Gongfu is a Chinese tea brewing style that uses a lot of tea, a small vessel, and very short steeps repeated many times. It sounds elaborate, but the basic idea is simple: instead of brewing one big cup, you brew many tiny ones from the same leaves, watching the flavour change with each round. A single session can last half an hour and produce eight or ten brews from a few grams of tea.
What you actually need
A small brewing vessel — a gaiwan (a lidded cup with a saucer) or a small teapot, ideally around 100–150ml. A fairness pitcher (a small jug to pour the brew into between rounds, so the strength is even). Small tasting cups, around 30–50ml each. A kettle. Loose leaf tea — oolong, pu-erh, and roasted Chinese teas suit the style best.
If you do not own a gaiwan, a small teapot or even a small jar works to start. The exact gear matters less than the process.
The basic procedure
Use about five grams of tea for a 100ml gaiwan — much more than you would put in a Western-style brew. Rinse the leaves with hot water and pour it off immediately; this wakes them up and washes off any storage dust.
First brew: about ten seconds. Pour into the fairness pitcher, then into the cups. Drink. Most of the first brew tastes brighter and a bit sharp.
Each subsequent brew adds five to ten seconds. The second is usually the most rounded; the third sweeter. By the fifth or sixth brew, you may need a full minute. The session ends when the tea no longer produces interesting flavour — usually somewhere between brews seven and twelve depending on the leaf.
Why bother
The point is not the gear or the choreography. It is that you watch one tea evolve through many brews, and you taste differences that are invisible in a single Western-style cup. The same leaves taste like several different teas across a session.
It also slows things down. A gongfu session is incompatible with checking email at the same time. For some people that is the most valuable thing about it.