::A good time for tea. View - enchanted by tea... The performance of "Da-ak" that happened not so long ago was a fresh experience for me since it made me recall the long years I spent studying in China. Tea was part of my life during my days back then. Because water had to be boiled before drinking in Beijing where the quality of the water is not so reliable, China was able to develop an elaborate tea culture. (Since water in China contains a high percentage of lime, the Chinese put a tea leave in the boiled water and wait until it submerges before finally drinking the water.) Drinking a cup of tea as I watch a performance or listen to music was a familiar habit during my leisurely hours. I drank tea sometimes by myself, and sometimes with my teachers or friends. I remember one such occasion when my favorite teacher joined me and some friends on a trip to have a cup of tea. It must have been after 8:00 pm, for we left after having dinner. Inside the tearoom there was a large table made from a log, and trees and rocks were engraved and water was running between them. The table reminded me of part of an Oriental painting. Each of us found a flat spot among the rocks between the engravings. Already, our eyes were captivated at what we were looking at on the table. It was another joy to learn about the Chinese methods of steeping tea in hot water in order to make a cup of tea, which was quite different from what I had known in Korea. From the moment we stepped into the tearoom, the air was filled with Chinese traditional music, which, by the time the tea was ready to drink and we had settled in enough to chitchat, everything became familiar and seemed natural to us. One cup after another....as we were enjoying our tea, I started to feel a little dizzy - I realized I had become enchanted by the tea that I had been drinking. Our tea drinking ritual continued until dawn, and it was a different experience from what you get when you spend a night getting drunk from alcohol. The more I drank, the more I felt my mind clear. Since that day, I have never felt drunk from tea. Could it be that I developed a certain inner vaccination against it? What I experienced that day gave me an opportunity to fall deeper into tea drinking. When I heard about "Da-ak"performance, I started to become anxious waiting for it, and I was especially curious about how different it was from what we have in Korea. Ceramic crocks at a corner of the stage, along with fallen leaves on the ground, were successful in bringing forth the atmosphere of autumn, appealing to those like me who are familiar with autumn scenes in Korean minds. A few other stage setting seemed to be drawing us into a world beyond time and space. Music played while we were making tea with different themes like Wind, Moon, Clouds, Star and Sun. It was such a neat experience. I was reminded of the days in Korea when I was offered by monks a few simple cups of tea on a large wooden table whenever I visited my temple. The weather is getting chilly, and a cup of warm tea will be nice at such time. Once again, I want to get drunk from the tea, as I once did somewhere in a tearoom while I was a stranger in China, drunk from the scent of tea that comes from my homeland, Korea. On a fine day in 2001. Eun-Yeong Han, Pipa Player In this essay, I wrote what passed through my mind as I was enjoying the "Da-ak" performance on the 27th of October. (location: The National Center for Traditional Korean Music, Umyeondang)