The ways of tea

Tea is calming, invigorating, warming, cooling, ancient, ever new, ubiquitous, and rare. You should try it.

There are many ways of tea and you'll find your own. The one signpost says: "Know your leaves. Steep them at the temperature and for the time they like." This means generally to make sure you don't oversteep by leaving the leaves in the water for too long, and to find the right temperature for the particular tea you're drinking. If it's bitter on one end or has little flavor on the other end, adjust the variables!

You should also know that tea is an actual plant—camellia sinensis. There are herbal teas made from different plants, sometimes called tisanes, and "true" teas (green, black, white, oolong, etc.) made from the leaves of the tea plant.

Strangely enough humanity so far has met in the tea cup. –Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea