“WE will cure your constipation tomorrow!” I boasted to my mother-in-law about a month ago as my wife and I welcomed her to our suburban home in Shanghai for the Lunar New Year.

“I will never trust you,” she smiled back. “I know you’re talking big.”

I didn’t mean to talk big, I knew for sure that some of my best friends had recently got rid of constipation after drinking aged Pu’er tea. But to be frank, I wasn’t really sure the same miracle would work for my mother-in-law. I just wanted to make her happy on the day she arrived in Shanghai from Yixing, Jiangsu Province.

Anyway, by dusk that day, my parents-in-law found themselves sitting at our tea table, ready to enjoy Pu’er tea like never before, prepared by my wife.

My wife and I have recently learned tea making from certain master tea artists.

A key to the seemingly complicated tea serving procedure is to make sure that the temperature of the water is right (100 degrees Celsius for certain teas but less for others).

Another key is to control the time between pouring water into the teapot and pouring tea into cups. If the time is too long, the tea leaves steep too long and the taste is bitter. If the time is too short, the fragrance of tea leaves will not emerge.

We had prepared some of the best old Pu’er tea for our parents. For every small teapot of Pu’er tea, at least six rounds were served, totally lasting around an hour, including the time we waited for the water to boil.

The next day, when I returned from work, I eagerly asked my mother-in-law, “How was it?”

“I knew you were talking big,” she said with a wry smile. “No relief.” I scratched my head in embarrassment.

ÔI relieved myself!’

When I returned the next day, I didn’t dare ask for progress.

My mother-in-law opened the door, showing no signs of relief in her face. As I turned around to change shoes, I heard her excited voice: “Wang Yong was really right. I relieved myself today!”

Suddenly laughter filled our home. My father-in-law was lost for words.

To think that my 73-year-old mother-in-law had suffered constipation since an early age. All her life she envied her husband for his regular habits.

“Now I feel like a baby,” my mother-in-law said, her face radiant. “I feel reborn each time I answer a call of nature.”

I was certainly carried away by the unexpected news.

Over the past one month or so, we had tea together almost every day. My mother-in-law relieved herself on time. “It never happened to me before,” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it!”

What a pity my wife and I didn’t know about the magical effects of old Pu’er tea until recently.

Moreover, my parents-in-law never liked the idea of traditional tea etiquette that required patience. For the better part of their lives, they would drink tea hastily from a big glass the way people drink beer or soda. And they had never tasted Pu’er Ñ green tea was always their first choice.

During their short stay with us, we also served them high mountain tea from Taiwan, in strict accordance with traditional tea etiquette. It also helped my mother-in-law’s digestion.

She was so overjoyed that she lighted incense daily in our toilet to thank the legendary toilet goddess Zi Gu.

My father-in-law, who used to ridicule our traditional tea etiquette as “a total waste of time,” eagerly reached out for a tiny cup of tea each time my wife was serving during the past month of family union.

That Pu’er tea aids digestion was known as early as in the 17th century when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was established.

Many of its founders were warriors on horseback whose main food was meat. They ate few vegetables.

As a result, many of them had difficulty relieving themselves, until they heard of Pu’er, grown primarily in Yunnan Province.

But with the decline of the Qing Dynasty and ensuing wars and revolutions, Pu’er tea’s medicinal benefits was largely unknown to the general public, especially to those who live far from Yunnan.

My wife and I learned about it only a few months ago when we happened to meet a few fans of Pu’er. Many people still don’t know it. I recently looked for ways to cure constipation on the Internet and found none related to Pu’er tea (unless I typed both “Pu’er” and “constipation”).

I’m not saying Pu’er is a suitable laxative for everyone, but the health benefits of certain Chinese herbal teas should be further studied and promoted.

It’s a total waste of tea, Pu’er in particular, to drink from one big cup. Without six or seven rounds of delicate serving, the effects of tea cannot be properly released to benefit the drinker.

Alas, in our modern life, the art of delicate and slow-paced tea serving Ñ which also benefits our health Ñ is often lost.

The other day, a Chinese friend of mine entertained an American friend in a Taiwanese-style tea shop. They were very surprised to find that they were served with a tiny teapot and tiny cups, and that they could not drink the same way they would gulp a big glass of water.

“I was so thirsty,” my friend complained to me later. “And yet I could only sip a small mouthful of tea each time. How ridiculous!”

He didn’t know that the best way to relieve thirst is to sip tea bit by bit, not to drink it fast.

The slower you drink tea, the more it benefits your health.

The art of  living slowly and being mindful is being appreciated in areas such as tai chi, but when it comes to tea, patience remains a luxury to many drinkers.

Wrong comparison

Many people, including policymakers in China’s tea industry, have lamented that even if all domestic tea factories Ñ around 70,000 Ñ were combined, they still could not compete with Lipton in global market share.

Imagine all Chinese tea being powdered into fast-food-style drinks, like Lipton’s bagged tea.

For a few days, my wife and I didn’t serve my mother-in-law in accordance with traditional tea etiquette, and she drank big cups as she would with fast drinks. Each time she did that, she failed to answer the call of nature.

I’m not sure whether this is universal, but at least in my mother-in-law’s case, drinking fast does not benefit the health.

The world today is awash with fast food and fast drink. Let’s toast to our health by saving a place for the art of drinking tea slowly.

The name of this weekly column comes from the famous Taoist saying that the ultimate good is the way of water.