HONG KONG VENDOR PITCHES POWER OF TEA.

Byline: Edward A. Gargan The New York Times

Tendrils of steam plumed from the teapot's spout as Yip Wai-man splashed the parchment-thin ceramic thimbles with boiling water. Then in a liquid ballet he filled a tiny red clay pot with water, spilled tea into a blue and white china jug and carefully poured a mouthful of pale amber liquid into each thimble.

``This is Iron Buddha tea,'' Yip said, balancing the translucent china thimble in his fingertips. ``Smell the bouquet and then sip it carefully.''

In the frenzy of Hong Kong's day, executives in crisp suits scurrying into glass towers, the 24-hour roar of construction equipment, the buzz of business over hurried lunches, Yip preaches the need for tranquillity and harmony - elements of the traditional Chinese tea ceremony. It is a ritual, he insists, that has been all but lost here.

``Basically everything of tradition in China was destroyed with the fall of the Qing dynasty,'' Yip said, referring to the collapse of China's last dynasty in 1911. ``When I went to China, I was devastated to find there was no one to teach me about tea.

``Frankly speaking, China is not so useful; they've lost everything related to the tea culture. Nobody talks about the Chinese tea ceremony, only the Japanese ceremony. Of course its origin was in China.''

With nervousness growing as Hong Kong braces for the takeover by mainland China on July 1, 1997, Yip, cherubic in a Beatle-ish mop and white cotton Chinese jacket, extols the virtues of ``cha dao,'' or ``the way of tea,'' as a political healer and social pacifier.

In a city with some of the busiest McDonald's anywhere, where Coke and cognac consumption spirals upward and where tea is more an afterthought than a passion, Yip's obsession nears the quixotic. But he is undeterred.

``I used to drink Coke,'' said Yip, 37, a former social worker. ``I was like the Hong Kong masses. I was totally not into tea. I didn't even think it tasted good. Then I became interested in China's history and culture. It arose from my concerns about 1997, to dig into my past, my thoughts about being Chinese.''

Being Chinese is apparently not at the forefront of many Hong Kongers' sensibilities. A recent poll by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that only 36 percent of Hong Kong's people see themselves as Chinese, while 49 percent identify themselves as ``Hongkongese.''

Yip said that escaping history was not so easy. ``I realized that because of jitters over '97 and my sense of the growing distance between people here in Hong Kong, I want to use tea to spread harmony,'' he said. ``What I want is a new Hong Kong tea culture, a product of the combination of the old and new China, of North and South and the ingestion of Western influences.''

Already he has staked out land in the New Territories, Hong Kong's bit of the mainland, for a tea farm and the site of his members-only International China Tea Club.

Intended as a refuge from the frazzled existence of urban Hong Kong, the Tea Club, to open in September, will be a traditional two-story Chinese teahouse where the elaborate ritual of tea drinking can take place in leisure and relative solitude, a privilege that will cost the equivalent of about $6,500 a year.

``The idea is to relax, drink tea and make teapots if you wish,'' he said.

To be sure, Hong Kong is not lacking in tea. There is not a restaurant here where tea is not a staple. But hunched behind his desk in his tea shop on Argyle Street in Kowloon, Yip disdains the plebeian practice of sloshing plain green tea into muglike teacups.

In his Jabbok Tea Shop the paraphernalia of the tea ritual - what he insisted are the essentials of the tea experience - sit carefully on well-lighted shelves and in glass cases. On three glass shelves, 15 palm-size red clay teapots are arrayed under spotlights.

``These are very special,'' Yip said, adding that they cost about $8,800 each.

Along the wall, fat canisters of tea displayed the profusion of regional vintages, from Pu-er to Long-jing, from Mu-dan to Iron Buddha, teas in a rainbow of colors, smells and tastes, with prices from $5 to well over $1,000 for a bit more than a pound of tea leaves.

``Tea,'' Yip declared, ``is like French wine. It matters where the leaves are grown, on a hill or a valley, and when they are harvested, in the spring or autumn.''

Yip spreads his devotion to tea, to the esoterica of ritual and his faith in the tea ceremony's palliative properties, in courses he teaches - more than 8,000 students over the past decade, he said. But a few other tea masters in Hong Kong, less fervent perhaps, have brought the ferocity of competition to the genteel world of tea sipping.

Vesper Cha, the proprietor of the Best Tea House, a small chain of tea shops in Hong Kong, sells a wide range of ordinary and rare teas, teapots and the assorted utensils used in a traditional ceremony. But Cha, a former dealer in industrial lubricants, saw the lack of high-quality teas in Hong Kong as a marketing challenge.

``All over Hong Kong, I could not find one high-quality tea,'' he said. ``So this was a big chance for me to open a shop with high-quality tea. My first shop was only 400 square feet.'' Today he has shops in Hong Kong and Canada.

Still, the infatuation of Hong Kong's young people for Coca-Cola and beer remains a hurdle.

``If your only customers are old people, you're doomed,'' he said with a laugh. ``When people are too young, they don't know how to appreciate a cup of good tea. They have too much energy. But hopefully when they get to be 30, they learn to enjoy real tea.''

Yip, who admitted that he is not immune to market pressures, insisted that his more refined approach to the tea business, and to tea culture, would endure.

``Tea has always been closely related to Chinese life for the last 3,000 years,'' he said. ``It brings out the concept of harmony, which is a central theme of Chinese civilization. Tea is a real instrument of furthering harmony. It is a real linkage in relationships.''