The Lie Every Tea Person Keeps Spewing!

I am really not sure why this hit me so hard today of all days, though it has always slightly nagged me, almost since the time I started drinking tea.   Yet there is a lie so deeply spread throughout all of tea culture, we have all probably heard it dozens if not more times.  While the lie is rooted in *mostly* good intentions, the honest truth is the lie is a lie because it is really impossible.    So without much further ado, the lie that we all keep spewing is:

When pouring from your [gaiwan/ teapot, what ever you use to brew] make sure you get out every last drop of water.

If you want to really think about why this is impossible, take any teapot you own, or heck even take a gaiwan.  Fill it with water then empty it, I mean try really good to empty it.  Look in side, can you see any water residue?  ( If it is a clay pot does the clay look damp?  Is there some tiny pool of water form when you tilt it slightly?  If you used a gaiwan and it passed the previous two, rub your finger in the gaiwan, does your finger come out wet?)  Guess what yes to any of those questions means there is water left in the pot.  Guess what, that is done without any tea leaves in the vessel!  Now imagine having tea leaves in the vessel, which offer all sorts of additional surfaces for water to cling to or hide, heck if it is a balled oolong it can even have pockets inside the unfurling leaves that can hold on to some water that you will never get out of the teapot even if you try and pour from it continuously for several hours. 

Where does this lie come from?  Well I will be the first to admit I have ruined several pots of Sencha because of a spout clog made me mistakenly believe the kyusu was empty when in reality there was about 10-15 ml of water left in the pot, only to be revealed when I lift the lid to add the water for the next steep.  Basically any time you are not brewing in a style that you are intentionally leaving a root to give a little more kick to the next infusion, if you accidentally leave a substantial amount of water in there things will turn out different than expected.  I imagine instead of trying to quantify "substantial amount" they decided to just go with "every last drop" as a nice and simple way to make their point.  

Lets face it water will always be left inside the pot after pouring, because water is water, it likes to cling to many substances at least until it finds something better to cling to or evaporates.   Trying to pour a teapot full of tea and having it be bone dry at the end of the pour is up there in impossible things with tea as: breaking up a puerh cake without breaking any leaves, or brewing tea for many years and never having burnt yourself.  Honestly I wouldn't trust a person to brew me tea in a gaiwan that has not burnt their fingers several times while using it.   Bonus points if you burn yourself while serving other people ;) . ( Reminds me of one time I brewed for my college roommate, I was using a rather poorly constructed gaiwan, because it was my largest, and I left basically no time between discarding the rinse and doing the first rather short infusion. I picked it up and started to pour, and wow did that hurt, my hand started to tremble from the pain, still clinched the gaiwan for dear life, once it was emptied I set it down as quick as I could, and got up and walked around waving my hand around.  A few minutes later I had a giant long and thin blister going across my thumb).