Gongfu cha is usually translated as “tea with skill”. It is the same word used in martial arts, and it means roughly an ability worked out over time. This is not about ceremony as performance. It is about doing a thing attentively.
The equipment and what it is for
A gaiwan is a bowl with a lid and a saucer. The lid holds back the leaves while you drink or pour. A simple object that replaces a teapot and a strainer at once.
The chahai, or fairness pitcher, has one specific job. The liquor in a gaiwan is not uniform: stronger at the bottom, weaker at the surface. Pouring it into the chahai first evens out the strength, so everyone gets the same. Hence the name.
The cups are small, two or three sips. Not out of thrift: the liquor cools quickly and changes taste, and from a small cup you finish it before that happens.
The chaxi is the mat or tray everything stands on. With this way of brewing, a fair amount of water ends up outside the cups, and that is normal rather than clumsy.
The first pour goes down the drain
A short, few-second pour that goes straight to the sink or over a figurine. People say it rinses the leaf, but the real reason is different: dry, tightly rolled leaf needs a moment to open. The first proper infusion after this warm-up is noticeably fuller.
With dark and pressed teas it is obligatory. With delicate greens you can skip it — a shame to waste the taste.
Tea pets
Small clay animals and figures that stand on the tray and get doused with leftover liquor. Most often toads, pigs, dragons, the Maitreya Buddha. The clay is unglazed, so over time it soaks up tea, darkens and takes on a sheen. After a year of regular pouring it looks nothing like the day it was bought.
Practical use: none whatsoever. They exist so there is company at the table, and somewhere to put the rinse water.
The empty cup
Smell the cup after you have drunk, while it is still warm. The aroma left on the walls is often different from the taste of the liquor, and often more interesting. With oolongs and red teas it is arguably the best part.
Tall narrow aroma cups exist for exactly this, but an ordinary one works too.
Is all of this necessary
No. Good tea can be brewed in a mug and it will be good. The equipment improves nothing by itself — it only gives control over time and temperature, and turns drinking into something that takes a quarter of an hour instead of thirty seconds.
To start, a gaiwan and two cups are enough. The rest accumulates on its own, usually over years.