Golden Staff Of The Monkey King Sun Wukong Tea Knife

In The Journey To The West, the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, is given a golden staff to fight off demons as he protects the Monk Tang Seng on his way to India to recover lost sutras.

This knife probably won’t be able to protect you from demons, but it will defintely be able to help you open up some tea cakes.

The knife is made of ebony wood with two golden-colored metal alloy end pieces which screw off to reveal blades underneath. Use the flatter blade for looser teas, and the sharper one for more compressed teas.

While it’s not in use, this tea knife also makes a great display piece - maybe a tea pet of yours would like to hold it?

What’s a tea knife? Why should I use one?

Many teas, especially pu’er and white teas, are pressed into cakes for storage. While you can break them apart with your hands, it is easier and more reliable to use a knife to break the cake apart.

Tea lovers soon found normal knives to be too sharp and dangerous, and also the wrong length and thickness for breaking apart tea cakes. As such, they developed “pu’er knifes” to better fit their need.

Check out my video here on how to use a tea knife: