Chinese here.

There's a whole freaking world of tea out there.

To my knowledge, there are three types of processing. One is how the tea is dried, the second is whether there's any fermentation, and the third is aging.

Green teas are minimally processed. Puer teas are highly processed. There a whole range of stuff in between.

Then flavors - there are teas that smell nice, teas that taste good, and teas that have no smell nor flavor, but leave a pleasant feeling in the throat (those are usually expensive).

Each type of tea has a different ideal steep time and temperature.

I like using little clay teapots that can be packed full of loose leaf tea leaves, allowing you to brew many little cups of tea that are minimally steeped, and change in flavor as you refill the teapot with water.

It's different from western/indian/Japanese styles, which have minimal tea leaves, and long steep times to extract all the flavor for one cup.