China has a long history of tea, and the Chinese tea culture is even more profound. Tea for the Way has compiled some information about the origin and development of tea, giving you a brief history of the development of tea, in the hope that you can have a preliminary knowledge of Chinese tea culture.
China is the home of tea and was the first country in the world to discover tea and make use of it. No country can deny China's status as the suzerain state of the tea ceremony, otherwise it would be against the basic civilisation of the tea ceremony. The origin of the tea tree is at least 60,000 to 70,000 years old. Tea has been discovered and utilised by mankind for about four to five thousand years. So tea is the national drink of the Chinese people, developed in the Shennong clan, heard in the Lu Zhou Gong, flourished in the Tang dynasty, flourished in the Song dynasty and became popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
There is a legend about the origin of tea: Shennong tasted hundred herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons, and got tantalum and solve it. According to legend, Shennong ate a grass after the unfortunate poisoning, but fortunately the tea juice into the mouth to save his life. Since then, tea has become a potent antidote to poison. The Shennong Hundred Herb Classic was written no later than the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, at least at that time, our ancestors already recognised the medicinal benefits of tea.
The origin of tea
(1) Shennong period: Tang - Lu Yu "Tea Classic":
"Tea for drinking, developed from Shennong's." In the history of China's cultural development, it is often the case that the origin of everything related to agriculture and plants is ultimately attributed to Shennong's. It is also because of this that Shennong became the god of agriculture.
(2) Western Zhou period:
Jin - Chang Qu's Huayang Guo Zhi - Ba Zhi: "King Wu of Zhou invaded Zhou, and obtained the division of Ba Shu, and all the tea and honey were paid tribute to it." This record indicates that when King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty conquered Zhou, the state of Ba had already paid tribute to King Wu of the Zhou with tea and other precious products. It is also recorded in the Huayang Guo Zhi that there were already artificially cultivated tea gardens at that time.
(3) Qin and Han dynasties:
Western Han. Wang Bao's "Boy's Covenant": "cooked all the tea", "Wuyang bought tea", after examination of the tea is now tea. In the Western Han tomb at Mawangdui in Changsha, the burial inventory was found to contain "? A Su" and "? A Su" bamboo text and woodcut text, after checking "?" This is a variant of the word "槚", which means that tea was widely drunk in Hunan at that time. The fact that we are still drinking the same beverage as our ancient ancestors, such as Jiang Taigong, is indeed a very exciting thing. It can give us a lot of reverie.
(4) Song and Yuan Dynasties:
The tea region continued to expand, and the techniques of tea growing, tea making and tea ordering were refined. Song Dynasty tea culture developed, there are several tea works, such as Cai Xiang "tea record", Song Zi'an "Dongxi try tea record", Huang Ru "tea tasting to record", especially Song Huizong Zhao Ji pro-authored "Da Guan tea theory" and so on. In the Song and Yuan dynasties, Liu Songnian's "Lu Tong's Tea Cooking" and Zhao Mengfu's "Tea Fighting" are even more artistic treasures of Chinese tea culture
The development of tea culture
1. The Formative Period of Tea Culture - Tang Dynasty
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, tea leaves were mostly processed into cakes. When drinking, it was cooked with condiments and served in soup. With the flourishing of tea affairs and the emergence of tribute tea, the development of tea cultivation and processing technology was accelerated, and many famous teas emerged, and the method of tasting and drinking was also greatly improved. To improve the bitterness of the tea, mint, salt and red dates were added for flavouring. In addition, the use of special tea cooking utensils was introduced and how tea was drunk changed significantly, from the previous rough and tumble style to the slow and careful frying style.
During the Tang Dynasty, tea drinking became an increasingly sophisticated practice, with the choice of tea and water, the way it was cooked and the environment in which it was served. Tea banquets were held in the imperial palaces, temples and among the literati, the atmosphere was solemn, the environment elegant and the etiquette strict, and tribute tea or high grade tea leaves were used, water was taken from famous springs, clear springs and expensive tea utensils were used. The formation of tea culture in the Tang Dynasty was linked to the development of Buddhism, the imperial examination system, the flourishing of poetry, the rise of tribute tea, the prohibition of alcohol and so on.
Around 780 A.D., Lu Yu wrote the Tea Sutra, which elaborated on the ideas of tea science, tea art and tea ceremony. During this period, due to the emergence of tea people, the pursuit of water, tea, tea utensils, tea decoction reached a point of extreme elegance and luxury, so much so that in the late Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty, there was a wind of extravagance in tea culture.
2. The flourishing period of tea culture - the Song Dynasty
By the Song Dynasty, tea culture continued to develop and deepen, forming a unique cultural taste. Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin himself loved tea, set up tea organs in the palace, the court with tea has been graded. As for the lower class, when the common people move neighbours to "offer tea"; a guest to "Yuan Bao tea", engagement to "under tea", marriage to "fixed tea".
In the academic field, due to the southward shift of the tea industry, tribute tea to Jian'an Beiyuan as the most, tea researchers tend to study Jian tea. Among the tea writings of the Song Dynasty, the famous ones include Ye Qingchen's "Description of a small article of boiled tea", Cai Xiang's "Tea Record", Zhu Zian's "Dongxi Trial Tea Record", Shen Gui's "Tea Law of this Dynasty" and Zhao Ji's "Da Guan Tea Theory".
Song Dynasty is the most active era of tea drinking activities in history, due to the fusion of tea drinking culture between the North and South, began to appear teahouse culture, teahouses in the Southern Song Dynasty was called the tea house, when the tea drinking business in Lin'an city around the clock. In addition, the tea drinking activities of the Song Dynasty started from the tribute tea, and derived from the "embroidered tea", "tea", "tea" and other entertainment methods.
3.The "tea" culture continued to develop during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties
Song people let tea become a thriving business, but also let the tea art towards the complex, trivial, extravagant, lost the original simplicity of tea culture and talk, too fine tea art drowned the spirit of the Tang Dynasty tea culture. Since the Yuan Dynasty, tea culture has entered a period of tortuous development. Until the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Han people felt the rise and fall of the previous generation of the nation, coupled with the difficulties of the opening of the country, in the tea culture presented simplicity and the fit between man and nature, to tea reveal their bitterness festival.
At this time, tea has appeared steamed green, fried green, baked green and other categories, tea drinking has been changed to "ing bubble dispel", the Ming Dynasty, many literati left several heirloom works, such as Tang Bohu's "cooking tea scroll" "tea tasting map" and so on. The variety of tea leaves increased, the skill of making tea differed, and the style of the tea set, texture and pattern were in a variety of ways. Late Ming to early Qing, fine tea culture again, tea making, cooking and drinking although not back to the Song people's tight trivia, but the tea style tends to be slim.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the development of teahouses was extremely rapid, some of the town's residents only a few dry home, while the teahouse can reach more than a hundred of them. Shops cloth stay quaint and elegant, drinking tea in addition to the literati, there are merchants, craftsmen, etc., teahouse camp snacks and food, but also additional storytelling, singing shows, and so is the folk entertainment venues.
4.The "tea" culture of the reappearance of the glorious period - contemporary
Although Chinese tea culture has been around for a long time, its revival in contemporary times was studied in the 1980s. Taiwan was the first place where modern tea art and tea ceremony were revived. On the mainland, after the founding of New China, China's tea production developed rapidly. The abundance of material base provided a solid foundation for the development of tea culture.
How tea has been utilised in China has gone through three stages: medicinal, edible and drinking. The use of tea ranged from the direct consumption of fresh leaves to the processing of fresh leaves into dried tea for storage.
The medicinal stage of tea
As early as 4700 years ago in the Shennong era, the ancients discovered that the fresh leaves of the tea tree had an antidote to poison, and directly chewed tea leaves to extract tea juice for healing, and over time chewing tea leaves became a hobby for people.
The edible stage of tea
Although the Qin and Han dynasties, the value of tea is still mainly expressed in the medicinal, but in the Western Han dynasty, the Sichuan area took the lead in the trend of tea drinking, to the Wei and Jin dynasties, tea as a daily drink has been in the common people and even the noblemen in the formation of consensus.
During this period, the tea drinking method showed a diversity, as people would simply kill the freshly picked tea leaves and then grind them into a paste with oil and other ingredients to make tea cakes or tea balls, which were then decocted with onions, ginger and cinnamon and served.
The drinking stage of tea
With the continuous development of human life, the use of tea from the direct consumption of fresh leaves, the development of fresh leaves processed into dry tea storage spare, the habit of chewing tea leaves raw changed to decoction, that is, fresh leaves washed and placed in clay pots with water to boil, even soup with leaves to take, decoction of tea although bitter, but the taste is rich, flavor and efficacy are better than several chips, over time people have developed the habit of decoction of drinking, which is the development of tea as a beverage The beginning.
Tea drinking in the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties through the development process, the evolution of the Tang boiled, Song point, Ming bubble three kinds of tea drinking methods. In the Ming Dynasty, tea was brewed in a teapot or tea jar, then brewed with boiling water and served directly. Our current brewing method is an evolution of the Ming tea making method.
It has to be said that brewing tea was a great experiment and invention, which freed people from the tedious procedures of boiling and ordering in the Tang and Song dynasties, and it was only then that the true taste of tea, unadulterated by any other external elements, began to be released.
As one of the world's three natural beverages (tea, cocoa and coffee), tea brings people a wonderful enjoyment with its colour, aroma and taste. Tea is also a cultural carrier, mingling with the thousands of years of emotional attachment and spiritual civilisation of the Chinese people. Welcome to follow the micro-signal: "Tea as the Way" to learn tea ceremony, tea art, tea rituals, tea virtues, tea culture and more for free!
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