This was one of the books that I bought for my birthday! I’ve been meaning to read up about tea in China, but the library doesn’t have many books about it. I found this book after some googling and it sounded good, so I got it from Book Depository.
Subtitled “a religious and cultural history”, this book looks at the rise of tea in China mainly through the aforementioned two dimensions. While it looks at tea in the pre-Tang dynasty and even out of Japan, the main focus of this book is on the Tang and Song dynasty (with a bit more page-time given to the Tang dynasty). Divided into nine chapters, the book looks at:
1. The Early History of Tea: Myth and Reality
This looks at tea before the Tang dynasty and examines the motives of Lu Yu and other writers for establishing tea as an ancient beverage. I have to admit, I was extremely shocked to find out that the myth of Shen Nong discovering tea was a claim first advanced by Lu Yu – given its prevalence, I thought it was a lot better supported (in terms of textual support by earlier text).
There’s also an interesting discussion about the words used to describe tea before the word 茶 (cha) came about, and several interesting accounts of the relationship between ghosts and tea.
Overall, though, the author argues that “it is most sensible to understand tea as a Tang-dynasty invention and to accept that the prehistory of tea is a tale that is impossible to recover.” Given the interesting tales in this chapter, I would think that even if a complete picture of tea Pre-Tang is impossible, we still have enough to be able to sketch out a rough picture of tea before that.
2. Buddhism and Tea during the Tang Dynasty
This chapter looks at how tea “moved into the place previously occupied solely by alcohol.” The big reason for this was that Buddhism had precepts against alcohol. But alcohol played an important role in social situations and an alternative had to be found: tea. This helped it move from a Southern drink to one that was drunk all over the country.
A big part of this chapter looks at the 茶酒论 (cha jiu lun), a hypothetical discourse between both tea and alcohol. Each beverage tries to claim superiority, with tea claiming an exalted status among plants, his status as a luxury product, and his positive relationship to Buddhism (such as the effect of being able to “clear away their [monk’s] dullness and weariness”). In his responses, alcohol argues that he has a long history and a valuable role in helping to lubricate the wheels of government, allowing people to speak freely and listen to advice. That point reminded me of how nomikais in Japan allow people to speak freely to one another, even in this modern day and age. Alcohol also points out that certain types of liquor are famous as well.
Each beverage also tries to disparage the other, with alcohol warning about the dangers of drinking too much tea:
“To drink tea is only to get backache. [If one] drinks too much, one will be sick in the stomach.”
As someone who’s tea drinking is currently restricted by my doctor, this definitely hit close to heart (not that I’ll be replacing alcohol with tea anytime soon). Of course, tea hits back by pointing out the intoxicating effects of alcohol.
The 茶酒论 (cha jiu lun) was actually briefly mentioned in Chinese Tea, a book I read earlier this year. So it was pretty interesting for me to read more about the work and to see how tea was regarded, especially in comparison to alcohol.
3. Tea Poetry in Tang China
The next chapter takes a closer look at tea in Tang poetry. I recently went for a class on Chinese literature, and while I didn’t understand a lot, I did grasp the fact that poetry was a very big thing. So now, I understand why there’s a whole chapter dedicated towards it. It was rather interesting to see all the different verses, and I even learnt about a type of tea called ‘Transcendent’s Palm’:
“Unlike the highly processed cakes of tea that were commonly consumed by Tang tea connoisseurs, the long leaves from the Yuquan monastery were naturally sun-dried, curling up to take the form of a hand. These naturally dried leaves would have produced a tea that was quite different from that made from cakes of tea in which the leaves had previously been rinsed, steamed, pounded, and baked.”
This tea sounds quite like the tea we drink today!
Transcendent’s Palm tea shows up because the tea was given some ‘advertising’ push through a poem by Li Bai. Looks like celebrity endorsements have a much longer history than I imagined!
There is also a discussion of Lu Tong’s Seven Cups of Tea and I learnt that the proper name of the poem is “Written in haste to thank Imperial Censor Meng for his gift of freshly picked tea.” It’s actually part of a longer poem and it was interesting to read the whole thing – I wanted to read more analysis about it!
4. The Patron Saint of Tea: Religious Aspects of the Life and Work of Lu Yu
Given the pivotal role of Lu Yu’s Classic of Tea in Chinese tea culture, it’s no wonder that the book dedicates an entire chapter to him. Half the chapter is a look at his life and influences, and while I have read a little about him, most of the information here was new to me. I appreciated that the book put the Classic of Tea in context with its period – I certainly did not know that Lu Yu’s “method of making tea […] was superseded relatively soon by other ways of preparing the beverage.”
There was also a discussion of imitators and later works inspired by the Classic of Tea, which goes to show that for a relatively short work, it has a huge influence.
5. Tea: Invigorating the Body, Mind, and Society in the Song Dynasty
Finally, we move on to the Song dynasty, which also had a “particular enthusiasm at all levels of society for beverages that had medicinal qualities – what we might today called ‘health drinks’ – made of aromatic herbal ingredients.” Sounds like the superfood trends in society today!
While tea had more competition, it was also being produced and consumed in bigger quantities. There’s an extensive discussion of tea in the monasteries, and I learnt that drinking tea was associated with the bathing in monasteries (which was not an everyday occurrence). But apart from its use in bathing, tea “was a vital social lubricant for monastic communities and essential to the regular functioning of their administration and their calendar.”
6. Eisai’s Kissa Yojoki
This chapter is titled “Tea Comes to Japan”, but it’s really a discussion of only one work – the Kissa Yojoki (drinking tea for nourishing life) by Eisai, the monk generally credited for being the guy who made tea popular in Japan. The Kissa Yojoki not only talks about what tea is and its uses, but also has about different diseases and how they can be cured (with mulberry).
7. Religion and Culture in the Tea Economy of Late Imperial China
This chapter looks at tea in the Ming dynasty, including famous Ming teas (like Longjing, which is still famous today) and how tea related to aesthetics. I learnt that Ming tea connoisseurs “preferred to enjoy their tea in quiet, secluded, elegantly simple surroundings where they met with two or three friends.”
I left out the introductory and concluding chapters, which is why there are only seven points. The introductory chapter has some basic information about tea and gives an overview of the book, while the last chapter is a summary of the earlier chapters.
Since I’m not a tea scholar, nor am I a history student, I was wondering how accurate the translations and citations in this book are. I found a review from the Journal of Chinese Studies which says that the translations and citations are generally reliable, although the reviewer doesn’t agree with the emphasis on the religious dimensions of tea.
The review also elaborated on what wax tea, something mentioned but not explained in the book, was:
“This was a famous tribute tea produced in Fujian during the Tang and Song periods. It was referred to as “wax tea” because of its white, milky appearance that looked like melted wax. Hence, it was also called làmiàn chá 臘面茶 (wax surface tea) or just làmiàn 臘面 (wax surface).”
The review also positively referenced a book called The Rise of Tea Culture in China, which I managed to find in the library and will be reading soon.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and learnt a lot from it. I can’t say that I’ve memorised/understood the contents of the entire book, but that’s why I bought it – so that I can reference and re-read as many times as I want.
Reference:
Review of Tea in China by Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania – I would highly recommend reading the whole review here; the author goes into detail about the strengths and weaknesses of the book and adds a lot of new information too. That said, he does seem very biased towards a book that he blurbed, which is something to keep in mind when reading the review.