Tea Heritage

In his immortal book The Classic of Tea 《茶经》, Lu Yu (about AD 733 – 804, Tang Dynasty), the widely regarded Tea Saint, wrote:

'Tea is a precious evergreen tree found in South China. It varies from one or two Chinese feet (chi – 33.3cm) to several tens of feet.'

'Because tea is by nature cool, it makes most suitable drink. Those who attend to their behavior and are of frugal character and who may feel hot and thirsty, or out of sort, or have a headache, or irritation of the eye, or fatigue of the limbs, or discomfort of the joints, merely need to drink four or five mouthful of tea and it will achieve much the same effect as drinking refined curds.'

'Drinking tea that has not been picked in time, that has not been prepared with care, or that has been mixed with wild tea will cause illness.'

This book covered all the major topics in Tea. It has ten chapters, covering: 1. The origins of tea, 2. The tools used in picking and manufacturing tea, 3. The manufacturing of tea, 4. Vessels of making and drinking tea, 5. Tea boiling, 6. Tea drinking, 7. Historic materials on tea, 8. Tea production areas, 9. Simplification on tea drinking, 10. Hanging Scrolls for tearoom.

This book is well regarded as the foundation of tea culture in China. Even today, it is still used as the number 1 teaching material on tea and tea culture.

Tea has been so impactful to life and society, Zhao Ji (AD 1082 – 1135), the art-gifted emperor of the Song Dynasty, personally wrote a book on tea, 'On Tea in DaGuan' 《大观茶论》.

Tea was produced and pressed into small tea cakes in his time. It was ground to powder before being prepared, known as DianCha 点茶, which is very close to the Matcha 抹茶 in Japan today.

Tea was ordered to be made in loose tea form 散茶 by Zhu YuanZhang (AD 1328 – 1398), the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, in order to stop the over-extravagant trend in tea preparation. Loose tea is still the most popular form of tea in China today.

It is generally believed tea was brought to Japan from China in the Tang dynasty (AD 618 – 907). It has gone through times and played a very big part in the Japan history, and it has deeply woven into Japanese culture.

Murata Juko is known in chanoyu history as an early developer of tea making as a spiritual practice. He studied Zen under the monk Ikkyu, who revitalized Zen in the 15th century, and this is considered to have influenced his concept of chanoyu. By the 16th century, tea drinking had spread to all levels of society in Japan.

Sen no Rikyu (AD 1522 – 1591) has been the most famous person and is regarded as Tea Saint in Japan. He carried on the studies of Japanese Monks in Zen and treated tea as a spiritual practice. The principles he set forward for the Japanese Way of Tea (teaism) — Harmony (和, wa), Respect (敬, kei), Purity (清, sei), and Tranquility (寂, jaku) — are still central to the Way of Tea in Japan. It has profound impact on many aspects of Japanese life.

Also to mention is 'The Book of Tea' (茶の本), published 1906 by Okakura Kakuzo, a very well-regarded English book, introducing not only the Japanese Way of Tea, but also the aesthetic and cultural characters of Japanese life.