Tea ceremony begins
Tea art, which sprouted in the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Song Dynasty, reformed in the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty, can be said to have a considerable historical origin and form its own system.
China's nationality is natural, modest and does not emphasize form. Therefore, whether it is the tea classics in the Tang Dynasty, the grand view of tea in the Song Dynasty or the tea sparseness in the Ming Dynasty, the article only talks in general terms. Ordinary people integrate tea into their lives without any ritual or religious color. Tea is a necessity of life, and they can drink it at will. We pay attention to the interest in drinking tea, such as "tired of singing", "talking in the middle of the night", "painting a boat in a small bridge" and "burning incense in a small courtyard", which are the best environment and opportunities for drinking tea. The realm of "tea is wine for guests on a cold night" not only shows the harmony and joy between host and guest, but also contains an elegant feeling.
Tea art is a beautiful artistic conception in the whole process of tea tasting, including the appreciation of tea tasting techniques and artistic operation means, and the beautiful appreciation of tea tasting environment. Its process embodies the mutual unity of form and spirit, and it is a cultural phenomenon formed in the process of tea drinking. It has a long history, profound cultural background and close relationship with religion. Tea art includes: tea selection, water selection, tea-making technology, tea art, environmental selection and creation, etc. The background of tea art is an important means to set off the theme, which renders the pure, elegant and simple temperament of tea and enhances the artistic appeal. Different styles of tea art have different background requirements, and only by choosing a suitable background can we better understand the taste of tea.
Tea culture is a cultural phenomenon in the production of edible tea. The way humans eat tea generally goes through four stages: eating, drinking, drinking and tasting. "Eating" refers to eating tea raw or cooked as food, "drinking" refers to boiling tea into medicine, "drinking" refers to boiling tea into a drink, and "tasting" refers to tasting tea as an appreciation object (drinking is to quench thirst and can be drunk at one gulp. Taste is tasting, which needs to be sipped slowly and pondered repeatedly. The first three ways all happened very early, which can be as early as the primitive society, and the latter way is later, probably later than the Wei and Jin Dynasties.
There has always been a saying that "Shennong tastes a hundred herbs, and it encounters 72 poisons a day, and tea is the solution." According to the research of archaeology and ethnology, the history of tea consumption in China can be traced back to the Paleolithic Age. The so-called "Shennong tasting a hundred herbs" means that the tender buds and leaves of tea trees are used as food together with other edible plants. Later, people found that tea has the function of detoxification in the process of eating, so they boiled it into soup as medicine to drink. This is the so-called "instant tea solution". Usually, tea soup is used as a healthy drink. Ethnological data prove that primitive people collected some specific leaves and cooked them into soup. In some tea-producing areas, tea soup will naturally be used as a daily drink. Archaeologists found boiled tea and complete tea seeds 8,000 years ago at the Neolithic site in Huqiao, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. It can be seen that the history of ethnic tea drinking in China is at least 10 thousand years.
However, from the existing literature, until the Three Kingdoms period, the way of drinking tea in China still stayed in the stage of medicinal use and drinking. For example, when the literature of the Han Dynasty mentions tea, it only emphasizes its refreshing and health-care functions. During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Hao secretly changed the tea soup because my favorite minister, Wei Yao, was not good at drinking, which proved that tea is a drink.
Since the Western Jin Dynasty, the situation has changed. Some scholars in Sichuan participated in tea drinking activities and began to give tea drinking cultural significance. Zhang Zai, a famous poet in the Western Jin Dynasty, wrote in his poem "Climbing the White Tulou in Chengdu": "The fragrant tea is six clear crowns, and the fragrance spreads to Kyushu." People think that strong tea soup is better than all drinks, and the smell of tea spreads all over China. Aroma and taste have nothing to do with the refreshing, thirst-quenching and health-care effects of tea, but the aesthetic satisfaction of smell and taste. Fu, written by Du Yu, a scholar in the Western Jin Dynasty, is the first poem describing tea tasting positively in the history of China. In addition to describing the growth and picking of tea trees, the poem also mentions the use of water, tea sets, brewing and other links, especially the appreciation of tea soup foam, which is described as snow in winter and flowers in spring ("flowers are like snow, flowers are like spring"). It can be seen that tea soup began to become the object of tasting at this time. Fu also mentioned that drinking tea has the function of reconciling spirit and heart ("harmonizing spirit and interior"), which has already involved the spirit of tea ceremony. Therefore, the budding period of China tea tasting art can be traced back to the Western Jin Dynasty at least.
But it was only in the hands of Lu Yu in the Tang Dynasty that China people's tea drinking developed from eating, drinking and drinking to quality, and finally turned tea drinking into an art of life. In the Book of Tea, Lu Yu only touched on the medical and health care function of tea, and clearly put forward that "tea is extremely cold, and it is most suitable for people to drink frugally", which raised tea quality to the height of moral cultivation, and made a series of norms for the tea-making methods in the Tang Dynasty, from tea selection, water use, tea set, baking tea, grinding, sieving powder, boiling water, adding salt, adding water and boiling water. In particular, we pay great attention to the cultivation and appreciation of tea soup foam and make careful observation. We call foam Tang Hua, thinner foam, thicker cake and thinner tea, and use a series of vivid metaphors to describe the beauty of foam: like jujube flowers floating on round water, like green duckweed floating on deep pools or curved mainland water, like fish scales floating in clear sky, like green banknotes floating on water Mae. Paying so much attention to foam in drinking tea is obviously not to meet physiological needs, but to start from visual aesthetic pleasure. A bowl of tea soup with foam has become an aesthetic object full of artistic charm in front of Lu Yu, so it is full of inspiration and imagination. It can be seen that drinking tea has become a poetic art of life in the Tang Dynasty.
Similarly, poets in the Tang Dynasty tasted tea not for physical satisfaction, but for the aesthetic pleasure of the spiritual world, which can be proved by their emphasis on color, fragrance, taste, shape and artistic conception in a large number of tea poems. Qian Qi's tea poem "Tea Banquet with Zhao Ju" can be taken as a representative: "If you forget to say purple tea under the bamboo, all the guests will be drunk, but the dust will not wash your heart, and a tree will know."
Tea drinkers drink purple bamboo shoots tea under the bamboo forest, enter a state of forgetting words, the dust in their hearts is washed away, and enter an empty realm. The interest in drinking tea is endless, which makes people completely immersed in the beauty of nature and completely forget everything around them. Only the cicadas in the sloping shadows reflect the silence of the bamboo forest. This kind of tea tasting is a poetic art of life, which is essentially different from drinking tea to quench thirst.
Since then, tea people in all dynasties have the same conscious pursuit, and tea people in the Song Dynasty also called the color, fragrance and taste of tea soup "three musts" (Su Shi: "Make color, fragrance and preparation three musts a day"). While paying attention to the "color and fragrance" of tea soup, they also actively pursue a higher level of aesthetic artistic conception. In the Song Dynasty tea poems, we can often see such a poem: "It is better to sip the fairy mountain, and Ling Ran will want to fly with the wind" (Fan Zhongyan). "Whispering and singing at night are excellent, where is the dust in the heart" (Song Yu). "I also want the breeze to give birth to two armpits and blow away the moon wheel in teaching" (Mei). "Bored and temporarily relaxed" (Wen Yanbo). "If you forget to go home leisurely, you will be liberated" (Lv Tao).
Tea tasting in the Ming and Qing Dynasties promoted the literati to an elegant art, because in the Ming Dynasty, steamed green cake tea was abolished, loose tea brewing prevailed, and more attention was paid to the color, aroma, taste and shape of tea, which required stricter and more detailed requirements for every link of tea, water, utensils, environment, soaking and taste. The formation and maturity of Kung Fu tea art is a typical example. According to Yuan Mei's Eating List with the Garden in Qing Dynasty, when he was visiting Wuyishan in Fujian, the Zen master offered him tea: "The cup is as small as a walnut, and the pot is as small as a citron. Every time I pour one or two, I can't bear to swallow it. Smell its fragrance first, then taste it, chew slowly and be considerate. Sure enough, it smells sweet and the tip of the tongue is sweet. After drinking a cup, have another cup, which is soothing and enjoyable. " This way of tasting tea in small pots and cups is the Kung Fu tea art that later prevailed in Fujian and Guangdong. Kung Fu tea is one of the most artistic charms in traditional tea art in China. There are a series of standardized procedures in the process of brewing and drinking, which are difficult to master without a certain period of study and practice. As far as tea fragrance is concerned, when Liang Zhangju mentioned "Kung Fu tea told by Xiamen people in Quanzhou" in his Notes on Returning to the Field in Qing Dynasty, he pointed out that tea fragrance can be divided into four grades: "There are various fragrances, fragrances and so on. Today's tea tasters regard this as the ultimate wonderful truth, but if they don't know how to wait, they will say that it is clear, fragrant but unclear and still popular. Waiting for it is sweet, fragrant but unwilling, bitter tea. If you wait, you will live. If you don't live, it's just good tea. A movable type must be distinguished from the tongue, which is very small, but it must also be soaked in the water in the mountains to understand the news. " At this point of tea tasting, it is really "the meaning of tea Weng is not in tea, but also between mountains and rivers." It has nothing to do with people's physical satisfaction, but has entered the realm of "transcending things" and is the advanced enjoyment of the spiritual world.
This is the traditional art of tea tasting in China. It keeps pace with the times with the inheritance of the times, and it is a more humanized, life-oriented and artistic way of tea tasting. Referred to as "tea art" The term "tea ceremony" was first used in Taiwan Province Province in the 1970s to summarize the art of tea tasting, which is different from the term "tea ceremony". This is a great contribution of tea people in Taiwan Province Province, because separating "tea art" from "tea ceremony" is conducive to the healthy development of tea tasting art.. "Tea ceremony" is the moral spirit embodied and pursued in the operation of tea art. The "skill" of making tea is mentioned because it is not only artistic but also technical. To "taste tea" by mentioning "art" instead of "skill" is an ingredient with few skills in tea tasting, mainly how to appreciate and experience the wonderful artistic realm after the entrance of tea soup. Tea ceremony is the core of tea culture, and the spirit of tea ceremony can only be reflected in the operation of tea ceremony. Only by observing the spirit of tea ceremony can tea ceremony have spirit, taste and charm. With tea ceremony and tea ceremony, tea culture has a carrier and soul.
It can be seen that tea art really occupies an extremely important position in the history of tea culture in China, and even today it has a far-reaching impact on tea processing in China. Due to the development of tea art, tea people in past dynasties demanded perfection in tea, which led to the highly developed production of famous and excellent tea, exquisite production and early picking, not only paying attention to aroma and taste, but also pursuing bright color and beautiful appearance. Therefore, tea can only be picked and fried by hand, and it is difficult to use machines, which makes it difficult to realize mechanization of tea production in China today. Although not many people drink tea abroad, they just regard it as a drink. Although they also pay attention to the taste, fragrance and color of tea, they don't pay attention to the shape of tea, let alone pursue the natural beauty of tea shape. They can make tea bags with broken black tea and green tea. They don't pay attention to the art of tea tasting like us. They don't pursue tea before tomorrow and tea before rain. They know nothing about flags, guns, birds' tongues and birds' mouths, and they don't care about such good names as Longjing Biluochun Tieguanyin. Therefore, their tea gardens and factories can realize the mechanized picking and processing of tea as early as more than a century ago. This is an important reason why the total output and export volume of tea in China are not as good as those in India and Sri Lanka.
Ancient tea knowledge
There are descriptions of tea art in Du Yu's Fu, such as choosing water: "Water is a note for it, and it is clean", and choosing the clear water of Minjiang River; Selector: "Tao Jian is selected from the East Corner", and porcelain produced in the East Corner (now Shangyu, Zhejiang) is selected as the tea set. Stir-fried tea: "The foam is ups and downs, as bright as snow, just like spring." Fried tea soup, the soup is floating, as bright as snow and as bright as spring flowers; Drinking tea: "Drink it in one breath and get Gong Liu." Divide the tea soup with a spoon.
What is described in Zhuan Fu is the embryonic form of Chinese tea art, which originated from Bashu.
"Make all the tea" in Wang Bao's "Tongyue" means to make tea with respect to the guests after they come home as guests.
He Fasheng, a Song Dynasty man in the Southern Dynasties, wrote in the book "Promoting Books in Jinzhong": "When Lu Na was a satrap, General Xie An of Wei often wanted to accept it ... When he arrived, all he had was tea and fruit." Luna entertained the guests with tea and fruit.
Liu Yiqing, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote in A New Interpretation of World Languages: "Ren Yuchang was very famous when he was young. ..... Unexpectedly, sitting at the table drinking, he asked people:' Is this tea, tea?' After the guests sat down, they began to serve tea. The same book also records: "Wang Meng, the chief Shi of Situ in Jin Dynasty, likes to drink tea, and people who want to drink it are all suffering from scholars. Every time I want to wait, there will be water today. " Wang Meng: "Drink when you are told." This is his hospitality.
Hong Jun quoted "Food Prohibition": "When it is cold and hot, you should give first frost tea, and you will get three honors in the end." When the guests arrive, please drink three cups of tea after greeting each other. This is not only the secular etiquette of offering tea to guests, but also the etiquette of Tangji monks, who have the same way and customs.
Here, tea art has become a form of receiving guests in life. Talking about realistic tea topics is the necessary basis of tea art, and entertaining guests and offering tea became a common custom of the Chinese nation in the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties. It's not as fantastic as some tea ceremony institutions say now.
The Basic Connotation of Tea Art
Tea art is a beautiful artistic conception in the whole process of tea tasting, including the appreciation of tea tasting techniques and artistic operation means, as well as the beautiful appreciation of tea tasting environment, and its process embodies the mutual unity of form and spirit.
As far as form is concerned, tea art includes a series of contents such as tea selection, water selection, tea brewing technology, tea art, environmental selection and creation. When tasting tea, you should first choose whether the pot and cup are simple and elegant or luxurious and noble. In addition, tea tasting should also pay attention to the harmony between personality and environment, literati emphasize quietness and elegance, and dignitaries pursue luxury and nobility. Generally speaking, traditional tea tasting needs a variety of interests and artistic conception, such as the breeze and bright moon, the song and bamboo rhyme, the plum blossom falling snow and so on.
In a word, tea art is a perfect combination of form and spirit, which contains aesthetics and human spiritual sustenance. Traditional tea art uses dialectical and unified view of nature and people's own experience to identify related problems from the feeling of interaction between soul and body, so the techniques include not only the simple dialectical materialism in ancient China, but also people's subjective aesthetic taste and spiritual sustenance. -from the book "tea".
Stages of Chinese tea history
According to the characteristics of the economic development of traditional tea industry and the changes of tea-making technology and tea-drinking fashion, the history of China tea is divided into five stages:
The first stage:
Before the Tang Dynasty, this was the period of the origin, spread and initial formation of tea. Tea industry originated in Bashu area. "After Qin people took Shu, there was tea drinking." Tea industry began to spread to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. From the Han, Wei, Six Dynasties to the early Tang Dynasty, the tea industry continued to develop slowly, which laid a long-term foundation for the leap of the tea industry in the Tang Dynasty.
The second stage:
The Tang Dynasty was a period of great development of traditional tea industry. The unprecedented development of tea production, the increasingly active trade, the popularization of tea drinking, the formation of tea science and tea culture, and the initial establishment of tea law have laid the basic pattern of traditional tea industry.
The third stage:
In Song Dynasty, it was a prosperous period of traditional tea industry. The production technology and tea-drinking art of Tuanbing tea, represented by Beiyuan tribute tea, have reached the extreme, the tea law system and the tea-horse mutual market system are maturing day by day, and the tea industry economy is in an eye-catching position in the national economy and people's livelihood.
The fourth stage:
Yuanming, this is a period of sustained development of traditional tea industry. The tea-drinking fashion has undergone epoch-making changes, which has promoted the great progress of tea-making technology and tea, and the traditional tea culture has also leapt to a new realm; Tea production, trade and national tea administration developed continuously on the basis of Song Dynasty.
The fifth stage:
In the Qing dynasty, this was the transition period of traditional tea industry. Before the Qing Dynasty, the tea industry was developed under the traditional pattern. With the expansion of producing areas, the appearance of famous products and the progress of technology, the tea method and the tea-horse exchange also inherited the Ming system and improved. However, with the change of social and historical environment, the production mode of tea industry presents a new form, and gradually develops towards mechanization and science. Tea-horse trade has ended, China's tea export trade has risen rapidly, the international competition of tea industry has intensified, and the traditional tea industry has gradually transformed into an international track.
Four steps of drinking tea
In the long river of the development and evolution of this vast tea culture, the way of drinking tea has undergone four major changes, which are also the four stages of the development of drinking tea.
Decocting method:
In primitive tribal times, drinking tea was purely to fill the stomach, not to enjoy the color, fragrance and taste of tea. When people found that tea can not only relieve summer heat and quench thirst, but also cheer up the spirit and treat many diseases, tea began to be separated from food. Boiling tea juice to cure diseases is the first stage of drinking tea. At this time, tea is medicine.
Method of drinking soup:
From pre-Qin dynasty to Han dynasty, tea changed from medicine to drink. When cooking tea, add corn and seasoning to make porridge. Most ethnic minorities in remote areas of China accepted the habit of drinking tea in the Tang Dynasty, so they are still used to adding other foods to tea juice.
Grinding and drinking:
This method appeared as early as the Three Kingdoms period, became popular in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty. The tea collected at that time should be made into tea cakes first, and then mashed and boiled when drinking. But at this time, the tea made of soup still needs to be mixed with "onion, ginger and orange", which shows the trace of excessive drinking from soup to tea.
Foam drinking method:
The fourth stage of drinking tea can be called whole leaf brewing. This law began in the Tang Dynasty and prevailed since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The method of steaming green tea was invented in the Tang Dynasty, which specially collected the tender buds in spring, made loose tea after steaming and baking, and brewed with whole leaves when drinking. Loose tea is of good quality and tastes great. In order to distinguish the quality of tea, a set of methods for evaluating the color, aroma and taste of tea had been formed at that time. In the Song Dynasty, the method of grinding and drinking coexisted with the method of whole leaf brewing. In the Ming Dynasty, the production of loose tea gradually became the mainstream. The drinking method is basically whole leaf brewing. This is very close to the way of drinking tea today.
Throughout the history of tea drinking in China, there are four tea drinking methods: boiling, frying, lighting and soaking. Tea art is formed by frying, lighting and making tea. As far as tea art is concerned, China Tea Ceremony has successively produced three forms: frying tea ceremony, lighting tea ceremony and making tea.