Chinese tea culture includes all facets of tea () found in Chinese culture throughout history. Physically, it consists of tea cultivation, brewing, serving, consumption, arts, and ceremonial aspects. Tea culture is an integral part of traditional Chinese material culture and spiritual culture. Tea culture emerged in the Tang dynasty, and flourished in the succeeding eras as a major cultural practice and as a major export good.
Chinese tea culture heavily influenced the cultures in neighboring East Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea, with each country developing a slightly different form of the tea ceremony. Chinese tea culture, especially the material aspects of tea cultivation, processing, and teaware also influenced later adopters of tea, such as India, the United Kingdom, and Russia (even though these tea cultures diverge considerably in preparation and taste).
Tea is still consumed regularly in modern China, both on casual and formal occasions. In addition to being a popular beverage, tea is used as an integral ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine as well as in Chinese cuisine.
Tea also holds symbolic significance in the Five Elements (wuxing) theory. The tea plant represents Wood; pan-firing adds Fire and Metal; brewing uses Water; and ceramic serving embodies Earth. This cycle harmonizes all elements in one cup, reflecting Daoist balance.
Etymology
The concept of tea culture is referred to in Chinese as ("the art of drinking tea"), or ("tea culture"). The word denotes the beverage that is derived from Camellia sinensis, the tea plant. Prior to the 8th century BCE, tea was known collectively under the term along with a great number of other bitter plants. This term is found in the Shi Jing (Classic of Poetry). These two Chinese characters are identical, with the exception of an additional horizontal stroke in the Chinese lettering , which translates to tea. The older character is made up of the radical in its reduced form of and the character , which gives the phonetic cue.
During the Han dynasty, the word took on a new pronunciation, , in addition to its old pronunciation . The syllable later evolved into in the Fujian dialect, and later 'tea', 'te'.
Tea was also called in the ancient Chinese classic Er Ya compiled during the early Han dynasty which states: " is bitter ". The word tu was further annotated by a Jin scholar, Guo Pu (276–324 CE): "Tu is a small plant, its leaves can be brewed into a beverage". Tea was also called in a West Han monograph on dialect called the Fang Yian. The syllable later became and 'chai' (Russia, India). Meanwhile, the syllable later became 'soh' in Jiangsu, Suleiman's 'Sakh' also came from 'she'.
History
Legends Tea was identified in Southwest China over four thousand years ago. Ancient Chinese sources like the Classic of Tea and the Shennong Ben Cao Jing credit Shen Nong, a mythical patron of medicine and agriculture, as the first person to discover the effects of tea in China. He was known to have tasted numerous leaves to determine if they could be used as food or medicine. According to legend, there are two different accounts telling how he discovered tea's beneficial attributes. First, it is said he had a transparent stomach where he could see how his stomach was reacting to what he ate. After a long day of picking leaves, he was tired, and when he was boiling water, some leaves fell in. It was sweet when he drank the water, and he enjoyed the taste. Soon after that, he became more energized. In the second accounting, Shen Nong tasted 72 poisonous leaves and became very sick, and was close to death. When some leaves fell beside him, he put them in his mouth and chewed them. Before long, he was feeling better and more energized, so he ate more leaves. Soon after, the poison left his body. The first book written about the medical effects of tea was the Shen Nong Herbal.
Pre-history The geographical home of tea in China is in the southern regions (such as Yunnan and Sichuan), the homelands of the Hani, Yi, Bai, Dai, Bulang, Wa, and De'ang ethnic groups. It is believed that various peoples from southern China had been eating tea leaves since ancient pre-historic times. These ethnic groups continue to eat tea leaves in traditional ways today.Mair, Victor H. The True History of Tea, ch. 2, Thames & Hudson (2012).
The early dynasties 11th to 7th century BCE Chinese sources mention a drink called . While some have seen these mentions as indicating that tea was being consumed at this time, we cannot be sure that this was Camellia sinensis. The question of the identity of is a much debated one among modern scholars. The Erya, a Chinese dictionary dated to the 3rd century BCE, records that an infusion of tu, which it defines as a "bitter vegetable".Benn, James A. Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, p. 32. Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Records also indicate that ritual worship during the Zhou dynasty included ceremonies led by officials which used "bitter herb" drinks. The herb was considered an exotic plant from southern China, so it was offered as tribute to the emperor and was served to the nobles. In the third century BCE, tea is mentioned as an alternative to wine. Xia Zhong's Treatise on Food states "since Jin dynasty, the people of Wu (now Suzhou city) cooked tea leaves as food, and called it tea broth".
From the end of the Spring and Autumn period in the Early Western Han dynasty the "bitter herb" was used as a table vegetable food, often drunk in a soup with onions, ginger and other additives. In 2016, the discovery of the earliest known physical evidence of tea from the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han (d. 141 BCE) in Xi'an was announced, indicating that tea from the genus Camellia was drunk by Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) emperors as early as the 2nd century BCE. The first recorded cultivation of tea during the Han is dated to the era of Emperor Xuan (53–50 BC), when tea was planted on Meng Mountain, east of Chengdu where many Buddhist monasteries grew and processed Mengding Ganlu tea (Sweet Dew tea), sending some of it to the emperor as tribute tea. During the Han, improved picking and processing of wild tea refined the taste of tea. According to Victor H. Mair, the processing of tea at this time included steaming the leaves, pounding them and patting them into cakes which were then baked, pierced, and strung together in a string before storage.
During Jin dynasty (266–420), tea was boiled with other plants to make a tea soup which was considered a combination of medicine, food, and drink. According to the 3rd century CE Guangya dictionary, "In the region between Jing and Ba the people pick the leaves and make a cake. If the leaves are old, rice paste is used in forming the cake. wish to brew the tea first roast until it is a reddish color, pound it into a powder, put it into a ceramic container, and cover it with boiling water. They stew scallion , ginger, and orange peel with it."
As the tea culture developed during the Jin (266–420) and Wei period (220–265), it became more popular in the upper classes, including scholar-officials, Buddhist monks, and royals. Tea was set against wine as a beneficial drink, with wine being 'violence and intoxication' and tea 'freshness and purity'. During this period, refined forms of tea became the backdrop to deep philosophical discussions between learned men, Taoists and Buddhist monks. Buddhists believed it helped prevent tiredness and promoted wakefulness, while Taoists believed it kept a person young and healthy.Mair, Victor H. The True History of Tea, ch. 3, Thames & Hudson (2012).
Before the Tang dynasty, refined tea was consumed as a social drink (as opposed to as a food) mainly by the upper classes. It continued to be used as a vegetable and herb soup by commoners, especially in the south. For the elites, tea was used as a medicinal health drink, a sacrifice, tribute, for ceremonial purposes or as an energizing drink. Refined expensive teas or "tribute teas" like Mengding Ganlu were not available to the masses during this early period.
Tang dynasty (618–906)
During the Tang dynasty, tea culture or 'the art of tea' as a pleasurable social activity (instead of as food, a ritual or medicine) began to spread widely throughout China. At this time, elite tea was now being drunk mostly on its own instead of as part of a soup, though some additives were still used sometimes, like a pinch of salt or certain kinds of flowers. New methods of growing and processing tea were developed, making it easier to produce more tea (all of which was green tea at this time) and improving its flavor. A new tea-making technique of roasting and baking leaves was also invented during this period. Tea production grew, especially in Meng Mountain region (in Sichuan) and in Fuliang (Jiangxi).
Tea was widely consumed by the Tang emperor and his household, and who received the highest quality tea as "tribute tea" from tea producing regions. A famous tribute tea from this time was a purple-shoot tea from Guzhu mountain, on the western side of Lake Tai. Tea also began to be taxed and directly managed during the Tang. This put pressure on the commoners, who were also sometimes press-ganged to harvest tea for the emperor and on merchants, who often resorted to smuggling tea (which could carry the death penalty). Large scale tea smuggling, often by river boat, was a profitable venture for bandits and smugglers during the Tang.
During the Tang era, the southern Tea Horse Road trade network led to mature trade routes between China and Tibet where Chinese tea was traded for Tibetan horses that the Chinese needed for their military. Furthermore, the completion of the Grand Canal established a cost-effective method of transporting goods between northern and southern China, making tea less expensive throughout the empire. Opening up trade routes and new processing techniques was vital to establishing tea as a national drink throughout China. Thus, from the Tang period onward, tea became one of the "seven necessities."
The leading high-end teaware of this period was the celadon Yue ware and the white glazed Xing ware. Both were patronized by the Tang imperial court. Also during this period, artisans produced hundreds of examples of tea art, such as poems, drawings, songs, and literature. Tea houses and tea shops were also established during this time.
Buddhism and tea During the Tang, tea became a central part of the life of Buddhist monks, who were not allowed to drink alcohol or eat solid food after noon as per the Buddhist monastic code.Mair, Victor H. The True History of Tea, ch. 5, Thames & Hudson (2012). According to Victor H. Mair, "the monks cultivated tea, drank it for meditation, while studying, and during ceremonies, offered tea to the Buddha, presented it as a gift to visitors, sold it, and sent it as tribute to the imperial court, which in turn reciprocated." Buddhist tea culture (which was centered in Southern China) in turn popularized tea wherever Buddhist monasteries were built. A Record of Things Seen and Heard by Mr. Feng (c. 800) states that a Chan Buddhist master on Mount Tai promoted tea, and his monks carried it everywhere. Furthermore,
This habit was in turn imitated by others, and became a custom. From Zou, Qi, Cang and Di it gradually spread to the capital. Many shops making and selling tea opened in the markets, and people, whether religious or lay, pay money to drink it. The tea arrives in a constant stream of boats and carts from Jiang and Huai , and is piled up in mountains, with many different types. In this way, a tea drinking culture, which was mainly centered in the south, was widely transmitted to the north through Buddhist channels. Famen Temple (Xi'an) was one important Buddhist monastery that was associated with tea culture. A cache of imperial grade teaware and tea tools were found in this temple.