These days, everyone has an opinion about how to grow and brew the best tea. But how did the Ancient Chinese develop the act of boiling a simple plant into a process where fine art meets science?
The Classic of Tea is the first monograph on tea in the world, an ancient document that helped codify and bring together different strands of knowledge about growing and brewing tea. Think of it as a kind of ancient tea manifesto that outlines best practices for enjoying an ideal cup.
The document was written by a Chinese writer named Lu Yu, between 760 CE and 780 CE, during the Tang Dynasty. A renegade who ditched monastic life to join the circus, Lu Yu happened into the world of academia, where he became adept at calligraphy and later authored The Classic of Tea.
For a topic as far-reaching as tea, the document is pretty concise, consisting of about 7,000 Chinese characters. It’s made up of three scrolls, which are, in turn, made up of ten chapters. Each chapter covers a particular aspect of tea, and the entire document is a mix of mythology and fact.
For instance, the first chapter talks about the mythological origins of tea in China, but also serves as a field guide to finding the tea plant, outlining regions where it’s found and detailing instructions on how it should be planted for optimum growth. The Tea Classic also covers approaches to cultivation, describing how harvest seasons and soil types can greatly affect tea quality.
Subsequent chapters go on to detail some very practical aspects on how to make tea, including tools of the trade, brewing, and, of course, tea drinking itself. The Tea Classic outlines processes for compressing tea leaves into bricks for storage, advice on how many cups you should have for the best taste (three!), and even a gauge by which to measure if your tea has been heated enough (it should be as tender as a baby’s arm).
There is also some great supplemental information on tea in the scrolls, including stories that illuminate more of China’s tea lore including origin stories and poems. There are also maps that illustrate regions in China where tea flourishes, as well as scrolls that use diagrams to condense the information from the rest of the document into a quick-reference guide.
All throughout, there’s an emphasis on process and ritual. If that sounds incredibly dry, the writing is far from it! Here’s a taste of the poetic language you can find in the Classic of Tea:
“Tea can look like a mushroom in whirling flight just as clouds floating from behind a mountain peak. Its leaves can swell and leap as if they were lighting tossed on wind-disturbed water. Still others twist and turn like rivulets carved out be a violent rain in newly tilled fields…”
To read more about the Classic of Tea, click here. (http://www.artistictea.com/classics-of-tea)