Throughout the ages, drinking tea has been a way to entertain guests. Whether visiting or socializing, drink a cup of tea first. This tea can now be tea made from tea leaves, or simply boiled water. But before the appearance of the tea saint Lu Yu, Chinese people's tea drinking was actually a big stew, and anything could be put in. The tea leaves were mixed with salt, orange peels, ginger slices, jujubes, etc. The cooked tea porridge is probably not liked by anyone now.
Lu Yu cooked tea
From tea porridge to the Wei and Jin Dynasties
Stewed tea porridge has been recorded since the Western Han period. Drinking tea at that time was like making soup. The picked small tea leaves were thrown into the pot, boiled until thickened, and then poured into a bowl to drink directly. At that time, there was no technology to stir-fry tea, and the tea tasted very bitter. To this end, they added onion slices, ginger slices, and orange peels, but the taste was still bitter. Then add some jujube and mint, and the taste was weak? Let's take some salt... Anyway, you can add it according to your own preferences. The taste is also strange, but from the Western Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms, Wei and Jin Dynasties, everyone drank this way.
A bowl of tea porridge
But the Wei and Jin Dynasties were an era that liked elegance, and the scholar-bureaucrats said that this kind of tea porridge could not be considered elegant, so Western Jin A man named Du Yu wrote an article "荈興" for drinking tea. The so-called "荈(chuan)" actually refers to the autumn tea leaves picked a little late, and he was also very particular about drinking tea.
In early autumn, I went to the mountains to pick tea with my friends. After picking, I boiled it with clear water from the upper reaches of the Minjiang River. The tea bowl must be made of ceramics from the Yue Kiln.
Drinking tea has become a habit for many people
But Du Yu's tea-making method has not been handed down. Maybe it is too complicated, maybe it is unnecessary. Even after his death, it was not mentioned by literati. It was not until Lu Yu wrote him in the "Tea Classic" that later generations knew about the elegance of the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Before Lu Yu's "Tea Classic", everyone still made tea and porridge to drink.
The emergence of the "Tea Classic"
Lu Yu was a person in the Tang period of . The records of his life are all from his autobiography. The reason why he wrote his autobiography was probably because he didn't care about his own talents. Hua was buried. At the age of 29, Lu Yu went to live in seclusion in Tiaoxi, Huzhou, chatting with a group of hermit monks and exchanging tea drinking experiences. Among them was the famous poet monk Jiao Ran. He also wrote a book on tea drinking, "Tea Jue", which was unfortunately lost.
However, Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" has been preserved. Since both parties are good friends, Jiao Ran must have the same concept of drinking tea as Lu Yu. In "Tea Classic", Lu Yu directly batches all the previous teas and recipes. Adding these messy things to tea is simply a waste of money. Obviously, you only need to add salt ( The initial boiling will hydrate the tea, and it will be seasoned with salt ).
The Emergence of the Tea Book
In addition, Lu Yu put forward tea picking and making tea, the selection of tea sets, cooking and drinking methods, etc. in the "Tea Book". It can be said to be a guide to drinking tea.
The water for making tea should be running water that flows slowly and slowly. Water that has been boiled for three times is too old to be drunk; the pot for making tea should be a cast iron pot. Silver ones cannot be used by everyone, and stone and ceramic ones are not durable; a pot of water can only make three bowls of tea, or at most five bowls. If you make too much, the taste of the tea will be lost; what if there are too many people? Use the first boiling water after drinking tea to replenish it, which is called meaning. In this way, Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" was regarded as a classic by major tea merchants in Jiangnan, and Lu Yu was also hailed as the Saint of Tea.
At the same time, in the "Tea Classic", Lu Yu divided tea into crude tea, loose tea, powdered tea, and cake tea. But no matter what kind of tea you drink, the tea leaves must be roasted and ground into rice-like broken tea before boiling. The water for boiling the tea must be salted first. In addition to the three-boiling method proposed before, this is the later popular sencha method.
Broken tea
The Sencha method proposed by Lu Yu, the taste of the cooked tea is not as complex and strong as tea porridge. It focuses on the taste of the tea itself and the foam on the tea surface. Although the entrance is bitter, the aftertaste is sweet, which is tea tasting. However, the taste does become a bit bitter later. Tea drinkers began to pursue the sweet and fragrant tea that everyone likes now. This is the tea ordering method popular in the Song Dynasty.
The most famous Dragon and Phoenix Tea
The emperors of the Song Dynasty all liked to drink tea, and it became popular among the Northern Song Dynasty from top to bottom. The so-called tea ordering method actually involves pouring water and stirring the tea foam. tea paste evenly, and then pour it with boiling water while stirring until the tea foam and water are completely integrated and no separation can be seen. At the same time, a layer of fine foam needs to appear on the surface of the tea. A bowl of tea is ready. In fact, it is similar to the current matcha .
Tea
In the Song Dynasty, a bowl of top-quality tea was about milky white in color. The less green the tea leaves, the better. Secondly, it tasted sweet, and the less bitter the tea leaves, the better. Finally, water and tea blended together. The less tea the pure color, the better. Therefore, tea fighting among literati during the Song Dynasty became a fun among scholar-bureaucrats.
In order to achieve the standard tea color, the scholar-bureaucrats would repeatedly squeeze the tea leaves until the green tea leaves turn white. Then they would finely grind the white tea leaves into a sticky tea powder , add borneol , For spices such as musk , in order to make it whiter, you have to add some rice flour. The tea foam will be pressed into tea cakes or tea balls. When you need to drink it, pound it directly into blocks, then grind it again with graphite and tea grinder, filter it and wait for pouring boiling water.
The Tea Fighting Culture of the Song Dynasty
Of course, the most expensive thing in the Song Dynasty was the royal tribute - Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea. The production process of Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea is very complicated, from picking, sorting, steaming and squeezing to grinding, making, baking and storing. It is cumbersome. The source of its picking is Beiyuan tea from Fenghuang Mountain in Jian'an, Fujian. When picking, only the tender tea cores are selected. After repeated drying, they turn into white. The surface is also painted with dragon and phoenix patterns, which means that this is a royal tribute. During the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song Dynasty, a dragon group tea was worth four taels of gold. Of course, you can't buy it. This is a royal tribute.
Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea
After the fall of the Song Dynasty, the Mongolian nobles did not like Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea very much. They felt that this light white thing was not delicious, but as a tradition, they still classified Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea as tribute tea and drank it reluctantly. However, the imperial examination system was terminated in the Yuan Dynasty. The literati had no official positions and no money to drink tea, so they began to drink loose tea instead.
Ming Dynasty Drinking loose tea up and down
Zhu Yuanzhang After establishing the Ming Dynasty, he felt that Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea was time-consuming and laborious. After all, people who drank Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea were either rich or not at that time. Noble people, Lao Zhu's family was poor and could not drink it. He was afraid that the extravagant customs of the Song Dynasty would affect future generations, so he abolished the tribute of dragon and Phoenix group tea and replaced it with loose tea. He took the lead in drinking loose tea in the palace. The group tea made later were basically exported.
The method of drinking loose tea at this time was the same as now, and the technique of frying green tea was invented during the Ming Dynasty, which removed the bitterness of the tea itself, and the method of drinking tea became simple. You only need to prepare the utensils, select water, make fire, wait for the soup, add tea, brew, brew the tea, etc. Now the Gongfu tea in Fujian and Guangdong is actually this way of drinking.
And Lao Zhu's son Ning Wang Zhu Quan went a step further and wrote a book " Tea Book ", which proposed the tea ceremony aesthetics. In Zhu Quan's eyes, tea cakes need to be made, but they do not need to be ground into powder. There are not many steps in ordering and making tea. As for Lu Yu's suggestion that 24 tea sets should be used for drinking tea, in Zhu Quan's eyes only the necessary ones can be left.
In Zhu Quan's eyes, the gold and silver tea sets popular in the Song Dynasty could be replaced by porcelain and bamboo . The most important thing is that the tea must not only taste good, but also drink it to show the nobleness of the literati. The best choice is beside the spring water and under the pines and bamboos. It can be said to be the spokesperson of tea ceremony aesthetics.
King Ning’s sovereignty
spread to Japan and became the tea ceremony
As a popular tea drinking life in the Central Plains, how can the neighbors next door not learn from it? During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, tea making and tea set technology spread to Japan, and the method of ordering tea became Japan's favorite method of drinking tea. In the continuous development, a person named Sen no Rikyu added some utensils and etiquette to the tea ordering method. At the same time, he also wrote a set of specious tea drinking aesthetics and tea drinking principles, which laid the foundation of Japanese tea ceremony. Sen no Rikyu also became the founder of Japanese tea ceremony. Of course, the source is still from us.
The Japanese tea ceremony is based on the Song Dynasty tea ordering method
