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Liu, Jerry C. Y. (Forthcoming 2011). ―Between Classical and Popular: The Book of Tea and the Popularization
of Chinese Tea Drinking Culture in the Tang China‖. Journal of Popular Culture 44(2) (Accepted and to be
Published in Vol. 44, No. 2; AHCI, HI.)
Autobiographical Statement: Jerry C Y Liu received his PhD from The Nottingham Trent
University, UK. He teaches international cultural studies, cultural policy studies and world
history in the Department of International Affairs & Graduate Institute of International
Business and Cultural Practices at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages in Taiwan. He has
published in the areas of cultural studies, culture and modern world history, cultural
globalization, cultural policy, and leisure studies. His current research focuses on the concept
of cultural logic and identity in modern Chinese and European history as well as the
interactivity between culture and political economy in international culture relations.
1
Between Classical and Popular: The Book of Tea and the
Popularization of Tea-drinking Culture in the Tang China
Jerry C Y Liu
Introduction
Tea, ―green gold‖ it is called, is the most consumed substance on the planet with the
exception of water (Macfarlane and Macfarlane 31). And indeed, when one thinks of
applying the adjective ―popular‖ and at the same time ―civilized‖ there is probably no other
form of cultural practice in China that is more representative and taken-for-granted than
tea-drinking. It is perhaps difficult for modern food industry processors to imagine how a
simple green leaf could have conquered the entire Chinese empire early in the 8th and 9th
centuries (and a millennium later even the rest of the world)1 in the absence of three modern
pillars of popular culture—electronic media, capitalist markets and consumerism. How did
these bitter camellia tree leaves make their way out of the remote forests of Yunnan 雲南 and
the Sichuan 四川 region2 and enter into almost every household in China during the Tang
period (AD 618-907)? To understand this popularizing process of tea and tea-drinking culture
in China, one cannot afford to dismiss probably the most influential historical piece: the Book
of Tea, or Chajing
茶經
(literally the Tea Classic, c. AD 780) by Lu Yu 陸羽, the first book
that is specialized on the knowledge of tea, tea-processing, tea-making, tea-drinking and tea
legends.
Be it coincidence or not, in the decades that followed the publishing of the Book of Tea,
tea-drinking practice became widely accepted by the Chinese people (Zhu and Shen 39, Yao
14). To study the content, context and influence of the Book of Tea is to probe into two central
2
issues of modern popular culture studies. First, under what historical conditions could the
tea-drinking culture be considered ―popular‖? The differences in its agents, area of practice,
and its function or usage before and during Tang times identify the benchmarks of popularity.
Second, how could an elitist academic book contribute to the popularization of a daily
cultural practice for commoners and thus become both popular and classical? Should the
intimate relations between the Book of Tea and Chinese tea-drinking culture be seen as a
process of popularization of a classic? Or is it the canonizing, aestheticizing and civilizing
process of an already popular culture? Analyses of the content and influences of the historical
piece clearly exhibit Nobert Elias’s long-standing statement for process-sociology, which
involves the interaction between such interdependent social groups as nobles, scholar gentry,
and commoners (15-20, Featherstone 201).
Tea “Drinking” before Tang China
According to the Book of Tea, the earliest reference to tea in China was found in
Shennong’s Treatise on Food
神農食經
: It stated that ―having tu
荼
[tea]3 and ming
茗
[a
synonym of tea] continuously would invigorate a person and lift his spirit‖ (Lu 59, 64).
Shennong’s Treatise on Medical Herbs
神農本草經
also recorded that tu ―tastes bitter, yet…
by having it for a long period would help to… enhance one’s eyesight, decrease the sleep,
lighten the body and prolong one’s life‖ (Wu, Pu 140). The legendary lord Shennong (the
Divine Cultivator, c. 27th century BC) was said to have tasted all kinds of herbs in order to
relieve people’s suffering from diseases. And tea was once utilized as an antidote to neutralize
poisonous herbs (Li 85). Clearly, tea was served for medical purposes rather than as an
ordinary drink.
The character tu and other synonyms of cha4 also appeared in many pre-Qin (221 BC)
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Chinese documents such as the Book of Odes
詩經
, Book of Rites
禮記
and Book of Historical
Documents
尚書
(Lu 24, Wang 18). Tea leaves were believed to have been picked for food
by people in ancient China. As Lu Yu recounted, up to the Wei dynasty tea was brewed with
millet and condiments such as spring onions, ginger and tangerines; and it was boiled to a
porridge-like consistency (65). This is the reason why tea drinking was termed
―soup-drinking‖ or ―soup-having‖ rather than ―tea-drinking.‖5 Tea was also offered in ritual
ceremonies in the pre-Qin period. The Book of Rites and Book of Historical Documents both
suggest that tea ceremonies had been important parts of the ritual practice for worship by the
Zhou (1030 - 221 BC). Officials were designated to take charge of and oversee the entire
process of tea ceremonies (Shrh and Fu 131). Tea also served as tributary goods of local
nobles to the emperor and as a drink at the nobles’ banquets. Some, referring to the Gazetteer
of the Kingdom of Huayang
華陽國志
(Chang 264), claimed that King Wen of the Zhou
Dynasty had received tributary tea from tribal heads in present day Sichuan province as early
as the 12th century BC (Zhu and Shen 9). Gazetteer of Three Kingdoms
三國志
states that the
King of Wu had once granted tea in secret to his official Wei Yao 韋曜 to replace his wine
during a banquet, as the King knew that Wei was not a good wine drinker (Shou Chen). On
the whole, despite disputes on the dating of some Chinese ancient documents,6 there is little
doubt that tea had been consumed in various ways in China before the 5th and 6th centuries.
Why then can tea-drinking not be considered as popular culture before the Tang era? Tea
and the tea-drinking habit originated in Sichuan province, and its practice was mostly
confined to the upper Yangtze River area (in southwest China) before the Qin period. It
spread to the lower Yangtze River region only in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Up to the 5th
century, many nobles and officials in northern China still had very limited knowledge of tea,
and many would look at the habit of tea-drinking with contempt (Liu, Litang 69). As
4
documented in the Book of Tea (65), during the Jin period (AD 266-420), a famous mandarin
of northern China called Ren Zhan 任瞻 came to the South. Ren was welcomed by the
minister Wang with a tea banquet but was not familiar with the drink at all. Ren sat down,
tasted the tea, and then asked people near him, ―Is this cha
茶
or ming
茗
[a synonym of
tea]?‖ He soon realized that the guests were staring at him, puzzled. Ren then quickly
explained that he was actually asking whether people would normally drink it hot or cold
(again a strange question to ask during a tea banquet). The case of Ren reveals that even for a
learned official, who came from the Yellow River basin area in the North, tea-drinking was
still a rather peculiar diet habit (Chen, Shou). The Qielang Records of Luoyang
洛陽伽籃記
even suggests that during the Northern Wei period (AD 386-534) terms like ―hardship of
water‖, ―leaking funnel‖ and ―slave drink‖ were used by the northerners to mock tea-drinking
experiences and those southerners who were fond of tea-drinking, as tea was usually
consumed in big bowls, and people often drank heavily like oxen. Although tea parties were
held by rich families and high officials in the North, many of the guests had expressed their
distaste and felt ―ashamed, and would never come to eat again‖ (Wu, Zhihe 5, Ye 28-9, Liu,
Litang 69). To people in the North, tea was only a drink of the southern refugees, who had
surrendered themselves to the northern government.
Despite its early introduction, tea-drinking was certainly not widely accepted in China
before the Northern and Southern Dynasties 南北朝(AD 479-580), and it was not considered
popular before the mid-Tang dynasty. Historical accounts show that although geographically
tea had been consumed in the southern part of China, and socially by both elites and common
people, it was far from a generally accepted daily drink in the North before the 6th century.
Taken as an herb (since the 1st century BC at the latest), tea was restricted to a specific
profession. It was associated strongly with medical uses rather than with normal beverages.
5
When served as tributary goods, sacrificial offerings, and drinks in a banquet, tea circulated
mainly among the upper strata of the society for ceremonial purposes. Even though tea might
have also been served as ―food‖ and ―soup‖ of the common people, the ―drinking‖ method,
style, and the bitter taste of tea (due to the way it was brewed) before the Tang era had
certainly limited its popularity.
Tea-Drinking as a Popular Cultural Practice in the Tang Era
The late Tang poet Pi Rixiou 皮日休 summed it up well when he remarked that ―about
tea-drinking during the old times, most people brewed tea in a messy way. Thus, there was
hardly any difference between drinking tea and having soup that was cooked and mixed with
vegetables.‖ In other words, tea-making and tea-drinking was not the delicate and reflective
process that many thought (Zhu and Shen 43). Tea was ―drunk,‖ ―consumed,‖ and to a great
extent ―accepted‖ before the Tang, but was not yet ―tasted,‖ ―enjoyed,‖ ―appreciated,‖ hence
hardly ―popularized‖. There were no systematic accounts of tea-brewing, tea-making and
tea-drinking, let alone any clear interpretations of the meaning of tea-tasting and its
connections to life aesthetics, arts, or philosophy. There were not yet well-developed
connotations, which traditional Chinese literati would have assigned to it to make it a
―culture‖ or ―cultural practice‖. The Book of Tea by Lu Yu played a critical role in bridging
this gap between tea-drinking as habit and tea-tasting as culture (or art).
The Book of Tea and the Popularization of Tea-drinking Culture
The Book of Tea was written by Lu Yu (c. AD 733-803) around 760, but it was not
published until 780. Lu’s Chajing consisted of some 7,000 words. Its completion not only
initiated the formation of a new disciplinary knowledge of tea but also marked a new epoch
for the diffusion of Chinese tea-drinking practice and tea-tasting culture. For the relationship
6
between the popularization of Chinese tea-drinking culture and this ―Tea Classic‖, there are
three key aspects which provide understanding of the conflating concepts – ―classical‖ and
―popular‖: (a) the specialization and standardization of tea knowledge in a commonsense way;
(b) the civilizing and aestheticizing processes of the tea-drinking practice; and (c) the
incorporation of the indispensable popular traits of this tea book.
(a) The Specialization of Tea Knowledge in a Commonsense Way
The word ―classic‖, or jing 經, in Chinese intellectual tradition means ―route‖, ―eternal
code‖ or the ―everlasting principle‖ in the world beneath Heaven (Fu 64). At a pragmatic
level, classics are often taken as commonly applicable knowledge emphasizing its function of
being useful and reliable for people’s engagement in inner-worldly affairs. As a
self-consciously ―classic‖ (Lu 92), the Book of Tea too was meant to set a model for the
specialization and standardization of knowledge of tea for both Chinese literati and
practitioners of tea-drinking culture. However, the book had achieved this objective in an
almost commonsense way. By ―commonsense rationality‖, Chinese scholars meant to include
three basic levels of common human thinking comprehensible for both learned and lay people:
a) the common or intuitive knowledge and obvious natural laws within the universe; b) the
common feelings or emotions of people; and c) the common consciousness or sense of
morality of human beings (Jin and Liu 158-162).
The first chapter of Lu’s book described the botanical knowledge of tea. It traced the
place of origin and explained the characteristics, names (including synonyms) and qualities of
tea that were known from ancient days to the times of Lu Yu: ―Tea, a special kind of tree in
the South, can be as tall as one foot, two feet, to about ten feet tall‖. In chapters that followed,
the book brought together systematic information about the tools and methods for plucking
and processing tea (31-40), the utensils for tea-drinking, the tools and methods for
7
tea-brewing (41-58), the habits and methods of tea-drinking (59-63), and the locations that
produced tea in the Tang era (79-88). All these were systematic attempts in organizing the
common information about tea into a well-structured discipline of knowledge. For instance,
the third chapter of the Book of Tea stated that ―tea leaves should not be plucked in the
raining days; neither should they be plucked when it is cloudy. They should only be plucked
during the sunny days.‖ After being plucked, the tea leaves should then go through six other
processes – steaming, pounding, patting, baking, stringing, and sealing – so that they could be
preserved in the best condition.
In the fourth chapter, the Book of Tea listed and described in detail the shapes and
functions of twenty-four different tools and utensils for tea-brewing and tea-drinking. These
tools ranged from a stove, an air-blowing box, an iron clamp, a cloth towel, a porcelain bowl.
The book even graded the quality of bowls according to the prefectures in which they were
produced: ―the best bowl was produced in Yue prefecture 越州, then Ding prefecture 鼎州,
Wu prefecture 婺州, Yue prefecture 岳州, Shou prefecture 壽州 and Hong prefecture 洪州‖
(Lu 41-51).
Tea-brewing was no longer the ―messy‖ process Pi Rixiou had described; rather it
became a much more sophisticated and refined practice than cooking vegetable soup. Lu not
only graded the quality of water according to places where it originated, he even went so far
as to describe the boiling water in three phases:
For the first phase, there would be fish-eye like bubbles rising from the bottom of
boiled water, and the boiling sound is low. For the second phase, the water looks
like the emerging spring, and there would be incessant pearl-like sized bubbles
rising from the edge of the container. For the third phase, the boiled water is like
the surging wave, and the boiling sound is as loud as that of drums. (Lu 53)
8
Lu then continued to specify the amount of salt that should be added and the amount of
water that should be poured out of the kettle. Differing from earlier times, tea leaves were
now ground and left to soak in boiling water, and tea water was served separately as a drink
rather than as a mixed vegetable soup (52-3). This reduced greatly the bitterness of the tea
water. However, in terms of its founding spirit, the Book of Tea was not merely a treatise that
probed into factual knowledge about tea production, ways to discriminate among types of tea,
or how to process it. As Sen (18) has pointed out, Lu Yu’s intention was to avoid the pitfall of
simple explanation by depicting the ―correct ways‖ to drink tea and the world that one might
ultimately attain by drinking it to draw the reader into that world.
(b) The Civilizing and Aestheticizing Processes of Tea-drinking
The specialization and standardization of knowledge of tea had laid the foundation for
later Chinese scholars in providing useful information about it. However, this knowledge
alone was not sufficient in making the Book of Tea a classic. The Confucian notion ―jingshi
zhiyong 經世致用‖, which literally means to manage the world or the age through classic
learning so as to elaborate its pragmatic efficacy, expresses a scholastic commitment to
applying practical solutions for the improvement of the world, while carrying
―simultaneously a moral orientation, a repertoire of practical activity, and a category of
knowledge‖ (Brook). The concept of ―culture‖ (in Chinese wenhua
文化
), had been assigned
predominant moral-ethical and aesthetical meanings in the legacies of Confucian classics.
Chinese intelligentsia regarded culture, or all literature and knowledge, as the carrier or
instrument of human morality serving to carry out the civilizing function of the Tao (the way
that the universe functions). Three thousand years ago, the Book of Changes sought ―to
observe the details of the heaven so as to know the change of the season; and to observe the
9
details of humanity so as to transform and convert the world.‖ Culture evolving along this
line meant a continuous social civilizing process under the guidance of the Confucian
moral-ethical tradition (Gong 41, 56-7, Yu 20-21, Liu, Yongjie 32-3, Liu and Wu 5-6).
Thus the Book of Tea had incorporated into the Tang’s tea-drinking culture some
aesthetic, moral and philosophical traits. In his book, Lu Yu had collected a great numbers of
ancient legends, stories and tales about tea-drinking in other classics. These include the
legends of Shennong, and his Treatise on Food, records of tea being used as sacrificial
offerings in the Book of Odes, Book or Rites and Book of Ancient Documents, as well as the
story of Wei Yao at the wine banquet. There were also stories about how the bitter tea water
had been used as a divine drink for immortals and saints such as Dan Qiuzi 丹丘子 and
Huang Shanjun 黃山君 to lift their bodies and lighten their bones so that they could prolong
their lives (64-71). Lu had also assembled pictures and paintings of tea utensils and tea stories
to illustrate the tea-drinking occasions of the sages in earlier times, although all pictures
unfortunately were lost and only the headings survived (92). Lu’s attempt to link up the
tea-drinking habit with the early practices of ancient sages, saints and references of tea in
Confucian classics was obvious; such a connection would certainly provide the sense of
authenticity and continuity of the classic legacy to this drink of daily routine.
Apart from the two chapters of tea stories and paintings, terms with strong moral and
aesthetic indication also permeated Lu’s description of tea-making and drinking. For instance,
when depicting the characteristics of tea, Lu wrote that ―as regard to the usage of tea, it is
cold in nature [as categorized in Chinese herbal traits]. And as a drink, it suits best those who
are of a refined disposition and possess the virtue of frugality‖ (25). As tea was usually
utilized to dispel dizziness and sleepiness, tea-drinking also stood for a person’s effort in
maintaining his/her self-awareness and calmness. In addition, Lu suggested strongly that one
10
should enjoy the fine quality of tea. And to achieve that, tea should be brewed in deliberate
steps so that the ―essence of the tea‖ could be distilled (53-4). Since tea-brewing, tea-making
and tea-drinking were no longer messy diet habits, it followed logically that these
well-designed processes would require a high level of concentration of mind and control of
body. In other words, the practice of tea-drinking was taken as a symbol for people who
maintained a simple, plain, and frugal life, and who expressed their refined or self-restrained
nature by mastering the entire tea-making process. It is this dual process that gives
tea-drinking practice the characteristics of ―popular‖ and ―civilized‖ at the same time.
Without exception, the Book of Tea had attempted to transform the simple tea-drinking
habit into a tea-tasting art, by which it meant to embrace the Confucian philosophy of
self-cultivation and sense of beauty (Liao 37-38, Shrh and Fu 129). One should neither be too
rushed nor too slow when distilling the essence of tea. And since the entire tea-drinking
process—smelling the tea fragrance, viewing the clarity of tea water, bearing the bitterness
first when holding the tea water in the mouth for seconds, and enjoying the sweetness of tea
on the tongue seconds after swallowing it—demands a mindset of tranquility and a
concentrated sensibility, to learn to appreciate the plainness and bitterness of tea in turn
creates the beauty of the tea-drinking practice. To Lu Yu, the essence of tea-drinking culture
was reflected in the subtleties of water and the way one brewed it (Lu 53-4, Sen 32). Li
summarizes that, to Chinese literati and officialdom, tea represented elegance, harmony,
friendliness, and grace, while tea-drinking was considered a means to cultivate the mind and
improve moral integrity (Li 76). For Chinese intellectuals, these idealistic elements composed
the inner spirit of the routine drinking habit and elevated it to a drinking art and culture. In
this sense, the tea-drinking culture became inclusively ―popular‖, attracting not only the
commoners, but also the educated elites.
The other facets that were added to the aesthetic dimension of tea-drinking culture were
11
the newly created tea paintings and tea poems during the Tang times. In the painting of A
Music Party in the Tang Palace
唐人宮樂圖
(c. AD 900, Figure 1), a tea banquet among
several maids in the imperial Tang palace is beautifully sketched. In the picture, some of the
maids are tasting tea, some of them drinking wine, while the others are playing a Chinese lute,
zither, and a pipe wind instrument to liven up the atmosphere. Music, tea-drinking, lively
conversations, and artistic painting had then become integrated components of a brand new
aesthetic experience of tea-drinking.
FIGURE 1. A Music Party in the Tang Palace
唐人宮樂圖
. c. AD 900. Collection of
National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Before the mid-Tang Dynasty, very few poems were composed about tea and tea related
topics. However, as more and more intellectuals started to engage in tea parties and
tea-drinking, the number of tea related poems had increased significantly. Hundreds of pieces
12
of works written by famous poets and mandarins survived and were collected and compiled
as the Comprehensive Collection of Tang Poems
全唐詩
during the Qing Dynasty. As Lin
classifies them, poems that concern tea can be divided into six different categories: poems
which describe the preciousness of tea, the function of tea, the vogue of presenting tea as gifts,
methods of tea-drinking, the location of tea production, and the mindset of tea-drinking (Lin,
Zhengsan 214-7).
These poems revealed the thriving tea-drinking culture among the Tang literati. For
years, Lu Yu himself had traveled often to tea producing areas (Chen, Qinyu 110-125, Shrh
and Fu 128). During his travels, Lu made acquaintance with many refined scholars such as Li
Bai 李白, Du Fu 杜輔, Yan Zhenqing 顏真卿, Meng Jiao 孟郊, Li Qiwu 李齊物, Huang-Fu
Zeng 皇甫曾, the Buddhist monk Jiao Ran 皎然, and the Taoist master Zhang Zunshi 張尊師.
More than fifty of Lu’s mandarin friends must have been involved in the ―Literati Circle of
Huzhou湖州文人圈‖, and tea parties became a daily routine among those scholars when they
had their friendly chats, academic conversations, and talks about life philosophy. The Book of
Tea therefore was a product of and testimony to the tea-drinking experiences that Lu had
enjoyed so much with the Tang literati. In the wake of the Book of Tea, by the end of the Qing
Dynasty ninety-seven tea books had been written to explore the widely diffused tea-drinking
culture (Liao 5, Xie 76, 82). Almost every later work of tea would refer to Lu’s
groundbreaking piece. The paintings, tea parties, tea poems, and tea books together with the
ideals embraced had created a new tea-drinking culture during the Tang. Tea-tasting had
become a fashion and a form of life aesthetics. The substance (tea) remained the same, yet the
aesthetic, poetic and philosophical elements, which were added to it, had made the
tea-drinking habit something different and popular.
13
(c) The Popular Traits of the Book of Tea
If the Book of Tea had been only about the specialization of tea knowledge and the
civilizing and aestheticizing processes of Chinese intellectuals’ tea-drinking activities, it
would have brought little contention about its designated status for the learned people. Not
many lay people would be able to afford such a time consuming tea-processing and
tea-brewing procedure, and not many commoners would be able to afford those twenty-four
delicately designed tea sets and utensils. However, the ninth chapter of the Book adds an
entirely new spirit to it. Lu obviously recognized the complication of his tea book. He thus
purposefully offered pieces of advice for those aspects of tea-processing and tea-brewing that
he thought could be skipped under varied occasions. Lu also suggested and listed those tea
utensils that could be replaced or omitted if people could not afford to get them. Thus a
chapter entitled ―Omission,‖ documented simplified ways of tea preparation. This chapter
meant to express one central spirit of the book: to provide people enough flexibility to take
actions that would suit local circumstances, and to suit the tea-making measures to local
conditions so that people would not be limited by complicated rules when enjoying the
pleasures of tea-drinking (Xie 74, 81-2, 84-5). This almost-planned popularizing design of
the Book of Tea indeed opened the door of tea-tasting for commoners. It fitted naturally with
the common people’s everyday life, their conversations about folk philosophy and their
interpretation of life aesthetics. Specialized skills when practiced with flexibility thus become
accessible parts of commoners’ daily pleasure.
In fact, commoners became the key agents of the practice during the mid-Tang dynasty.
A direct testimony for the vigorous development of Chinese tea culture was found in the
Eye-witness Report of Tang scholar Feng Yan 封演:
Tea was brewed and drunk everywhere. Since such a habit was imitated here and
there, tea-drinking now has become a vogue. Tea shops, which brew and sell tea,
14
are opened in towns from Zou 鄒, Qi 齊, Hu 滬, Di 棣to the capital city area. All
people, no matter Daoist or secular, would just drop the money and get the drink by
themselves. (71-2)
Similar descriptions can be found in the preface to the later edition of the Book of Tea by
the Song Scholar Chen Shidao 陳師道, as he recounted the situation during the late Tang
period when tea was consumed by people who lived ―up in the palatial prefecture, down to
the village houses. Even the outer barbarians would take it as ritual offerings and enjoy it as a
drink in the parties‖ (Shrh and Fu 132-3).
FIGURE 2. Liu Songnian’s劉松年. Market Competition in a Tea Garden
茗園賭市
. c. AD
1190. Collection of National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
15
An eye-catching illustration is shown in the Southern Song (AD 1127-1279) painter Liu
Songnian’s劉松年 painting of Market Competition in a Tea Garden
茗園賭市
(Figure 2),
allegedly a replica of the painting of Tea Contests
鬥茶圖
by the Tang painter Yan Liben 閻
立本 (AD 601-671).7 The painting showed vividly that male and female vendors (and even
a child) carried tea utensils, kettles, stoves, and cups with bamboo stands along the market
street. The tea sellers brewed their tea in a circle and competed with one another on their
tea-making skills. Through the tea contests the vendors of tea found their pleasure and
developed their own conversations of life philosophy, that kind of pleasure and philosophy
which differed from the luxurious tea banquets of the rich and high officials.
John Fiske states that ―pleasures of popular culture lie in perceiving and exploiting these
points of pertinence and in selecting those commodities from the repertoire… that can be
used to make popular sense out of popular social experiences‖ (133). The commoners did
adopt and create their own form of pleasure and taste from a relevant social repertoire. Carlo
Ginzburg made it even clearer that ―[b]ehavior patterns were transmitted not only from above
to below, but in line with the shift in the social centre of gravity, from below to above… Here
too we find a relaxation of traditional patterns of behavior, the rise of certain modes of
conduct from below, and increased interpenetration of the standards of different classes‖
(125-6). The wide diffusion of Tang’s tea-drinking culture demonstrates this point.
Tea-tasting art had become not only a specialized recreation for nobles and high literati but
also a consumable spiritual satisfaction for common people.
More evidence indicates that tea-drinking had become a widely accepted practice during
the Tang China. According to Zhengsan Lin, tea was taxed for the first time in 783 in order to
compensate the over expended warfare during the middle period of the Tang. In 821, a Tang
16
official, Li Jue 李玨, submitted a memorial to the emperor to oppose the taxation of tea. It
argued that ―tea as a necessity is the same as grain and salt. No matter people from near or far,
the custom is the same, and everyone needs to consume it.‖ The taxation of tea had a direct
connection with the vogue of tea-drinking, which the Book of Tea had brought about. Only
when tea became a commonly consumed beverage and the demand was high enough to
stimulate the market would the government consider it profitable to levy a tax on it (213). A
Chinese saying in the Southern Song period has passed on to the present day: Tea together
with firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar are the seven daily necessities indispensable to
people from day to night.
Conclusion
Although tea had been consumed as a medical herb, tributary goods, sacrificial offerings,
drinks at banquets, and even as a beverage for common people in the southern regions of
China to rid them of their thirst, it was never a popularly welcomed culture before the Tang
era. There had been no systematic accounts of tea knowledge. Hardly were there any
scholastic attempts to assign values or meanings to the practice of tea-drinking and to connect
it to life aesthetics, arts, or philosophy. Tea-drinking, though practiced, was not a real
reflective process that was actually ―enjoyed‖ and ―appreciated‖ by both literati and
commoners before the Tang China. Common people in particular did not consider themselves
capable of taking part in a scholarly recognized special knowledge and at the same time
seeking their own pleasure in a day-to-day routine practice. Lu Yu’s Chajing served to bridge
these gaps, and contributed to the popularization of tea-drinking culture by (a) specializing
and standardizing tea knowledge; (b) providing civilizing and aesthetic qualities to the
practice of tea-drinking for both scholar gentry and lay people; and (c) incorporating the
indispensable popular trait of sense of ordinariness and flexibility into the specialized tea
17
knowledge and tea-drinking culture.
Surely, the Book of Tea is not the sole cause for the popularization of Tang’s tea-drinking
culture, as other factors such as the newly established tributary system of tea (Lin, Zhengsan
212, Jiang 14-5), newly developed canal transporting systems (Shrh and Fu 132), the newly
universalized civil examination system (Liao 12), the booming tea industry (large scale tea
planting and the government initiated policy of trading tea for horses) (Zhu and Shen 34), and
the link between tea-drinking and the wide spreading Buddhist religion (Jiang 16) could have
contributed to it directly or indirectly. However, these factors alone could not have caused the
popularization of Chinese tea-drinking culture or tea-tasting art. If culture means the creation
or the interpretation of meaning of a daily practice, the Book of Tea as a ground-breaking
piece did serve as an important means to provide moral, civilizing, aesthetic and
philosophical connotations and to make the consumption of such a bitter drink a popular art.
Such a culture embraced not only the nourishing of the human body and the appraisal of
tea-making skills, but also the society’s ritual customs, the appreciation of tea literature, the
reflection of philosophical thinking, the interaction of people, as well as the self-cultivating
processes of human nature (Lin, Zhenying 51). Thus the Book of Tea, though not a sufficient,
has to be taken as a necessary cause for the popularization of Tang’s tea-drinking culture.
Although it had enjoyed a wide readership among Chinese scholars (notably the
influential Literati Circle of Huzhou), the Book of Tea itself was never really ―popularized,‖
considering the low literacy rate (about 15%-20%) during the Tang period (Adshead 70,
Gough 72). However, soon after the Book of Tea appeared, extraordinary reverberations burst
forth. Vast numbers of tea paintings and literature were produced in its wake: at least
ninety-seven tea books were counted by the end of the Qing era and almost all referring to
Lu’s work. Poets continued to appraise Lu and his work. Lu Yu himself became the immortal
sage of tea. Tea merchants worshiped porcelain statues of him and gave them as gifts to
18
favored customers. The ―Tea Classic,‖ as the author named it, to the surprise of many did not
provoke the slightest hostile criticism, despite that the notion of using the character jing, or
―classic,‖ was abhorred by Chinese for any except the teachings of the most revered sages.
Lu Yu’s unequivocal use of this character jing in the title of his Book of Tea could surely have
excited the suspicions of ordinary Chinese gentry and scholars, but it did not. It was not
merely those who sold tea or dealers in tea ceramics who venerated him; the public venerated
him and his book. Even the literati and artists affixed his portrait to the wall as they enjoyed
their tea at the tea gatherings (Sen 31).
Since the practice of tea-drinking had no doubt existed before the completion of the
Book of Tea, the birth of such an academic work did appear like a kind of the canonization of
a popular culture. Nevertheless, as tea-brewing, tea-making, and tea-drinking practice
introduced by the Book of Tea was so closely derived from the everyday life of ordinary
people, it gave people the impression that such ―specialized‖ knowledge was accessible even
for commoners. The principle of taking actions that would suit local circumstances and the
spirit of flexibility of the scholastic piece contributed to the popularization of Chinese
tea-drinking culture by offering it a sense of ordinariness. The tea-tasting art opened to people
at the very bottom of the society the possibility to participate profoundly in their everyday
life, their conversations of folk philosophy, and their interpretations of life aesthetics.
Differing from other Confucian classics, the Book of Tea enjoyed a dual classical and
popular status because it brought together not only the practices of rites, etiquette, and
notions of self-cultivation in life philosophy, but also the very mundane experiences,
pleasures and life habits of commoners. In other words, it incorporated at the same time the
core cultural values of the scholars and the day-to-day knowledge of the Tang commoners.
The popularizing process of Chinese tea-drinking culture was not a simple result of an
imposition of the dominant values of the social-political groups from the top down. Rather, it
19
was the two-way interaction, which had reflected at the same time the tastes, pleasures, sense
of relevance and feeling of ordinariness of common people.
NOTES
1 As Alan Macfarlane and Iris Macfarlane describe, two thousand years ago tea was drunk
only in a handful of religious communities. By a thousand years ago it was drunk by
millions of Chinese. Five hundred years ago over half of the world’s population was
drinking tea as their main alternative to water. During the next five hundred years tea
drinking spread to cover the world. By the 1930s there was enough tea for 200 cups a
year for every person in the world. Thousands of millions of cups of tea are drunk every
day. In Britain, for instance, 165 million cups of tea a day are drunk, an average of over
three per person (31-2).
2 According to a UNESCO report (47), a 2,700-year-old tea tree has been discovered in
Yunnan province of China, and not far away from it is another tea tree 2,500-year-old.
3 ―Tea,‖ in Chinese cha 茶, was actually written as tu 荼before Tang times. Only through
the descriptions of the characteristics of tu and cha in varied references did later scholars
consider tu an interchangeable form of cha.
4 Synonyms of cha includes jia 檟, ming 茗, chuan 荈, she 蔎, and cha 詫.
5 Many scholars believe that tu in the Book of Odes actually refers to other bitter vegetables
rather than to tea.
6 Many have claimed that Shennong’s Treatise and some of the ancient classics were in fact
literature forged by the Han scholars; hence they cast doubts on the practice of
tea-drinking in pre-Qin China.
7 There have been controversies over who the original painter is for the picture of the tea
contest in the ancient Chinese market, as the illustrations of vendors who took part in a
20
tea competition in the paintings of the Song painter Liu Songnian and the Ming painter
Gu Bing (in fact, also the Yuan painter Zhao Mengfu’s趙孟頫 Painting of Tea Contests)
had shown great resemblances to each other. According to Gu Bing 顧炳, he had
replicated the images from Yan Liben of the early Tang era. Yet, despite the controversy,
it is generally agreed among historians (as also documented in Liu Songnian’s description
of his own painting) that the practice of tea contests had existed in China as late as the
late Tang period (Liu Songnian).
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