Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its
noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad
paintings--generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making
the perfect tea, as there are no rules for producing a Titian or a
Sesson. Each preparation of the leaves has its individuality, its
special affinity with water and heat, its own method of telling a story.
The truly beautiful must always be in it. How much do we not suffer
through the constant failure of society to recognise this simple and
fundamental law of art and life; Lichilai, a Sung poet, has sadly
remarked that there were three most deplorable things in the world: the
spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation of fine
art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of fine tea through
incompetent manipulation.
Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be
roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea,
and the Steeped Tea. We moderns belong to the last school. These several
methods of appreciating the beverage are indicative of the spirit of the
age in which they prevailed. For life is an expression, our unconscious
actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Confucius said
that "man hideth not." Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small
things because we have so little of the great to conceal. The tiny
incidents of daily routine are as much a commentary of racial ideals as
the highest flight of philosophy or poetry. Even as the difference in
favorite vintage marks the separate idiosyncrasies of different periods
and nationalities of Europe, so the Tea-ideals characterise the
various moods of Oriental culture. The Cake-tea which was boiled, the
Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was steeped, mark
the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang, the Sung, and the Ming
dynasties of China. If we were inclined to borrow the much-abused
terminology of art-classification, we might designate them respectively,
the Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.
The tea-plant, a native of southern China, was known from very early
times to Chinese botany and medicine. It is alluded to in the classics
under the various names of Tou, Tseh, Chung, Kha, and Ming, and
was highly prized for possessing the virtues of relieving fatigue,
delighting the soul, strengthening the will, and repairing the eyesight.
It was not only administered as an internal dose, but often applied
externally in form of paste to alleviate rheumatic pains. The Taoists
claimed it as an important ingredient of the elixir of immortality. The
Buddhists used it extensively to prevent drowsiness during their long
hours of meditation.
By the fourth and fifth centuries Tea became a favourite beverage among
the inhabitants of the Yangtse-Kiang valley. It was about this time that
modern ideograph Cha was coined, evidently a corruption of the classic
Tou. The poets of the southern dynasties have left some fragments of
their fervent adoration of the "froth of the liquid jade." Then emperors
used to bestow some rare preparation of the leaves on their high
ministers as a reward for eminent services. Yet the method of drinking
tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme. The leaves were steamed,
crushed in a mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice,
ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions!
The custom obtains at the present day among the Thibetans and various
Mongolian tribes, who make a curious syrup of these ingredients. The
use of lemon slices by the Russians, who learned to take tea from the
Chinese caravansaries, points to the survival of the ancient method.
It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea from its
crude state and lead to its final idealization. With Luwuh in the middle
of the eighth century we have our first apostle of tea. He was born
in an age when Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking mutual
synthesis. The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to
mirror the Universal in the Particular. Luwuh, a poet, saw in the
Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned through all things.
In his celebrated work, the "Chaking" (The Holy Scripture of Tea) he
formulated the Code of Tea. He has since been worshipped as the tutelary
god of the Chinese tea merchants.
The "Chaking" consists of three volumes and ten chapters. In the first
chapter Luwuh treats of the nature of the tea-plant, in the second of
the implements for gathering the leaves, in the third of the selection
of the leaves. According to him the best quality of the leaves must have
"creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap
of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam
like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth
newly swept by rain."
The fourth chapter is devoted to the enumeration and description of
the twenty-four members of the tea-equipage, beginning with the tripod
brazier and ending with the bamboo cabinet for containing all these
utensils. Here we notice Luwuh's predilection for Taoist symbolism. Also
it is interesting to observe in this connection the influence of tea
on Chinese ceramics. The Celestial porcelain, as is well known, had
its origin in an attempt to reproduce the exquisite shade of jade,
resulting, in the Tang dynasty, in the blue glaze of the south, and the
white glaze of the north. Luwuh considered the blue as the ideal colour
for the tea-cup, as it lent additional greenness to the beverage,
whereas the white made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because
he used cake-tea. Later on, when the tea masters of Sung took to the
powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown.
The Mings, with their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white
porcelain.
In the fifth chapter Luwuh describes the method of making tea.
He eliminates all ingredients except salt. He dwells also on the
much-discussed question of the choice of water and the degree of boiling
it. According to him, the mountain spring is the best, the river water
and the spring water come next in the order of excellence. There are
three stages of boiling: the first boil is when the little bubbles
like the eye of fishes swim on the surface; the second boil is when the
bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil
is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle. The Cake-tea is roasted
before the fire until it becomes soft like a baby's arm and is shredded
into powder between pieces of fine paper. Salt is put in the first boil,
the tea in the second. At the third boil, a dipperful of cold water is
poured into the kettle to settle the tea and revive the "youth of the
water." Then the beverage was poured into cups and drunk. O nectar! The
filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like
waterlilies on emerald streams. It was of such a beverage that Lotung, a
Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second
cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup searches my barren entrail but
to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth
cup raises a slight perspiration,--all the wrong of life passes away
through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me
to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup--ah, but I could take
no more! I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves.
Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away
thither."
The remaining chapters of the "Chaking" treat of the vulgarity of the
ordinary methods of tea-drinking, a historical summary of illustrious
tea-drinkers, the famous tea plantations of China, the possible
variations of the tea-service and illustrations of the tea-utensils. The
last is unfortunately lost.
The appearance of the "Chaking" must have created considerable sensation
at the time. Luwuh was befriended by the Emperor Taisung (763-779), and
his fame attracted many followers. Some exquisites were said to have
been able to detect the tea made by Luwuh from that of his disciples.
One mandarin has his name immortalised by his failure to appreciate the
tea of this great master.
In the Sung dynasty the whipped tea came into fashion and created the
second school of Tea. The leaves were ground to fine powder in a small
stone mill, and the preparation was whipped in hot water by a delicate
whisk made of split bamboo. The new process led to some change in the
tea-equipage of Luwuh, as well as in the choice of leaves. Salt was
discarded forever. The enthusiasm of the Sung people for tea knew no
bounds. Epicures vied with each other in discovering new varieties, and
regular tournaments were held to decide their superiority. The Emperor
Kiasung (1101-1124), who was too great an artist to be a well-behaved
monarch, lavished his treasures on the attainment of rare species. He
himself wrote a dissertation on the twenty kinds of tea, among which he
prizes the "white tea" as of the rarest and finest quality.
The tea-ideal of the Sungs differed from the Tangs even as their notion
of life differed. They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried
to symbolise. To the Neo-Confucian mind the cosmic law was not reflected
in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law
itself. Aeons were but moments--Nirvana always within grasp. The Taoist
conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all
their modes of thought. It was the process, not the deed, which was
interesting. It was the completing, not the completion, which was really
vital. Man came thus at once face to face with nature. A new meaning
grew into the art of life. The tea began to be not a poetical pastime,
but one of the methods of self-realisation. Wangyucheng eulogised tea
as "flooding his soul like a direct appeal, that its delicate bitterness
reminded him of the aftertaste of a good counsel." Sotumpa wrote of the
strength of the immaculate purity in tea which defied corruption as a
truly virtuous man. Among the Buddhists, the southern Zen sect, which
incorporated so much of Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual
of tea. The monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and
drank tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a holy
sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which finally developed into the
Tea-ceremony of Japan in the fifteenth century.
Unfortunately the sudden outburst of the Mongol tribes in the thirteenth
century which resulted in the devastation and conquest of China under
the barbaric rule of the Yuen Emperors, destroyed all the fruits of
Sung culture. The native dynasty of the Mings which attempted
re-nationalisation in the middle of the fifteenth century was harassed
by internal troubles, and China again fell under the alien rule of the
Manchus in the seventeenth century. Manners and customs changed to leave
no vestige of the former times. The powdered tea is entirely forgotten.
We find a Ming commentator at loss to recall the shape of the tea whisk
mentioned in one of the Sung classics. Tea is now taken by steeping the
leaves in hot water in a bowl or cup. The reason why the Western world
is innocent of the older method of drinking tea is explained by the fact
that Europe knew it only at the close of the Ming dynasty.
To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal.
The long woes of his country have robbed him of the zest for the meaning
of life. He has become modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted. He
has lost that sublime faith in illusions which constitutes the eternal
youth and vigour of the poets and ancients. He is an eclectic and
politely accepts the traditions of the universe. He toys with Nature,
but does not condescend to conquer or worship her. His Leaf-tea is often
wonderful with its flower-like aroma, but the romance of the Tang and
Sung ceremonials are not to be found in his cup.
Japan, which followed closely on the footsteps of Chinese civilisation,
has known the tea in all its three stages. As early as the year 729 we
read of the Emperor Shomu giving tea to one hundred monks at his palace
in Nara. The leaves were probably imported by our ambassadors to the
Tang Court and prepared in the way then in fashion. In 801 the monk
Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in Yeisan. Many
tea-gardens are heard of in succeeding centuries, as well as the delight
of the aristocracy and priesthood in the beverage. The Sung tea reached
us in 1191 with the return of Yeisai-zenji, who went there to study
the southern Zen school. The new seeds which he carried home were
successfully planted in three places, one of which, the Uji district
near Kioto, bears still the name of producing the best tea in the
world. The southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and with it
the tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the Sung. By the fifteenth century,
under the patronage of the Shogun, Ashikaga-Voshinasa, the tea
ceremony is fully constituted and made into an independent and secular
performance. Since then Teaism is fully established in Japan. The use
of the steeped tea of the later China is comparatively recent among us,
being only known since the middle of the seventeenth century. It has
replaced the powdered tea in ordinary consumption, though the latter
still continues to hold its place as the tea of teas.
It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination of
tea-ideals. Our successful resistance of the Mongol invasion in 1281
had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement so disastrously cut off in
China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea with us became more than
an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of
life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and
refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to
produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The
tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where
weary travellers could meet to drink from the common spring of
art-appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was
woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a colour to
disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things,
not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the
unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and
naturally--such were the aims of the tea-ceremony. And strangely enough
it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism
was Taoism in disguise.