A Brief History of Tea - Summary Part 1

While waiting for construction to finish so I can start my work, I picked up a lovely book from the spa. This is for Lisa and Lx who told me to write them a summary of this thick book after I am done. 

The story of TeaA Cultural History and Drinking Guide

Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J Heiss

It is speculated that prehistoric humans discovered indigenous tea trees in the wild and in the quest to discover edibles, chew on the leaves of tea bushes and found them to be a source of invigorating energy that sustain them in their daily rounds of food foraging. When they learn the skills of fire building, they may have experiment adding tea leaves to boiling water to stew into strong, bitter concoction.

Tea’s origins and ascendancy began in China, along Xishuangbanna, Yunnan.

Around the middle of Zhou dynasty, China’s 3 great philosophy religions – Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism – sprouted and they all embrace tea. Monks and priests found the beverage help them keep awake in long meditations. They declare tea, the “ elixir of life” that should be consumed daily by all people. As the popularity of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism spread throughout China, so did the awareness of tea.

Under the rule of Qin Shihujangdi who ordered the construction of the Great Wall, massive numbers of workers from all over China were forced into labor camps and as workers share and praise the wonders of their own homeland, word of this tonic spread across the chinese empire, making tea a much sought after commodity.

Around 53 BC, Wu LiZhen, the forefather of tea cultivation cultivated the first tea garden in Sichuan. His tea plants, today referred to the Seven Tea Trees yield tea so pure and delicate that they became the exclusive Tribute Tea reserved for the emperor. As Sichuan and Yunnan start to fold under the Chinese Celestial Empire, tea could be traded more easily.

Despite its popularity, tea remains a bitter tasting drink. However during the Three Kingdom period, steaming is introduced to make tea leaves pliant before drying (not charred). This eliminates the bitterness of the leaves, turning tea into a sweet tasting drink. Tea was since transformed from a bitter tonic to a pleasure beverage.

The Tang Dynasty

In the Tang dynasty, an era of high art and culture, tea became an engaging and relaxing pursuit. Manners and social order were emphasized in the Tang era.  And to ensure the rare and costly tea is prepared properly, the role of the grand tea master is created. Tea, no longer crude, becomes a cultural social rite that imparts peace, harmony and well being.

Lu Yu, often called China’s father of tea, codified the rituals and preach that inner harmony could be attained through the expression of careful attentive tea preparation. Lu Yu emphasized all moments of life to be attended by beauty – a concept that was to become central to the pleasure of tea drinking.

Formal utensils were exclusively designed for preparation, serving and drinking of tea. Tea bowls, tea cups, teapots and water pouring devices were selected to enhance the true color of tea.

During this time, Tang established a vast government controlled network of tea gardens, which brought China to the pinnacle of tea production. They also set up a system of trading tea for horses with border populations. Tibetans first learn of tea in 641AD, when the Tang princess married the Tibetan King.

For the Tibetans, tea is indispensable for enhancing the nutrition of their Spartan vegetable less diet. The Chinese trade tea for healthy horses they needed for their warriors. Long caravan routes were developed for this difficult round trip now known as the Tea Horse routes, which stretched, from Sichuan and Yunnan to Tibet over the rugged Himalaya. For transport purposes, tea is packed into compressed hard bricks.

The Song Dynasty

Finely powdered tea start to replace coarse leave in cakes. To compliment this new powdered tea, the Song emperor Huizong, commanded the royal pottery works to create new tea drinking cups, characterized by refined elegance, under glazed decorations and subtle etched designs and sensuous glazes.

Song porcelain was mostly monochromatic and the most popular style is the Qingbai porcelain. These cups encourage the awareness and admiration of the tea itself. Tea ware then was viewed as objects of desire and value not simply for their functional needs. The desire for strong but thin tea vessels that can withstand near boiling liquid spur the beginning of China’s porcelain trade.

Teahouses sprang up during this time and become important places to socialize and conduct business.

Yuan and Ming Dynasties

For the next 88 years. Kublai Khan’s Yuan dynasty terminated the aesthetic tea pursuit. However, a new technique of drying and roasting tea leaves called chaoqing was developed in this era, taking a step closer to discovering techniques for making green tea. The long pause in chinese tea development under the Mongul rule gave the Japanese time to flourish their tea culture based on Japanese principles.

Ming dynasty drove the Monguls out and under Zhu Yuanzhang's rule, policies regarding tea cultivation, production, grading, storage and transportation were established and codified, providing a framework for China’s tea industry.

Porcelain kilns at Jingdezhen switched from producing qingbai wares to under glazed blue and white glaze, known as mei-ping. Small handle-less teacups requiring a lid and a deep saucer called a gaiwan became popular.

The first porcelain and zisha teapots appeared under the Ming rule. Because tea is costly, teapots were intentionally made small to allow tea leaves in pots to be reinfused several times by successively adding more water.

Ming’s obsession with flowers and richly perfumed fragrant led to creation of flower scented tea. This is considered Song’s most significant contribution to China’s tea culture.

Chanoyu: Japanese way of Tea

While the Chinese perfected the culture of steep tea, Japanese embraced the whipped powdered tea of the Song dynasty. Chanoyu or “the way of tea” is an artful practice that embodied harmony, respect, tranquility, humility, purity, mystery, beauty, artful appreciation, symmetry and total attention to tea brewing. Chanoyu is based on Zen qualities that are different but not opposition to Song’s more temporal concepts of connoisseurship and tea appreciation.

Qing Dynasty

Manchurian claimed power and ushered in the Qing Dynasty. They prefer coarse dark tea with fermented mare’s milk. The Han Chinese however, never developed a taste for black tea.

The West

When trade established between China and Europe, the Chinese tea men were faced with the challenge of producing tea for the Dutch that can endure the long damp voyage back to Europe. By trial and error, the Chinese discovered that to allow tea to darken then fired and baked-fried in way green tea was not, it can last longer Over time, the Chinese refined and perfected the production of black tea.

The Dutch embraced tea and drank them with milk based on reports from Dutch traders that the emperor drank tea with milk. This is only true because the emperor then was a Manchurian not a Han Chinese.

The Dutch soon purchased enough quantity of tea to ship from Holland for exportation. Much of Europe started to adopt the habit of tea drinking. Especially the English, who import vast quantities and they drink their tea with milk and sugar.

When trade opening in the Far East, the English desire trading rights there but they were barred from the Dutch and can only establish territory in India, a country that would later become the largest and most powerful tea producing country in the world.

England and China: Exchanging one addiction for another

The English desperately dependent on Chinese tea and a huge trade deficit, launched a devious scheme to get China addicted to opium and ruthlessly exchanged China’s new opium addiction for their own tea addiction. Destruction of the opium by the Chinese emperor ignited the English retaliation to became what is latter known as the Opium War of 1839 – 1842.

By the end of the conflict, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed and China gave up ownership of Hong Kong and free trading rights of all Chinese ports to the English. Despite these heavy concessions from China, England remains desperate to control tea import in a greater way. In the end, they started cultivating tea in India and through the success of propagating the Assam bush, England accomplish their goal of controlling tea imports in less than fifty years. Chinese tea import dropped from 90% to 5%, and China would not recover from this blow until the twentieth century.

The Modern Age

The success of English tea in Assam led Dutch to import Assam tea bush cuttings into Java. The bush thrived in Indonesia and both English and Dutch managed to crumble China once tightly held dominance in the tea world. Africa also became a world player in tea production with the Assam seeds first planted in Kenya. The spread of tea production spur a new generation of tea drinkers.

.........

Summary for the rest of the book could come earlier if I had not spent the whole of yesterday trying to find where I can get my hands on Fujian Da Hong Pao and Anhui Tai Ping Hou Kui... I also found out that my favorite Bai Hao Yin Zhen is actually very rare and precious.... I have good taste...