Let the Chinese Tea Art Go to the World

China tea culture research institute, Jiangxi Province: Chen Wenhua
Chapter 1: Development of Chinese tea art
Tea culture is the cultural phenomenon appearing in the process of producing and using the tea. People use tea differently in four periods, namely eating, remedying, drinking, and tasting. Eating tea means people take tea as food, eating it cooked or uncooked. Remedying tea means people drink tea as medicine. Drinking tea means people boil tea and drink tea water as soft drink. Tasting tea means people pour boiling water into tea and enjoy this process then enjoy the process of tasting tea. Drinking tea is for sake of thirsty and can be gulped down, while tasting tea needs much more attention and longer time to aftertaste. The first three periods were in really early time, which might be as early as primitive society; and the last period began at Wei Dynasty and Jin Dynasty.
There was a legendary about Shen Nong testing herb and eat poisonous herb one day and fortunately cured by tea. According to archeological and ethnological study, the history of eating tea in our country can be traced back as far as Paleolith Time. The so-called Shen Nong testing herb was mix the burgeon of the tea and other vegetables and cooked together as food. Later people discovered the tea leaf has the function of detoxification and boiled the tea leaf into medical soup. And at that time, people also drank tea soup to keep fit. The ethnological materials prove that in some tea region, people in ancient time drank tea soup commonly. And archeologists found tea leaf and intact tea seeds (1) in a relic of New paleolith time(?) which had 8000 year history near Hangzhou. Therefore, we can conclude that the history of drinking tea in our country can be at least ten thousand years.
However, from the existed documents, we can see that till Three-states Period the way of using tea were merely for medical care and for drinking. For example one document of Han dynasty has mentioned the sanitarian function of tea. In Three-states Period, an empire gave his servant, who was not good at drinking wine, tea instead of wine. That is a good proof to illustrate tea has been used as beverage. (2)
The situation changed since Xi Jin(?). Some literators were interested in the tea activity and gave cultural value to tea. One poet at that time once wrote a poem to praise the scent and good taste of tea, and said that the esthetic satisfaction of smelling and tasting was the most important function of tea. Du Yu, one poet at that time, wrote the first poem of tasting tea in our history. In that poem, he described the growth, picking of tea, the watering, tea-things, flushing process, as well as the appreciation of foam of tea, which he compared as snow in water and flowers in spring. Therefore, we can see that just at that time, tea soup has begun its function of tasting. Also in this poet, he has mentioned the soul of tea art, which bring the emergence of tea art in China.
But it did not become a life art until Lu Yu elevated it to the tasting period in Tang Dynasty. In the book he wrote about tea, he valued tasting tea from a moral aspect and systematically standardized the way of boiling tea in Tang Dynasty. He paid special attention to the making and appreciating the foam of tea, and called the foam the essence of tea. And he gave different names to different forms of foam; he adopted many metaphors to describe the foam as well. Paying such special attention to the foam of tea obviously was not for meeting the physical need of people but for esthetical pleasure of sight. For Lu Yu, a cup of tea, full of foam, was an esthetic subject to appreciate. Thus drinking tea in Tang Dynasty has become a poetic life art.
Meanwhile, the poets in Tang Dynasty also began to tasting tea for esthetic pleasure instead of physical satisfaction. This can be proved by the large number of poems (3) which were writen to praise the colour, scent, taste and shape of tea, and Qian Qi’s poem could be the representative one. In the poem, the poet described a kind of ideal life: people tasting tea under the bamboo, forgetting the social affairs and entering a kind of empty space, and sinking in the beauty of nature. This kind of tasting tea is totally a poetic life art, which is different from drinking tea for sake of thirsty.
Since then, poets in every dynasty chased for the same pleasure from tasting tea. The tea man in Song dynasty called the color, scent and taste of tea “three greatness”. They cared about the color, the scent, and the taste during tasting and searched for a much higher level of esthetic means. In Song poems, there were a lot of sentences to describe and praise the greatness of tea. (4)
When it came to Ming and Qing dynasty, tasting tea has became refinement art. Since the cake tea has been abandoned in Ming dynasty, boiling loose leaf tea became a fashion. People paid more attention to the color, the scent and the taste of tea. And they demanded more strict and detailed rules for all the steps of making up a tea. The emergence and maturity of the Kongfu tea is one of the models. According to one prose wrote by Yuan Mei in Qing dynasty, we saw a vivid description of the Kongfu tea. The cup is as small as a nut, and the pot is as small as apple. When people drank such tea, they seldom drank it in one time. They always first smell the scent of tea, then taste a little. One cup after another, then people enter a kind of peaceful environment. Kongfu tea is the most graceful tea art in our traditional tea art and need a certain time to study before they can master this technique. In one Qing prose, it mentioned the scent of tea could be divided into four classes. The first class is fragrance and all the flower teas have this smell. Then the higher class is clear, if the tea only with fragrance but not clear, it is only common tea. Higher then clear is the sweetness, without it, the tea is only bitter drink. And the highest is living, people could only judge it by their tongues and the tea must be boiled by spring water can have such feeling. Till reaching this level, tasting tea has been an activity with no relation with physical satisfaction, but reach the level of spiritual enjoyment.(5)
This is the tradition tea art in China and it improved with time. The word tea art was first used in 1970s’ in Taiwan, which was created to differentiate from tea technique. This is one of the contribution make by Taiwan people. Dividing the tea art from tea technique is good for its healthy development. Simply speaking, tea art is the art of making tea and tasting tea. Tasting tea is an art instead of technique. Tea art is the soul of tea culture. Only by including the tea art and tea technique, the tea culture could have the carrier and soul.
We could see in the previous part that tea art really occupies an important place in Chinese tea culture and it still plays an important part in the modern Chinese tea production industry. Thanks to the great development of tea art, the production of special and premium tea develops into a high level. Because people ask for picking and cooking all by hand, it is very hard for the modern Chinese tea industry become mechanized. Many foreigners drink tea as well, but they only take them as beverage, paying no attention to the taste, scent, color nor the shape of tea leaf. They use black tea and green tea to make tea bag. They do not care about the art of tasting tea, nor what different kinds of tea name. Therefore the tea farm and tea industry has realized the mechanization of picking and processing. And also this is one of the important reason why Chinese tea yield and export quantity is less than that of India and Sri Lanka.
Chapter 2: Two directions and two situations
China is the hometown for tea as well as tea culture. All the tea and drinking tea style in the world are spread from China. The most important one is tea art.
There are two directions for Chinese tea art’s spread: one is to Korea and Japan in east, and the other is to Europe and America in west.
It was in the 8th century that the tea art spread to east. In Tang dynasty, Korea, Japan and China were all in feudalistic society and the cultural level in China was the most developed one. Therefore the two neighboring countries accepted the tea art in all aspects. Japan accepted it more than Korea did. It were by Yongkong, Konghai and Zuicheng, who were monks, that brought Tang boiling tea style back to Japan and presented it to the Mikado. Soon it was well accepted by the upper class. When in Song dynasty and Yuan dynasty, the Monk Rongxi and Yuan’er bian yuan from Japan brought the Buddhism tea activity back to Japan, which form. the developed tea art in Ming and Qing dynasty. However, the main stream of the tea art changed from time to time in China, Japan maintained the old fashion in Song and Yuan dynasty of our country.
It was much later than spread to east did the tea art go west. Portuguese brought tea to Europe in 16th century, then to Britain and France, etc. But with the cultural difference, westerners only take tea as beverage which could keep them fit without accept the Chinese tea culture. They mainly accepted the black tea and in early time tea was sold in coffee shop. And they drank tea with sugar and milk like the way they drank coffee. And at present, the international tea market is lead by black tea. Since they do not care about the tea culture, they only import common piece black tea and green tea. The most fashioned way to drink tea till now is only to boil the tea bag. One of the reasons why western did not accept Chinese tea art is that when Chinese tea came to western, the entire Europe was in capitalism society and have their mature culture ideology, thus hard to accept the different life style far away from China.
From the above introduction, we can see that neither Japan nor Britain keeps pace with time, or to be exact, with Chinese tea art development. Instead, they lagged back. Japanese tea art stays at the stage of Song and Yuan dynasty. And the so-called black tea culture in Britain, that is, adding sugar and milk into tea, is only a mixing way we already have in ancient time. And the materials they use are merely piece black tea with little cultural meaning. And from artistic aspect, these phenomena are not improvement.
Meanwhile, this phenomenon plays an important part in Chinese tea situation in international trade market. For example, black tea occupies the dominant place in international tea market that China produces less. Green tea is Chinese strong at, while the market only needs piece green tea to make tea bags, which bring little value to our tea industry. Our special and premium tea has a bad sales, all these factors make the hometown of tea could not get the top place.
Chapter 3: The key factor to re-strengthen the Chinese tea: promote and develop Chinese tea art
Now if we want to change this situation, the best way is not to let Chinese to drink tea bag, which will bring our level from tasting tea back to drinking tea. That is a bad idea. The right way is to change the custom of westerners and promote their drinking tea custom from dinking tea to tasting tea. Only by doing this, Chinese tea could have chance to change the situation. Therefore the key factor to change their custom is our tea art.
The revitalization of Chinese tea culture begins with the promotion and development of tea art. Through more than thirty years effort, all kinds of teahouse appear allover China. By showing tea art to mass people, the interest of tasting tea is aroused, thus the consumption of tea would raise. For example in Shanghai, in 1990 the average annul tea consumption was 200g before promotion of tea art. However, after 12 years consecutive international tea exhibition, in 2005 the average annul tea consumption exceeds 800g. Anxi in Fujian province is the yield place for oolong. Since oolong is popularized in teahouse, that this type of tea become a good sale and this poor county became rich. Wuyuan in Jiangxi province produce a kind organic tea and sell it to European market.
Now with the increase of our state power, the charm of eastern culture has drawn more and more attention from the western world. The popular tea art has also attracted great attention allover the world. Teahouses appear in West Europe, East Europe and North Europe. Even in Japan, more and more people tend to go to China to learn Chinese tea art. In Tokyo and Kyoto, there are all kinds of tea art training class. The trainees include young people, old people and even the Japanese teacher of tea technique. They believe that Chinese tea art has more fun and artistic factors. Now, green tea and oolong occupy more and more share in Japanese tea market.
In the west the same thing also happened and more and more westerners are learning Chinese tea art. Take France as the example. The earliest city to promote the Chinese tea art is the second large city in France, Lyon. As early s ten years ago, lady Bei Ge started an organization called France tea art association. The members are all scholars. Every month lady Bei Ge would teach the ways of boiling Chinese green tea and oolong to the members. And all the members have master the basic skill of boiling Kongfu tea and could reach the level of junior tea teacher. Every year lady Bei Ge would attend tea art festival in mainland China, and sometime she brings French friends to visit tea regions in China. In Nov. 2003, France hold the “Chinese Culture Year”, in the opening ceremony, they held a Chinese tea culture festival for three days. They invited a playact union from Nanchang Vocational School to play three shows of tea art. In the grand city hall of Lyon, more than three hundred officials listened the speech of lady Bei Ge and enjoyed the show of historical tea art. At the end of the show, all the audience applauded warmly. In the following two days, the French friends followed the play show where they go, showing great enthusiasm to Chinese tea art. There are many audience came from Belgium and Swiss and other neighboring countries. In Paris, they also start an organization to promote the development of Chinese tea art in France. From 24th June, 2004 to 4th July, 2004, this organization held the first “Tea art week” together with Chinese Cultural Ministry. They held the exhibition of Chinese tea art and invited the playact union from Nanchang Vocational School to play about 10 plays and set the location at street to let more French people know about Chinese tea art and drink the delicious Chinese green tea and oolong. Every play won great praise and applaud from French audience. They sighed, “How wonderful Chinese tea art is! We just like finding the new land.”
The same example appears in Finland in North Europe. Some years ago, a delegation from Finland visited Nanchang in Jiangxi province and enjoyed the performance of tea art from Nanchang Vocational School. They were impressed deeply. Later, when the officials from Nanchang visited back, they mentioned the tea art performance and wondered whether they could invited them to come for another show. Therefore, in this July, Wuyuan green tea in Jiangxi province went into North Europe with the performance. Many Fins understand the special charm of Chinese green tea. This is the magic of tea art, without it, tea is merely a kind of article. Only through the show of tea art, it becomes a kind of art.
Now, not only in France, Britain, Germany, but also in Czech, Russia, even in America, Canada, Brazil and many other countries, Chinese teahouse has became a fashion. They do tea art performance to the foreign audience everyday, promoting and recommending Chinese tea to them. More and more people begin to be interested in Chinese tea. And this is just a beginning, we might have a long we to go before it get its peak. However, we can predict that best situation for Chinese tea will come with it. If foreigners are fond of Chinese tea art, they would certainly be fond of Chinese special and premium tea, that means those special and premium tea could go to the world. Through this, Chinese tea production and exportation could have chance to exceed that of India and Sri Lanka.
Chinese cook art is so popular that no big city nor middle sized city has no Chinese restaurant. No it is Chinese tea’s turn to win worldwide acceptation. In the near future, the such situation might happen, that is, every city which has Chinese restaurant would also has Chinese teahouse. And Chinese special and premium tea will also win worldwide praise.
Therefore, Chinese people should promote tea art both home and abroad, which has economic meaning and cultural meaning.
Promoting Chinese tea art to the whole world is not only our sage responsibility but also the world people’s responsibility. That is because people loving tea should unit together.