LU
YU AND THE TEA CLASSIC
The Tang dynasty saw the first comprehensive treatise
on tea and its varieties, though shorter works had
appeared earlier. This was The Book of Tea (Chajing)
now known as The Classic of Tea by the man of letters
LuYu (733-804). Little is known about his antecedents
except that he was a native of Hunan province. Apparently
abandoned on a riverbank when he w^as very small,
he was found and adopted by the famed Buddhist monkjiji,
of the Dragon Cloud Buddhist monastery. Ji gave the
boy the name Lu Yu, obtained from the Taoist classic
The Book of
Changes (I Ching).
Lu did not want to become a monk so was put to tending
a herd of buffalo. What is probably a Confucian retelling
of his story has him so avid for study that he practiced
writing his characters while sitting astride a buffalo.
If you see a figurine or painting of such a one, it
is probably him.
Later he became a clown with a group of traveling
performers and endeared himself to the company for
his cutting and editing of play texts. After years
of wandering he settled in Zhejiang province. Lu's
in-terest in tea dated back to those early years when
he had to .brew it for his foster father. Tea drinking
had become widespread and Lu began to investigate
the process and its history. The tea growers wanted
a systematic codification of tea information. He began
work in 760 and the book was published in 780.
The chapter headings are:
1. Origin, Characteristics, Names, and Qualities of
Tea.
2. Tools for Plucking and Processing Tea.
3. Varieties, Plucking and Processing Methods.
4. Utensils for Making and Drinking Tea.
5. Methods of Making Tea and the Water of Various
Places.
6. Habits of Tea Drinking.
7. Stories, Plantations and Tea as a Medicine.
8. Which Kinds of Tea Are Better in Different Locations.
9. Utensils Which May Be Omitted.
10. How to Copy This Book on Silk Scrolls.
The book made Lu a celebrity7. He spent the last
decades of his long life in semi-seclusion polishing
others of his total often books, all now lost. Lu
Yu's work played a great role in giving tea cultural
significance, Francis Ross Carpenter points out in
the preface to his translation of The Classic of Tea.
Before Lu Yu, tea was a rather ordinary7 drink, says
an early preface to the classic, and "he taught
us to manufacture tea, to lay out the equipage and
to brew it properly."
After Lu became known as the patron saint of tea,
tales about him j proliferated. The water used for
tea is crucial and Lu was skilled at I distinguishing
its kinds. He later wrote a book on twenty sources
for fine J water, the best of which was held to come
from midstream on the Yangtze at Nanling. Water from
near the bank w-as often brackish. J During a trip
on the river his host gave Lu w-ater from that spot
to taste. Lu sipped and said the w-ater was from near
the bank. The servant who had drawn it swore it was
from the favored place. Lu took another sip and conceded
that perhaps it was, but some other water was mixed
in. Then the man admitted that when his boat rocked,
some of the water in the jar had spilled out and he
had added a bit from near the bank.
In another tale, the emperor refused to believe the
story that when Lu left home his foster father gave
up tea because no one could make it so well. The emperor
invited the old abbot to the palace for a cup of tea
made by his most skilled court lady. The monk was
not impressed. But, when served a cup of another brew,
he declared that even his son could not do better.
What the abbot did not know is that the second cup
had been made by Lu himself, summoned to the palace
to make tea for an "unknown guest."
Contests testing their acuity at tasting were a popular
pastime among officials in both the Tang and subsequent
Song dynasties. Participants would nominate a judge,
and each in turn prepared a tea of his choice for
the others to identify. Greatest taster of them all
was probably Cat Xiang, born in 1012. Many tales are
told about this native of Fujian province who served
as its tea commissioner and later governor, in-cluding
his role in building a bridge at the town ofChuanzhou.
He was able, one story says, to tell when even a tiny
bit of a cheaper tea had been added to make a cup
of the expensive Small Rounds (two ounces of gold
for a little over a pound). His Tea Record (Cha Lu),
a report to the emperor, is another renowned tea book.
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