Chinese Taoist tea and Chinese Buddhist tea are known as China’s two famous religious tea. Buddhist tea has Zen and Taoist tea has tea theory. Chinese tea culture has a profound religious and cultural foundation. It can be said that without this foundation, tea can not form culture. How did Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism act on tea culture and make Chinese tea culture form a grand atmosphere.
After the Han Dynasty, until the Tang Dynasty, there was no strict boundary between tableware and drinking utensils. In most cases, they were shared. However, as a ceramic tea set, after the development of the Western Jin Dynasty and the southern and Northern Dynasties, to the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu’s <tea classic 茶经> contains 20 kinds of tea sets, which shows that the Tang Dynasty tea set has complete shape, complete supporting facilities, and special tea sets have been established. Book Workshops
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Huishan- Hui Mountian Spring 惠山泉, was tasted by Lu Yu, the “tea sage” of Tang Dynasty, according to legend, therefore, Huishan spring was named Lu Zi spring, honored as “the second spring in the world” by Qing Emperor Qianlong. The spring is now located in Xihui park at the foot of Hui mountain in the western suburb of Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province. Because Huishan spring water is famously good, so many ancient tea experts came to taste and discuss. Li Shen, a poet in the middle Tang Dynasty, “茶得此水，皆尽芳味也 once tea has this spring water, it will give off all its fragrance of this tea”. Zhao Mengfu, the great calligrapher of the Yuan Dynasty, wrote “the second spring in the world 天下第二泉” for Huishan spring, which is still well preserved on the back wall of the spring Pavilion. In Song Dynasty, the famous poet, Su Shi was well versed in his poem, he brought the best tea cake to try the second spring in the world. After drinking, he repeatedly praised the wonderful.
Good news for English and Chinese readers: the related article has been published, the “Tea’s Smoke and Qin’s Rhyme 茶烟琴韵” <Coffee Tea & I> Vol. 82 in English and Chinese.
Tea’s bitterness can clear the heart, Qin’s low and deep sounds can calm the mind down “茶苦可清心，古琴低沉可静心“, playing Qin (Guqin), tasting tea… several tea friends listen to the dialogue between Qin and tea, tuning Qin, boiling water and infusing tea. In a certain sense, there are many similarities between these two kinds of treasures with profound cultural heritage. Tea has a very long history, even before the beginning of human civilization, Qin, one of the oldest plucked string instruments in China, it has been popular since the time of Confucius with a history of more than 4000 years. Because Qin music style belongs to the quiet, virtual quiet, deep quiet, and so on static beauty. This is why Guqin is most suitable for playing in the dead of night, because such an environment can match the style of Qin music and the artistic conception it pursues. Tea and Guqin have very similar temperament, so in a tea ceremony performance, Guqin is generally chosen. When we clean our hearts, we do not simply drive away the external fatigue, but use Qin, emotion, tea, and Tao to drive away the turbid Qi in our hearts, and then cultivate our body and mind, so as to achieve a truly transcendent spiritual enjoyment. Ancient Chinese literati loved Qin and tea, playing Qin and drinking tea became a vivid portrayal of the life of literati and scholars, both of them can cultivate people’s character, temperament and sentiment, and meditate on Buddhism and Taoism, so as to achieve spiritual enjoyment and personality’s transcendence.
In China, there has always been a saying that tea and wine compete for merit. But in the minds of Chinese literati, the status of tea is still above wine. Throughout the status of tea and wine in the poets’ minds, there is a process, a leading wine poetry first, tea and wine on an equal footing, to the tea dominating position. In the early Tang Dynasty, the poets used wine to boost their spirits. With the emergence of tea drinking groups such as Lu Yu and Jiao Ran, more and more poets of Tang Dynasty became associated with tea. The tea loving monk, Jiao Ran not only knew, loved and enjoyed tea, but also wrote many charming poems about tea, he thought that wein was far from tea “The elegance and purity of this tea is unknown to the world, people relying on drinking alcohol is to deceive themselves and others. 此物清高世莫知，世人饮酒多自欺 – <饮茶歌诮崔石使君>”. Jiao Ran discussed the art of tea drinking together with Lu Yu, the sage of tea, and advocated the tea tasting atmosphere of “replacing wine with tea”. He made great contributions to the development of tea culture in Tang Dynasty and later generations. Bai Juyi’s attitude towards tea and wine is more typical, “when there is no alcohol for guests to drink, 聊将茶代酒 for the moment, make do with tea instead of alcohol – <宿蓝溪对月>”, “We can know the strength of an alcoholic drink when we drive away the sorrow, we can see the effect of tea when we break the drowsiness 驱愁知酒力，破睡见茶功 – <赠东邻王十三>”, it was Bai Juyi who added a large amount of tea into the poetry world and made tea and wine keeping abreast of the world of poetry. From his poems, we can see the gradual rise and transformation of tea among literati.
Offering tea to guests is a virtue left over from ancient China in the land of rites, and it is a kind of noble etiquette in daily life to offer tea to guests. “山居偏隅竹为邻，客来莫嫌茶当酒” This is a couplet describing how to treat guests with tea. The meaning of the couplet is: I live in seclusion in the mountains, and the bamboo forest next to my residence is my neighbor. When relatives and friends come to visit, please don’t dislike me to treat you with tea instead of alcohol. This group of tea poem written by master Zhu Xi, the famous confucianist honoured as Zhu Zi in Song Dynasty, also known as “Tea Immortal 茶仙“, the couplet was inscribed in front of Sanxian temple in Shuilian cave, Wuyi Mountains. It shows Zhu Xi’s daily life of being close to nature and entertaining guests with tea when he lived in seclusion in Wuyi Mountains. At the same time, his “以茶喻学 analogy of his theory from tasting tea” was brought into full play, and his combination of “tea” and “theory” together created a different spark.
Tea drinking of Song Dynasty reflected the unique life style and philosophy of literati. Liu Xuezhong, a modern scholar, commented: “Su Shi was the typical representative of tea drinking life in Song Dynasty. The feature and spirit of tea were still hazy in Bai Juyi’s time, but they became clear and clear in Su Shi‘s period. Su Dongpo (Su Shi), a great literary giant in Song Dynasty, loved tea in an all-round way. He not only tasted, fried and ground tea, but also planted tea trees. In his poem <Planting Tea 种茶>, Dongpo described how he transplanted an old tea tree. A hundred years old tea tree, has been abandoned, but Su Shi chose a good spring rain season, moved it to his garden. Under his careful care, the old tea tree revived its vitality and produced excellent tea.
Wu Lizhen, a native of Yandao (famous mountain area of Ya’an, Sichuan Province) in the Western Han Dynasty, was a Taoist school figure named Ganlu- Sweet Dew Taoist, he successively presided over the monasteries of Meng Mountain. In 153 BC, Wu Lizhen discovered the medicinal function of wild tea in Meng Mountain, When the villagers were ill, he enthusiastically soaked the leaves in water for them to drink, and the effect was also very good. Unfortunately, there were not many such trees, and the leaves could not meet the needs of curing diseases and saving people. He was determined to cultivate more tea trees, so he planted seven tea trees from seeds on a hollow land between the five peaks of Meng Mountain. Wu Lizhen is regarded as the earliest tea grower in China and even in the world, which was clearly recorded in words, he is also known as the tea ancestor and tea ceremony master of Meng Mountain.