Famous Tea Figures

Lu Yu (733 - 804 AD)
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 (Cha Jing) now known as The Classic of Tea by the man of letters Lu Yu. Little is known about his antecedents except that he was a native of Hunan province. Apparently abandoned on a riverbank when he was very small, he was found and adopted by the famed Buddhist monk, Ji Ji, 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 he.

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 interest 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 AD and the book was published in 780 AD.

The chapter headings are:

Origin, Characteristics, Names, and Qualities of Tea
Tools for Plucking and Processing Tea
Varieties, Plucking and Processing Methods
Utensils for Making and Drinking Tea
Methods of Making Tea and the Water of Various Places
Habits of Tea Drinking
Stories, Plantations and Tea as a Medicine
Which Kinds of Tea Are Better in Different Locations
Utensils Which May Be Omitted
How to Copy This Book on Silk Scrolls

The book made Lu a celebrity. He spent the last decades of his long life in semi-seclusion editing the ten books he had written. Unfortunately, all are now lost. Lu Yu's work played a great role in giving tea cultural significance as Francis Ross Carpenter points out in the preface to his translation of The Classic of Tea. Before Lu Yu, tea was a rather ordinary 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 proliferated. The water used for tea is crucial and Lu was skilled at distinguishing its kinds. He later wrote a book on twenty sources for fine water, the best of which was held to come from midstream on the Yangtze at Nanling. Water from near the bank was often brackish. During a trip on the river his host gave Lu water from that spot to taste. Lu sipped and said the water 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 was 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 Sung dynasties. Participants would nominate a judge, and each in turn prepared a tea of his choice for the others to identify. The greatest taster of them all was probably Cai Xiang, born in 1012. Many tales are told about this native of Fujian province who served as its tea commissioner and later governor, including his role in building a bridge at the town of Chuanzhou. 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. His Tea Record (Cha Lu), a report to the emperor, is another renowned tea book.

Lu Tung, the Tea Doter

The second great figure in the history of tea was Lu Tung, a poet who is said to have loved tea as much as life itself. Born in north China towards the end of the eighth century, he lived a secluded life on Cottage Mountain in Hunan Province under the name Master Jade Spring. Both as a poet and a tea master he won the admiration of some of the greatest scholars in the land. He seems to have subscribed to the Taoist principle of Wu-Wei (no calculated activity, just spontaneous action in accordance with one's nature) for from morning to night he scarcely did anything else but intone poems and brew the beverage on which he doted so extravagantly that some of his contemporaries thought him daft. The ebullience of his enthusiasm can be gauged from a line in one of his poems, "I care not a jot for immortal life, but only for the taste of tea." However, he is best remembered as the author of the most famous of all tea poems, which is entitled "Thanks to Imperial Censor Meng for his Gift of Freshly Picked Tea."

This joyous Tea Master's life ended in unexpected tragedy. He had gone on a visit to the capital at the invitation of two great ministers of the Emperor Wen Tsung. That monarch, finding himself being treated by his army chiefs as a puppet, had secretly ordered the civilian branch of the government to arrange for the ambush and destruction of the regiment of guards. Somehow the secret leaked out. The enraged guards slaughtered not only the 600 soldiers preparing to overpower them but also some 2,000 members of the loyal ministers' families and their supporters. During this holocaust the luckless "Tea Doter" had his head smitten from his body and exposed in public like that of a malefactor.

Hui Tsung "Tea Emperor" (1100 - 1125 AD)
Sung Dynasty (960 - 1279 AD)

After the Tang dynasty, much of China was ruled for a time by Tartar invaders. However, in the year 960 AD a new dynasty, the Sung, came near the equaling the Tang in splendor.

Greater farm productivity in the subsequent Sung dynasty allowed for more subsidiary crops. Thus it was possible for tea to move from the role of luxury to that of necessity, even among the poorest households. A contemporary writer describes night markets in the Northern Sung capital, Kaifeng, running through the third watch (3:00-5:00 a.m.) with vendors bringing in their jars of tea all the while. The Southern Sung capital, Hangzhou, the world's greatest city of its time, had numerous teahouses also serving soups and seasonal snacks. They featured flower arrangements according to season and displayed works of prominent painters on the walls. In some, young men of wealthy families gathered, in others, domestic servants, laborers and artisans of different trades. The reason for going to a teahouse, says one account, had nothing to do with tea, which was only an excuse. Young men gathered to play instruments or sing, and enjoy the performances or the company. Among the wealthy, tea drinking as an art rose to new heights and a small teahouse was included in many of the beautiful gardens that officials built.

The art of tea rose to new height, having received encouragement from the Emperor Hui Tsung. He was patron of a search that found several new varieties. This monarch, though shockingly careless of his duties as a ruler, was a likable and erudite personage whose treatise on tea, the Ta Kuan Ch'a Lun covers the subject so expertly that many doubt whether a son of Heaven dwelling in August isolation from his people could be the real author, yet there is firm evidence that he was.

Indeed, he was more of an artist than a ruler, excelling in poetry, essay writing and painting besides having a temperament so touchingly romantic that his obsession with wine, women and song finally cost him his Dragon Throne. Within the palace precincts Emperor Hui Tsung had no fewer than 3,912 ladies (his empresses, concubines and female attendants), but even this great variety of beauty failed to satisfy his longings.

While on a semi-incognito visit to the willow lanes housing the dwellings of beautiful and accomplished courtesans, he succumbed to the charms of Li Shih-Shih, perhaps the most famous of that sisterhood in Chinese history. Exiling her lover, he flouted the conventions of the imperial household by admitting non-virgin to the rank of concubine. Unfortunately, this lovely lady led him even deeper into debauchery. To the stupefied amazement of the traditionalists, he opened a department store within the palace walls and staffed it with the ladies of the 'Great Within.' For the first time in history ministers of state found themselves buying rare delicacies from beauties upon whom it would previously have cost them their lives to gaze. Doubtless the wines and teas tasted all the more delightful on account of this novel circumstance.

Not surprisingly, conditions of anarchy gradually engulfed his poorly governed empire. The Son of Heaven's consequent abdication in favor of his son failed to avert a fearful retribution. Discontent seethed to a point where a horde of Tartars invaded the capital and carried off both Hui Tsung and his reigning son to exile in the melancholy wilderness beyond the Great Wall. There they languished in captivity until death released them. Hui Tsung left behind a poignant poem, which runs:

I still recall the splendors of my jade-like capital,
My home as ruler of those boundless territories,
The Forest of Coral and the Hall of Jade
The morning levees, the evening music.
Now the people of that beauteous city
Have fled its lonely solitude.
How remote were those youthful dreams of mine
>From this sad Mongolian wilderness!
Ah, where are the hills of my homeland!
I must bear the cacophony of barbarous flutes
Blowing piercingly among the plum blossom.