A Tea Addict's Journal

How do you keep adding water to powdered tea?

That’s my question when I read Daguan Chalun, because Song Huizong seems to think you can.  In fact, he mentioned adding water seven times.

Because of this description, I’m not entirely certain what he’s talking about.  If it’s anything like today’s matcha, then… adding water in seven steps without adding tea seems strange… after all, the tea will just get really, really thin.  This is, in some ways, more mysterious than Lu Yu’s boiling, which is actually relatively straightforward.

So, we did it today in class, making Tang dynasty tea as best as modern, inferior equipment will do.

What you see here are the remnants, having already finished.  I first asked them to work out from the Chajing what procedures we should follow.  The served as our discussion, mostly.

We ground the dok cha up (thanks Corax and Maitre_Tea for the reminder of using dok cha), using what I estimate to be about 5g of tea in a big pot of water.  The cheap Walmart bought mortar and pestle grounds it surprisingly well.  Despite the fact that it’s not a Famen Temple silver grinder, it does the job.  It’s certainly not as fine as, say, modern day matcha, but I don’t think it was supposed to be nearly as fine.  We did roast the tea a little bit, but I’m confused about Lu Yu’s suggestion that it should be roasted so that the leaves are tender — I’m not sure how that’s possible without steam.  Dry roasting will only make the tea drier, whereas if it’s tender, then the tea will be mushy and won’t ground well at all.  Unless, of course, that’s the idea, but that creates all sorts of problems…. and would fundamentally change the way its taste.

We did skip the salt (I forgot to bring it, but probably a good choice anyway) and threw the tea in right after the fish eye stage.  At this point, something rather interesting happened — the tea immediately formed a foam, a fairly thick one at that, which was unexpected.  I turned off the heat, but allowed the pot to stay on the stove, as it’s going to be kept warm for a while.  Students lined up to use the spoon to pour tea into the cups, which might be a little bit of a health hazard now that I think about it, swine flu and all (it’s going around).  The tea is interesting in taste — greenish, not nearly as sweet as matcha, but definitely sweet.  As I sort of expected, my students find it a lot more bitter than I did, which is normal.  I think us teaheads have no idea what bitter means anymore, at least when it comes to tea.

You can see the tea is darkish.  There’s plenty of huigan.  Can’t say much about the qi.  Drinking with or without foam made little difference.  Some students went for seconds, as our cups were quite small.  I think I ended up having about four to five cups (some while cleaning after class — didn’t want it to go to waste, after all).

You can see the grounds — pretty roughed up.

Was it a success?  I suppose in the sense that we did something, and it turned out better than I imagined, yes, it was.  Pedagogically, I thought doing something like this will highlight the differences in how you make something so long ago that can’t really be explained by words alone.  I do wonder, though, about how interesting this actually is.  I am a teahead, and if you’re reading, chances are you are as well, so naturally, this stuff excites you.  Lu Yu was also writing for fellow teaheads, I think, and also trying to gain converts, if there were any.  For students, especially first years, I can’t tell how much of this is actually interesting, and how much of it is just stuff.

Of course, there are all sorts of problems, chiefly is Lu Yu’s rather spare instructions — we really have no idea exactly how much tea for the water, how long to boil, etc.  He’s not very clear, and rightly so — he was writing for people who knew these things, much like I never talk about how much tea to put when brewing puerh, or oolong, or whatever, because I assume my readers know.

Whatever it is though, I think, as I’ve said before, that Lu Yu, while great and historical, is really irrelevant as a source of tea wisdom.  The tea he drank was too different, too remote.

The rather relentless schedule of a new semester is making it hard to drink much tea, much less talk about it.

For class this Thursday, we’re talking about Tang dynasty tea, which means that I will at least give it an honest try to make it in class.  I’ve never done it before, nor has anybody else I know.  It’s a bit complicated, because if you read Lu Yu’s (sparse) instructions, there isn’t much to go on.  There are a lot of problems.  First is selection — what tea to use?  Nothing we have nowadays approximate what was produced back then.  The closest might be some sort of poorly sha-qinged green puerh.  Then, the roasting, which should be done on the spot but is again a difficult thing to negotiate.  After you roast, there is the mashing/grinding.  Obviously, I don’t have the proper grinder for tea — I need to find some silversmith to make me one, some day, somehow.

Even thinking about this, not to mention the salt that I might add to the water, really makes you appreciate how truly different tea was back in the day.  We’ve come a long, long way from Lu Yu.

From a broadsheet printed in 1664 on tea (spelling revised to modern standard as best I can)

The Peculiar Virtues are these:

It maketh the Body active and lusty, strengthening the Muscles and Sinews
It helpeth the Headache, Giddings and Heavings thereof
It removeth the Obstructions of the Spleen
Its very good against the Stone and Gravel, cleansing the Kidneys and Ureteries
It taketh away the difficulty of breathing, opening Obstructions
Its good against Lipitude, Distillations, and cleareth the Sight
It removeth Lassitude, and cleanseth and purifieth adult Humors, and Hot Liver
Its good against Crudities
It stregtheneth the weakness of the Ventricle or Stomach, and causeth a good Appetite and Digestion
It vanquisheth heavy Dreams, easeth the Brain, stregtheneth the Memory
It overcometh superfluous Sleep, and prevents Sleepiness in general, a draught of the Infusion being taken, so that without trouble Whole Nights may be spent in study, without hurt to the Body, in that it moderately heateth and bindeth the mouth of the Stomach.
It prevents Agues, Surfets, and Fevers, by infusing a fit quantity of the Leaf, thereby provoking a most gentle Vomit, and breathing of the Pores
It assuiageth the Pains of the Bowels
It cureth the Colds, Dropsies, and Scurvys, by a proper Infusion, purging the Blood by Sweat and Urine, and expellenth Infections
It purgeth safely the Gall

Now all we need is
It cureth the Cancer

And we’re good for an ad for the newest Snapple Peach flavoured iced white tea.

Among the things that have been keeping me very busy these days is job search — I’m looking for an (academic) job, which means that I have to write stuff, send stuff, and pray, very hard, for a reply. If you have any suggestions for an efficacious deity to whom I should direct my prayers, I am all ears.

One of the things I have to write are syllabi for new courses that I might teach. One of the courses that I tried to write up is a topical survey of tea in East Asian history. I hope to cover, in broad strokes, history of the drink from a variety of perspectives, from the first written record (Lu Yu in the Tang dynasty) to its dissemination to Korea/Japan and the rest of the world, tea trade, and so on, so forth. It’s not easy to find stuff that are both academically sound and relevant to the topic — most of what’s been written on tea are, by and large, not robust enough as pieces of scholarship to stand up in a university classroom, which is quite unfortunate. Heck, we don’t even have much in the way of translations of texts other than the IMHO over-valued Classic of Tea. C’est la vie.

I did, however, come across something interesting while searching for readings that will work for the class. If you have access to JSTOR (an online journal storage) or some good public library (which will have JSTOR) you should be able to find this:

Gardella, Robert, “Tea Processing in China, circa 1885: A Photographic Essay”, The Business History Review, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 807-812

I showed it to a few people, and much of the response is “things really hasn’t changed that much in the last 100 years”. They’re right. Take a look if you have time. Or, if you have suggestions for other things I might be able to use for the class, please do let me know.