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Tea drinking กก |
| Tea drinking before Tang
Dynasty Tea was used as medicine at first. The ancient man drank it to relieve poison. It was said in <Shen Nong Classics> that having the tealeaves, which was bitter would make people spirited and think clearly. Hua Tuo said in <The eating classics> that a continuous drinking of bitter tea was good for thinking. The ancient people have known the refreshing effect of tea. Being medicine before the Qing Dynasty, the efficiency of tea gradually changed to drink, while people still paid close attention to the medical efficiency. Tea can not only cure diseases, but also prolong the life span. The habit of drinking tea originated from Sichuan. After his textual research,a scholar of Qing Dynasty, Gu Yanwu said, "Sampling tea started when the Qing people occupied Shu. The vogue of drinking tea spread out from Sichuan gradually". Tea had been first -class drinking in imperial and noble families at the end of the Xi Han Dynasty. A box of tealeaves was found in the noble mausoleum of Mawangdui of the Xi Han Dynasty. The king of the Dong Han Dynasty once went to Mingling, Yixing, Jiangsu specially to recruit apprentices to learn skills of planting tea. Ge Xuan, a famous scholar of the Dong Han Dynasty, established tea plots at Tiantai Moutain. Drinking tea in the palace became very common in imperial and noble families from then on. Drinking tea has popularized by degrees and became the drinks among the people from the Jin Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty. For example, it was recorded in history that in AD 317, everyday, an old lady carried a kettle of tea to sell, and people hurried buying it. However, the general vogue of drinking tea had disparities in different place. Drinking tea was more common in the south than in the north. According to the Luoyang notes of Yang Xianzhi of the Bei Wei Dynasty, people of the north did not drink tea at all, but also disdain tea drinking. Scholars of the Bei Dynasy called tea "the slave of cheese". Moreover, they said," though there was tea in dinner party, everyone was shamed to have it except people came to surrender from the south. The general vogue of drinking tea spread out from the south to the north following the cultural amalgamation of the south and the north. Nevertheless, the flourishing of tea drinking still need a more unite and peaceful environment. กก |
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