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Tea drinking กก |
| Tea drinking in Ming Dynasty
and Qing Dynasty Tea drinking in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty was very different from previous dynasties. People mainly drank piece-tea instead of solid-tea, and the way they deal with tea is to soak. Piece-tea appears in Tang Dynasty and prosperous in Ming Dynasty. People in Ming Dynasty stir-fry the tea to strengthen the flavor of tealeaves. When stir-frying, the worst is over-fried. The instruments to fry the tea were made of iron, and the smell of iron will ruin the tea. So old instruments were recommended. The instruments should be kept away from fat, grease and so on. And the firewood should be dry branch instead of dry leaves because dry leaves burns easily and the temperature gets high too quickly. Tealeaves will get burnt if temperature gets high too soon. Most tea in Ming Dynasty is green tea. There were much famous green tea such as Huqiu tea, Tianchi tea, Yangxian tea and Longjing tea, Tianmu tea. There were flower-tea appeared in Ming Dynasty. Some literati first made flower-tea and it's not popular at that time. When it came to Qing Dynasty, jasmine tea was mass produced in Suzhou and sell to the North. People in the North came to like tea mixed with jasmine, rose and orchids. From then on, this habit remained till now. Except many kinds of green tea and flower tea, oolong and black tea appeared in Qing Dynasty. The main difference between green tea and black tea is ferment. It's said that black tea was invented by accident. There was a troop in Qing Dynasty came in a tea factory, they sleep on tea sacks which the tea was not completely dry. After they left, the tea was stir-fried in a hurry. Nobody could predict that this kind of tea would be popular in Europe and all over the world. Oolong was found on the rocks of Wuyi Mountain in Fujian, so it was called rock-tea at the first time. The way it was processed is between green tea and black tea. It is a kind of half-ferment tea. It looks like a green leaf bordered with red bands. The basic structure of tea established in Qing Dynasty. The way people drink tea differentiates from previous dynasties, they don't grind tealeaves into powders any more. And they drink tea only instead of eating all the tealeaves together. This way is simpler and can maintain the natural flavor of tea. So we Chinese still use this method to deal with tea these days and we may say that the art of tea drinking is becoming perfect in Qing Dynasty. From then on, we Chinese people inherited this tradition and made tea drink an elegant artistic enjoyment. กก |
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