Chinese Tea Culture
China is both “the homeland of tea” and “a nation of poetry”. Therefore, tea has permeated the poems since a very early time. From the earliest tea poems (such as Poem on Lovely Young Girls written by Zuo Si) to the present time, lasting one thousand and seven hundred years, a large number of poems and litterateurs have created many graceful poems about tea.
Tea songs and dances
As in the case of tea and poems, tea songs and dances are a tea cultural pheonomenon deriving from the primary culture of tea production and drinking. They not only appear at the later development stage of songs and dances in our country, but also are merely seen after the tea production and drinking has become frequent content of social production and life in our country.
Tea and Chinese traditional drama
China is a nation that creates tea culture and also the sole nation that produces the independent type of drama “tea-picking drama” from the development of tea industry in the world. The tea-picking drama is a type of Chinese tradional drama popular in provinces such as Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. In each province, owing to different districts it goes current, a distinction is made between them by naming it after the places, such as “Yuebei tea-picking drama” in Guangdong and “Yangxin tea-picking drama”, “Huangmei tea-picking drama” and “Jichun tea-picking drama” in Hubei, etc. This drama is common especially in Jiangxi and has many genres. For example, the genres of Jiangxi tea-picking drama include “Gannan tea-picking drama”, “Fuzhou tea-picking drama”, “Nanchang tea-picking drama”, “Wuning tea-picking drama” and “Ji’an tea-picking drama’, etc. Though these types of drama have a multitude of items, the time of their development is generally at the stage from the middle period of the Qing Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty.
Tea and fine arts
Fine arts is a “design art”, which creates visual images through the devices such as composition of a picture, design and using color, etc. Therefore, apart from the generally regarded painting and sculpture, its extent or content even include architecture. The sculpture technique in tea culture is mainly concentrated on the tea set such as pot, bowl, cup and calyx, the form of tea ball and cake and their facing. For example, the dragon and phoenix tribute tea of Beiyuan in the Song Dynasty were very particular about the patterns of their facing, which were frequently changed. In the palace, there were also activities of adding other ornaments to the tribute tea, which was then called “embroidery tea”.
Tea and couplets
The tea couplet is a dazzling fresh flower in the treasury of couplets in our country. There is no limit on the number of characters but it requires antithesis, neatness and coordination in the level and oblique tones. It evolved from the form of poetry. In our country, in all the sites with the theme of “keeping up a friendship with tea”, you will often find tea couplets with the content of tea life hanging in the courtyard or on the stone pillars of tea shop, tea house, tea room, tea leaves shop, tea spa, on the wall of the halls where tea lore, tea art and tea etiquette performances are conducted and even in the living room of tea lovers. They not merely have the beauty of primitive simplicity and elegance, but also present a feeling of “social morality and honesty and uprightness”, provide people with association, add temperament and interest to tasting tea.
Tea proverbs
Tea proverb is another cultural phenomenon derived during the development of tea culture in our country. According to its content and characters, it approximately belongs to the two categories of tea drinking and tea production. In another word, tea proverb mainly originates from tea drinking and production practice. It is a generalization or statement about tea drinking and production experience, which is preserved and goes round through the form of proverbs by the method of handing down by mouth and memorizing by heart. Therefore, tea proverb is not only a precious heritage of tea science or tea culture of our country, but also a beautiful flower with strong and pervasive fragrance in the folk culture of our country from the perspective of creation or literature.
We can see from the above narrative that tea has a close connection with all the aspects of people’s life either in the history or in reality and has become a unique treasure of Chinese culture.
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