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World > Asia >
China > China Tea Culture
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Tea Culture
China |
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Tea culture is an important part of Chinese traditional culture, which covers a
wide field and is rich in content. It not only has the embodiment of spiritual
civilization, but also the extension of ideological form. No doubt it is
beneficial in enhancing the cultural accomplishment and level of art
appreciation among the Chinese people.
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Tea books |
The ancient tea history of our country creates tea scientific technologies for
mankind and also accumulates the most abundant literature of tea history for the
world. Among the vast cultural classic books, there are not only books specially
discussing tea, but also a large quantity of records about tea life, tea
history, tea law and production technology of tea in historical books, local
records, notes, textual studies and ancient books of calligraphy.
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Tea journal |
Tea journal refers to a serial professional publication of tea that has a fixed
name, is numbered by volume and issue or in the order of year and month, and is
bound into a book. According to incomplete statistics, there are twenty two tea
journals in our country after reorgnization. The large number of tea journals is
incomparable to other tea production nations.
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Tea and wedding |
Simply speaking, the relationship between tea and wedding refers to applying and
assimilating tea in the wedding or tea culture as a part of etiquette. Wedding
is not merely a form of proclaiming to the society or requiring the society to
admit marriage relationship, but also is actually a "reception" held for the
bride and bridegroom to regonize relatives and meet friends. Therefore, on the
festive wedding day, which is generally also the day of big gathering for close
kins and good friends of the two families that establish a marriage
relationship. When visitors come, tea is presented to them. In this way, wedding
has bore an indissoluble bond with tea.
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Tea and sacrifice |
As for when tea began to serve as a sacrifice, our ancestors seem to have never
done special research. It is generally regarded that the use of tea has
developed from medicinal use through drinking to a series of cultural pheonomena
of tea, that is to say, only after tea became an item in daily use, has it
slowly been used or assimilated into the etiquette system of our country
including the funeral.
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Tea and Buddhism |
The relationship between Chinese tea and Buddhism is interative. Buddism,
especially Zen Buddhism needs tea while this prevailing custom of addiction to
tea also promote the development of the tea industry and tea culture of our
country. Apart from choosing a quiet environment as the monastic room, the
sitting meditation of Zen Buddhism in our country also requires attention to
five coordinations, namely, food coordination, sleeping coordination, body
coordination, breath coordination and heart coordination.
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Tea and poems |
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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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.
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