What is the origin of Chinese tea culture?

Now the process of tea culture - "tea as a drink, hair in Shennong's, heard with the Lu Zhou Gong, emerging in the Tang, flourished in the Song Dynasty, the development of the Ming and Qing dynasties"

1 hair in Shennong's

Shennong's

Ancient times Period of Shennong's, because of the discovery of fire for the benefit of mankind, known as Yandi, Shennong tasted a hundred herbs of the story we are all very familiar with. Shennong was a knowledgeable scholar and an experienced botanist. And he had a high sense of hygiene, that is, drinking boiled water. Legend has it that one day Shennong was under a tea tree, set up a pot to boil water to drink, a few tender leaves floated into the pot, the water in the pot was clear and fresh, fragrant, refreshing after drinking, tea was discovered. Later generations assumed the name of Shennong's "Shennong's Food Classic" said "tea and tea served for a long time, people have the power to please the will". There is another legend, said Shennong has a crystal stomach, "Shennong is exquisite jade body, can see its lungs, liver and five organs". He tasted a hundred herbs, tasted the tea, saw the tea in the stomach to check around, check through the tea.

Another legend is that "Shennong tasted all kinds of herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons, and got the tea and the solution". ("Shennong hundred herbs Jing") According to legend, Shennong ate a kind of grass after the unfortunate poisoning, fortunately the tea juice into the mouth to save his life. From then on, tea has become the antidote to the special medicine." . The Shennong's Classic of the Hundred Herbs was written no later than the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, and at least at that time, our ancestors had already recognized the medicinal effects of tea.

2Wen and Lu Zhougong

First of all, we have to recognize Lu Zhougong. The Duke of Zhou, Ji surname, name Dan, the fourth son of King Wen Ji Chang of Zhou, the younger brother of King Wu Ji Fa of Zhou, twice assisted King Wu of Zhou in the eastern expedition against King Zhou, and the production of rituals and music. He was a feudal lord of Lu (present-day Shandong). He was called the Duke of Zhou after his great-grandfather, King Tai, who lived in the Zhou as a cognizant land. The Duke of Zhou was an outstanding statesman, militarist, thinker and educator in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, and was honored as the "Sage of Yuan" and the pioneer of Confucianism.

The achievements of the Duke of Zhou were summarized by the book "Shangshu - The Great Biography" as follows: "One year to save the chaos, two years to overcome Yin, three years to trample on Amen, four years to build the Houwei, five years to build the Zhou, six years to make the rites and music, and seven years to make the government of the King."

The tea is listed in his book "Er Ya", and it is important to note that tea was included in the tribute in his time. At that time, to become a tribute product, it must be recognized by the upper and lower hundreds of officials seriously determined, the people of the world recognized one by one, before it can be identified. Huayang Guo Zhi - Ba Zhi" records, about 1025 BC Zhou King Wu Ji Fa rate of the Zhou army and the vassals after the destruction of King Zhou of Yin and Shang, it will be one of his relatives in the Ba land, which is not a small territory of the state, now Fengjie, Sichuan, Yibin, Shaanxi, south of the Qinling Mountains, Sichuan, Fuling and other areas. The king of Ba, as a vassal state ruler, was rightly required to pay tribute to King Wu of Zhou. The "Ba Zhi" recorded such a list of tribute: five grains and six animals, mulberry silkworms and hemp Boehmer, fish, salt, copper and iron, Dan lacquer tea and honey, tortoise and giant rhinoceros, mountain chicken and white quail, Huangrun fresh powder.

The Eastern Jin Dynasty Chang Qu wrote "Huayang Guo Zhi - Ba Zhi" recorded "tea tribute", "the garden has fragrant tea" two tea, "Tea scripture review" and many contemporary writings on tea culture that the two tea can be traced back to the "King Wu's conquest of Zhou". "The Commentary on the Tea Scripture The Review of the Tea Scripture says in the "Review of the Tea Scripture - The Source of Tea - The Motherland of Tea": "In the Huayang Guo Zhi - Ba Zhi, written by Chang Qu in the Jin Dynasty in about 350 AD, it is said that 'King Wu of Zhou conquered the Zhou Dynasty, and he actually obtained the divisions of Ba Shu,'" and "The Tea Scripture - The Source of Tea - The Motherland of Tea. The land of Ba Shu, which is written in the book of Shangshu ......, extends from Yufu in the east to Bo Road in the west, from Hanzhong in the north to Qianfu in the south. The soil is planted with grains. Six kinds of animals are used. Mulberry, silkworm, hemp, ramie, fish, salt, copper, iron, dan, lacquer, tea, honey ...... are all tribute.'' This indicates that as early as 1066 BC, when King Wu of Zhou led eight small southern states to attack Zhou (see the Records of the Grand Historian - Zhou Benji), Ba Shu (now parts of Yunnan and Guizhou) had already used the tea it produced as 'tribute'."

Tribute, necessarily precious, in addition to daily miscellaneous tributes, are the ranks of the treasures, but the king of Ba tribute tea but the treasures of the very best. Ba Zhi" in this "tribute list" after also specially added: "the fruit of the precious, the tree has lychee, vine has Xin K蒟, garden has jacaranda tea". That is to say, the tribute to the tea is not the wild tea in the mountains and wilderness, but specifically someone carefully cultivated tea garden tea. From this point of view, it can be imagined, then there is a special tea planting people in Sichuan.

The emergence of tribute tea, with thousands of time to promote the development of Chinese tea culture, more directly or indirectly affect the rise and fall of each dynasty.

The tea market appeared during the Western Han Dynasty

The "Boy's Covenant" was a contract with the boy's servant, which mentioned the fact that "Wuyang bought tea" involving commercial tea. And there is an exact time - 59 BC on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, which became the earliest tea market in China.

Wang Bao (90 years ago - 51 years ago), Shu Zizhong (now Ziyang City, Sichuan Province, Yanyang District, Kunlun Township, Mochi Dam). In the first month of the third year of Emperor Xuandi's reign (59 BC), Wang lived in the house of a widow named Yang Hui in Anzhili, Chengdu. In Yang's house, there was a bearded slave named "Bin Dai", who was often assigned to buy wine.

Ben Dai was reluctant to run errands for Wang Bao because he was an outsider, and suspected that he might have had an affair with Yang, so one day he went to his master's grave to express his dissatisfaction, saying, "When you bought Ben Dai, you only asked me to guard the house, and you didn't ask me to go buy wine for other men.

When Wang Bao learned of this, he was furious, and in a fit of rage, on the 15th day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival, he purchased Bentou as a slave from Yang for 15,000 yuan.

Benzi was extremely reluctant, but there was nothing he could do about it, so he proposed to Wang Bao when he wrote the contract: "Now that it has come to this, you should do what the Yang family did when they bought me, and write down clearly in the contract all the things you want me to do in the future, or else I won't do it."

Wang Berg, who wanted to make things difficult for Wang Berg and lighten his workload, did not realize that Wang Berg was a good rhetorician and proficient in the six arts. In order to teach him a lesson, Wang Berg wrote a 600-word contract titled "The Boy's Contract", which listed a wide range of labor items and work schedules, so that he would have no time to spare from morning to night.

The heavy workload on the contract was too much for him to bear, and he begged Wang Berg for mercy, saying, "If I work according to this, I am afraid that I will die of exhaustion right away, and if I had known that, I would have preferred to buy wine for you every day.