When we read the phrase “the way of tea,” the first thing that comes to mind is the Japanese tea ceremony. We envision a tea maker whisking a bowl of tea in a serene setting. We will not connect the Japanese tea ceremony or Chanoyu to the Chinese Song whisking tea or Diancha, nor will we link the Japanese Sencha to the Chinese Kungfucha. The Sinologist Victor H. Mair states in his newly released book, The True History of Tea: “Just as chanoyu harks back to the Song custom of whisking tea, sencha traces it roots to China and the early Ming, when the Hongwu emperor issued his prohibition of milled wax tea.” (Mair, 100)
Until the beginning of the Ming dynasty in 1368, the Chinese tea production had been extremely labor intensive and expensive. The freshly picked tea leaves were graded, washed, steamed, pressed, ground, placed in molds of various forms, roasted over a slow fire, sealed, and made into what was called “dragon rounds” or “phoenix cakes.” There were chiefly two ways to have tea. In the Tang time, the cakes of tea were crushed and ground into powder, and boiled in an iron pot then ladled into the tea bowls to serve. In the Song time, the cakes of tea were ground into finer powder, sifted, and placed directly in the tea bowls, the boiled water was poured onto the tea powder from an ewer, and then beaten into froth with the bamboo whisk.
Although the earliest and most reliable textual evidence on the drinking of tea in China was dated 59 BCE of the Western Han dynasty, the drinking of tea did not become popular and admired until the mid-Tang and Song time. While the Song texts show that common people approached the drinking of tea as a social and daily means: “without tea I will not get married,” “the peasant complains the landlord offers no tea at work,” (Zhu Ruixi, 51) the Song nobles, literati, and tea connoisseurs set out to achieve an aesthetic cultivation and spiritual contemplation through the drinking of tea. The Song emperor Huizong (1082-1135 CE) stated: “The nature of tea is defined by the beauty of ceramic tea ware, and the spirit of mountains and rivers. Tea banishes the dull mind and cleanses the troubled emotion so that the mind and body are harmonized, such disposition is difficult for the common people and children to grasp. Tea creates a light, calm, and intangible state of mind so that the aesthetics and contemplation are cultivated, such spirit is difficult for people who are only busy in their worldly affairs.” (Bao Sitao, 130)
Official Court Painting of the Song Emperor Huizong
Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk. National Palace Museum, Taiwan
The emperor Huizong was a great tea master, according to a Song text: “On the water–snake day in December 1120, the Emperor called the state chancellor, the prince and other nobles for a banquet at the Palace of Fortune. His majesty ordered attendants to bring the tea wares forth and began to whisk the tea powder vigorously with the bamboo brush while adding boiling water. Shortly after the white cream (foam) floats on the surface of the tea, like the remote moon and stars reflecting in the tea bowl. His majesty said: this is how to make tea.” (Zhou Hui, 215)
The Song emperors were among the most enlightened and cultivated rulers in world history. The Song dynasty is considered one of the key epochs of Chinese civilization, a peak time of superior cultural and political refinement. It was the first time and the last time that the Chinese were in the position to endeavor their ideal of the contemplative arts, to an unusual extent, what previous dynasties had given only a vision, ironically at the expense of sapping national strength with overlapping military incompetence and losing the nation.
“A Literati Tea Gathering” by Emperor Huizong
Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk. National Palace Museum, Taiwan
While the contemplative arts were practiced in Southern China under the charismatic despotism of the Song emperors and their literati, the Mongol Khans and their warriors were ready on their battle steeds to attack from the north. The Mongol conquest in 1279 ended the Southern Song (dynasty) along with the “Superior Refinement” of China. The Yuan culture of the Mongol dynasty held sway in China for about one century. Despite their chief interests in the revenues that might be produced in the form of taxes, little else of an innovative nature distinguishes Yuan culture and arts from the Mongol imperial promotion.
The historian Ebrey writes: “seldom has the course of Chinese history been influenced by a single personality as much as it was by the founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang.” (Ebrey, 190) It was a wonder that the peasant orphan boy and later Buddhist monk beggar Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398 CE) became the rebellious army leader and defeated the Khan and Mongol knights in sixteen years. Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming dynasty and restored China to rule by Chinese, unified the empire and improved agriculture, and reinstated Confucian ideology. His vision was a creation of self-supporting agricultural communities, thus he warned his heirs to be on guard against foreign barbarians but not seek military glory and conquest. (Chase, 42)
Official Court Painting of the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang
Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk. National Palace Museum, Taiwan
With his great deeds and his ruthlessness, Zhu Yuanzhang has been a notoriously controversial figure considered by historians. In a remarkably short time, his government was reorganized on Confucian lines, and a measure of prosperity was restored to the country. Nationalistic and xenophobic as it seemed, in reaction to a century of foreign rule, there was a widespread effort to revitalize Chinese institutions and cultural traditions. Embroidered silks that brought luster to women were always in demand by the rich, along with the exquisite blue and white porcelain, glimmering lacquer, ornamental jade, delicate ivory, and shining rosewood furniture made the homes of the rich places of beauty. The elaborately carved brush holders of wood or stone, the immensely labored cotton paper, the ink sticks and the stones on which they were rubbed and mixed with water to produce the best and blackest ink, all combined to make of every scholar's desk a spiritual ritual and an aesthetic world before he even had put a brush stroke down. China once again withdrew into the comfortable glow of her own self-sufficiency. Unlike the Song, the Ming was a time of sensuous enrichment and elegant banality. Like the Song, the Ming ended with losing national strength and the conquest of China by the Manchurians.
If the fact is that neglecting agriculture was not the main reason leading to the Mongol's failure in China, the fact was that neglecting agriculture was destroying China indeed. It is very clear that Zhu Yuanzhang was aware of it. He instigated reconstruction of canals and irrigation to recover and cultivate the land, and initiated the land redistribution to peasants as soon as he came to power. By 1393 the cultivated land for agriculture increased over 56 million hectares, which was 4 times more than 25 years before when China was under the Mongol regime.
Tea farming was one of most laborious agricultural cultivations in history. As early as the Tang dynasty the famous poet and tea master Lu Tong expressed his sympathy for the tea farmers:
The Son of Heaven must have the first taste of Spring-tea from Yangxian, Even the myriad plants have to hold on their blooms. Why don't we know millions of lives Who dangle on the cliffs to pick tea. I here and now raise the question for these lives, How can they ever be restful at the end?
About 600 years later the Son of Heaven from the Ming dynasty responded to Lu Tang's question. Along the lines with his efforts to revitalize agriculture, Zhu Yuanzhang issued his prohibition upon the production of cakes of tea to reduce the demands for forced labor on the tea farmers in 1391. The prohibition abolished the extreme tradition of making cakes of tea. Consequently loose-leaf green tea became the common type tea in the world for the first time.
According to the legend, Zhu Quan (1378-1448 CE), the 17th son of Zhu Yuanzhang, invented the new way of tea: having the loose-leaf green tea brewed in the tea pot, then drinking the infusion (Ma, 118). The Ming History states that Zhu Quan was crowned as the Prince of Ning at age 13, and was in command of 80,000 warriors, 6,000 war chariots, and 3 regiments of surrendered Mongol riders in station the Northern frontier from age 15. After helping his bother Zhu Di (1360-1424 CE), the Prince of Yan, overthrow their nephew emperor Jianwen in 1402, Zhu Quan left the imperial palace and went “into hermitage, built a retreat villa where he played his zither, read and wrote,” and “devoted to spiritual refinement and the literati-friendship, and called himself Slender Immortal.” (Ming History) Zhu Quan withdrew completely from the arena of imperial power struggle at age 25.
Statue of Zhu Quan in Wuyi Mountain Tea Theme Park
The Portrait of Zhu Quan from the Annual of Zhu Genealogy reserved in The History Museum of Jiangxi Province
In 1439 Zhu Quan concluded his “tea quest” in his Tea Manual. It was the quest of “the art of Tao” through the drinking of tea that Zhu Quan had in mind:
To look up to the blue sky with my clear eyes, to draw clear mountain spring water and build a bonfire, I converse with the heaven in order to expand my mind. Ritualizing the drinking of tea in order to vitalize my inner energy, I have no interest in taking pleasure from the tea forms and tea rituals but seeking the way of self-cultivation… tea was made into cakes since the time of the Song emperor Renzong so that they were called Dragon Rounds, Phoenix Cakes, and Moon Cakes. These cakes were added with fragrance and painted in gold so that the true aroma was taken away from tea. The heaven and earth give life to everything so that it follows its own nature, and tea is the most unique one among them all. Hence one should just simply make it and drink it. It is so to follow its nature. I rather accentuate the way of making tea than the way of tea utensils. I reformed the way of tea and made my own way to share with those who drink dew and take sunlight. The tea rituals and tea wares are utilized for those to have long conversation so that our spirit is lifted beyond the world of current fashion and affairs. We may gather at the mountain springs and rocks under pine trees, look at the clear moon in breeze, sit next to the bright window on meditation cushions, and have luminous conversations with guests that lead to profound understanding of the nature, and transcend the mind beyond words… so Lu Tong needs seven bowls of tea, Su Shi even needs three bowls of tea—I only need one cup of tea—to connect with the Immortals and Spirits. (Zhu Quan)
In his own words: “To look up to the blue sky with my clear eyes, I converse with the heaven in order to expand my mind” to “lead to profound understanding of the nature, and transcend the mind beyond words.” Zhu Quan's objective was not the Art of Tea but the Art of Tao.
In the 45 years of his spiritual approach and self-cultivation, Zhu Quan demonstrated a choice that can be made so as to have a serene and content life without political power or financial superiority to the world. This choice has become a tradition to enliven life with a perfection of body, mind, and spirit and become the master of this earthly life to his descendants. Nevertheless, Zhu Quan is known today by his contributions of invaluable volumes to the Traditional Chinese Learning and Classics. He devoted his life in studies and practices of Chinese philosophy, history, Buddhism, poetry, plays, Qin music, Taoist practices including Daoyin and Neidan, medicine, the art of tea, divination and numerology, and many other subjects.
The Prince of Ning Zhu Quan's clan branched out in eight lineages after his death. The Prince of YeYoung Zhu Qingji (1835-1900), a descendant of the eighth branch from the Prince of Ning and a Yellow Robe Knight and the First Rank Military Officer the Governor-General of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), passed on the YeYoung lineage to his sons Denke (1870-1938) and Youhua (1889-1976). Zhu Youhua was known as YeYoung Ren, the former Patriarch of YeYoung lineage lived to the aspiration of cultivating a perfection of body-mind-spirit in high attainments of the Five Arts and Taoist practices.
Raised and trained as the lineage heir, Bing Fan YeYoung began to receive the YeYoung teachings at age nine from his grandfather YeYoung Ren. By implementing the Way of YeYoung Tea as daily practice, Bing Fan YeYoung upholds the Way of YeYoung Tea to cultivate the harmony of body, mind, and spirit. Like other YeYoung practices, the Way of YeYoung Tea is signified by serenity, elegance, and contentment of everyday life.