How was the tea culture in the early Tang Dynasty?

How much do you know about tea drinking culture in Tang Dynasty? In the history of tea drinking in China, there has always been a saying that "tea flourished in the Tang Dynasty and tea flourished in the Song Dynasty". Since the publication of Lu Yu's Tea Classic, the first tea book in the world, drinking tea has gradually changed from thirst and medicine to taste, and talking about its color, taste and elegance has become an artistic enjoyment in life. In the middle and late Tang Dynasty, it changed the "tea-frying method" initiated by Lu Yu and adopted the method of "ordering tea". In the Song Dynasty, on the basis of ordering tea in the previous dynasty, fighting tea was formed, which further enriched the taste of life. Cai Taize's Talk on Tiewei Mountain in the Northern Song Dynasty said: "Tea is still popular since the Tang Dynasty, and it is popular in the current dynasty. It is extremely new to have a mausoleum, that is, Hui Zong." Song Huizong is very good at drinking tea. He not only wrote "On Daguan Tea", but also liked tea fighting skills. Cai Jing wrote Hui Zong's performance Qu Yanji in Yanfu Palace: "In the second year of Yihe, 1 120/February, Wei Xiao invited Prince Zai Feng and other Qu Yan to Yanfu Palace" and "ordered me to take the tea set and fill the soup myself. After a while, it was like a bright star and a pale moon. Gu said, "Bozi makes tea. After drinking, they all nodded their thanks. "Jin Hailing Wang Yan Hong Liang was once regarded as Yan Hong Liang's virtue and art. After the tea-ordering technique spread to Japan, it gradually formed a "tea ceremony" with the purpose of "harmony, respect, purity and silence", which retained some tea-drinking interests of scholars in Tang and Song Dynasties. According to the tablet of "Yi Zhan Jin Yin Bao" unearthed in the underground palace of Famen Temple, the tea offered by Emperor Tang Yizong and Emperor Nuozong in the underground palace has the following characteristics: "A cage weighs 16 and a half. A turtle weighs twenty taels. A pair of salt tables, weighing thirteen liang. Tie a cage and weigh 823 points. There are seven tea rollers and tea spoons, a total of 82 pieces ... a glass bowl and a pair of glass tea bowl holders. " In addition, there are long-handled silver spoons, silver bars, diamond-shaped silver square boxes and round silver salt tables, which undoubtedly belong to tea sets. Also, the saucer in the secret porcelain and the plate in the glazed utensils can also be regarded as tea drinking utensils in the Tang Dynasty. The first step: preparation-drying the gold-plated tea cake. The "tea leaves" used for drinking tea in the Tang Dynasty should be processed and pressed into tea cakes. Usually wrapped in paper or leaves, put in a tea cage and hung high, ventilated and moisture-proof. Feel free to take it out when drinking. If the tea cake is wet, it needs to be baked on charcoal fire to make it dry and easy to crush. Ordinary tea cages are made of bamboo sticks. The gilded silver cage in Famen Temple is beautifully made, with a height of 17.8, a diameter of 16 cm and a belly depth of 10.2 cm ... The bottom of the cage is welded with four feet, and the cage is small in size. The cage is lined with leaves to prevent moisture. It is estimated that the cage can hold four or five small strings of tea cakes. Step 2: Boil the water. Tanghumen high circle is full of silver wind furnaces. To make tea in the Tang Dynasty, you should first boil water in the furnace. Lu Yu said in the Book of Tea in the Tang Dynasty: "The wind furnace is made of copper and iron, like an ancient tripod." He also said, "burn the furnace, or forge iron, or carry mud." "This shows that air stoves are usually made of copper, iron and even soil. This high-ring silver wind furnace at the entrance of the Tang Dynasty is a royal tea set. It pays great attention to materials and production, as well as craftsmanship and decoration. It is incomparable to the folk wind furnace. It provides the best physical evidence for studying the court tea culture in Tang Dynasty. The height of the boiler door is all silver air furnace, with a total height of 56.0 cm, a cover height of 3 1.3cm, a diameter of 17.7cm, a furnace height of 25.2 cm, and a total weight of 3920g ... The whole machine body is plain and clean, and is made of sheet metal, consisting of a cover and a body. There are three layers of silver petals on the top of the furnace cover to support the conical lotus. The lid is hemispherical, with a hollow upper part and two layers of lotus petals. There is a three-story pyramid on the edge of the cover. The furnace body is convergent, deep-bellied, cylindrical, flat-bottomed, and full-round, and there are also three layers of converging frustums at its mouth. The abdomen is small and big, with a sense of stability. Abdominal wall is divided into inner layer and outer layer; The inner layer is riveted with the furnace bottom; The outer layer is also circled. There are six pot doors under the abdomen to facilitate ventilation and ignition. The bottom of the furnace is riveted on the furnace wall, and cross copper sheets are welded to support charcoal combustion and lighting. Lifting lugs are installed on both sides of the furnace body for easy movement. When unearthed, it was stamped with a seal, and the words "Big Silver Smoker, Minister Yang Fuguong" were written in ink. Explain that this high-round silver wind furnace is dedicated to Yang Fuguong. Tang chain silver fire tendon Tang chain silver fire tendon, also known as chopsticks tendon, commonly known as chopsticks. Hawking is a tool for burning fire and transporting charcoal when frying tea, so Hawking has become a necessary tea set. The ancient people's understanding of tea set was different from that of modern people. The ancients thought that all the utensils related to making tea and drinking tea were called tea sets. In this way, the fire tendons used to make a fire and add charcoal when frying tea and boiling water are naturally classified into tea sets. In some ancient tea works, especially in the Tang and Song Dynasties, whenever tea sets are mentioned, fire tendons are mentioned. Bundled silver fire rod, with total length of 27.6 cm, upper diameter of 0.6 cm, lower diameter of 0.3 cm, chain length of 10.3 cm, and total weight of 765.0 g .. The whole is cylindrical, with thick upper part and thin lower part, and the chain is silver wire. The top of the upper end of the fire rib is pearl-shaped, and there is a groove below it, in which the ring nose is embedded, so that the two ribs are connected into a whole by a chain. This kind of fire rib is exquisitely designed and elegant in Athens, which fully embodies the superb technological level of making gold and silver vessels in the Tang Dynasty. Fire tendon, is it called fire in Lu Yu's Four Instruments of Tea Classics? And said, "Fire? , a tendon, if commonly used, round and straight, one foot three inches, flat-topped without onion platform, made of iron or cooked copper. " Meaning, fire? The decanter, also called tendon, is the same as usual. It is round and straight, one foot and three inches long, and the top is flat. It is made of iron or cooked copper, and there is no decoration such as "onion hook". The fire rib mentioned here is a folk tea set, which is generally made of gold and silver as the fire rib of the court or the family of dignitaries. As one of the tea sets offering sacrifices to the Buddha and praying for the peace and prosperity of Haiyan and the people in the Tang Dynasty, this kind of fireworks is very precious. Step 3: Put the tea cake taken out of the tea house in the door seat of the Tang gilt pot and grind it into fine powder. Tea dregs and pulverizers from the underground palace are used to crush tea cakes. Tea trough and roller are recorded in the clothing account, but in kind, the former is written as "a silver camellia roller made in Xian Tong Siwen Research Institute for ten years, weighing 292 Liang", while the latter is written as "axle weight 1 13 Liang". The tea trough in the Tang Dynasty has the same shape as the current medicine grinding trough. The trough is like a boat, with a V-shaped cross section, an arc bottom and upturned ends, which is convenient for the mill to move back and forth. The trough is 7 cm high, 5.6 cm wide and 22.7 cm long. The drum is called a shaft because the clock and the cymbal are homophonic. The stone pier is a stone grinding wheel. The roller has a shaft and is pushed by hand. The shaft length is 2l.6 cm, the roller edge is pointed, and the wheel diameter is 8.9cm.. Step 4: Sieve the tea, paste the gold, and open the crane pot. The silver tea cake is ground into powder in the tea trough and still needs to be sieved. Luo screening is a very important process in the tea ordering process. The fried tea advocated by Lu Yu is that the tea powder is boiled in a pot, and there is no strict requirement on the thickness of the tea powder. When ordering tea in the Tang Dynasty, tea powder should be put in a bowl, and the paste should be stirred evenly first, and then the soup should be boiled in a tea bottle. After the tea leaves are stirred in a bowl, a moderately viscous gelatinous state can be produced. If the tea powder is thick or uneven in thickness, it will not have a good effect when stirring. Therefore, the tea cone has become the key tea set for ordering tea, and the ancient tea cone has never been seen in the past. It is a piece unearthed from the underground palace of Famen Temple. Tea roller rack and roller drawer are placed in square boxes. There are still some yarn rollers woven with silk thread on the upper roller frame, and the mesh is very fine, which shows that the Tang Dynasty has noticed some fine skin of tea powder particles. The lower roller can accept the screened tea powder and can shoot it out of the box. The frame is 1 1 cm long, 7.4 cm wide and 3. 1 cm high. The drawer is l2, 7cm long, 7cm wide and 2cm high. Step 5: Adjust tea, tune, tune and tune. As a tea set, it is mainly used for blending and drinking tea, because drinking tea in ancient times is just like eating tea. According to Er Ya, recorded in Andy of the Three Kingdoms, when drinking tea, the processed cake tea should be "mashed into porcelain clay, covered with soup, and soaked with onion, ginger and orange." In addition, pepper, cinnamon and salt are also used as condiments. Blending is to put tea powder in first and add appropriate seasoning. Then the tea leaves are stirred into paste with boiling water in a blender; Add boiling water to make tea soup for people to drink. This way of drinking tea was opposed by Lu Yu and other tea people in the Tang Dynasty, but it was not until the Song and Yuan Dynasties that anyone was happy to see it. Only after the Ming Dynasty, due to the innovation of tea processing methods, strip-shaped loose tea rose all over the country. Except for some brothers in the frontier, no one puts any condiments in tea, pays attention to elegant drinking and pursues the "true color" of tea, so as to realize the true taste of tea. Therefore, the sliver is a unique tea drinking instrument in ancient times, and it has disappeared today. From this point of view, the status and role of Qupai unearthed from Jinji in Tang Dynasty is even more important. Tang people often mix salt with tea. This three-legged silver salt table is used to store salt flowers. Three-legged salt platform This three-legged salt platform is one of the palace series tea sets unearthed from the underground palace of Famen Temple in Fufeng, Shaanxi Province. It is a device for storing spices such as salt and pepper when the ancients cooked tea to taste. The tripod salt table consists of a cover, a table tray and a tripod, and the height of the whole table is 25.0 cm. There is a hollow shower handle with hinge on the cover, which can be split into two halves and welded together with the cover. Hollow handle, usually used for pepper. The cover heart connected with it is decorated with a flower and the four tails of Capricorn. The edge of the cover is rolled, and the bottom is a matching salt storage table plate. The tripod is welded on the table, and the whole tripod looks like a flat lotus leaf. The bracket is made of coiled silver tube with four oblique branches, two bud branches and two Capricorn branches in the middle. There is an inscription on the bracket, which reads "Xian Tong Siwen Institute will build a gold and silver salt platform in the ninth year". It shows that the three-legged salt platform was specially made for the emperor by Siwen Institute in the ninth year of Xian Tong in the Tang Dynasty (AD 868). As a salt table for salt, it is certain. Lu Yu's "Five Sores in Tea Classics" said: "When it boils at first, it is moist. If you season it with salt, it means giving up a sip. Doesn't it matter at all? " This means that when the water is boiling, tea should be seasoned with proper amount of salt. Of course, it is also recommended not to be too salty, otherwise it will become the taste of drinking salt water. Tea soup is seasoned with salt and other condiments, which were used more before the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, Lu Yu once mentioned in the Four Instruments of Tea Classics that tea sets are "heavy and heavy" and are made of porcelain with a round diameter of four inches. Or bottles, or, store salt flowers. "This is exactly the same as the three-legged salt table mentioned above, and it is also one of the tea-frying utensils. But Lu Yu also mentioned that "Jie" and "Yu" match. It's made of bamboo, and it's an instrument for taking salt. This is unprecedented in the unearthed three-legged salt platform of Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, some people objected to using salt to flavor tea soup. Tang Xueneng thought that "salt damages the constant precept" (see Eight Rhymes of Zhou Shu's Giving Bird Mouth Tea), saying that salt damages the taste of tea and should not be added more. Therefore, after the Tang Dynasty, tea soup flavored with salt was rarely seen. Step 6: The ingenious way to order tea in the secret porcelain tea bowl is to master the action of hitting back with a tea cage or spoon in the middle of the cup when the tea powder paste is evenly mixed. High mixing technology can produce vibrant white foam, which is called soup flower. In the Song Dynasty, fighting tea depends on the color and uniformity of tea noodle soup flowers and whether the soup flowers can last for a long time. Although there was no such requirement in the Tang Dynasty, tea was just boiled, and fighting tea was further improved on this basis. "Tea Classic" records: "The teaspoon is heavy and powerful. Gold is the best, while silver and iron are the most important in the world. "The teaspoon unearthed from the Famen Temple underground palace is covered with silver and is 19.2 cm long. I hope it helps you.