Chinese Tea Culture

China is the home of tea. Chinese people discovered and used tea. It is said that it began in the Shennong era, or at least for more than 4700 years. Up to now, Chinese compatriots of all nationalities still have the custom of substituting tea for etiquette.

Chinese tea culture is the culture of making and drinking tea in China. As one of the seven things that opened the door (firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea), tea drinking was very common in ancient China. Tea culture in China is very different from that in Europe, America or Japan. Chinese tea culture has a long history, extensive and profound, which includes not only the material cultural level, but also the profound level of spiritual civilization. The Tea Sutra of Tang Dynasty tea Saint Lu Yu sounded the horn of Chinese tea culture in history. From then on, the spirit of tea permeated the court and society, and went deep into Chinese poetry, painting, calligraphy, religion and medicine. For thousands of years, China has not only accumulated a large amount of material culture about tea cultivation and production, but also accumulated a wealth of spiritual culture about tea. This is the tea culture with Chinese characteristics, which belongs to the category of culturology.

Cultivating and drinking tea is not equal to having tea culture. It is only the precondition for the formation of tea culture, but also the participation of literati and the connotation of culture. The Tea Classic, written by Lu Yu in Tang Dynasty, systematically summarizes the experience of tea production and drinking in Tang Dynasty and before Tang Dynasty, and puts forward the spirit of tea ceremony of practicing thrift and virtue. Lu Yu and Jiaoran, a group of culturalists, attached great importance to the spiritual enjoyment and moral norms of tea, paid attention to tea utensils, water for tea and the art of tea cooking, and mingled with Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist philosophical thoughts, gradually enabling people to enter their spiritual sphere. In the process of tea drinking by some scholar-bureaucrats and literati, many tea poems have been created. Only in the poems of the whole Tang Dynasty, more than 400 poems of more than 100 poets have been circulated so far, thus laying the foundation of Chinese tea culture. Tea, for the Chinese Tea world shines brilliantly.