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The way of drinking tea in the Song Dynasty
Fighting tea, that is, competing for the quality of tea, also known as Douming and Ming Zhan. Beginning in the Tang Dynasty and flourishing in the Song Dynasty, it is an elegant game played by the rich and idle in ancient times. It has a strong color of winning and losing, and is full of fun and challenges.
The tea fighters each take the best tea they have hidden, cook it in turn, and judge the quality of the tea. In ancient times, most of the tea leaves were made into tea cakes, and then ground into powder. When drinking, the tea powder and tea were drunk together. In tea fighting, many people fight together or two people catch each other and “fight”, three fights and two wins.
The Song Dynasty was an era that paid great attention to tea ceremony, from the emperor to the scholar-bureaucrats, there was nothing wrong with it. Song Huizong Zhao Ji wrote “Grand View Tea Theory”, Cai Xiang wrote “Tea Record”, Huang Ru wrote “Tea Tasting Yaolu”, some literati and scholars were more popular with the life interest of fighting tea, and the wind of tea fighting was very prosperous in Song Dynasty.
Every year during the Ching Ming Festival, new tea comes out first, which is the most suitable for joining the fight. In ancient times, a dozen or five or six people fought for tea, most of them were celebrities and shop owners, and neighbors also competed to watch, just like watching a football game in modern times.
The venue for tea fighting is mostly in a large-scale tea shop, with two entrances in front and back, a large front hall, which is the storefront, and a small back hall, which also has a small kitchen, which is convenient for making tea. Some houses have more elegant and clean inner rooms, or gardens with sparse flowers and trees, or are near the water, or are quiet, all of which are good places for tea fighting.
The tea fighters each take the best tea they have hidden, cook it in turn, and judge each other to distinguish between superior and inferior. In ancient times, most of the tea leaves were made into tea cakes, and then ground into powder. When drinking, the tea powder and tea were drunk together. Tea fighting, or many people fight together, or two people “fight” against each other, three fights and two wins.
The content of tea fighting includes: tea fighting, tea fighting order, and tea play.
Fighting tea
The “new” tea is the most valuable in tea fighting, and the freshness of the water used in fighting tea is the most important. One bucket of soup color, two buckets of water marks. First of all, check whether the color of the tea soup is bright and white. The pure white one is the winner, and the blue-white, off-white, yellow-white one is the negative. The soup color can reflect the tea picking and processing skills. The pure white tea soup indicates that the tea is picked and tender, and the production is just right; the color is blue, indicating that the steamed tea is not enough; Reddish color means it has been baked.
Secondly, look at the duration of soup flowers. The Song Dynasty mainly drank Tuanbing tea. When preparing it, the tea cakes were first roasted and ground, and then boiled in water. If the grinding is fine, the tea, soup, and whisking are all just right, the soup flower will be even and thin, and you can bite the rim of the cup tightly and stay together for a long time. This best effect is called “biting the cup”. Ordering tea and ordering soup refers to the preparation of tea and soup, that is, the skill of boiling and brewing tea soup.
While ordering the soup, use the tea whisk to beat and stir the tea soup in the teacup to make the soup flakes appear, which is called hitting and whisking. Conversely, if the soup flower cannot bite the cup, but spreads out quickly, and the place where the soup meets the cup will immediately show “water marks”, then you will lose. The water marks appear sooner or later, which is the basis for the quality of tea soup. In a tea fight, the winner is the one where the water mark comes out late, and the one that comes out early is the loser.
Sometimes the tea quality is slightly inferior to the opponent, but with proper water use, it can also win. Therefore, tea fighting needs to understand the nature of tea, water quality and the effect of decoction, and can’t do it blindly.
Dou Cha Order
Tea fighting orders, that is, the ancients practiced tea orders during tea fighting. The stories and poems and poems cited in the tea order are all related to tea. Tea orders are like wine orders, which are used to increase interest.
Chabaixi
Chabaixi, also known as Tangxi or Fencha, is a popular tea ceremony in the Song Dynasty. The technique of pouring ready-to-brew tea into a teacup. In the Song Dynasty, Chabaixi was not an ordinary way of drinking tea. Some people put Chabaixi together with qin, chess, and books. It was a cultural activity loved and advocated by literati and bureaucrats. Yang Wanli, a man of the Song Dynasty, chanted a hundred operas on tea and said: “How can dividing tea be as good as frying tea, and frying tea is not as skillful as dividing tea…”
Tea Baixi can make the tea soup and soup flowers show magnificent and changeable scenes in an instant. If the mountains and rivers are cloudy and misty, like flowers, birds, fish and insects, like ink paintings, this requires high tea-making skills.
