194472

Introduction Lei Cha Chapter 26

Introduction Lei Cha Chapter 26

Lei Cha was once popular all over the country, but it gradually became lonely, so that people thought that Lei Cha was unique to Hakka. In fact, it is not, so why did Leicha decline? Since the Northern Song Dynasty, a trend of “chafing tea” has quietly emerged, and people’s attention has begun to shift to the original taste of tea. Therefore, Leicha mixed with ginger, salt and other things is not only ridiculed by the scholar-official class, but also in the vast area of ​​the south. Gradually abandon it.

Cause of decline

Since fighting tea became popular, people gradually began to pay attention to tasting the original taste of tea. Lei tea mixed with ginger, salt and other things was not only ridiculed by the literati class, but also gradually abandoned in the vast areas of the south.

For example, Su Dongpo once wrote dozens of tea poems. Among them, “Cao Fu’s Trial Cultivation of New Sprouts from the Source of Jiyun Cao Fu” describes the Fujian group tea as a tribute tea: Xianshan Lingcao is wet and cloudy, washed with fragrant muscle sand and powder. The bright moon came to cast Yuchuanzi, and the spring breeze blew through the martial arts spring. You must know that Bingxue is good-hearted, not anointed and new. Xiao Shijun, who plays the role of play, smiles, and always looks like a beautiful lady.

Su Dongpo is also very particular about the spring water used for making tea. In the poem “Jiancha from the Jijiang River”, he says: the living water must be boiled with living water, and it is deep and clear from the fishing stone. The big scoop stores the moon and returns to the spring urn, and the small scoop divides the river into the night clang. The snow milk has been turned and fried at the feet, and the pine wind suddenly makes a sound of diarrhea. Withered intestines are not easy to ban three bowls, sit and listen to the length of the barren city.

These poems are obviously not Leicha. The so-called “new bud” is the bud tea that “has always been a good tea like a beautiful woman”. The bud tea must naturally have good spring water, which shows that before the Northern Song Dynasty, the bud tea brewing method has already started. As a result, Leicha mixed with ginger, salt and other things was not only ridiculed by the scholar-official class, but also gradually abandoned in the vast areas of the south.

This phenomenon can be seen from “Dongpo Zhilin”: “Tang people used ginger for frying sticks, so Xue Neng’s poem said, ‘Salt damage adds to regular precepts, Jiang Yi cooks more squat’… Those who have used these two things in modern times I laughed out loud.” However, due to various reasons, Lei tea is still very popular among the northern folks, as evidenced by Su Zhe’s poem “He Zizhan Jiancha”: “Northern tea is indispensable, salt, cheese, pepper and ginger are full of praise. Tired of wandering about my hometown, not learning from the South and the North…”

once swept the country

Tea is a major feature of Chinese civilization. The Chinese tea altar is the largest in the world: China was the first to discover tea trees and use tea leaves in the world. That is, in the period of the matriarchal clan of Yangshao culture in primitive society, it has a history of more than 4,700 years. According to records, the way of drinking tea in my country seems to be related to porridge tea from the beginning, that is, the tea leaves are ground into powder and mixed with rice to make porridge, which is called rice tea, or Ming porridge.

The “Guang Ya” written by Zhang Yi of the Wei Dynasty of the Three Kingdoms has records about rice tea. At that time, people were accustomed to using onion, ginger, orange peel and other ingredients as ingredients.

In 1973, tombs No. 1 and 3 in Mawangdui, Changsha, were unearthed with blocked tea leaves and bitter soup made of tea leaves. Some experts believe that this kind of bitter soup is tea porridge made of tea and rice. In this way, before the Qin and Han dynasties, it became a common custom for people to eat tea soup.

In the Tang Dynasty, the production technology of tea has been greatly improved, and the military style of people’s tea drinking has undergone great changes. Rice tea is gradually disappearing, but the custom of mixing green onion, ginger, orange peel, etc. exist.

Some people think that Lei tea is a special product of the Hakka people. It seems that there are no people who make or eat Lei tea in other places except Hakka. After reading the previous introduction, we can see that this understanding is biased. In fact, before the formation of the Hakka people, the custom of making and eating lei tea already existed in the Central Plains, and it was popular in many parts of the country.

However, with the passage of time, after the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Lei Cha gradually disappeared in the Central Plains and other areas, and only the Hakka people, some She people and individual ethnic minorities in southwest my country inherited and continued to innovate and expand. According to relevant records, the Hakka people in southern Gansu, western Fujian, eastern Guangdong, southern Hunan, northern Sichuan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places still retain the custom of eating Leicha, and in some places it is even very popular. The proverb “No guest” is quite telling.