The Evolution of Tea Drinking

The Evolution of Tea Drinking
After tea was discovered by human beings, the way of drinking tea has gone through three stages of development and evolution.
The first stage, boiling tea. Whether it is Shennong boiled tea with water, or Lu Yu mentioned in the ‘Tea Classic’ decoction, boiling tea theory, human beings began to boil the tea leaves after taking. Guo Pu in the ‘Er Ya’ note mentioned: tea ‘can be boiled as a soup to drink’. That is to say, when boiling tea, but also add corn and flavouring ingredients, cooked as porridge. Until the Tang Dynasty, people are still accustomed to this drinking method. To this day, some of China’s ethnic minorities are still accustomed to adding other foods in the tea juice.
The second stage, half drink half tea. To the Qin and Han Dynasties, tea has not only as a medicine, but also in people’s lives on the scene, and gradually become a guest drink. People also at this time to create a ‘half tea, half drink’ of tea production and use of tea. They crushed the tea into a pot, added boiling water, and processed and flavoured it.
Zhang Yi in the Three Kingdoms period in the ‘Guangya’ recorded: ‘Jingba between the leaves for cakes. If the leaves are old, the cake is made with rice paste. If you want to drink tea, first burn it to make it red, pound it, put it in a porcelain vessel, pour soup over it, and pen it with green onion, ginger, and tangerine. Its drink to wake up the wine, people do not sleep.’ Probably means that, at that time, after picking the tea leaves, to be made into a tea cake first, when drinking tea and then mashed into a powder, brewed with hot water. However, at this time the process of cooking tea, still add onion, ginger, orange and other flavourings, which can be seen from the traces of the transition from cooking tea to brewing tea. This method can be considered the initial mould of the brewing method, similar to the modern method of drinking brick tea.
The third stage, brewing tea. This way of drinking tea can also be called the whole leaf brewing method, which began in the Tang Dynasty, prevalent in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it is another advancement of tea in drinking. Before the middle of the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu has been clearly opposed to adding other spices and seasonings to tea, stressing that tea should be tasted in the tea’s original flavour, indicating that the method of drinking tea at that time is also in the midst of change. Pure tea leaves brewed by the Tang people called ‘Qingming’. Drinking tea, and then chew the tea leaves, savour the taste, can get great enjoyment. From then on, people only put tea leaves when cooking tea. Steam green tea invented in the Tang Dynasty, specialising in spring buds, steamed and roasted after processing into loose tea, drinking with the whole leaf brewing. The quality of this kind of loose tea is excellent, can cause great interest in the drinker, and the drinking method is basically the same as the modern, with the whole leaf brewing.