Today’s Book: THE CLASSIC OF TEA


Tonight, let’s pick up a book that has long been sleeping on the shelf and open a little space in our hearts. On a long autumn night, as the voice within quietly begins to unwind, it’s not a bad idea to look at the present from a different vantage point. Today’s book is THE CLASSIC OF TEA—the most famous classic of tea preparing and drinking, the Cha Jing (茶経).

The Cha Jing was written by Lu Yu (陸羽), a tea master in Tang-dynasty China, in the latter half of the eighth century, and is regarded as the oldest surviving monograph devoted to tea. Some may know its famous line: “Tea is a fine tree of the South”(茶は、南方の嘉木なり).

In ten chapters, the Cha Jing systematically sets out tea culture, starting with the ecology of the tea plant, its cultivation, and methods of tea-making, and going on to the utensils and water needed for good tea and the way tea was enjoyed in the Tang dynasty.

Its structure—separating tea from the religious elements that were already deeply tied to Zen practice at the time and focusing instead on its cultural side—remains timeless for understanding tea. When I think of Lu Yu as a creator who lived a one-of-a-kind, utterly unique life, he feels all the more familiar and endearing.

The fervent summer has passed, and migratory birds now cross the skies above the Kamo River, travelling north and south. We hope that next time I can share something of the time and spirit of tea as it flows through contemporary China.