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The Way of Tea: Reflections on a Life with Tea
In the course of several years spent writing about tea at this site, at my own site, and various others, I’ve read and reviewed quite a few tea books and have encountered a lot of other titles in passing. On the whole they seem to fall into a few main categories. There are the broad overviews about tea, which attempt to summarize the whole story of the beverage and culture in one handy volume. It’s a feat that some authors have managed to pull off quite nicely. There are also those books that are more geared to delivering recipes, whether for tea-based drinks or dishes made with tea as an ingredient.
Another main category consists of those less numerous volumes that deal with the spiritual (for lack of a better term) aspects of tea drinking and tea culture. One of the earliest of these, dating from more than a century ago, is Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea. Another volume with a decidedly Asian bent is The Chinese Art of Tea, which was published in 1985, by the prominent Asian scholar John Blofeld.
More recently, in 2011, we’ve seen the release of an interesting work by Asian scholar Daniel Reid, who wrote The Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea. It follows hot on the heels of The Way of Tea, by Aaron Fisher, which was published the year before. While the title of the latter volume does not indicate any particular slant toward Asian tea culture, it does approach its subject matter from that direction, as do the other books mentioned here.
Like Blofeld and Reid, who were both noted for their writings on the Asian tradition of Taoism, Fisher also takes a look at the links between this particular way of life and tea. In his opening chapter, The Tao of Tea, he notes, “drinking tea with Tao is about letting go all our ‘stuff’ and just being ourselves as we really are, in our true nature.”
You’re not going to find a whole lot of information here on tea history and the more nuts and bolts type of information that other authors of tea books focus on. Which is not surprising, given that the sub-title of Fisher’s work is “Reflections on a Life With Tea.” It’s a relatively brief book overall, combining an introduction with twelve short chapters of the author’s thoughts on the more esoteric aspects of tea. The other chapters in Fisher’s book, Calm Joy, Quietude, Presence, Clarity, and Completion, are indicative of the approach he takes toward tea and tea culture.
If you’re looking for a tea-related thought worth remembering, then try this one, which the author offers near the end of this volume, “there is so much that just cannot be said, though it can be shared in a cup of tea.”
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Once upon a time, you could safely say that the art of tea and the Chinese art of tea were the same thing, given that the Chinese are credited with being the first people to drink our beloved beverage. But even though tea drinking eventually spread to other countries it’s worth noting that the Chinese culture of tea drinking is still a strong one. There’s also the fact that the Chinese are the world’s top producers of the stuff, including a number of varieties that are considered by many to be among the best available.
The Chinese Art of Tea
Over the course of the last decade or so the Western world has seen a considerable rise in interest in tea and tea culture, be it Chinese or otherwise. But this was not the case in 1985, when lackluster tea bags still ruled the roost in many parts of the West and the notion of drinking tea that was actually recognizably Chinese would have been considered very exotic.
It was in this landscape that John Blofeld published his pioneering book, The Chinese Art of Tea. A scholar who lived in and traveled extensively throughout Asia, Blofeld published a number of books on Buddhism, Taoism and other aspects of Asian religion and culture, with this particular volume the last of his works to be published in his lifetime.
It’s a work that would have been considered impressive even today, when tea scholarship is arguably a more common thing, but in Blofeld’s day it was quite a striking accomplishment. He starts off with a chapter on Tea in History and Legend and then explores such classic works as The Emperor Hui Tsung’s Treatise on Tea and A Ming Dynasty Tea Manual. There are chapters devoted to tea gardens and teahouses and also the relationship between tea and ceramics.
On the more spiritual side of things are chapters devoted to Poems and Songs of Tea, A Manual for Practising the Artless Art, and Tea and the Tao. Blofeld winds up things with a chapter devoted to tea’s potential health benefits, a chapter that predates much of the flood of interest in tea and health that we’ve been deluged with over the last decade or so.
Blofeld’s book was an important pioneering work on tea and tea culture in China, but it’s interesting to note that it was hardly the last such work. In 1990, authors Kit Chow and Ione Kramer released the appropriately titled All the Tea in China. More recently, in 2011, Daniel Reid, another noted scholar of all things Asian, released a volume titled The Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea. For more on that work, look here.
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Are there more poems devoted to the joys of tea than to its cousin in the hot beverage field, coffee? I haven’t done the research and thus concede that I might be wrong, but I’d be willing to bet that there are. There’s just something about tea that inspires devotion and praise in a way that few other beverages can match.
Nahum Tate: Great hair style!
Take Panacea: A Poem Upon Tea in Two Canto’s. It’s a work that was published all the way back in 1700 by one Nehum Tate (1652-1715). Tate had just been appointed the poet laureate of England in 1692 and ended up holding that spot for more than two decades. One of the earliest of arguably one of the most substantial paeans to Camellia sinensis, Tate’s poem is readily available these days in various electronic editions, thanks to the miracle of the Internet age.
One slight downside to reading this hymn to tea is that most of the editions that are available (or at least the ones I found) tend to be laid out in an odd manner. Add to this the fact that the English language was quite a different creature 300 years ago and the challenges are compounded a bit.
But if you’re brave enough to forge on ahead you’ll find the praises of tea put forth in a lofty manner eminently suited to the poet laureates of this age. As the poet notes, early on, of a group of tea drinkers who have recently imbibed:
With silertt Wonder mutually they Trace
Bright Joys reflected on each other’s Face.
Then thus the Bard—Fear no Circæan Bowls,
This is the Drink of Health, the Drink of Souls!
Later in the work, which runs to nearly forty pages in the electronic edition, Tate concludes:
Tip Tea sustains, Tea only can inspire
The Poet’s Flame, that feeds the Hero’s Fire.
Well said, sir. If you’re ready to try out one of the electronic editions of Tate’s poem you might want to start with the Google Books version.
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John Coakley Lettsome
As I noted in a recent article in these pages, the massive Google Books archive is a treasure trove for anyone with an interest in history, casual or otherwise. That includes tea lovers too. That article took a look at a volume from 1882 called The Tea Cyclopaedia. But there are tea books in the Google archive that go back farther than that, including The Natural History of the Tea-Tree, by John Coakley Lettsom. It originally appeared in 1772, not much more than a century after tea was first introduced to England.
A member of the Royal College of Physicians, Lettsom was also a philanthropist and abolitionist. The full title of his tea book is The Natural History of the Tea-Tree, with Observations on the Medical Qualities of Tea, and Effects of Tea-Drinking, and it provides an interesting snapshot of what he calls the “fashionable custom of Tea drinking.”
Though it had only been a part of the English diet for a little over a century, Lettsom estimated that about three million pounds of tea a year were being consumed. He bemoaned this to some extent because of his view that the “laboring people” were spending their scant and hard-earned dollars on tea rather than food. He also notes that a few of the many tea plants that were smuggled out of China were still surviving in their new English homes, an interesting aside, given the lengths the British would later go to obtain Chinese tea plants to cultivate in their new tea gardens in India.
At just under seventy pages, Lettsom’s book makes for a pretty quick read, though the background on the botany and botanical history of the plant itself might drag a bit for anyone without a specific interest in this sub-topic. Ditto for the section on Soil and Culture. But the chapters on the Origin of Tea, Drinking of Tea, and Gathering the Leaves help pick up the pace a bit.
The latter section of the book is devoted to a fairly in-depth examination titled The Medical History of Tea. Unlike some other commentators who wrote about tea in this era, Lettsom gives tea a passing grade, for the most part, when it comes to health benefits, a foreshadowing of what was to come in future centuries.
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Kambaa Estate tea
Say what you want about Google’s ambitious plan to digitize every book in the known universe (and perhaps in all parallel universes too), but you can’t say that it hasn’t been a boon to tea historians and anyone else who has an interest in seeing how tea used to be produced and consumed. A cursory search of the vast Google archive shows a number of interesting tea-related works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a few that go back as far as the late seventeenth century, the same century in which tea was introduced to Europe.
One of the more interesting works I ran across as I browsed this archive was The Tea Cyclopaedia, which first appeared in 1882. In keeping with the fashion of the times, its rather wordy full title is The Tea Cyclopedia: Articles On Tea, Tea Science, Blights, Soils And Manures, Cultivation, Buildings, Manufacture, With Tea Statistics. It’s unclear exactly who the author of said work is, as he (presumably) is identified merely as ‘The Editor of the ‘Indian Tea Gazette,”‘ which had offices in Calcutta and London. This is significant because, as noted in a recent article in these pages, the British began producing tea in India in the early nineteenth century and the output there had grown considerably by the time this book came out.
The Tea Cyclopaedia
As the title suggests, the book contains a lot of detailed technical information which is likely only to be of interest to tea growers and producers of the day. But if blights, soils and manures aren’t the sort of thing you consider to be riveting reading, there’s still plenty of interesting information to be had. You’ll have to skim around the book’s nearly 400 pages to get at these not so technical bits, but it makes for good reading nonetheless.
Among the highlights, the first section, which provides a brief overview of some of general facts about tea, at least as they were perceived at the time, including some thoughts on caffeine content and tea’s “Medical” properties. There are also sections encompassing Tea In India and other countries, such as Java, Japan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Cultivation and manufacture come in for a look, and there’s a miscellaneous section that looks at topics like Brick Tea, “Creamy” Indian Tea, and tea consumption in England and China.
In addition to the various other goodies contained therein, the book closes with a listing of some of the publisher’s other works, including one on tea, and advertisements for such high-tech gadgets (for the time) as a Stylographic Pen and a handheld Roller Copying Press.
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Time to visit with another person who has been in the “tea trenches” for many years. Another dedicatee to the Camellia Sinensis plant (the tea bush) and to processing it for a variety of tastes. Someone who contributes daily to the enjoyment of tea by people the world over. Another unsung hero, a veteran in the world of tea: James Norwood Pratt.
What is it about people who spend decades of their lives working with and learning about tea? They always seem so full of joy in their photos. Pratt is no exception. Even in photos where he is not smiling broadly he seems totally passionate about the subject of tea.
But Pratt was not always a devotee of the leaf. He started with an enchantment for the fruit of the vine: grapes and the wine made from them. His first book, published in 1971, was The Wine Bibber’s Bible which is out of print now. The other surprise is that Pratt is from North Carolina, a part of the U.S. that imbibes “sweet tea” the way others take in colas and other soft drinks. Pratt is a true phenomenon, expanding beyond that one method of enjoying tea to encompass about every tea style there is, from British to Asian and everything in-between.
From writing books and articles to giving lectures and conducting tea sommelier courses, Pratt has a full agenda. He also manages to keep up with tea friends as they begin their own tea adventures, including opening tea rooms, and with other tea veterans such as the dynas-TEA of the Harney family of Harney & Sons.
Books:
- Tea Dictionary, pub. 2010 — see randomly-selected terms and definitions on this tea blog.
- New Tea Lover’s Treasury, pub. 2000 — a greatly amplified and updated edition of the original book.
- Tea Lovers Treasury, pub. 1997 — the original version, full of history, anecdotes, and information to enchant tea lovers, along with information on a wide variety of teas available and what makes a quality cup of tea.
- The Tea Lover’s Companion: The Ultimate Connoisseur’s Guide to Buying Brewing and Enjoying Tea, pub. 1996 — the ultimate guide for true tea lovers to tea types, histories, legends, lore, brands, retail and mail-order companies, etc.
- Reading Tea Leaves, pub. 1995 — I’m not sure how seriously to take this one. It seems to have been written more in fun and could be interesting on a level with other games.
Articles:
- Lu Yu & Tea: A Mirror of Soul —Introduction for Santa Fe Opera premiere production of “Tea—Mirror of Soul” by Tan Dun
- Four Thousand Experience Tea At Slow Food Nation — A Report by James Norwood Pratt, from The Tea Room News
- An Exercise in Excellence
- Sisters Under The Skin: The Languages Of Wine And Tea
- In the News—Tea Pilgrimage
- The Ancient and Best Way to Brew Loose-Leaf Tea
- The U.S. Tea Renaissance and How It Happened
- How It Is With Tea and Me
- The Dutch Invent “Orange Pekoe”
Whew! When you’re done reading all that, you’ll need a couple of pots full of tea. Maybe even three!
A final note: Don’t bother with the Wikipedia page about Pratt. It is noted as being written more like a marketing or advertising piece than an objective article. It is also practically word-for-word the same as an article on Teacourse.com.
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I can’t honestly say that I’ve never written a poem about tea and I have a feeling that I probably never will. But I can see how it could happen. Every once in a while a tea comes along that’s sufficiently amazing that it could conceivably inspire a few lines of verse. And for that matter the whole of tea and tea culture is a worthy subject for at least a poem or two.
If you guessed that tea’s merits have already been celebrated a time or two or more in the form of verse, then you’d be absolutely right. The poetry columnist for The Observer, a British paper, recently took a look at this topic, in a review of Ten Poems About Tea - “a mini-anthology” on the topic which is available from The Observer’s online bookshop.
Among the luminaries whose tea-inspired verse makes it into this modest volume are Thomas Hardy, with a work called “At Tea.” Most of the other poets whose work turns up here are not as well-known but if you’re looking for poetry about tea it’s obviously not a bad place to start.
Yorkshire Gold Tea
Over at the Yorkshire Tea blog not so long ago they posted a piece of verse from a reader (and Yorkshire Tea enthusiast) that begins “Shall I compare thee to any other TEA.” Okay, so it ain’t quite at the level of old Will Shakespeare but you take what you can get. If that’s not quite enough tea poetry for you or if you’re looking for something perhaps a bit more timeless, take a look at this collection of tea-related poetry. It also contains links to even more tea poems. It’s a fairly extensive collection and a great place to get started.
And while it strays just a bit from the topic at hand, how about a classic story from a classic author of horror and mystery. It’s a tale in which green tea is portrayed as a substance that wreaks all manner of unrest and difficulties and which includes a very bad monkey that may or may not be real. That would be Green Tea, by the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and you can read the electronic version for free, at Project Gutenberg.
For some tea drinkers – present company included – a cup of tea is just fine and nothing more is needed. We drink our tea, sometimes in copious and staggering amounts, but that is all. Other tea lovers might want to take things a step further and do such things as incorporating tea into their food. This is not a new concept but it’s one that seems to be gaining in popularity along with the general upswing of interest in fine foods and specialty tea. If you doubt the level of interest in this topic, consider that there are actually restaurants scattered throughout Asia whose menus are comprised exclusively of tea-related dishes.
Of the smattering of cookbooks that have popped up to fill this niche, Cynthia Gold and Lise Stern’s Culinary Tea is the most recent. Gold, a tea sommelier (yes, that’s right, sommeliers are not just for wine anymore) at The Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, brings a considerable amount of experience to her topic and even claims to be “one of the first chefs practicing ‘culinary tea’ in the United States.”
Part One of the book is devoted to Understanding Tea, with a chapter that sketches out the historical precedents for using tea as an ingredient in cooking. The next few chapters take a look at the fundamentals of tea. It’s a section will be especially useful to newcomers to the world of tea but will probably be something of a review for old hands. Part Two of the book, not surprisingly, takes a look at the Techniques of Cooking With Tea and presents the 150 recipes (and then some), broken out into the categories of Starters, Entrees, Desserts and Tea Beverages.
As the title promises the recipes featured in here have an international theme, which seems fitting for a product that is produced and consumed in various ways around the world. Among the assorted and sundry of the many interesting recipes are a Jasmine Tea Chicken Soup, Rosy Green Tea Truffles, a Banana-Blueberry Smoothie, Chinese Tea-Smoked Duck, Smoked Tea-Brined Capon, Assam Shortbread and Thousand-Year Old Eggs. Aspiring tea chefs will be glad to know that this latter item, a popular delicacy in some parts of Asia, can be prepared in quite a bit less than one thousand years. But patience is still a virtue.
Don’t miss William’s blog, Tea Guy Speaks!
[Editor's note: Our blog is chock full of great articles on this topic. Use our search feature to find them!]
© Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog, 2009-2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this article’s author and/or the blog’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Online Stores, Inc., and The English Tea Store Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Drink tea. Sure. Eat tea? Why not?
As we pointed out in an article in these pages not so long ago, tea is not just for drinking. It can also be used as an ingredient in a wide assortment of recipes, including sweet and savory dishes. If you’re looking for more information about this subject, here are a few more books that will offer some insight.
Cooking With Tea: Techniques and Recipes for Appetizers, Entrees, Desserts, and More
by Robert Wemischner & Diana Rosen
Wemischner and Rosen have included more than 100 recipes for tea dishes in this volume. Also included, an assortment of useful information on tea and food pairings, tidbits of tea history and general background information.
Tea Cuisine: A New Approach to Flavoring Contemporary and Traditional Dishes
by Joanna Pruess & John Harney
Tea Cuisine is a revised edition of Pruess and Harney’s 2001 book, Eat Tea: Savory and Sweet Dishes Flavored with the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient. It features a number of tea-themed recipes, a Tea 101, of sorts, and assorted and sundry information about tea. If the name Harney sounds familiar, it’s probably because of his connection with tea merchant, Harney & Sons.
The Ultimate Tea Diet: How Tea Can Boost Your Metabolism, Shrink Your Appetite, and Kick-Start Remarkable Weight Loss
by Mark Ukra, Sharyn Kolberg
From Mark “Dr. Tea” Ukra, The Ultimate Tea Diet is not a cookbook, in the strictest sense of the word, and perhaps it goes a bit overboard on the connection between tea and weight loss. But it does include an assortment of tea recipes and, of course, plenty of advice on how to use tea as part of a weight loss plan.
New Tastes in Green Tea: A Novel Flavor for Familiar Drinks, Dishes, and Desserts
By Mutsuko Tokunaga
As the title would suggest, New Tastes In Green Tea primarily deals with beverages and various dishes made with green tea. As with the majority of the other books mentioned in this article, it also features sections on tea history and background information.
Cooking with Green Tea: Delicious Dishes Enhanced by the Miraculous Healing Powers of Green Tea
By Ying Chang Compestine
Even more on green tea and cuisine. This one, once again, as the title suggests, comes at the topic by taking a closer look at the alleged health benefits for this popular beverage.
Don’t miss William’s blog, Tea Guy Speaks!
Of the assorted and sundry tea magazines currently available to readers, one of the most intriguing might turn out to be The Leaf. Though it has only published online editions thus far – and will presumably continue in this vein – it has turned out seven issues of excellent content that has been focused primarily on Chinese tea, with occasional forays into other territory. For more on these first seven issues refer to our brief overview or head to The Leaf’s home base itself and dig into the archives.
While you’re there, of course, you’ll notice that Issue 8 is now available. Once again, publisher Aaron Fisher and a cast of luminaries from the tea world have conspired to bring us another collection of great articles on tea drinking and culture. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while and Fisher’s name sounds familiar it might be from our review of his recent book, The Way Of Tea. The author describes this volume as “my reflections on tea — its history, development and preparation over time — from an intuitive perspective.”
It should come as no surprise that the contemplative nature of Fisher’s book and the tendency to focus on the more spiritual aspects of tea drinking carries over to The Leaf. Among the many highlights in this latest edition of the magazine include another installment of Gong Fu Tea Tips and an examination by Jennifer Sauer of the attraction that teaware holds for so many serious tea drinkers.
The River Of Tea, by Elijiah Scidmore, is a great find that hearkens back to 1889 and which finds the author discussing the tea-related aspects of his travels through Hong Kong and China. There’s also a piece of tea-themed fiction, the usual assortment of great photos and much more. So be sure to check it out.
Make sure to visit William’s blog, Tea Guy Speaks!
