Chen Yinke, a master of Chinese culture, said: "The culture of the Chinese nation, which has evolved over thousands of years, was created in the era of the Zhao and Song dynasties. ”
China's tea culture, after thousands of years of development, also ushered in the peak of development in the Song Dynasty.
During the Song Dynasty, there were many teahouses in the folk market, and all the people loved to drink tea, and the tea that began in the Tang Dynasty had a new way of drinking in the Song Dynasty, that is, tea fighting.
From the emperor, down to the bureaucrats, eunuchs, and literati, they were all keen on ordering tea, which derived "tea fighting" and "tea opera".
Song Huizong has the color of fighting tea in "Daguan Tea Treatise":"The color of tea is pure white as the truth, green and white as the second, gray and white as the second, and yellow and white as the second. Su Shishi said "Snow Foam Milk Flower Floating Afternoon Cup", and Lu You Shiyun "Clear Window Fine Milk Play Tea", which is the "white of tea" of ordering tea.
The Song Dynasty brought the Chinese tea culture represented by tea fighting to its peak. Why, in later generations, the tea fighting culture disappeared?
The process of ordering tea is cumbersome and very expensive
The tea leaves used in the Song Dynasty to order tea are group tea, which is steamed and pressed into pieces, and we can call it "steamed Qingtuan tea".
The production process of steamed Qingtuan tea is extremely complex, time-consuming and laborious, according to records, "Jianzhou Beiyuan roasting, the production of wax tea, each year of Caosi, cost 450,000 yuan, more than 1,000 servants."
A pound of dragon and phoenix group tea requires at least six hundred tea workers of hard work, time-consuming and laborious, so ** is also very expensive, with dragon and phoenix group tea as the most expensive, Huizong period of tribute tea group tea, a pound of tea is said to be worth two taels**.
At the same time, the production of tea is mainly divided into six steps, namely boiling tea, grinding, Luo tea, waiting for soup, boiling and tea. If it weren't for the rich and idle gentlemenThe home is generally not able to drink tea.
The Yuan Dynasty ruled the Han people, and there was a fault line in culture and customs
We know that the dynasty that followed the Song Dynasty was the Yuan Dynasty, and the Mongol ethnic minorities unified the Central Plains, and the cultural customs of the Han people were restricted to a certain extent.
At the same time, the status of the literati was also very low at that time, and the "order tea", which was the first of the four idle things of the literati, was limited to a certain extent.
Zhu Yuanzhang "scrapped the group and dispersed", and loose tea quickly became popular
Nearly a hundred years later, Zhu Yuanzhang of the Han dynasty destroyed the Mongol regime and became the emperor of the new dynasty.
Zhu Chongba, who was born a poor peasant, knows the hardships of tea farmers making group tea, so he is hereIn the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu (A.DYear 1391).issued an edict to abolish the group tea and restructureScatteredTea.
The Record of Emperor Taizu Gao" contains: "Gengzi edict. Jianning pays tribute to the tea, listens to the tea households, and does not have to deal with it. Where to go for tea production in the world, there is a quota for annual tribute. And Jianning tea is the top, and the person who enters it will grind and knead it, press it with a silver plate, and the size of the dragon group. On the heavy labor of the people, strike the dragon group, but pick bud tea to advance. There are four of its products, called Tanchun, first spring, second spring, and purple bamboo shoots. 500 tea households were exempted from servitude. I specialize in planting. Even when there is a fear of the future, he often sends people to supervise it, and the tea households are afraid of their persecution, and often accept bribes, and they hear about it, so it is fate. ”
A decree of tea, the whole country obeys, since the emergence of the Tang Dynasty, after the Zhao Song Dynasty, the Mongolian regime of the group tea quickly withdrew from the historical stageWith the rise of loose tea, the way of drinking has changed, and it is brewed directly with boiling waterThis opens the source of Chinese clear drinks.