Since the Western Han Dynasty, the way tea is cooked has undergone continuous development and change. It can be roughly divided into four methods: boiling tea, sencha, ordering tea, and making tea.
1. Tea boiling method: The earliest tea boiling method refers to the tea leaves being boiled in water and then drinking. Before the Tang Dynasty, due to the lack of tea-making technology, people usually picked raw tea leaves directly for boiling. With the advancement of tea-making technology, dry tea began to be used for boiling after the Tang Dynasty. During the Han and Wei dynasties and the early Tang Dynasty, the tea leaves were mainly boiled directly into soup and eaten, similar to vegetable soup, and sometimes called "porridge". After the Tang Dynasty, the tea-making technology continued to develop, and the sencha method advocated by Lu Yu gradually became popular, but the boiled tea was still popular in some ethnic minority areas, and salt, green onions, ginger, cinnamon and other seasonings would be added to the boiled tea in the Tang Dynasty.
2. Sencha method: The sencha method is a tea cooking method proposed by Lu Yu in the "Book of Tea". This method mainly uses cake tea, which is roasted and crushed and then put into boiling water, then stirred, and stopped after the water boils, compared with the tea boiling method, the sencha method is more simple and fast. The sencha method was very popular in the middle and late Tang dynasties.
3. Tea ordering method: The tea ordering method is to grind the tea leaves into fine powder, put them in a tea cup, and then brew them with boiling water. Pour a small amount of boiling water into the teacup to mix the powdered tea, then pour in enough boiling water, and gently whisk it with the tea basket while pouring the water. The origin of the tea ordering method can be traced back to the Five Dynasties period, which prevailed in the Song and Yuan dynasties, spread to Liao and Jin in the north, and then gradually declined.
Fourth, the tea method: The tea making method was first seen in Lu Yu's "Book of Tea", that is, the tea leaves are placed in a bottle or thread, poured into boiling water and soaked. In the Tang Dynasty, it was called "Ancha", which opened a precedent for the method of making tea in later generations. The method of making tea gradually became popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and is now widely used in various places, especially in Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan, and gongfu tea is a typical method of making tea. Although boiling, frying, and ordering tea are still used by some deep enthusiasts, the tea brewing method is still the most common and convenient way to cook tea, and more tea brewing methods and tools have also been derived.