Tea as an Icon Food

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Tea as an Icon Food

The origins of tea drinking are shrouded in historical obscurity and legend. While some scholars maintain that tea drinking began in ancient India, most place its beginnings in China as early as 2700 to 3000 B.C.E. A commonly cited account is more recent, however (Qin dynasty, c. 221–206 B.C.E.). According to the story, tea was created one day when the Emperor Shen Nung was boiling water next to a fragrant bush when a gentle breeze blew a leaf from the bush into the pot, creating a pleasing aroma—and tea. Although this story is probably apocryphal, it is likely that plain boiled water or rice water were most commonly drunk in ancient China, and that tea was used occasionally and boiled in combination with other ingredients such as ginger, shallots, orange peel, and mint. The first documented reference to tea occurs in a Chinese dictionary, in 350 b.c.e.

More important than any exact date, however, is the idea of tea as a linchpin and iconic food type in Chinese and other Asian and world cultures. Tea has had social, medicinal, economic, political, and class implications for centuries, being used as a chew, a beverage, a vehicle for familial and business bonding, a curative, a preventative, a stimulant, and a soporific. The preferred drink of many nation's ruling classes, and a measure of economic prosperity among all classes, it is also associated with the British opium trade and the Opium Wars in China, the economic development of the Indian subcontinent and the North American continent, and the beginnings of the American Revolution.

Tea and Chinese Culture

Published accounts of tea cultivation and enjoyment surfaced in the sixth century b.c.e. when Lao-tzu (c. 604–520 b.c.e.), author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism, is reputed to have proclaimed tea an "elixir of immortality." That description is supported by tales of a monk who extended his lifespan considerably by drinking forty cups of tea a day. While Chinese drink the beverage with meals and at numerous other points throughout the day, consistent with a culture deeply committed to an ideal life of balanced opposites, they also recommend against drinking too much because overindulgence might have negative effects.

Factual accounts of tea as a bona fide drink surface most convincingly in China during the Han dynasty (c. 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.), when it became a widely popular drink, and lacquered cups, manufactured specifically for the use of tea ("tea cups"), appeared. Tea has continued to be popular in China throughout its history, but most notably during a high point of Chinese civilization, the Tang dynasty (c. 618–907 C.E.). During this period, the rituals of tea preparation and drinking were codified and spread throughout northern China and Asia, along with other aspects of China's culture. Tea was also taxed during this period, eventually becoming a valuable asset in Chinese households, where it was used as currency and referred to as "green gold." Tea bricks (compressed tea leaves) were used to buy horses (and, for example, in the case of the British, were exchanged only for precious metals such as silver and later for opium).

During the same period, the poet and philosopher Lu Yü (d. 804 C.E.) wrote the Ch'a Ching (c. 780 C.E.; later translated as The Classic of Tea ). Respected among tea enthusiasts, connoisseurs, and amateurs alike it became a definitive book on the subject. Concisely and beautifully written, it describes various forms and types of tea, explaining the selection and use of proper utensils, and discussing the water used for brewing. Water collected from natural springs located near Buddhist monasteries was believed to possess spiritual qualities, for example. Lu Yü also recommended water from the mouth of Szechuan's Yangtze River (where some of the best teas in China are cultivated) and mountain water. The precise instructions of Lu Yü raised tea drinking to an art form, earning him the status of tea "divinity." It is likely that his C'ha Ching became the basis for the highly ritualized and formal Japanese chado ("tea ceremony"). Teahouses were also established during the Tang dynasty, where people could enjoy pungent bitter tea with savory and sweet bite-size morsels or dumplings, early snack foods. (The popular Chinese expression yam cha literally means "drink tea," but figuratively it refers to eating dim sum ["touch of the heart"], steamed or fried dumplings stuffed with a variety of fillings, for example, bean paste.)

The appearance of teahouses further ritualized tea drinking as an essential component of Chinese life, connecting it to business negotiations, social encounters, relaxation, and other facets of Chinese culture. In this sense, it parallels the use of alcohol and other stimulants as social lubricants in other cultures. Tea is also a preferred drink at wedding banquets, and is traditionally presented to the bride and groom as a symbol of unification. Additionally, tea, along with fruit, is used as an offering at ancestral altars. It is also customary, if not mandatory, in Chinese culture to offer a cup of tea to a guest at any time of the day.

Tea in Japan

While the date of tea's introduction to Japan is difficult to pinpoint, Okakura Kakuzo, the great twentieth-century Japanese philosopher and tea master, wrote that the Japanese Emperor Shomu (c. eighth century C.E.) offered tea brewed from Chinese leaves sent by Japanese ambassadors to the Tang court to one hundred monks. The Japanese monk Saicho (767–822 C.E.), who had spent time in China, is believed to have offered a cup of tea to the Emperor Saga in 815 C.E. Saga was said to be so fond of the drink that he ordered the planting of a bush in order to establish tea as the beverage of choice in Japan. The tea proved to be too strong for many Japanese, however, and its popularity has proven less consistent than with the Chinese. Nonetheless, Japanese tea cultivation began during this period and was well established by the thirteenth century C.E.

Revivals of interest occurred during the thirteenth century, and reached a plateau during the sixteenth century (a period of cultural consolidation and political reunification), when tea cultivation spread, making the drink widely available. With this cultural shift came the traditional teahouse, a small bamboo hut created by tea master Sen Rikyu, who developed the chado (cha-no-yu, "hot water for tea"), or tea ceremony. The Japanese came to consider tea a way of life, and, like the Chinese, saw it as a symbol of hospitality, relaxation, and consolation. The chado both reflected and extended the preparation and drinking of tea as a ritual, codifying the preparation, serving, and drinking of tea according to strict rules. This codification is sometimes tellingly referred to as "the law of tea," and is closely associated with the principles of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

The Japanese ceremony involves the whipping and frothing of powdered green tea (matcha ) with a slit bamboo brush while introducing hot water. It derives from a Chinese Sung Dynasty (c. 960–1279 C.E.) tradition in which steamed and formed tea cakes are pounded into a fine powder. (The Japanese serve kaiseki-ryori, a meal masterfully prepared and eaten prior to the tea ceremony.) Due to its rather complex preparation, matcha is usually reserved for tea ceremonies or special occasions. Japanese sencha, loose tea leaves, was brought from China during the seventeenth century, and remains a more convenient and common form of tea. While the tea's popularity eventually waned, it was revived in the twentieth century, and the Japanese people have come to perceive it as a convenience food, ideally suited to their fast-paced lifestyle, something to accompany a light meal carried in a Japanese lunch box.

Tea and Europeans

While the Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade and drink Chinese tea in their Macao colony during the early sixteenth century, the Dutch established the Dutch East India Company during the same period and were the first to import tea to Europe. It was the British, however, who most took tea to heart, making it an integral part of their culture, trading it under the English East India Company out of Java, popularizing it globally, and mastering its cultivation.

The first public tea sale in Britain took place in the mid-1600s, beginning a commerce that would increase in volume to several million pounds annually by the late 1700s. The suspicious, protective (and perhaps wise) Chinese successfully denied information about the cultivation of tea to the British for so long that they did not fully understand that green, black, and oolong teas came from the same bush until the late nineteenth century. Tea plants were eventually discovered in Assam (between Burma and India) in the early nineteenth century, enabling the British to circumvent the Chinese and establish tea cultivation in India shortly thereafter, and in Ceylon during the later nineteenth century.

Tea services developed by the British were known as high tea or low tea and were common throughout their empire by the late seventeenth century. Low tea was served during the afternoon, usually around four o'clock, with sweets and bite-size sandwiches. High tea was served as an early dinner with a hot entrée and other tidbits. A tradition among the aristocracy, English teas are rather complex and precise rituals, employing a tea strainer (to hold back the brewed leaves) while pouring the infusion into the cup. Tea service was popularized in Hong Kong during its British colonization, and one of the best remaining examples of formal British tea service can still be experienced at the Peninsula Hotel, located in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Tea in India

Some Indian scholars argue that, like Buddhism, tea originated in India. This is often connected with the idea that wild tea plants were discovered in ancient Assam and then transplanted to China. While this is possible, the first records of the Indian aristocracy drinking tea date back only to the seventeenth century. Tea cultivation flourished in India under the British, however, and today India is the largest exporter of tea in the world.

Darjeeling tea, for example, is grown in the foothills of the Himalayas, and is a prized Indian black tea. The use of milk and sugar in tea is also linked to India: while the Chinese and Japanese believe that the only way to drink tea is pure—without milk and sugar—Indians drink theirs with both. This convention may have originated with the British, who enjoy tea "light and sweet" to this day. It is also possible, however, that the Indians, who had enjoyed the milk of their sacred cows as a favorite beverage, developed it on their own and passed it on to the British.

Tea in North America

Tea has frequently been associated with political turmoil historically. One well-known event has been credited with precipitating the American Revolution. The mid-eighteenth century was a time of both illegal Dutch tea smuggling and economic exploitation of the tea trade by the British in their North American colonies. The notorious Tea Act of 1773 epitomized British manipulation of the tea market and pointed the way to possible future British abuse of American colonial tax law. Protests erupted in New York, Charleston, South Carolina, and, most famously, in Boston, Massachusetts, culminating in the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. Boston merchants marched to Griffin's Wharf disguised in Mohawk headdresses, smashing and dumping tea chests from British East India boats into the water as an act of political defiance, instigating broader rebellion and, eventually, the American Revolution (1775–1782), which secured the independence of America from the British Empire.

Americans were able to plant and cultivate their own tea in the South, with particularly large plantations in South Carolina. It is said that tea, as part of that state's overall agricultural wealth, allowed South Carolina to finance the Confederacy substantially during the American Civil War. The Charleston Tea Plantation in South Carolina was established in 1799, eventually growing teas crops that originated in China, India, and Ceylon. It remains the only tea plantation in America today, producing an excellent orange pekoe black tea under the label American Classic Tea.

Varieties of Tea

Tea can be broadly divided into three common types: green (unfermented), oolong (semi-fermented), and black (fermented). These are usually sold as loose whole leaves, pearled, crushed, powdered, cakes (preferred by Tibetans), and—beginning in modern times—the twentieth century, as individual tea bags. The Chinese prefer the green varieties for their unique and delicate floral notes. Understood to be the healthiest of all teas, fresh green tea is sometimes recommended as a modern cancer preventative and curative, primarily because of its high concentrations of antioxidants. The best of the green teas are considered to be those produced in the province of Szechuan, including a highly regarded, fragrant, and semisweet type variety called "Dragon's Well." The fresh varieties require a bit of fussing in their preparation and, for this reason, are usually reserved for both formal and informal social rituals as a result. Fermented teas were developed as a means of preservation, especially preservation related to early international trade and shipping, when long sea voyages would have caused the leaves to rot. Accordingly, black teas have enjoyed greater historical popularity in the West, where they were the prevalent type most readily available.

The price of tea—essentially its value—is determined by the quality and rarity of the leaf. As such a pound of tea can range from roughly ten dollars to one thousand dollars, with the best most expensive teas usually being those in the green tea category. Today's quality teas come from China (Gunpowder, Pu'erh, Lapsang Souchong, Dragon's Well), Taiwan (Imperial Oolong, Formosa White Tip, Jasmine), Japan (Sencha, Bencha, Matcha, Genmaicha), India (Assam, Darjeeling), and Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The word "blend" is used to describe teas composed of various tea leaves from different locales. Good examples of blended teas include English and Irish Breakfast teas. Scented teas are perfumed with ingredients such as oil of bergamot, magnolia, cassis, and other fruits or herbs. Examples of classic scented teas include Earl Grey and Jasmine tea.

Tea as a Cooking Ingredient

Tea is also used as a cooking ingredient, imparting a bitter, sweet fragrance to dishes. Classic Chinese recipes include tea-boiled eggs, Hunan tea-smoked duck, and shrimp cooked with tea leaves—a specialty of the Imperial Court of Beijing. In Southeast Asia, especially Burma, pickled tea leaves—steamed, pressed into bamboo culms, and then buried until the tea is properly aged—are a popular snack, these having been steamed and pressed into bamboo culms, which are then buried until the tea is properly aged.

Tea in the Contemporary World

Tea has spread throughout the world, becoming an important part of Southwest Asian, Central Asian, African, European, North and South American, and Australian culinary cultures. International tea drinking has been affected by invention and innovation. Ice (or "iced") tea was invented early in the twentieth century, introduced by an Englishman, Richard Blechynden, at the 1904 World's Fair, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in St. Louis, Missouri, and helped to sustain the beverage's popularity. Since then, ice tea is offered in private homes, public events, diners, fast-food chains, and restaurants the world over.

Tea bags were invented by Thomas Sullivan in 1908, which made it convenient to brew single servings of tea in individual cups quickly and simply. (It also kept the leaves from spreading into the drink, at once solving a problem and stripping the beverage of some of its ritual.) Tea bags rapidly became the most popular form of making tea. Fruit-flavored, sweetened teas have become increasingly popular, too, not only as stimulants but satisfying the American (and increasingly international) taste for sweet drinks. Powdered, "instant" ice teas also exist, a cultural counterpoint to periodic revivals of more complex teas such as Indian milk-based chais.

See also British Isles: England ; China ; Coffee ; India ; Southeast Asia ; Stimulants .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Chang, K. C., ed. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

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Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. London: Kegan Paul, 2001.

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Sen, Soshitsu. Chado: The Japanese Way of Tea, translated and edited by Masuo Yamaguchi. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1979.

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Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food, translated from the French by Anthea Bell. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993.

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Corinne Trang

Japanese Tea Ceremony

The rituals known collectively as the Japanese tea ceremony are based on practices brought to Japan from China by Zen priests in the 1200s. Their style of tea preparation became popular among military and merchant elites, and these practices were later codified by Sen no Rikyuu (1521–1591). The art is organized by "schools," such as Ura-senke and Omote-senke.

Finely powdered green tea is put in a bowl, hot water is added, and the tea is whipped into a suspension with a bamboo whisk. The tea is prepared by a host for guests, who are expected to know the elaborate etiquette. For the first several years, students tend to focus on performance aspects, learning when to bow or how to carry utensils into the room. For elite practitioners, however, the key to the art lies in their connoisseurship of the many art pieces used in the ritual, such as the tea bowl, the hanging calligraphy, or the lacquered tea container. Hosts manipulate the symbolism of utensils to create complex themes for each gathering, and guests are expected to read these allusions.

The most complex ritual, called chaji, lasts four or more hours and involves the serving of an elaborate meal. The food should be simple and seasonal yet arranged with casual artistry on understated, elegant dishes. After the meal, sake is served. Moist sweets (omogashi) are served before the preparation of thick tea (koicha) and dried sweets (o-higashi) before the preparation of the thin tea (usucha).