Tea making - from the past to the present
In the coming time, we will explain several facets of our Chinese garden in the Hortus.
In doing so, we will also discuss Chinese culture.
We previously told you about the Dragon Wall in this Ming garden.
Today we focus on the traditional process of making tea.
Tea is a beverage drawn from the processed leaves of the plant Camellia Sinensis.
In the book Cha-Ching (Lu Yu, 618) there is a description of the tea plant Camellia Sinensis.
It grows naturally on mountain slopes next to running water in Szechwan Province preferably on yellow clay and well-drained soil.
Shen Nung
As early as 3,000 years earlier, the mythical Emperor Shen Nung lived.
He traveled around and collected herbs, testing them for their healing and harmful effects.
He always boiled his water before drinking it.
A leaf fell from the tree into his pot of hot water.
The water colored and Shen Nung considered this a miracle!
He experienced a sense of calm and peace after carefully drinking the drink.
Medicinal drink
For a long time, tea was considered a medicinal beverage partly because of its bitter taste.
Just that the leaf had to steep in boiled hot water was better than drinking uncooked water.
Could this be where the expression “bitter in the mouth makes the heart healthy” comes from?
Salted powdered tea
In the Tang Dynasty (618-907), people knew of preparing the picked young leaves by steaming, bruising and stirring them into a paste with plum juice as a binder.
To make tea, a lump was roasted in the fire until it became soft to be ground into powder so that it could be boiled in water.
For flavor, people added salt or spices such as ginger, cloves or sweet onion.
Thus was born the school of salted powder tea.
Foaming Jade
The second school of preparing tea – school of foaming Jade – emerged during the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
Whipping the very finely pulverized tea in boiled water with a bamboo whisk produced a frothy layer on the liquid.
This process could be repeated up to seven times after drinking the first cup of frothy tea.
The spicy additions of the Tang Dynasty were replaced by delicately fragrant flavors of jasmine or chrysanthemum.
From then to now
From the Ming period (1368-1644), people switched from pressed tea blocks to loose tea leaves.
The tea leaf was marinated in water to extract the flavor from it, making it taste softer.
This is how we still prepare our tea today from loose tea leaves in a teapot poured with hot water.
Six types of tea we know: green, yellow, white, oolong, black and post-fermented tea.
The amount of steps from picking to drying determines the variety.
Read more about the Chinese Garden
Dragon Wall
The Dragon Wall of celestial dragons in the Ming Empire is unique (in Europe) and a gift from China to the Hortus Botanicus (1995).
The wall screens off the imperial gardens to the south, as this is the domain of the emperor and his family.
Renovated Chinese Tea House
In the Hortus in Haren, workmen have been busy applying new paint to the woodwork, among other things.
Chinese garden has been (and is being) restored
Among other things, the “Thousand Things Pavilion” is already looking beautiful again. A good time to tell more about this building.
