Chinese Tea

Tea culture is an important part of Chinese traditional culture. With the social development and progress, tea not only has played a good role in driving the development in economy, but also has become a necessity in people’s lives. Moreover, it has gradually developed into resplendent tea culture and become a bright pearl of the spirtual civilizaion of the society.  

The emergence of tea culture brings the spirit and wisdom of human beings to a higher ambit. Tea has an extextremely close relationship with culture, covers a wide field and has very rich content.

It not only has the embodiment of spiritual civilization, but also the extension of ideological form. No doubt it is beneficial in enhancing the cultural accomplishment and art appreciation level of people. 

Custome of Drinking Tea

The custom of drinking tea has been continuing for thousands of years in China. It is customary to drink a cup of tea prior to or after a meal. In Chinese families, tea is also served to treat guests

Chinese Tea Culture

Tea culture is an important part of Chinese traditional culture, which covers a wide field and is rich in content. It not only has the embodiment of spiritual civilization, but also the extension of ideological form. No doubt it is beneficial in enhancing the cultural accomplishment and level of art appreciation among the Chinese people.

Simply speaking, the relationship between tea and wedding refers to applying and assimilating tea in the wedding or tea culture as a part of etiquette. Wedding is not merely a form of proclaiming to the society or requiring the society to admit marriage relationship, but also is actually a "reception" held for the bride and bridegroom to regonize relatives and meet friends.

Therefore, on the festive wedding day, which is generally also the day of big gathering for close kins and good friends of the two families that establish a marriage relationship. When visitors come, tea is presented to them. In this way, wedding has bore an indissoluble bond with tea. Hence, from this point of view, the relationship between wedding and tea can be traced back as early as the era when drinking tea began to come in in our country. However, what I am saying here is not entertaining guests with tea during the process of establishing a marriage relationship but all kinds of etiquettes that directly use tea as rites during the wedding ceremony. 

People throughout China drink tea daily. Because of the geographic location and climate, different places grow various kinds of tea. The most conspicuous content in China's tea culture is the popular phrase "Ke Lai jin Cha" which means when a guest arrives, a cup of tea will be brewed for him. In the past dynasties, people not only formed a special way of tea-drinking, but also developed an art form called tea-drinking. This art form comprises of many aspects. The most noticeable ones are the making of tea, the way of brewing, the drinking utensils such as tea pot. Tea drinking is so popular in every part of the country that there is a museum specially dedicated to the tea culture in China.

Most Chinese Compressed Tea uses Black Tea as base tea. It's steamed and compressed into bricks, cakes, columns and other shapes. Compressed Tea has all the characteristics of Black Tea. It can be stored for years and decades. Aged Compressed Tea has a tamed flavor that Compressed Tea fans would pay huge price for.  

Tea Production 

A new tea-plant must grow for five years before its leaves can be picked and, at 30 years of age, it will be too old to be productive. The trunk of the old plant must then be cut off to force new stems to grow out of the roots in the coming year. By repeated rehabilitation in this way, a plant may serve for about l00 years.

For the fertilization of tea gardens, soya-bean cakes or other varieties of organic manure are generally used, and seldom chemical fertilizers. When pests are discovered, the affected plants will be removed to prevent their spread, and also to avoid the use of pesticides.

The season of tea-picking depends on local climate and varies from area to area. On the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, where the famous green tea Longjing (Dragon Well) comes from, picking starts from the end of March and lasts through October, altogether 20-30 times from the same plants at intervals of seven to ten days. With a longer interval, the quality of the tea will deteriorate. 

A skilled woman picker can only gather 600 grams (a little over a pound) of green tea leaves in a day. 

The new leaves must be parched in tea cauldrons. This work , which used to be done manually, has been largely mechanized. Top-grade Dragon Well tea, however, still has to be stir-parched by hand, doing only 250 grams every half hour. The tea-cauldrons are heated electrically to a temperature of about 25oC or 74oF. It takes four pounds of fresh

leaves to produce one pound of parched tea. 

The best Dragon Well tea is gathered several days before Qingming (Pure Brightness, 5th solar term) when new twigs have just begun to grow and carry "one leaf and a bud." To make one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of finished tea, 60, 000 tender leaves have to be plucked. In the old days Dragon Well tea of this grade was meant solely for the imperial household; it was, therefore, known as "tribute tea". 

For the processes of grinding, parching, rolling, shaping and drying other grades of tea various machines have been developed and built, turning out about 100 kilograms of finished tea an hour and relieving the workers from much of their drudgery.

Chinese Tea Culture

Chinese tea culture is well-established, broad and profound in both material culture aspect and spiritual culture aspect. Tea sage Lu Yu of Tang dynasty had produced the Tea Classic or Chajing, which signed a beginning Chinese tea culture. Therefrom, tea culture permeated many aspects in China, such as Chinese poems, verses, paintings, calligraphy, regions, medicine and so on. With thousands of years' accumulation, material culture together with spiritual culture about tea had formed.

 The content of Chinese tea culture includes tea books, tea customs, embodiment on Chinese literature and arts, tea set arts, literary quotations on famous tea. Chinese people stress tasting in tea-drinking, which means not only identification of the quality, but to reverie and take delight in tea-drinking. As a Civilized Ancient country, land of ceremony and propriety, Chinese people takes making tea as a good manner to serve guests. Tea food, candies, dishes are also used as an adjustment for taste.