"The way of tea" here denotes the Chinese Way of Tea and the Japanese Tea Ceremony. The way of tea may instigate spiritual or philosophical inspirations, but it is not religion or philosophy. The way of tea involves a few essential elements: tea, water, tea ware, ritual (the ways of making tea), and the state of mind. Nonetheless, it is the tea ware and tea ritual that cultivate the state of mind. Hence, the way of tea is a way of "training the body and cultivating the mind" (xiushen yangxing 修身養性). Thereupon we immediately encounter the problem of the unsatisfactory translation of xiushen yangxing, the same problem that seems to parallel the case of translating Foucault's term "surveiller" to English. Yet with all the nuances, such as infinitive, supervise, observe, impersonal, and imperative that suggest surveiller to mean discipline appropriately suggest xiushen yangxing also as discipline. On this account, the way of tea is a discipline. Nevertheless, without tea ware and tea ritual there is no "way of tea" indeed. Tea ware and tea ritual change over time, and the change of tea ware and tea ritual is always subject to political-cultural and social-economic conditions.

When we read the phrase "the way of tea," the impression that often comes to mind is of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, chanoyu 茶の湯 or chadō 茶道. We likely envision a tea maker whisking powdered tea in a composed and sedulous setting. We will not associate chanoyu with the Chinese Song dynasty diancha 點茶 (whisking powdered tea). Nor will we link the Japanese sencha 煎茶 to the Chinese jiancha 煎茶 (boiling tea). Notwithstanding, sinologist Victor H. Mair states in his book The True History of Tea: "Just as chanoyu harks back to the Song custom of whisking tea, sencha traces its roots to China and the early Ming, when the Hongwu emperor issued his prohibition of milled wax tea."[1]

The study of the Chinese tea history is essentially embedded in the study of history of China. Since the 1800's the Western study of Chinese history has kept historians and scholars busy and produced some unusual thought-provoking ideas. In the twentieth century the distinction between a "modern" China and a China that had existed before the modern has been a common and predominant theme. There is a distinction between a "modern" China and a "traditional" China. The pre-modern China had long ago ceased to change in any fundamental way because the traditional history and culture were an immobile (Hegelian term) obstacle to progress. Appropriately, the very long history and "traditional" (imperial) China and the very recent "modern" China (Republic of China 1912-1949) culminated in a revolutionary end that brought about the "new" China (Communist China 1949-present).[2]

The Euro-American-centric historians and scholars endeavor to venture that a continuous Chinese civilization is not so much fact, but rather an asserted idea that Chinese civilization was unruptured in both the political and academic world. The UCLA Sinologist Lothar von Falkenhausen avers: "In general, traditional Chinese historiography is focused upon the concerns of the ruler, and it propagates the court's official interpretations of historical events. That it is Sino-centric goes without saying. Beholden to a notion of uninterrupted cultural, ethnic and historical continuity, as well as unity, it propounds a unilinear sequence of events and is prone to disregard divergent (e.g. local) traditions."[3] The Princeton University Sinologist Robert Bagley affirms, for the Chinese archaeologists, "the always thorny problem of interpreting mute archaeological evidence has been complicated by national pride, which insists that tradition is reliable and that the task of archaeology is to vindicate it. Searching always for correspondence with the written record, inclined to overlook or explain away evidence that conflicts with it, archaeology sadly misses its chance of giving us an independent view of the second millennium."[4] The Stanford University historian Mark Edward Lewis accelerates the current Euro-American view of history of China to its summit: "The Chinese empire, including its artistic and religious versions, was based on an imaginary realm created within texts."[5]

Beijing University historian Li Ling, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2016), phlegmatically explicates this vigorous Western view of the history of China in plain words: for Sinologists (historians), or for some Sinologists, the Xia dynasty (c. 2070-1600 BC) never existed. It has been a story favored and told by Chinese to themselves. The Shang dynasty (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou (c. 1046-256 BC) dynasties were small "city-states" (like the ancient Greeks). According to these Western historians and scholars, the history of China is full of holes like a slice of Swiss cheese.[6] What is Chinese? Their definition is that people who speak Chinese are Chinese, and the Chinese language is Mandarin but only the Han people speak Chinese (in this case it could only be Mandarin). The inference is that the areas of China where people don't speak Chinese are not parts of China. The example is that Sanxingdui people certainly could not speak Anyang language. Therefore, Sanxingdui 三星堆 was not a part of Shang dynasty. Li Ling asks, were only those who spoke Roman Romans, and only those who speak American Americans (never mind English)? For the same reason, should China not include the Four Frontiers, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and the Northeast China area, which was "claimed by China 'a part from the territories occupied by the Japanese since 1931," stated by a certain mysterious anonymous author in 1945.[7] Of course, there are also people that don't speak Chinese in the large areas of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Fujian provinces. 

The conclusion is that the history of China is based on the Chinese narrative, which is a nationalistic reconstruction. "From now on," sighs Li Ling, "there should be no study of the history of China. The so-called Chinese history should only be the histories of dynasties. Consequently, the history of China is all but imaginary."[8] However, even if we accept this vigorously Western and progressive view without scrutiny, Li Ling has legitimate questions: "How are we going to 'delimit', or to make sense of the 'the history of pre-imperial China,' and 'the history of imperial China' as the Cambridge History of China writes?"[9] One can't help but wonder: if the Chinese historiography is full of holes like a slice of Swiss cheese, the holes on the cheese of the Euro-American Chinese historiography are equally if not more stupendous. The readers of the histories of Chinese civilization, culture, and arts must stay alert and keep an open-mind to examine carefully the extreme assertions from both sides.

Tu in these phrases from the Classic of Poetry indicate closely to snachus oleraceus, or the plant of the thistle family that may have no connection to the tea tree, camellia sinensis. The chapter "the Earthly Officials" in the Book of Rites (compiled c. 475-221 BC) affirms the official position of zhang tu 掌荼, or the administrator of tu, thistle. Zhang tu was in charge of collecting and gathering the thistle supplies for royal funerals: "The way to prepare the mat for the evening ritual is to sew two pieces of light black-colored fabric together, and decorate the fabric with the thistles, then put the fabric under the coffin before the coffin is placed."[13] The thistle flowers were used for decorative purpose in royal funerals, which did not seem to have much to do with tea drinking.

This causes another problem. The Chinese scholars often treat this problem as tongjia 通假 or jiajie 假借, characters meaning borrowing or loan interchangeably. Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren demonstrates the typically cautious view of Western scholars regarding the issue of the loan characters: "One of the most dangerous stumbling-blocks in the interpretation of pre-Han texts is the frequent occurrence of (jiajie), loan characters."[14] The University of Pennsylvania sinologist Victor H. Mair states that "the word chá, the character 茶, and the beverage all appear to have developed out of medicinal tú 荼," and "came to fruition around the time of Lu Yu (mid-eighth century)." Temple University Buddhologist Marcus Bingenheimer shows how the contents of the Taisho Tripiṭaka can in no case internally be traced back beyond the Song period, and in many cases its earliest sources are from the Yuan or Ming period.[15] Mair points out insightfully:

This fluidity between tú 荼 as a bitter weed to be used in a medicinal concoction or decoction and chá 茶 as the invigorating beverage that people have been drinking for the last thousand years and more corroborates the point I have often made about Lu Yu reconceptualizing or rebranding the former into the latter. A search of the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (1773--1782) database reveals that all eight occurrences of 荼湯/茶湯 in Tang texts have been normalized as the latter. A search in the Scripta Sinica database found two results for tutang 荼湯, but not in Tang texts. The first is in a biji 筆記 by the Ming writer Shen Defu 沈德符 (1578--1642); and the second is in a late Qing biji essay by Xu Ke 徐珂 (1869--1928). All of this confirms my old suspicion that there is a fine dividing line between tú 荼 and chá 茶, between medicinal and refreshing applications. As for the relative instability of the change from tú 荼 to chá 茶 and the occasional persistence of the former, it most likely had to do with topolectal differences and orthographical habits. [16]

Nevertheless, the most recent archaeological excavations in China have uncovered some rather astonishing evidence. In 1980, Lu Qiming, the research member of the "Guizhou Wild Tea Tree Resources Survey project," discovered Camellia sinensis seed fossils or tea seed fossils in the Yuntou Mountains of Qingkou village in Qinglong county. In 1988, the discovered fossils were identified as the "four-ball tea seed fossils from the late Tertiary to Quaternary period more than one million years ago." According to the Chinese researchers, "this discovery of the tea seed fossils in Guizhou confirms that Southwest China was the origin of tea trees."[17]

The American tea historian and specialist Steven D. Owyoung states: "In 2001, the remains of a Neolithic settlement (Xiaoshan, Zhejiang) were discovered near the eastern coast of China where archaeologists excavated nearly a dozen roots of the tea plant Camellia sinensis. Each rhizome was found in an extraordinary state of preservation and in a regular pattern of planting. The remarkable find dramatically changed the history of tea by extending the geographical range of primordial Camellia sinensis from the remote fastness of Sichuan in the far west eastward to the marshes and streams of the lower Yangzi and the Zhejiang coast."[18]

In 2011, during the fifth excavation of the Tianluoshan of Hemudu Neolithic site, "more than 10 pieces nearly upright plant roots" were unearthed in the H 67 pit of T 307 on the southside of the site. These organic remains were immediately tested and the lab results show similar amino acids in the remains that are identical to the surrounding living tea trees and their roots, and the "theanine content of the unearthed tree roots is close to the main root of the living tea tree, and the content of theanine in camellia, camellia oleifera and camellia japonica... therefore, we can be certain that the unearthed tree roots are the tea tree roots."[19] In the following years, research collaborations among Tohoku University, Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory, Nanjing Forestry University, China National Center for Tea Quality Inspection and Testing took place. In 2015, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Archeology along with other organizations held the "Research Results of the Camellia sinensis Remains from the Tianluoshan Site" hearing and announced: "The experts are convinced that the three clusters of root remains unearthed from the Tianluoshan Site," "are the remains of tea plants of the genus of Camellia sinensis," "from about 6000 years ago," "the archaeological excavations show that the Tianluoshan Camellia sinensis remains are the remains of human cultivation by the ancient people."[20]

In 2018, the National Center for Biotechnology Information published "Domestication Origin and Breeding History of the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis) in China and India Based on Nuclear Microsatellites and cpDNA Sequence Data." The research suggests the "tea plant was initially domesticated in China over 4,000 years ago (Yamanishi, 1995)," and concludes:

Although China and India are the two largest tea-producing countries, the domestication origin and breeding history of the tea plant in these two countries remain unclear. Our previous study suggested that the tea plant includes three distinct lineages (China type tea, Chinese Assam type tea and Indian Assam type tea), which were independently domesticated in China and India, respectively.

Results from demographic modeling suggested that China type tea and Assam type tea first diverged 22,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum and subsequently split into the Chinese Assam type tea and Indian Assam type tea lineages 2770 year ago, corresponding well with the early record of tea usage in Yunnan, China.

The three distinct types of the tea plant represent a rich gene pool, which is valuable for future tea breeding and cultivar development. For example, Assam tea from India and China type tea are the only two gene pools that are currently used for the development of hybrid tea cultivars in approximately 30 countries worldwide (Ellis, 1995). In particular, Chinese Assam type tea from Southwestern Yunnan, China was recently found to represent a distinct gene pool (Meegahakumbura et al., 2016) and both landraces and cultivars of Chinese Assam type tea possessed a high proportion of rare alleles and private haplotypes. Given these results, Chinese Assam type tea is a highly valuable, yet underutilized, germplasm resource for future tea breeding. Furthermore, the existence of ancient trees that are presumed to be over 1,000 years old may present a unique genetic window into tea domestication in China. Therefore, the preservation of these tea plant germplasm resources through in-situ conservation should be considered a conservation priority in Yunnan, China.[21]

“When the Roman Empire collapsed and the European Empire plunged into the Dark Ages the sun rose in the Orient with an extraordinary brilliance. The year 618 marked the founding of the Tang Dynasty and the beginning of a glorious golden age for China.”[22] Evans’s encomium reflects Hegel’s view of the Orient with mordancy. “History performs no circle round it, but has on the contrary a determinate East, viz. Asia. Here rises the outward physical Sun, and in the West it sinks down: here consentaneously rises the Sun of self-consciousness, which diffuses a nobler brilliance.”[23] On the other hand, Mark Edward Lewis, with his usual vigor, argues that the idea of the “extraordinary brilliance” of the Tang dynasty “(which dismissed the militarily weak Ming dynasty) ignores the fact that the Tang ruling house was both genealogically and culturally—a product of the frontier ‘barbarian’ culture that dominated northern China in the fifth and sixth centuries.”[24] Here Lewis sways off the Tang glory with his artful double-bladed sword: the Tang military glory was attributed to the northern “barbarian,” while the Chinese cultural glory only consigned Chinese permanently in their weak-Chineseness (such as the culturally high-achieved Song or Ming dynasties).[25]

If we consider Lewis’s view that the Tang military glory was “a product of the frontier ‘barbarian’ culture that dominated northern China in the fifth and sixth centuries,” in the same unique view, we must reflect on the fact that all the bordering nations and countries around the Tang (even some part of the long Hexi Corridor to West Asia and entering the Near East) were the cultural products of the Han Chinese civilizational and cultural domination. This profound and far-reaching, subtle and fundamental influence harks back to the Han dynasty “silk road” from the second century BC. Such dangerously doubled accountings cannot be easily settled one way or another. Thereafter, we must be alert in this doubled-narrative: to learn carefully what we don’t know about the Chinese tea history on the one hand, and to examine critically what we know on the other hand.

It is often rare for the serious historians of China and sinologists to bother with the history of Chinese tea studies. Nevertheless, there has been a silently concurrent viewpoint, or in Mair’s words, “good judgment” that “tea was essentially a Tang invention,” which displays a part of the doubled-narrative. Thanks to Mair’s works, particularly his book review on A Religious and Cultural History by James A. Benn, which articulates the doubled-narrative, and more importantly, provides a comprehensive synopsis of the crucial aspects on the current Western scholarly studies of the Chinese tea history. By examining Benn’s A Religious and Cultural History, the Rise of Tea Culture in China, the Invention of the Individual by Bret Hinsche, and restating his own views, Mair inclusively demonstrates religious, ideological, and social-cultural views that the Western scholarships have taken on the Chinese tea history:

Benn’s Tea in China (hereafter TiC) is Sinologically and Buddhologically generally adequate. By and large, Benn’s translations are up to snuff, and his references to and annotations for early texts, for the most part, are reliable. Where he goes astray is in placing so much emphasis on the religious affinities of tea, to the degree that it slants the overall development of tea drinking in China.

Bret Hinsch demonstrates as never before how an unpretentious infusion of the dried leaves of a bitter plant from the southern hinterland became the iconic beverage of high culture in central China. Beyond that, he shows how the art of tea drinking during the transition from medieval to early modern China was intimately involved in the development of individualism and self-expression, such that the “new man” of this period had a very different outlook on personhood from individuals of classical times. This is a learned study of the role of tea in Chinese society, one that ranges from literature and aesthetics to gender and morality, covering a host of topics in a most engaging fashion.

What’s more, if one objects to the lack of solid historical data concerning Bodhidharma, there is not a shred of evidence for the existence of Shennong 神農 (Divine Farmer), to whom Benn devotes considerable attention as a mythical discoverer of the tea plant. It is all the more odd that Benn ignores Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Chan/Zen, since he devotes much of chapter 6 (on the Song period) to tea in relation to Chan/Zen, and he also brings up Zen in other chapters as well. Bodhidharma was most closely linked to Shaolin Monastery 少林寺 (the home of the famous “fighting monks”), an important centre for meditation in China, during a key part of his career.

Before the integrative research of Mair and Hoh, which began in the sixties, these and many other sources pertaining to the history of tea in China were only to be found scattered in specialized journals and original language sources. Mair and Hoh brought these new additions to the history of tea together in a comprehensive history for the first time.

There is still plenty of room for further studies on the history of tea in China. One thing we need to understand better is precisely how Lu Yu was able to bring about the legitimization of the drinking of tea among the broad population at the particular moment when he did. Up to this point, we have been hampered by the lack of a reliable, adequately annotated translation of Lu Yu’s Cha jing 茶經 (Tea Classic), but have had to rely on Carpenter’s pedestrian 1974 rendering. Let us hope that this lacuna in scholarship on tea will soon be filled by Steven D. Owyoung’s forthcoming translation of the classic. If it had been available to Benn, his presentation of Lu Yu’s role in the history of tea would have benefitted greatly.

There is much we can learn from TiC. For instance, the author displays good judgement when he states that “tea was essentially a Tang invention” (p. 95, see also p. 200). And he is also right on the mark when he emphasizes that it was around the time of Lu Yu when tea consumption began to transform from “slurping vegetable soup” (p. 99) to drinking a refined beverage. But I think Lu Yu deserves more credit for this dramatic transformation than Benn affords him when he says, “his book on tea coincided with a rapid development of interest in the topic. By default, his work became the definitive word on the topic for centuries and a blueprint that was copied by other aspiring experts on the subject” (p. 202). I believe that Lu Yu was a genius who brought about the revolution in tea usage by legitimizing tea drinking, not as something uncouth from the barbarian south, but as an elegant and cultivated activity suitable for elites. Naturally, commoners could tag along if they wished.[26]

Mair’s comprehensive synopsis of the Western studies furnishes us the current viewpoints, and leaves plenty of room for further studies on the history of tea in China. In addition to the recent archaeological discoveries and scientific research on the origins of human cultivation of tea on the far-reaching horizon, the four most essential aspects of the history of tea in medieval China are urgently open to scrutiny and reexamination: 1. Was Chinese tea drinking a Tang dynasty invention? 2. Was Chinese medieval religious practice essential to the Way of Chinese tea? 3. Was the rise of Chinese tea drinking the invention of the individual in Tang dynasty? 4. The signification and the demystification of Lu Yu and his Tea Classic.

1. Was Chinese Tea Drinking a Tang Dynasty Invention?

The Classic of Tea composed by Lu Yu (733-804) is the first and the foremost comprehensive book on tea drinking in the world. What Lu Yu documents in his Tea Classic regarding the history of tea practice in China has long been questioned by the modern scholars. “Tea as a drink was discovered by the Shennong Emperor 神農 (Divine Farmer, also known as Yandi 炎帝 c. 3rd millennia BC), practiced by the Duke of Zhou 魯周公 (c. 12th century BC), and 晏嬰 of Qi State 齊國 (c. 7th century BC), Yang Xiong 楊雄, Sima Xiangru 司馬相如 of Han dynasty (206 BC-9 AD), Wei Yao 韋曜 of Wu 吳 dynasty (222-280), Liu Kun 劉琨, Zhang Zhai 張載, Yuan Zuona 遠祖納, Xie An 謝安, and Zuo Si 左思 of Jin 晉 dynasty (281-420).”[27] Lu Yu’s historical testimonies have been difficult to prove, however, the recent archaeological discoveries seem to provide shreds of evidence, which may justify some of his claims.

We may object to the lack of solid historical data concerning Shennong to whom some scholars devote considerable attention as a mythical discoverer of the tea plant, while we may devote innumerous attention to Homer as the foundational works of ancient Greek literature with only shreds of evidence. The only validity here may be the symbolism that we seek. This symbolism may or may not validate our claim at all. There is often not a shred of evidence to validate our claim when we approach in a different perspective. History does not tell itself. We interpret the past and say what it means for our own purposes. Propitiously, the past is past, and it will not object to anything we say, just as we cannot object to what people will say about us in the future. History is indeed open to interpretations. As Foucault once suggested, history should be sought, not to reconstitute the continuity of “periods” or “centuries,” but rather to uncover the “phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity.”[28] He describes the problem that rupture and discontinuity present for the study of history: “the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations,” but of revealing “several pasts, … several hierarchies of importance… for one and the same science, as its present undergoes change.” Foucault continues: “thus historical descriptions are necessarily ordered by the present state of knowledge, they increase with every transformation and never cease, in turn, to break with themselves.”[29]

There are brief statements scattered in some of the historical entries and literatures that may also reflect Lu Yu’s testimonies. The History of the Three Kingdoms states that Wei Yao never drunk alcohol but he was a favored official of the Wu emperor Sun Hao 孫皓 (242-284). At the court gatherings the emperor “often reduced the amount of alcohol that Wei Yao had to drink, or secretly granted him tea instead of alcohol”.[30] The Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era《太平御覽》states: “Fu Xian of the Jin dynasty (265-420) wrote in Sili Teaching: It is said that there is an old woman from the South who makes tea and sells it,” also “Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 (456-536) wrote in New Writing: Tea can alleviate the body and refresh the bones, the immortals such as Dan Qiuzi, Huang Shanjun all drink tea.”[31] It may be realistic to consider that from the 3rd to the 6th centuries, tea drinking already was more a practice in the South than it was in the North. The Northerners used to mock tea as “the slave of cheese.” The History of Luoyang Samghrma recorded that when the scholar-official Wang Xiao (c. 464-501) from the Southern Qi state surrendered to the Northern Wei state, he continued his tea drinking:

Upon Xiao’s first arrival in the Northern country, he did not eat lamb and cheese but fish and rice with tea only. When the northern scholar-officials saw Xiao drinking a liter of tea each meal, they called him the Drain. Years later Xiao had a lot of lamb and cheese in the presence of emperor Yuanhong at a court banquet. The emperor was surprised and asked Xiao: “According to the Chinese taste, how do you compare lamb to fish? and tea to cheese?” Xiao replied: “Lamb is the best on land, fish is the best in water; they are unique in their own ways. In terms of taste, they are quite obvious, lamb is like the great kingdom of Qilu, and fish is like the small state of Zhuju, but only tea is inferior that it ought be the slave of cheese…” The northern literati Liu Gao admired Xiao’s life style and started to learn tea drinking. The prince Pengcheng told Gao: “You don’t have a high regard for our noble tastes but approval of the slave flavor. You are truly one of these who have peculiar hobbies and go after the wrong fashion.” The prince’s servant soon spread around this news. The court officials and literati all did not drink tea even when tea was available at the royal and noble banquets. It was only the southerners who surrendered to the northerners were still fond of tea.[32]

Wang Xiao “was learned in extensive knowledge and has a stunning writing style.” He renounced the emperor Yuanhong 元宏 (also known as Tuoba Hong 467-499 原名拓拔宏) of the Northern Wei dynasty in 494. It was during this time that Yuanhong began his complete sinification of the Capitol Luoyang to replace the Uokil or Syanbi cultures and customs with the Chinese. The northern royalties and scholar-officials still had little regard for tea. Tea drinking was more or less a common practice in southern China.

The Song dynasty calligrapher Huang Bosi 黃伯思 (1079–1118) made an entry on “the Postscript to the Collection of Northern Qi Dynasty of Books and Paintings” in his Dongguan Yulun: “Li Zhengwen's Zixialu recorded that the tea bowl holder (specialized saucer) began with Cui Ning from the Tang dynasty, but there had been such objects that appeared in paintings from the Northern Qi dynasty. Thus, it is known that it may not have begun in the Tang dynasty.” In his exegesis of the word tuó (tea bowl stand), Yan Shigu 顏師古 (581–645) wrote: “Tuó used to hold books. The one with a bottom is called 囊 bag, and the one without a bottom is called tuó 橐, also pronounced 托tuó.”[33] It shows that 橐 and 托were the “loan words” in the early Tang Dynasty. More importantly, it showed the clear evidence that the specialized tea drinking utensils had taken place in the Northern and Southern dynasties.

In 1994, the Chinese historian and archaeologist Sun Ji 孫機explained about the recently excavated celadon wares in the areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangxi from the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties, “there are tea bowls with customized saucers for tea drinking that the center of these saucers are concaved. There are raised walls around the concaved center, and the shape is basically the same as the gold and silver saucers with inscribed characters chatuo 茶拓 (tea-holder) from the Tang Dynasty.”[34] These recent archaeological findings are basically consistent with Huang Bosi's records. Sun Ji made a clear distinction between tea bowl saucers and wine cup saucers for the first time: “The shapes of tea bowls and wine cups are similar, but the styles of their saucers are quite different. The one to hold a tea bowl is called chatuo or tea-holder, and the one that holds the wine cup is called jiutaizi or wine-stand; the latter protrudes a small round platform in the center of the saucer, and the wine cup is placed on the round platform.”[35] Sun Ji also emphasized: “The height of the wall in the tea saucer is increased as if a small bowl were added to the saucer so that the lower half of the tea bowl is completely set inside of it by the Song dynasty.”[36] Evidently, this type of saucer has become a fixed accessory for tea bowls. “Some of these saucers have a narrow-open mouth and others with a wide-open mouth. Some of the saucers are even hollow at the bottoms, making it difficult to use them for other purposes. In addition to porcelain and metal wares, the unearthed objects also include a silver-rimmed vermilion lacquer saucer of the Song dynasty tomb from Huanxin Village in the north of Changzhou, Jiangsu.”[37]

The mainstream academic conclusions:

The author (James A. Benn) displays good judgement when he states that tea was essentially a Tang invention. (Mair, 2016)

Bret Hinsch demonstrates as never before how an unpretentious infusion of the dried leaves of a bitter plant from the southern hinterland became the iconic beverage of high culture in central China (of the Tang dynasty). (Mair, 2016)

Sun Ji’s archaeological investigation on the recent excavated ceramic tea wares, particularly tea-holders (saucers) from the Eastern Jin and Southern dynasties, are recognized as the fixed accessories for tea bowls. “There are tea bowls with customized saucers for tea drinking that the center of these saucers is concaved. There are raised walls around the concaved center, and the shape is basically the same as the gold and silver saucers with inscribed characters chatuo 茶拓 (tea-holder) from the Tang Dynasty.” (Sun Ji, 2015)

Two simple questions:

Does the conclusion, precisely assertion that the Way of Chinese Tea was essentially a Tang dynasty invention become problematic, and therefore an obstacle in the scrutiny of the history of tea in China? Would it be sensible to be openminded considering the possibility that the Way of Chinese Tea already took its seminal formation since the Eastern Jin, and Northern and Southern dynasties?

[1]Victor H. Mair, The True History of Tea, (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2009), p. 100.
[2] Peter Bol, “Thinking about China’s Past”, (Harvard Magazine), p. 1.
[3] Lothar von Falkenhausen, “On the historiographical orientation of Chinese archaeology,” (Antiquity, Vol. 67, No. 257, 1993), pp. 893–849.
[4] Robert Bagley, Cambridge History of Ancient China, (London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999) p. 231.
[5] Mark Edward Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China, (Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 4, 365.
[6] 李零《何枝可依》, (北京: 三联出版社, 2009), p. 161.
[7] Anonymous, Historical Variations of China’s Frontiers, p. 346, JSTOR, vol. 18. 4 (Dec., 1945), pp. 346-354.
[8] 李零《何枝可依》, (北京: 三联出版社, 2009), p. 161.
[9] Ibid., 173.
[10] 彭衛等《中國風俗通史秦漢卷》, (上海: 上海文藝出版社2001), 41.
[11] James A. Benn, Tea in China, A religious and Cultural History, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), p. 25.
[12] Cf. Arthur Waley, The Book of Song, the Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, (New York: Grove Press, 1996).
[13] 《周禮》《十三經注疏》, (北京: 中華書局, 1980), p. 748.
[14] Bernhard Karlgren, Loan Characters in Pre-Han Texts, (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1968), p. 1.
[15] Marcus Bingenheimer, “Collation Strategies for the Buddhist Canon—As Seen in the Frequency and Impact of Character Variance in Canonical Editions of the Song Gaoseng Zhuan 宋 高僧傳 (T.2061),” East Asian Publishing and Society 4, no. 2 (2014), pp. 155-74. Mair states: “Especially striking for the purposes of this review are the instances of 荼 and 茶 shifting back and forth in different editions of the same text, and with later editions often replacing 荼 with 茶 (see pp. 159, 160, 166, and 170); Bingenheimer also supplied me with unpublished data showing clearly that 茶was a variant of 荼 as late as the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, and even till today where one can sometimes see 荼 in tea-related contexts.” Mair, book review “Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, by James A. Benn.” Journal of Chinese Studies No. 63-July 2016, pp. 308-316.
[16] 沈德符: “萬曆野獲編 /卷二十四 /畿輔 /京師名實相違 /段940 【京師名實相違】京師向有諺語云。翰林院文章。武庫司刀鎗。光祿寺荼湯。太醫院藥方。蓋譏名實之不稱也。然正不止此。儒生之曳白。無如國子監。官馬之駑下。無如太僕寺。曆學之固陋。無如欽天監。音樂之謬誤。無如太常寺。帑藏之空乏。無如太倉庫。士卒之老弱。無如三大營。書法之劣俗。與畫學之蕪穢。無如制誥兩房。文華武英兩殿。真可浩歎。至若京官自政事之外。惟有拜客赴席為日課。然皆不得自由。一入衙門。則前後左右皆紹興人。坐堂皇者如傀儡在牽絲之手。提東則東。提西則西。間有苛察者欲自為政。則故舉疑似難明之案。引久遠不行之例。使其耳目瞀亂。精彩凋疲。必至取上譴責而後已。若套子宴會但憑小唱。云請麪即麪。請酒即酒。請湯即湯。弋陽戲數折之後。各拱揖別去。曾得飲趣否。拜客則皆出長班授意。除赴朝。會謁貴要之外。遠近遲速。以及當求面。當到廳。當到門。導引指揮惟其所適。即使置一偶人於輿馬間。不過如此。世間通弊。固非固非一二人所能挽回。若前云諺語之屬。則開創之初。必無此事”; 徐珂: “清稗類鈔 /詼諧類 /京職各署之比儗 /段3476 京職各署之比儗京諺云:「翰林院文章，太醫院藥方，光祿寺荼湯，鑾儀衞轎扛。」又云:「吏科官，戶科飯，兵科紙，工科炭，刑科皁隸，禮科看。」蓋各言其職守也。又巡城御史諺云:「中城珠玉錦繡，東城市帛菽粟，南城禽魚花鳥，西城牛羊柴 炭，北城衣冠盜賊。」蓋各言其所巡之地，華樸喧寂，迥不同也。又稱翰林院講讀學士云:「無事日有事，有事日無事。」詹事府衙門云:「開印日封印，封印日開印。」蓋遇翰林院直日，講讀學士遞無事摺，如有應奏事件，則由掌院學士具摺而學士弗與也。至於東宮官屬，則政務清閒，用印日少故也。” Mair, Book Reviews “Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, by James A. Benn.” Journal of Chinese Studies No. 63-July 2016, 308-316.
[17] In October 1988, the “Lu Qiming fossils” were identified as Camellia sinensis or tea-seed fossils by multiple on-site surveys that were carried out by paleontologists from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Guiyang Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Guizhou Institute of Geology, the Guizhou Provincial Department of Agriculture, and the Guizhou Provincial Tea Research Institute. 胡伊然、陈璐瑶、蒋太明，“贵州晴隆茶籽化石的发现及其价值”,《农技服务》, 2019, 36 (11)。
[18] https://www.tsiosophy.com/2013/06/tianluoshan-tea-in-the-neolithic-era-3/
[19] 孙国平、郑云飞、中村慎一、铃木三男，“田螺山遗址出土山茶属植物遗存——六千年前中国已开始人工种茶的重要证据”, (《余姚市茶文化促进会、田螺山遗址出土山茶属植物遗存研究成果资料汇编》, 2016).
[20] Ibid., 铃木三男、郑云飞等著《浙江省田螺山遗址出土木材的树种鉴定》，北京大学中国考古学研究中心、浙江省文物考古研究所、田螺山遗址自然遗存综合研究合编, (北京: 文物出版社, 2011).
[21] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5788969/
[22] John C. Evans, Tea in China, the History of China’s National Drink, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), 39.
[23] Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree, (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1901), 163.
[24] Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire, the Tang Dynasty, (Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 1.
[25] Lewis’s skillful sword performance shares a deep resonance with Hegel. “Hegel simply consigned the Chinese permanently to their space outside the development of the World Spirit. Hegel says, ‘a relation to the rest of History could only exist in their case, through their being sought out, and their character investigated by others.’ ‘The question of by whom or how that seeking out was to be done was left open by Hegel,’ Spence concludes, ‘but the Western powers, with their ships, their diplomatic missions, and their opium, were rapidly beginning to provide the answer.’” Fann, This Self We Deserve, (Berkeley: Philosophy & Art Collaboratory, 2020), 23.
[26] Mair, Book Reviews “Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, by James A. Benn.” Journal of Chinese Studies No. 63-July 2016, pp. 308-316_._
[27] 飽思陶《茶典》, (濟南: 山東畫報社, 2004), p. 17.
[28] Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, (New York: Pantheon Book, 1972), p. 4.
[29] Ibid., 5.
[30] 《二十四史》《三國志》, (北京: 中華書局1997), p. 377.
[31] 張承宗等《中國風俗通史魏晉南北朝卷》, (上海: 上海文藝出版社2001), 52.
[32] 楊衒之《洛陽伽藍記》, (上海: 上海古籍出版社1993), pp. 580-30.
[33] 黃伯思《東觀餘論卷下》, (欽定四庫全書).
[34] 孫機《仰觀集古文物的欣賞與鑑別》, (北京文物出版社2015), p. 450.
[35] 孫機《中國古代物質文化》，(北京中華書局2015), p. 47.
[36] 孫機《仰觀集古文物的欣賞與鑑別》，(北京文物出版社2015), p. 462.
[37] 孫機《中國古代物質文化》，(北京中華書局2015), p. 67.

Some tea historians argue that the Japanese Zen Master Eisai Zenji 栄西禅師 (1141-1215) should be credited with the beginning of the tea tradition in Japan while others disagree. What is indisputable in Eisai's argument is in The Treatise on Drinking Tea for Life Cultivation, which states: “In the Great Country (of the Song China) 大國, they drink tea, as a result of which there are no heart diseases and people live long lives. Our country is full of sickly looking, skinny persons, and this is simply because we do not drink tea.” [2] In addition to Eisai's admiration of “the Great Country” and its tea tradition, it is also said that Eisai and his student Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 (1200-1253) instigated bringing Linji/Rinzai 臨濟宗 and Caodong/Soto 曹洞宗 Buddhism to Japan along with the Song style of whisking tea, the tea related karamono 唐物, and the Chinese objects of arts and crafts.

Japanese tea historian Murai Yasuhiko 村井康彥, however, avows a distinctive view: “The use of matcha (powdered tea) was transmitted from China and developed independently as chanoyu in Japan.” [3] Yasuhiko contends that the Song Buddhist monastic codes, Chanyuan Qinggui 《禪苑清規》Rules and Etiquettes of Chan Temples compiled by Buddhist monk Zong Yi 宗頤 in 1103, exerted great influence on and codified with what is called the qinggui/shingi 清規 rules at the Japanese Zen temples with the help of Chinese Buddhist missionaries Lanxi Daolong/ Rankei Dōryū 兰溪道隆 (1213-1278) and Qingzhuo Zhengcheng/ Seisetsu Shōchō 清拙正澄 (1274–1339). Chali/sarei 茶禮 “the tea rituals and rules” were a part of the qinggui/shingi rules. In this sense, Yasuhiko declares: “chanoyu emerged from the sarei of Zen.” [4] Like filtering a clear stream of Japanese cultural practice from the muddy flood of Chinese cultural influence, Yasuhiko focuses on “Japaneseness,” that is, he seeks historical factors and events that validate the idea of an independent development of Japanese culture. He concludes that when shingi rules were adopted at the Japanese Zen temples during the mid-fourteenth century, chanoyu was then created. In other words, the development of the Japanese Tea Ceremony was a Japanese cultural development based on the Japanese Zen monastic rules.

Like filtering a clear stream of Japanese cultural practice in the muddy flood of Chinese cultural influence, Yasuhiko focuses on the “Japaneseness,” i.e. seeking historical factors and events that validate the idea of an independent development of Japanese culture. He concludes that when shingi rules were adopted at the Japanese Zen temples during the mid-fourteenth century, chanoyu was then created. In other words, the development of the Japanese Tea Ceremony was a Japanese cultural development based on the Japanese Zen monastic rules.

Tea drinking had long become a Buddhist monastic practice since the Tang dynasty (618-907). In the ten volumes of Rules and Etiquettes of Chan Temples, volume five is entirely devoted to detailed tea rituals and rules. Minute tea rules permeate the entire text, such as: “One must peacefully hold the tea bowl and the tea bowl stand with both hands in front of one's chest, not too low or too high... one must not blow air to one's tea (in order to cool down one's tea), one must not drop the tea bowl, nor should one make noise when one drinks tea..." [5] In 1355, monk Dehui 德輝 compiled the Yuan Imperial Court version Baizhang Qinggui《百丈清規》that was originally composed during the Tang dynasty. The section "To tea gathering" “赴茶湯” states:

When the abbot and the titled monks offer tea, such rituals and rules are extremely important, one must not neglect. If one accepts the invitation, one must clearly acknowledge the time and location in order to avoid hastiness. If one is in sickness or urgency (in the toilet), one must submit one’s excuse to the host. However, when the abbot offers tea, one should never decline. If one neglects such tea, one will be dismissed from the monastery. [6] We have known for a long time that largely nonphonetic scripts like Chinese or Japanese included phonetic elements from a very early period. They remained structurally dominated by the ideogram or algebra, and thus we have a testimony to a powerful movement of civilization developing outside of all logocentrism. [7] Chinese and Japanese did not and still do not write or read in phonetics in everyday life. Without the actual characters 禪, 清規, 茶禮, the Romanized phonetics Chan/Zen, qinggui/shingi, and chali/sarei are nothing but Romanized phonetics. In effect, the Romanized phonetics have denied and effaced the original characters, gained their own lives, and created a “double” reality, which in turn gave the phonetic language users convenience as well as misunderstanding and misinterpretation for their Chinese or Japanese sightings or expeditions.

The question never gets a good answer or the same answer but it should always be asked: When Chan Buddhism and mocha were transmitted to Japan, how and what discrepancies (misinterpretations and/or reinterpretations) occurred between the transmitted 禪 (chan)，末茶 (mocha), and 茶禮 (chali) and the received 禪 (zen), 抹茶 (matcha), and 茶禮 (sarei)? Despite the phonetic differences between Chan and Zen, Mocha and Matcha, Chali and Sarei, to say that "chanoyu emerged from the sarei of Zen" would seem to lead to the idea of a choice of phonetic speech. It is then all about speech. As Foucault used to say: "We must ceaselessly speak, for as long and as loudly as this indefinite and deafening noise—longer and more loudly so that in mixing our voices with it we might succeed—if not in silencing and mastering it—in modulating its futility into the endless murmuring we call literature." [8] We have murmured great literatures of histories including tea history. Of course, this is not to imply a word game. It implies what Habermas, summarizing Foucault’s view, termed the twentieth century “enterprise” of the human sciences:

The human sciences are pseudo-sciences because they do not see through the compulsion to a problematic doubling of the self-relating subject; they are not in a position to acknowledge the structurally generated will to self-knowledge and self-reification and thus they are also unable to free themselves from the power that drives them. [9] Or so, in Foucault's words, what we believe about the continuity of the history of ideas, i.e. the human sciences—in short, our history and our cultural traditions—is only reconstructed by the restitution of our knowledge, thought, belief, and practice in the course of time, or in the specific given place and time. [10] To this end, whether the Song whisking of powdered tea and the Song Buddhist monastic rules of tea exerted influence on the development of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, or whether the Japanese Tea Ceremony was a single development from the Japanese Zen monastic rules, it certainly was a way of drinking powdered tea. The way of the Tea Ceremony has been the whisking powdered tea ever since (no one has attempted to add milk to it).

Yasuhiko states, in the early history of Japanese Tea Ceremony shoin chanoyu 書院茶道, which was established in the early Muramachi shogunate 室町幕府 (1336-1573), something called karamono suki (taste for Chinese objects of art and craft) was developed. The Chinese paintings, scrolls of calligraphy, and ceramics—especially tea bowls, incense burners, and flower vases—were in great demand, thus “the decoration of the shoin room with karamono and the preparation of tea using karamono utensils” became essential. [11] To decorate the tea room with the imported Chinese objects of art and craft, and to prepare tea with the Chinese tea wares, certainly created overall financial strain on the Japanese side. Interestingly, Yasuhiko argues that the karamono suki actually might have only served a decorative purpose:

The transmission of shingi was accompanied by the accumulation at Zen temples of many things of Buddhism, including paintings, scrolls of calligraphy, tenmoku tea bowls. What interests us, however, is whether these things were immediately sought after by the people of Japan and became objects of aesthetic appreciation. [12]

According to Yasuhiko, the shoin chanyu idea, the highest form of tea, was the tea of “karamono magnificence,” however, it might have only been the “decorative furnishings” without aesthetic value. As the Japanese-trained East Asian art historian Ming-liang Hsieh 謝明良 states, some of the jian ware (also known as tenmoku), the black-brown-glazed Chinese tea bowls, which have been considered as “the national treasures” by Japanese, could be the Chinese imperial gifts granted to Japan by the Chinese emperors. According to The Historical Documents on Trade between Japan and Ming China 《日明勘合貿易史料》, the Ming emperor Yongle (1360-1424) granted to Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408) “Eleven jian ware tea bowls with gilt rims” on January 16th, 1406. The Great Ming Statutes of Wanli《萬曆大明會典》also confirms that the imperial gifts of “the ancient musical instruments, scrolls of calligraphy, and paintings,” were granted to Japan during Yongle’s time.[13]

Furthermore, the Medieval Japanese book The Imperial Artifact Records 《君臺觀左右帳記》Kundaikan Sōchō Ki attributed to 能阿弥 Nōami (1397-1471), states that the jian ware tea bowls were in extreme demand at the time. This book ranks Jian ware as follows: 矅變 Yohen, “iridescent,” is the supreme sacred vessel, and is thus rarely seen in the world. It is black-glazed with small star-like dots that are surrounded by jade-like iridescence. It is as beautiful as silk, valued at 10,000 bolts of silk. 油滴 Yuteki, the “oil spot,” the lesser treasure, is valued at 5,000 bolts of silk. 建盞 Kansan (hare's fur glazed), the standard jian ware tea bowl, is valued at 3,000 bolts of silk. Even 鱉盞, the Jizhou tortoiseshell glazed tea bowl, is valued at 1,000 bolts of silk.[14]

In Medieval China and Japan, a bolt of silk would be equivalent to a 30-40 foot long and 3- to 4-foot-wide roll of silk today. Would it be too costly to prepare tea with a Chinese tea bowl that costs several thousand rolls of silk just for decorative purpose? Or were the Medieval Japanese just too wealthy? When Buddhist monk Eichū 永忠 served tea to Emperor Saga (嵯峨天皇 Saga-tennō 786 – 842), he complained about the poor quality of the food served during mass at the Buddhist temples and recommended that the Emperor improve it. Yasuhiko says, “No doubt Eichū, who had lived so long in China, made this recommendation because of his enthusiasm for the food in Chinese temples.”[15] This comment reminds us of the remarks made by Eisai, who also lived long in China: “our country is full of sickly looking, skinny persons.” It is thus reasonable to suspect that the Japanese living standard was not as high as the Chinese at the time. It is also reasonable to suspect that it would not be possible for a common monk or a lay person to have tea in a Chinese tea bowl valued at several thousand rolls of silk only for decorative purpose. In fact, it was a great and costly task for the eminent monks and nobility to achieve the “karamono magnificence.” Clearly, Yasuhiko's statement is a prelude to his own scholarly argument to fund a Japanese ideological expedition to “shift from karamono to wamono,” from Chinese to Japanese. In other words: to mix and modify Chinese things into Japanese things so to demonstrate and prove the independent Japanese development.

Japanese cultural historian Kumakura Isao 熊倉功夫 confirms:

In Shuko's (also known as Murata Jukō 村田珠光 1423-1502) time, the highest form of tea was the tea of “karamono magnificence,” which involved objects imported from China. Shuko, however, understood also the beauty of the “cold and withered,” as found in renga, and the beauty of the imperfect and incomplete. He perceived this latter beauty in such wamono (Japanese things) as Shigaraki and Bizen ceramic ware, which, compared to the art and craft of China, was imperfect and rough. Shuko sought to discover a new beauty in the contrasting taste of kara (Chinese) perfection and wa (Japanese) crudeness and imperfection.[16]

Rikyū (Sen no Rikyū 千利休 1522-1591), the greatest chanoyu master, however, did not stop at harmonizing and mixing. Dynamically he interpreted the idea of blending Japanese and Chinese tastes as a quest for beauty that neither possessed. This was the beauty of “Korean things” (Kōrai-mono), which were claimed to have a warmth unknown to the works of China and a delicacy of texture and craftsmanship not found in Japan. It was an ideal beauty that accorded with the ideal of wabi.[17] We are informed by Isao’s essay about Rikyū that there was “the contrasting taste of kara (Chinese) perfection and wa (Japanese) crudeness and imperfection.” Was there also a contrast between the Chinese sophistication and perfection and the Japanese crudeness and imperfection in terms of know-how, the ceramic technology? The term _wabi_侘び originally refers to the miserable feeling that comes from material deprivation. According to Yasuhiko, wabi was taken into chanoyu and gained its aesthetic value at the height of the craze for mono-suki (the taste for material things).[18]

It is logical to interpret the craze for mono-suki in this way: when the craze for the taste of material things was unfulfilled, the craze only increased. The aesthetic at the center of the Japanese Tea Ceremony was based on things, thus the development of the Japanese Tea Ceremony was based on tea ware and rituals, which were subject to social and economic conditions. As Yasuhiko clarifies, “chanoyu encountered wabi as an aesthetic based on things. Wabi was, indeed, the final point in the development of mono-suki.”[19] In other words, the foundation of chanoyu was all but developing a particular taste for tea ware and related objects. Although Shuko established Sōan chanoyu 草庵茶道, also known as Wabicha 侘び茶道, Rikyū indeed completed the essence of Wabicha and brought the Japanese Tea Ceremony to its zenith. However, it was the daimyo 大名, or warlords like Oda Nobunaga (織田信長 1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉 1537-1598), Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康 1543-1616), and the others alike who patronized and made the height of Japanese Tea Ceremony during the most violent time in the Japanese history. The American religious historian Theodore M. Ludwig remarks:

Why were these men of power attracted to the tea art to such an extent that they not only amassed hoards of valuable tea utensils but immersed themselves in the discipline and practice of chanoyu? And why did the leading masters of the art, like Rikyū, drawn to the centers of power, willingly serve in positions and places that seemed even to some contemporaries to contradict the basic values and ideals of chanoyu?[20]

The contradiction between the simple, cold 冷, crude, withered 枯, and unrestrained wabi tea and the sophisticated, magnificent, restrained daimyo tea (shoin cha) is sharp and clear. It is the dichotomy between the “transformatory” and the “confirmatory” in the established social order, in short, the gap between the poor and the rich, powerlessness and power. Idealists may say that the wabi tea functions as a ritual to promote humility, equality, and thus to overcome violence, i.e., to close the gap. In reality, the gap can never be closed, and this is why the daimyos and wabi masters (Hideyoshi and Rikyū, for instance) were deeply involved in both. As Ludwig remarks, the value of using the chanoyu masters in political and economic negotiations has been well recognized. But it is also important to recognize the use of chanoyu as ritual process in the context of the new societal structure:

Ritual, whether religious, quasi-religious, or secular, has essential public functions in societies: It communicates values and structures, it reduces conflict by affording a means of mutual recognition, and it dramatizes consensus regarding roles and thus motivates actions for healthy intragroup bonding.[21]

The practice of Ritual is nonetheless subject to political-cultural and social-economic conditions. The relationship between Hideyoshi and Rikyū, and the death of Rikyū, confirm that the change of tea ware and tea ritual is subject to the above conditions. The simple and undeniable facts are that Rikyū was Hideyoshi's tea master first, and then became one of Hideyoshi's closest confidants. Hideyoshi ordered him to commit “ritual suicide” after Rikyū became the most eminent tea master in his lordship. Historians have speculated on the actual causes for Rikyū's death ever since. The popular assumptions are as follows: Rikyū placed a life-sized statue of himself in the Kimmōkaku, a structural addition to the main gate of the Daitokuji (大徳寺 the temple of Great Virtue) that he and his family donated; Rikyū refused to give his daughter to Hideyoshi as a concubine; Rikyū demanded exorbitant prices for his tea utensils.

China began to exert influence over Japan fundamentally since the early Tang dynasty. From 607 to 894, Japan dispatched about 20 imperial delegations (Kentō-shi 遣唐使) to China. Each delegation consisted of several dozens to several hundreds of people, including imperial envoys, scholars, monks, and merchants. The Annotations of Shiji 《 史記正義》 by the Tang scholar Zhang Shoujie (張守節 early 8th century) has a trivial entry: “The Empress Wu (武則天 624-705) changed the name of the country Wo to the name of the country Japan 武后改倭國為日本國。”[22] Its contemporary sources, The Old Tang History 《舊唐書 》, The New Tang History《新唐書》, and later The Song History《宋史》, reveal a similar message: the name of the country Japan was changed from Wo to Japan because the Wo people were self-conscious about the name of their country after they learned more of the Chinese language.[23] The discussion about the meaning of the character 倭 between Chinese and Japanese has been notoriously inconclusive, but the message consists of the simple question of how much China exerted influence over Japan historically.

According to Japanese scholar Enomoto Wataru 榎本涉, after the mission of Kentō-shi ceased in 894, the Japanese trading and the unofficial delegations to China massively increased. Roughly from 500-1500, the Chinese influenced/trained Japanese officials, scholars, monks, and merchants returned to Japan with the Chinese imperial administrative systems, advanced science and technology, literature, arts and crafts, religious doctrines and practices, and hundreds of thousands of ships loaded with Chinese goods. Concurrently, the ideological and financial strains on Japan were immeasurably accumulated. In tandem, more than a dozen Chinese dynasties were, as in the game of musical chairs, replacing one after another. Subsequently, the Chinese cultural and commercial exportations to Japan were impeded by the historical developments. By the 1500s, the Chinese jian ware tea bowls, for instance, not only cost thousands of bolts of silk but were also hard to obtain in Japan since the Chinese stopped making them by the end of the 1300s.

Wabi, as we know, also refers to “the miserable feeling that comes from material deprivation.” Under the constant threat of ideological and material deprivation, the Japanese would have felt greatly wabi, or miserable. Therefore, when a tea master knew with certainty that he could no longer get the most essential element, a good Chinese tea bowl, for his chanoyu, he would definitely have felt wabi. As a logical result, wabi was taken into chanoyu, and its aesthetic became most valued at the height of the craze for the taste for material things: creating a new taste for tea bowls that were obtainable and economical was the only logical conclusion.

Rikyū, as a devoted Buddhist who accepted the miserable feeling that comes from material deprivation or wabi, accepted the essential Buddhist concept of Impermanence. Taking a crude, imperfect, and locally made tea bowl, bringing it into the world of chanoyu, and making it a wabi tea bowl, wabi chanoyu was then the reasonable outcome. Of course, this is speculation, but it is not entirely unreasonable. As Isao points out, “Rikyū instilled chanoyu with a new kind of wabi taste. And if there is one aspect of this taste that comes most readily to mind as something Rikyū alone discovered and nurtured, it is the beauty of raku pottery.”[24] This statement reminds us that one of the speculated causes for Rikyū’s death was that he demanded exorbitant prices for his tea utensils.

Yasuhiko concludes wabicha, the highest form of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, in a very precise Japanese way:

Wabi does not deny things, but rather to penetrate as far as possible to their true essence and therein to discern beauty. In the beauty of the plain lies the ultimate sense of beauty that the Japanese have discovered. It is a beauty of restraint. Wabi goes beyond the aesthetics of things and becomes a state of mind.[25]

Regarding the Chinese tradition and influence, or the “karamono magnificence” and the expensive Chinese jian ware tea bowls, Yasuhiko clarifies:

We must note, however, in regard to the development of this wabiwamono aesthetic, the karamono suki and wamono suki were not diametrically opposing tastes. It is true that karamono were considered at the time to be objects of richness and perfection and were contrasted with the rough and simple beauty of wamono. But since many karamono were used in Zen temples to suggest the Zen state of enlightenment, it is dangerous to say there were no aesthetic correspondences between karamono and wamono. Indeed, it appears that in some sense the aesthetic of wamono simplicity was nurtured within the long tradition of karamono suki.[26]

The Chinese tea bowls were turned into replicas and sacraments, and became the Japanese “National Treasures.” We may wonder why the Japanese have accepted these foreign objects as national treasures? Yasuhiko concludes:

I doubt that there is any other form of artistic conduct that is so indulgent and extravagant. But it is not just a matter of accumulating things. A major feature of chanoyu is the arranging of these things—that is, the suitable display of them according to the time, place, and people involved. In other words, the artistic conduct of chanoyu is closely related to the ethic of entertaining people, and in this sense chanoyu cannot simply be categorized as an art.[27]

This is to say that Rikyū reformed the rules of the game: cease to seek and use the magnificent but expensive and deprived Chinese things, and instead, beautify, ritualize, and seek the crude and imperfect (and, to a certain extent, impaired) Japanese things. It was good for the unique Japanese aesthetic and for the Japanese economy. Most importantly, to be illuminated in the sense of the miserable feeling that comes from material deprivation, or wabi, and to utilize the sense of wabi, are means to the immediacy of awakening.

The earliest book on the Japanese Tea Ceremony in English was written by Okakura Kakuzō (岡倉覚三1862-1913), who immigrated to the USA in 1904. In The Book of Tea, Kakuzō calls the Japanese Tea Ceremony “a cup of humanity.” Although the contemporary scholars do not take Kakuzō’s works seriously, he nevertheless exerted great influence on Martin Heidegger, Ezra Pound, and other Western cultural tycoons. According to Kakuzō, before the hour of Rikyū’s death, he had his last “cup of humanity,” performed his last wabicha ritual, and uttered: “Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of misfortune, be used by man.” He spoke, and shattered his beloved wabi tea bowl.[28]

Benjamin Schwartz once called Confucius a “cultural hero.”[29] We may call Rikyū a “heroic cultural entrepreneur.” Rikyū’s suicide made his “cup of humanity” a manifesto, which completed and perfected chanoyu, and at the same time, cursed chanoyu forever. Chanoyu became a ritual of simulation, in other words, a social means of collective operation since Rikyū’s death. As Yasuhiko states, during the Japanese Tea Ceremony development, “what was at first a pursuit of men spread also among women, and today women are in fact predominant in chanoyu.”[30] Particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the hands of Japanese courtesans and geishas, chanoyu became a national and social-psychological defense against Western imperialism. Rejecting westernization and withdrawing into native tradition thus helped to consolidate the Japanese identity.

In 1884, the Ukiyo-e (or the images of floating world) artist Toyohara Kunichika 豊原国周 (1835-1900) made “the Fifty-four Modern Feelings 現時五十四情” series depicting chanoyu, kadō 華道, flower arrangement, Kakemono 掛物, hanging scroll paintings, and calligraphy (and “the way of smoking pipe 煙道”). These wood block prints were designed precisely to convey “the modern feelings” instead of the “ancient feelings” by courtesans and geishas. The intrinsic spiritual agent of tea that was brought to Japan from Song China, and avowed by the early Zen masters, was replaced by Rikyū's heroic-cultural ritual and economic-entrepreneurialendeavor first, and then by militaristic, meticulous, and rigid ritual and collective social operation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One may wonder: has chanoyu become the accent of the culture of courtesans and geishas? or has the culture of courtesans and geishas become the accent of chanoyu?