Calligraphy Masterpiece Shows Tea Tradition in Tang Dynasty

Legend has it that tea was first used as medication by Shennong (legendary god of farming) more than 5,000 years ago. In the Qin (221-206 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) dynasties, tea became an everyday beverage. In the following 2,000 years, tea-processing technology underwent major changes. In ancient times, tea leaves were frequently compressed into cakes; a tea-leave cake was cooked with other ingredients together to produce tea soup; then tea leaves were steamed to make cakes, which were made into tea; afterwards, some people developed a technology to crush tea leaves and used shredded tea leaves to make tea; finally people hit upon the technique of stove-drying tea leaves to stop fermentation and oxidation and make tea with dehydrated tea leaves. These methods are recorded in professional books of tea written in various dynasties as well as literary works. As tea has been a daily necessity and part of culture and life of Chinese literati, paintings throughout history have vividly and faithfully depicted tea-sipping and tea-making activities. These paintings combine to serve as an illustrated history of Chinese tea.

Taking Preface to the Orchid Pavilion by Strategy, a painting made in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), is a perfect case in point. The painting was created by Yan Liben and it tells how Xiao Yi takes a priceless treasure of calligraphy by strategy. Yan Liben (?-673)was minister of works and then prime minister of the Tang Dynasty, but he was also an accomplished painter specialized in illustrating stories, and his representative paintings tell stories about the royal houses and noble people of the dynasty. Li Shimin, the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty, fell in love with the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi (303-361), a great calligrapher of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420). The emperor had sent several envoys to the southern part of China to get Wang’s Preface to the Orchid Pavilion, a great essay handwritten by the calligrapher himself. The missions all failed.

Fang Xuanling, the prime minister of Emperor Taizong, recommended Xiao Yi, a grandson of an emperor of the Five Dynasties (907-960), to try to get the masterpiece. Xiao Yi disguised himself as a Confucius scholar with a great passion for Wang’s calligraphy. Xiao brought some of Wang’s writings to a temple in Zhejiang. Monk Biancai, a disciple of Wang’s seventh-generation great grandson, was in possession of the great writing. The monk did not recognize Xiao’s hidden intention, thinking the scholar was just an innocent enthusiast. So the unsuspecting monk handed the authentic calligraphy over to Xiao for the scholar to take a closer look. It was the last time the monk saw the calligraphic masterpiece. After getting the treasure for the emperor, Xiao was handsomely rewarded. The loss of the great legacy killed the monk. He died of guilt and regret.

For scholars of tea studies, what they see is not a thrilling story, though the painting illustrates the story well. Scholars see the way people of the Tang Dynasty make tea. In the painting, an old man sits in front of an oven and inside the pot on the oven is tea about to boil. The old man is stirring the tea leaves and a boy servant is holding bowls in his hands. On a bamboo table beside the oven are tea bowls and mats and a wheel used to crush tea leaves and a can to store crushed tea leaves.

The painting was created 60 years before the birth of Lu Yu, a scholar of Tang Dynasty who wrote the Book of Tea. Scholars point out that the painting illustrates two interesting things about tea in the Tang Dynasty. First, by the early years of the Tang Dynasty, tea-drinking was already part of everyday life among ordinary people and monks in Buddhist temples in Zhejiang not only drank tea but also entertained guests with tea. Scholars say that this is a convincing example that tea was first popular in southern part of the Yangtze River Delta before the habit spread to northern China. Second, in the early Tang Dynasty, tea was boiled in a pot and stirred with a bamboo device during the cooking before it was ladled out to bowls and served. This illustration paints a picture of what Lu Yu describes in his classic about 100 years later.

Today there are two ancient copies of the original painting by Yan Liben. One copy was created in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) and is now in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The other copy, painted in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), is now in the collection of the Liaoning Provincial Museum. The two copies look similar, but the copy of the Northern Song Dynasty shows only the monk and the scholar in the right part of the painting and a boy servant is about to take the priceless handwriting.

Ju Ran, a landscape painter of the Five Dynasties, created a painting under the same title. A monk of Nanjing, Ju Ran stood out as a landscape artist of the Southern Style. Although he painted the story, his painting focuses on landscape without showing any detail about tea drinking.