Gwangju News

Korean

Canto X ( The excellence of Dongda, Korean tea)

Though Korea tea is originally
The same as Chinese tea
Its color, aroma, and use
Boast of special merits.
Yookam tea tastes brilliant,
Mongsam tea has medicinal effects
While Dongda (Korean tea) has both.
The great ancient recognized it.

from “Dongdasong” by the venerable Cho Eui

By  Warren Parsons

Tea is an infused beverage made from the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis tree. Tea, also refers to the leaves, dried or un-dried, of the same plant before they are infused. This has led to some confusion over years because many infused beverages are referred to as “tea”. In Korea for example, there is ginger tea and jujube tea. While it is not incorrect to calls these delicious drinks “tea”, neither of them is actually made from the camellia sinensis plant. Finally, to add to the confusion, since there is only one type of tea plant, all the varieties of true tea, regardless of color, taste, and texture, all come from the same plant.

Camellia Sinensis is an evergreen, flowering, fruit bearing tree indigenous to the temperate mountain areas of the Himalayas. Native peoples from present day Nepal to Sichuan province in China have picked and consumed wild grown tea leaves for thousands of years. Originally and still to this day, remote villages have consumed the tea, boiled in water, for its stimulating medicinal effects. During the legendary Shang dynasty of China and into the later Zhou period, tea began to makes its way out of the high mountains into the low lying lands in all directions. This early tea was packed in large compressed bricks and traded on horseback throughout central, south, and east Asia. As tea continued to makes its way into the eager hands of consumers in China’s large cities, it soon lost its strictly medicinal use. Tea began to have a spiritual and religious significance and the practitioners of Buddhism and Daoism embraced it.

It wasn’t until the further unification of China under the Qin and Han Dynasties that tea began to have a larger place in society on the whole. The era of wild-growing tea for local consumption disappeared as demand spread throughout China. Because of the tighter, more organized trade routes instituted with the strengthening of imperial power in China, tea entered the markets from the mountains in much larger volumes. Moreover, as the demand for tea grew, so did the area of cultivated tea. Soon traders brought tea plants and seeds throughout the country and set up new gardens in tea friendly environments.

Finally, during the Tang dynasty, the height of Chinese art and culture, tea drinking took on a new sense of popularity. With even greater and more efficient trade routes and increasingly larger areas of tea cultivation, tea continued to move out of the incense draped confines of religion and into the cups of just about anyone who could afford it. During the Tang period, tea culture flourished, and tea drinking, especially among the upper classes, became an important daily ritual. Special tea wares and accessories were made to accompany the liquor of tea. Even though tea culture expanded greatly, interestingly tea still remained a rather coarse beverage. Tang producers compressed tea into bricks or into ornately decorated moulds, and while these pretty shapes looked wonderful, the liquor, when brewed was still very bitter and benefited from the addition of salt, fruit, or flowers.

It was also during the Tang Dynasty that tea made its way to Japan and to Korea. Chinese and Korean monks who traveled between the two kingdoms exchanged wisdom, news, and no doubt tea. Tea entered Korea during the Silla dynasty and tea drinking and tea culture flourished well into the Goryeo dynasty. Not surprisingly, the Goryeo period is famous for its beautiful celadon that is glazed to compliment the color of tea. Equally, the people of Japan’s Heian and Kamakura eras appreciated the presence of tea and adopted many of the tea drinking habits from their neighbors.

Needless to say, tea drinking continued well into the China’s Song dynasty. The Song kings and aristocrats were famous for their art and poetry, their ornate gardens, and elegant tea culture. No longer satisfied with coarse brick tea, Song tea makers developed a fine powered tea, which was whipped in a large tea bowl with wonderfully crafted bamboo whisks. In many ways, tea drinking became a highly elegant and stylized affair. From the accessories, to the paintings, to the poetry, the Song tea ceremony exemplified the extravagance of the era. Similarly, the modern tea ceremony in Japan, which emphasizes strict procedures and uses finely ground green tea called “matcha,” owes its beginnings to the early Song influence. This influence, however, was severed by the Mongolian invasion and conquest of the Song kingdom.

Kublai Khan, the great Mongolian leader and grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered China in 1271 with his well-trained mounted army. After removing the Song leaders of their power he set up a new capital city in northern China closer to his homeland. He became the great emperor of the Yuan dynasty ruling his empire from the Forbidden City. In his new capital, today’s Beijing, he built a new palace, made new laws, and changed tea-drinking habits forever. Unhappy with the coarse brick tea and also with the ostentatious tea ceremony of the Song, the Mongolians worked to create a loose-leaf tea that could easily be boiled with milk. This style of tea drinking is the predecessor of today’s tea-drinking habits and the first step towards the production of green tea.

During the Ming Dynasty, China returned to Han Chinese leadership and tea culture picked up where the Song left off, but with a new style of tea. The Ming producers adapted the loose-leaf style left by the Mongolians, took away the milk, and discovered the way to make delicate green tea. With this new subtle and refined tea, all things surrounding tea culture developed to accommodate it. Tea gardens and producers experimented with various methods of production, roasting, and drying, adding to the diversity of teas produced in China and setting the precedent for today’s tea production. Most appropriately, porcelain production too changed to accommodate the new style of tea. While earlier darker teas called for earthier colored glazes, Ming kilns developed clean, bright, white and blue glazes to highlight the green color of their tea.

Inevitably the Ming dynasty would fall, giving rise to China’s last dynasty, the Qing. The Qing rulers from Manchuria, like the Mongolians of the Yuan dynasty, couldn’t develop a taste for the delicate drinking habits of the Chinese aristocracy. The new emperor preferred a darker brew, taken with milk, which is what he served to the first European explorers who arrived in his Kingdom during the mid 1600’s.

The Dutch and the Portuguese arrived first and they brought tea back with them to Europe and to the New World. During the early days of European trade and conquest in Asia, tea was an important factor throughout. To satisfy the foreign demand, the Chinese developed a special type of dark tea that could withstand the long voyage to Europe. This durable tea was black tea, and when it arrived in Europe, people became addicted. The Dutch also brought tea in 1670 to New Amsterdam and the English to their Massachusetts colony. This set off an insatiable desire for more and more tea, and more and more trade. All the major European nations were vying for the lucrative tea trade from China. In the end, England succeeded in securing a monopoly in the Chinese market.

The British East India company, operating just outside of Canton (present day Guangzhou), dictated the supply and price of nearly all the tea that left China. This not only angered other European nations but also Britain’s own colonies. In 1773, during the infamous Boston Tea Party, dozens of American revolutionaries dumped hundreds of pounds of tea from the decks of newly arrived British trade ships. This was one of many signs of protest against England’s colonial power and it set off a series of events that led to America’s Declaration of Independence.

War, however, did not end the English tea monopoly, which lasted until 1834, well after the American Revolution. Without full control and with competition from other Europeans powers, England looked elsewhere for a strategic advantage. They found their leverage in India with the production and sale of opium. Against the demands of the Chinese emperor, England continued to trade large quantities of opium into China in exchange for tea. This led to the Opium Wars from 1839 to 1842. Embarrassed, China gave into England’s trade demands, and furthermore gave England a permanent lease on a small island at the end of the Pearl River called Hong Kong.

Even with a stronger hold on trade, England still lacked control over production. For some time it had been known that tea grew wild in India, but the English viewed this as an inferior species and were reluctant to cultivate it. Eventually, in the 1848, a Scottish businessman clandestinely entered Fujian province and returned to India with tea plants, seeds, and 80 Chinese tea experts. With this newly found tea knowledge, tea was successfully cultivated in Darjeeling in northern India from Chinese trees. Additionally, at around the same time, the native tea plants in India were found to be a different strain of the same plant and, after years of unsuccessful production and cultivation, tea was finally produced in the Assam region. From here the rest is history, with the newly cultivated Assam bushes and the production techniques developed by the British, tea gardens spread throughout Assam, southern India, and into Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1875. England, Europe and the world now had almost unlimited access to all the black tea they needed. All that was left was the invention of the tea bag in favor of the cumbersome teaspoon, and the replacement of afternoon tea with tea anytime.

Writer’s Note:

The writing of this article is relevant for a couple of reasons. #1. Many readers of the Gwangju News live in Jeollanam-do, which produces much of the tea in South Korea. #2. One of Korea’s most important advocates of tea and the Korean tea ceremony, the venerable Cho Eui, was born in Muan. He spent much his life at various temples around Jeollanam-do and wrote arguably the most important Korean book about tea. Fortunately this book, entitled “Dongdasong,” was published in English for the first time this past summer. I have included a passage from the work with this article. Enjoy and drink tea.

Picture #1 caption:

Camellia Sinensis flowers above the Uijae Museum in Mudeung Mountain Provincial Park.

Picture #2 caption:

The Chinese character for tea, reading the three elements from top to bottom, can be interpreted as meaning:

“The revered plant that sustains man in his situation on earth.”

Three elements: “plant” or “grass”, “man,” “tree or “being rooted.”

Within China there are two major pronunciations of this character, in Mandarin or Cantonese “Cha” or in the Fujian dialect “Te”. So depending on where the tea originally came from, different countries and languages have slightly different ways of referring to the same plant.

Historical Timeline:

Shang Dynasty 1766-1050 BC

Zhou Dynasty 1122-256 BC

Qin Dynasty 221-210 BC

Han Dynasty 206 BC ? 210 AD

Tang Dynasty 618-907 AD

Song Dynasty 960-1279 AD

Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368 AD

Ming Dynasty 1368-1644 AD

Qing Dynasty 1644-1912 AD

Japan

Heian era 794-1185 AD

Kamakura era 1185-1333 AD

Korea

Unified Silla Dynasty 668-935 AD

Goryeo Dynasty 918-1392 AD

Joseon Dynasty 1392-1910 AD

Western Trade and Colonialism

Early 1600’s Dutch and Portuguese traders arrive in Asia

1670 Tea arrives in Massachusetts and New Amsterdam

1773 Boston Tea Party

1834 British Monopoly Broken

1839-1842 Opium Wars

1848 Tea Cultivated in India (Darjeeling and Assam)

1875 Tea Cultivated in Ceylon (Sri Lanka

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