The Tea Classic
Summary of the work
Lu Yu (733-804), author of the Classic of Tea, describes an art of living around this beverage of unsuspected refinement. He distinguishes nine essential elements: brewing, plant selection, utensils, fuel, water, drying, powdering, cooking and tasting. He travelled throughout China's main tea-growing regions to gather information about the plant, classifying the best plants and critiquing tea qualities in a manner not dissimilar to wine oenologists.
In Lu Yu's time, poetry, painting, music and tea tasting were already, and would become even more so after him, avenues of spiritual development. Influenced by his best friend Jiaoran, a famous Chan/Zen poet and monk, and having himself been raised in a Chan monastery, Lu Yu also introduces us to tea as a Way to enlightenment and participates in the spread of this beverage so appreciated by the learned, as shown in particular by this verse by Wang Wei (699-761): "A cup of tea! I live again!"
The preparation of tea according to Lu Yu was very different from today's method of infusing leaves. It is described with a number of highly poetic images that refer to animals or plants and show Lu Yu's great sense of observation of the plant world. This text has exerted considerable influence, not only in China itself, but also in Japan and Korea.
Conference organized under the aegis of the Inalco Foundation.
Catherine Despeux, now an honorary professor, was formerly a university professor at Inalco, Chinese studies department. She specializes in body techniques and self-cultivation in Taoism, traditional Chinese medicine and Buddhism. Her research has also focused on the relationship between medicine, society and religion in medieval China, with studies notably of medical manuscripts found in Dunhuang, studies published in a collective work she edited, Médecine, religion et société dans la Chine médiévale (Paris, Collège de France, 2010). She has also explored the history of women in Taoism and the practices specific to it.
Lu Yu (733-804), taken up in a monastery in Jingling (Hubei), received a Buddhist and literate education. Leaving the monastery at the age of 12 to lead a life of acrobatics, he was soon noticed for his diverse talents by high-ranking officials and men of letters. At the age of 22, during the An Lushan revolt, he emigrated south to Wuxing (present-day Huzhou, Zhejiang) and led an itinerant, eremitical life, revolving around his passion for tea. Protected by the famous calligrapher and scholar Yan Zhenqing, he frequented great poets. He died in 804 and was buried in a monastery near Wuxing.