Tea Classic Illustrated

Author: Ruan Haogeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: Tea culture has endured for thousands of years in China, becoming an important branch of traditional Chinese culture. Whether it was emperors and nobles, scholars, common people, each, at their own different levels of life, enjoyed tea drinking with great pleasure, and each recorded or expressed the myriad tea-related matters through various literary and artistic means, accumulating a rich cultural heritage. Poets sang of tea, painters depicted tea, calligraphers wrote about tea, writers recorded tea, and playwrights brought tea affairs onto the stage. Tea artisans designed tea sets that were both playful and aesthetically pleasing. As history entered the 1980s, China's national economy developed rapidly, and people's living standards improved swiftly. The saying goes, "One must first ensure regular meals, then seek fine food; clothing must be warm, then one can pursue beauty; one must first live in safety, then seek joy." Tea culture also increasingly "flew into the ordinary households." As Chinese people gradually entered a more prosperous life, tea drinking and appreciation were infused with greater aesthetic cultural content, elevating the quality of tea culture. More tea-loving literary and artistic figures took tea affairs as their themes, creating a large number of tea culture works rich in the spirit of the times, greatly expanding the space of tea culture. In terms of literature, apart from poetry, prose, and drama, there were also long novels, biographies, and film and television works. In terms of art, apart from Chinese painting, calligraphy, and seal carving, new additions included oil painting, sculpture, photography, and environmental design. Tea set creation as a whole saw significant improvement, with attempts to create works with fresh artistic languages using various ceramic materials and multiple non-ceramic materials. Additionally, as an important carrier of tea culture, urban tea art studios, while inheriting tradition, integrated various artistic techniques, pursued innovation and change, and expressed individuality, establishing new identities. Chinese tea culture has flourished in the new era, receiving attention and importance from all aspects of society. This reflects the strength of the nation's economy and the improvement in people's quality of life, symbolizes the vigorous vitality of China's indigenous culture, and more importantly, demonstrates the elegance and composure of a revitalized nation. In light of this, several tea enthusiasts, either combining their personal expertise or drawing on years of research, each chose a specific topic to narrate, compiling them into a series of books, which can also be seen as fruits grown in the garden of tea culture.