Green Tea Earth

So, I’ve been reading this book, The Ancient Art of Tea. Great little book, I highly recommend it. (The links to my introductory post on the book).

So far, I’ve been fascinated by what Peltier has to say about water. Well, ok, it’s not Peltier, but the ancient Chinese tea masters (or… his translation of them… so I guess it’s both). But, according to the ancient masters, good water is vital to good tea. One of them said that a leaf that’s only an 8 with a water that’s a 10 makes a tea that’s a 10. But a leaf that’s a 10 with a water that’s only an 8 makes a tea that’s an 8. So, in essence: water makes your tea.

They review different water sources in Chine — they compare well water to river water to spring water; they talk about mountain water and different rivers and where to get water from different rivers… fascinating stuff.

Mountain water is best, river water is next, and well water is inferior, according to Lu Yu who wrote ‘Classic of Tea.’ I guess the Classic of Tea is a compilation of this guy during the Tang dynasty of ancient texts on tea (I’m looking into getting a translation of that next, if I can find one). According to Zhang You Xin (who Lu Yu excerpts in the Classic of Tea), the very best water in China is the Yangzi’s Nan Ling water. The Yangzi is a river (here’s the wikipedia article on the river). I’m not exactly sure where the Nan Ling part of the river is… the book isn’t real clear.

Another exceptionally good water is dew water. Wow. I’m not sure how you collect dew water, but how sweet would it be to drink tea made from the dew of a mountain or something? I really want to try that sometime. I’m trying to figure out how to collect dew water.

Certain types of rains were also considered good for tea. Melted snow was also used.

While I’m on Zhang You Xin, I came across this totally sweet story he tells in his work. It sounds like something straight out of The Golden Legend, lol.

So one day he meets Master Lu Hong Jian — a renowned tea master who traveled China testing various waters. So Zhang You Xin is all excited, and he begs Master Lu to instruct him about tea. So Master Lu tells one of Zhang You Xin’s trusted guards to fetch some water from the very middle of the river — from the Nan Ling. So, the guard goes off in his boat and fetches the water in a jar. But when he comes back, Master Lu looks at the water and says “This is not from the Nan Ling!” The guard argues otherwise, but Master Lu is adamant. He pours out the water from the jar on the ground, but then stops abruptly midway through and declares that *now* the water is the Nan Ling water. Everyone is awed when the guard admits that he got the water from the middle of the river as Master Lu instructed him, but spilled half the jar on the way back, and fearing that what was left wasn’t enough, ladled in some water from the shore.

Now if that’s not sweet, I don’t know what is. I mean seriously, isn’t that a great story?

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