Tea, like a gentle breeze, has lifted the barriers among peoples; it has transcended class distinctions, and has spread around the world. Regardless of its species or culture, Asia is its land of origin.
Two thousand years ago, China already attached importance to the practice of tea-drinking. In the T’ang dynasty during the 7th century, drinking tea became a noble and graceful art of life among intellectuals, who were particularly keen on exploring new directions to make such elements as tea, the utensils and the environment compliment one another. With the writing by Lu Yü (733-804) of the Classic of Tea, teaism or the “Way of Tea” gradually emerged, and its philosophy and practice spread eastwards, along with religion, to Japan and Korea, becoming part of the rites and customs of life there, and westwards to Tibet, where the nobles, monks and priests, through the introduction of envoys, cultivated the habit of tea drinking, and went on to make tea-horse trade an indispensable link with China. As international commerce became more active, tea leafs were brought via sea and land routes to Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, and, with variations shaped by local conditions and customs, each area was to produce its own unique tea culture and tradition.
Tea utensils of China, Japan, Tibet and Thailand are showcased in the exhibition in the hope that the audiences observing their striking differences and unavoidable similarities will come to realize that tea culture is definitely one of the essential keys to exploring Asia.
China, the homeland of tea culture, has a long and uninterrupted history, so the Chinese way of tea is particularly rich in content. During the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties, the Chinese ways of brewing and drinking tea leafs and applying assorted tea utensils had influenced the development of Asian tea cultures far and wide. The tea culture of China at the time has thus been selected as the main theme of the exhibition. Apart from emphasizing the union of tea, literature, art and life as an integrated whole, this section will also demonstrate the differences in the tea-drinking philosophies of the emperors and the learned, and their impact upon each other.
The high plains of Tibet do not produce tea leafs, but since the 8th century when Turfan nobles and clergies had their first sip of the tea brought by T’ang envoys, tea had become a manna of life that Tibetans could not do without. The result was the flourishing of Tibet’s tea-horse trade with China. Due to the geographical environment and folk customs of the region, the salted butter tea is an indispensable companion to the people of Tibet, and their tea utensils are richly endowed with ethnic characteristics, such as those featuring the decorative patterns of domo butter and monk’s cap. These wares were once treasured objects and even targets of imitation at the Chinese imperial court.
Tea was introduced into Japan in the 8th century by returning Japanese monks from China. Ritual and aesthetical elements were then added, richly imbuing tea-drinking with philosophy and wisdom, as if it were a way of spiritual cultivation. By the mid-17th century, the introduction of the Fukien-style kung-fu tea tradition and Yi-hsing wares received enthusiastic response from the learned circles. After the 18th century, however, Kao Yu-wai (1675-1763) advocated a more relaxed way of tea-drinking, merging the way of tea with the arts of painting, calligraphy and aesthetic appreciation, an approach drastically different from the more spiritually-oriented chanoyu cult which stressed the nursing of an atmosphere of extreme cultural refinement, and was known as sencha tea ceremony.
The seeds of Thai tea culture were sown during the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties amid sporadic economic interaction between Thailand and the countries surrounding the South China Sea. At the beginning of the 18th century, porcelain tea wares from Yi-hsing and Ching-te-chen were marketed extensively in Thailand. It is said that the Thai king Chulalongkorn (1868-1910) had ordered Yi-hsing tea utensils, and that when the wares arrived he had them further polished and bordered in gold and silver, creating an aesthetic taste different from that of China.
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