Chapter VI · The Drinking: Making — Winged creatures fly, furred creatures run, and those with mouths…

Photo: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

The passage

“Winged creatures fly, furred creatures run, and those with mouths speak — all three dwell between heaven and earth and live by drinking and eating. How far-reaching is the meaning of drinking!”

Making

Tea is made, not merely picked. The timing of the harvest and the precision of each step decide how much of the mountain survives in the cup.

Fixation, rolling, oxidation, and drying all push the leaf in different directions. A fine raw material can be lost by a careless hand.

Read the old processing sequence as a chain of decisions, not a list of museum objects.

Reading note

Read the passage once for the image, once for the judgment, and once for the practice it implies.

Practice

• Name one thing the passage asks you to notice.
• Compare it with a tea you know.
• Keep the question open.