Chapter VI · The Drinking: Misreadings — Some add scallion, ginger, jujube, tangerine peel, cornel, and mint…
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The passage
“Some add scallion, ginger, jujube, tangerine peel, cornel, and mint, boiling it a hundred times, or stirring it slippery, or skimming off the froth. This is nothing but ditchwater — yet the custom persists.”
Misreadings
The most common misreading of “Some add scallion, ginger, jujube, tangerine peel, cornel, and mint…” is to treat a Tang observation as a universal rule.
“Wild is better than garden” made sense in a particular landscape and market. It is not a law that every modern tea garden is inferior.
Ask instead: what was the observation responding to, and what part of it still holds?
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.