Chapter VI · The Drinking: Misreadings — Those who cultivate tea may grow several hundred clumps; the…
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The passage
“Those who cultivate tea may grow several hundred clumps; the tree like gualu, leaves like gardenia, flowers like white rose, fruit like palm.”
Misreadings
The most common misreading of “Those who cultivate tea may grow several hundred clumps; the…” 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.