Chapter VI · The Drinking: Misreadings — Tea has nine difficulties: the making, the judging, the vessels…
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The passage
“Tea has nine difficulties: the making, the judging, the vessels, the fire, the water, the roasting, the grinding, the brewing, and the drinking.”
Misreadings
The most common misreading of “Tea has nine difficulties: the making, the judging, the vessels…” 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.