Chapter X · The Illustration: Misreadings — Write it out on silk, in four or six panels…

Photo: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

The passage

“Write it out on silk, in four or six panels, and place them by your seat — then the Origin, the Implements, the Making, the Vessels, the Brewing, the Drinking, the History, the Producing Regions, and the Omissions are all kept before your eyes.”

Misreadings

The most common misreading of “Write it out on silk, in four or six panels…” 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.