Chapter I · The Origin: Misreadings — Picked out of season, made carelessly, adulterated with wild weeds…
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The passage
“Picked out of season, made carelessly, adulterated with wild weeds, drinking it brings illness. The harm of tea, too, is like that of ginseng.”
Misreadings
The most common misreading of “Picked out of season, made carelessly, adulterated with wild weeds…” 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.