Chapter II · The Implements: Making — The cheng base, also called tai or zhen, is made…

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The passage

“The cheng base, also called tai or zhen, is made of stone; otherwise of locust or mulberry wood, half-buried in the ground so that it will not rock.”

Making

Tea is made, not merely picked. The timing of the harvest and the precision of each step decide how much of the mountain survives in the cup.

Fixation, rolling, oxidation, and drying all push the leaf in different directions. A fine raw material can be lost by a careless hand.

Read the old processing sequence as a chain of decisions, not a list of museum objects.

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.