Chapter VI · The Drinking: Misreadings — As a beverage, tea began with Shennong, the Divine Farmer…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
The passage
“As a beverage, tea began with Shennong, the Divine Farmer, and became known through the Duke of Zhou of Lu.”
Misreadings
The most common misreading of “As a beverage, tea began with Shennong, the Divine Farmer…” 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.