Chapter VII · The History: Misreadings — Wang Meng of Jin loved tea, and pressed it on…

Photo: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

The passage

“Wang Meng of Jin loved tea, and pressed it on every visitor; the officials dreaded it, and whenever they meant to call they would say, ‘Today we must suffer the water-calamity.’”

Misreadings

The most common misreading of “Wang Meng of Jin loved tea, and pressed it on…” 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.