Chapter I · The Origin: Misreadings — Tea is a fine and noble tree of the South…

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The passage

“Tea is a fine and noble tree of the South. It may stand one or two feet tall, or reach many dozens of feet. In the mountain gorges of Bashan, there are trees so thick that two men can barely encircle them; one must cut the boughs and pick the leaves from below.”

Misreadings

The most common misreading of “Tea is a fine and noble tree of the South…” 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.