Author:Sun Hongwei (Associate Professor, Nanjing University)
Diet carries important symbolic significance. The American historian Westminster pointed out in "Sweetness and Power" that dietary patterns are consistent with the society to which they belong, and thus specific cultural forms are maintained. "When unfamiliar substances are used by people, these new substances enter an existing social and psychological situation, and from those users, they derive (or are given) contextualized meanings."
A food that crosses cultural boundaries is often reinterpreted in different social contexts, generating different meanings. Although they superficially retain their original names or similar forms, the corresponding life experience and social connotation have changed, marking the gap between different cultures. This is especially reflected in the "westward journey" of tea.
First, the early tea drinking and artistic reproduction of the tea locked in the box
The English painter Hogarth has a painting titled The Strod Family (1738) depicting the Strød family going through a tea party. In addition to the extravagant interior furnishings and gorgeous dress, the most prominent is the tea set in the center. At the very front of the picture, there is also a box that seems out of place. In the composition of the whole picture, this box with a golden handle and lock buckle is particularly prominent.
It was a tea box used to hold Chinese tea, which was still a luxury at the time– for which the box was designed with a lock to prevent theft by servants. In a certain sense, this box that occupies the frontmost position of the picture plays a role in "showing off wealth".
The Victoria and Albert Museum houses a similar artifact. It is a practical appliance made of gold and silver, with excellent craftsmanship, square shape, and a tough and varied silhouette. Its lines are delicate and vivid, and the crisscrossed heraldic motifs create a magnificent decorative effect. In fact, its carving, like the painting Strods, was by Hogarth. The box was a collaboration he had with a craftsman of the time. The box is engraved with the letter "B", which represents "Bohea", which means "Wuyi tea", "Bohea" is the Hokkien pronunciation of the word "Wuyi", and the box is also equipped with a lock.
Both the porcelain used in the painting to drink tea or the tea box are practical utensils, but in the still life paintings and genre paintings of the 18th century, they are attached with other meanings, and they are both decorative and decorative, indicating cultural taste and social identity.
The English scholar Alan McFarlane, Green Gold: The Empire of Tea, notes that "European accounts of tea began in 1559 ... Tea first arrived in Amsterdam in 1610, in France in the 1630s, and in England in 1657." According to Kao, the first English poem to mention tea — by the poet and courtier Edmund Waller — was written in 1663 and glorified China as "the land of the East where the rising sun rises," and tea symbolizes the mysterious, romantic Orient.
Soon things changed. In the 1730s, when Hogarth designed the tea box, tea imports exploded and prices began to fall sharply. After the 18th century, with the increasing popularity of prices, tea profoundly affected Britain and even the whole of Europe, changing people's way of working, art and aesthetics. The picture of drinking tea as a type of composition constantly appears in different paintings. Bundina's Food in Painting refers to the 18th-century Swiss painter Lyotard's painting Still Life of Tea Sets (1781-1783) and analyzes the tea sets in them. The painting depicts a slightly awkward scene after a tea party, with leftover bread, cream, cups that have not yet been cleaned, sugar bowls, milk jugs and trays. The painter did not show the scene of high-end friends and happy conversations, but showed the scene after leaving the scene. However, the picture does not appear lonely and lonely due to the absence of the tea drinker, as if there is still the temperature and breath of the guest and host present. The porcelain in the painting depicts Chinese-like figures who are substitutes for tea drinkers who have left the scene. As people from the source of tea and porcelain, they are experts in this way of life, and their faces constitute a unique metaphor that reflects something exclusive to Chinese culture. Through their medium, the tea drinkers seem to be back on the scene.
The painting presents only a part limited by a limited physical space, and its macroscopic social context is the routineization and ritualization of the way tea is drunk. Tea has become so widespread and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that the viewer can easily interpret it in a pictorial sense and activate this static picture. It expresses a sustenance, reproducing a typical rich, leisurely way of life. From Hogarth's genre paintings to Lyotard's still life paintings, tea occupies a central position, maintaining a relatively stable connotation as a fixed composition. On the one hand, they point unequivocally to the popularity of tea; on the other hand, they point to the fact that tea has undergone a makeover after its trip to Europe: the way it is drunk requires a combination of sugar and milk, and plays a different role in the new dietary structure than its original context.
Picture of a tea box with a Heraldic engraving pattern by Hogarth
Lyotard's Tea Still Life (1781-1783) profile picture
Hogarth's "Strods" (partial) profile picture
Second, the dispute between sugar and unsweetened tea drinking
The 18th-century English novelist Henry Fielding famously said, "Love and gossip are the best sugars for tea." Obviously, such a witty phrase presupposes a conventional way of drinking tea with sugar. Only when this way of drinking tea has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people can those who read this sentence understand its agility and humor. Since the 18th century, there has been no shortage of afternoon tea, tea parties and other activities in British literature, and even the absurd novel "Alice in Wonderland" must set up a chapter of hilarious "crazy tea party", taking the etiquette and rules of tea drinking as the object of parody and ridicule. In the early years of the Republic of China, the young Shen Congwen continued to write Alice's travels, imagining that she and the rabbit had come to China, and also intimately set up a section for the British to learn Chinese tea drinking. In order to teach the rabbit to adapt to Chinese life, "Habu Jun, according to the Chinese method, entertains guests with Longjing tea, and the bowl containing the tea is also Chinese Qianlong porcelain, the bowl is blue and white, and there are dragons." This sugar-free, milk-free way made the rabbit shake his head when he drank: "This, no sugar, bitter." The other party explained in detail: "Ha, friend, I tell you, this is the Chinese method, that is, the way you want to eat tea in that place!" I know you're not used to drinking. But you have to study hard. Just drink it. ”
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the people, Longjing tea should be a taste that is difficult for Westerners to appreciate. In Wu Zhaoren's "Strange Situation Witnessed in Twenty Years", a flag-down flag man goes to the tea house to "swing the score" and brings the so-called "good Longjing tea from The Atlantic Red Hair France", which is a very ironic comedic effect based on the fact that "Atlantic Red Hair France" and "Longjing Tea" are incompatible. Lao She's "Erma" also mentions the encounter of Longjing tea in Britain: "Several Chinese restaurants in London are the most developed business in Zhuangyuanlou. The place is generous, the food is cheap, and sooner or later there is really a group of sages. Not only Siamese, Japanese, Indians, went there to relieve their hunger, but also the British, poor artists, social party members with red ties, fat old ladies who competed for curiosity, and often went there to drink a cup of Longjing tea and eat bowls of egg fried rice. However, these people "don't like to drink tea without milk", and they go there to hunt for curiosity. The British are very unfamiliar with Chinese green teas such as Longjing - after drinking the incense chips brought by the Ma family's father and son, Mrs. WenDu could not help but ask: "How many kinds of Chinese tea are there?" Where is tea in China? What is the name of this kind of drink they drink now? How is it made? In 1939, Xiao Qian, who had just arrived in England, found that the British drank Ceylon black tea, "the tea was purple, as if it was chicken blood." Chinese tea is particularly rare, "Longjing, incense chips, then only in the dream or to which sinologist's house to visit the door, occasionally can taste." These teas are cherished things, usually reluctant to drink, only came the oriental guests," only from what corner of the cupboard to take out. While sipping tea, he talked about Li Bai and Bai Juyi."
Compared with the fragrant flavor of butter bread and milk sugar cubes, Chinese appreciate the indifference of stripping away the "thick oil red sauce", emphasizing the return to the basics and pursuing elegant and vulgar fun. The idea that Westerners drink heavily flavored teas, naturalistic, minimalist green teas, is deeply rooted, in part because of the repeated reinforcement of classic literature. There are both Westerners' own records and Chinese observations. Zhou Zuoren once pointed out on the way the British drink tea: "Drinking tea is authentic with green tea. Black tea has no meaning, let alone adds sugar - and milk? In his opinion, "the black tea belt 'Tusi' has not been eaten, but this is only when the rice is eaten, when the stomach is hungry; my so-called drinking tea is drinking clear tea, appreciating its color and fragrance and taste, which may not be in quenching thirst, and naturally it is not in the stomach."
In the eyes of Chinese scholars, Westerners' tea drinking lacks a little elegance and fun, and is always a little out of step with the Chinese tea ceremony. Implicit here is a condescending aesthetic judgment, which makes a distinction between the poetry of the East and the sweetness of the West. We commented on the way to drink tea with sugar and milk, just like Grandma Liu in "Dream of the Red Chamber" - holding the tea and "eating it all in one bite", laughing: "Good is good, it is lighter, and it is better to boil it thicker." "Tea has a long history in China and has accumulated the essence of culture. Its various cultural representations have been admired and imitated by future generations, and have become a kind of cultural pursuit that comes from inner spiritual recognition and self-consciousness, with too many "not with outsiders" difficult to understand the twists and turns and subtleties.
3. "Snow Water" Chinese tea in contemporary English poetry
In 2004, the Irish poet Michael Langley published Snow Water, a collection of poems. In the poem of the same name in the collection of poems, he writes:
A man who is meticulous about making tea,
A tea taster, and a poet,
I humbly pleaded for a portion of snow water
As a gift to my sixtieth birthday.
The tea is pouring, the marks of pen and ink.
I burned the teapot intently,
Carefully took it
A silver needle for two brews.
Other favorite teas are Qingyuan
Silver millimeter, and shoumei,
Or, from the top of a dangerous mountain
Picked cloud tea (especially sweet).
This is the tea picked by the clever monkey
The basket is filled with selected leaves
Bring it down the hill and give it to me,
This man waited with a clay pot of snow water.
This is a poem that Chinese readers will find very kind, describing Yaxing who cooks snow and boils tea. In Chinese culture, there is a long tradition of cooking snow boiled tea - Chen Jiru's "Small Window Youji" Yun: "Cooking snow tea, there is indeed a cold fragrance left; the hall of fighting for spring is a sigh of flowers." For another example, in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Miao Yu uses the snow on the plum blossoms of the Xuan Tomb Panxiang Temple to cook tea. The use of snow-cooked tea highlights the tea drinker's concern for water.
Regarding the selection of water, Gao Lian's "Zunsheng Eight Notes" has an evaluation of "on the landscape, the river, and under the well", and praises several good waters: "Ruohang Lake Heart Water, Wushan First Spring, Guo PuJing, Hupao Spring, Longjing, Ge Xian Weng Well, Jujia." There is a section in Jin Yong's "Book of Swords and Enmity" that mentions using "Tiger Running Spring Water" to soak "Longjing before ming". Interestingly, the translator of Jin Yong's novel, Yan Gewen, directly translated "Longjing Tea" for this sentence, but did not mention the two keywords of "Tiger Running Spring" and "MingQian". Perhaps in the translator's opinion, this distinction is too subtle, and the reader is concerned with the shadow of the sword and light, and these details are negligible. Moreover, for the concept of "MingQian" and "Tiger Running Spring Water", it is difficult for English readers to understand the doorway. But for Chinese readers, these details just make the text of the novel add additional cultural implications, adding interest and readability.
Due to geographical constraints, spring water is not easy to obtain, and snow water has become an easier choice for tea drinkers. Yuan Ming's "Suiyuan Food List" Yun: "If you want to cure tea, first hide the water, and the water will be in the middle, and the spring will be overcome." How can people do it? However, the water of the spring and the water of the snow can be hidden. The focus of "snow water" lies both in its quality as water and in the poetry of coldness, coldness, purity and silence it evokes. From Bai Juyi's "melting snow to fry fragrant tea, mixing crispy boiling chyme", to Lu You's "snow liquid clear sweet rising well spring, cooking and frying with the tea stove", to the plum blossom snow water of a flower urn that Miao Yu has hidden for five years, the imagery of snow water has accumulated rich meaning. When Chinese readers see such allusions, they will associate them with a series of poems, and various emotions will emerge.
It can be seen that Mr. Langley is indeed well versed in the Chinese tea ceremony. In his case, the word snow water itself is accompanied by a very romantic imagination. A jar of snow water to make tea is not only his cultural self-complaint, but also an aesthetic pursuit and spiritual identity. It was another life he had created for himself. The poem talks about the types, cooking and tasting of tea, from white silver needles to cloud tea, a variety of tea leaves are like several family treasures, just the list of names, reading is a bit elegant, making people's teeth and cheeks fragrant. The names of tea not only simply identify the category of a certain tea, but also have additional meanings: on the one hand, as a series of unusual combinations of nouns, their recitation conveys a pure sense of sound beauty; on the other hand, they also have a poetic function, which makes people inevitably have rich associations. In the 19th century, the American Thomas de Witte Tarmech wrote in his imperial magnum opus, "Sitting Around the Tea Table," that xichun tea makes people talk lively and cheerful, while gunpowder is aggressive and aggressive—and it is clear that their names play a role in this interpretation.
Titled "Snow Water", the collection of poems combines the ice purity of snow with the fresh elegance of tea, and reproduces the mood of a noble and elegant person. Langley is one of the leading poets of contemporary Ireland, having been a "Professor of Irish Poetry" from 2007 to 2010, and he has a keen interest in Chinese tea drinking culture. In the Irish literary tradition, this interest has a long history. As early as the 19th century, Oscar Wilde, who visited the United States, observed the way Chinese laborers drank tea there, and admired the aesthetics of these Chinese who did rough work but drank tea in cups as thin as cicada wings. Joyce's Ulysses begins with the tea affair —"Tea is here, pour it." Sugar in the pocket", a breakfast, a pot of very sour tea, each person divided into two sugar cubes, a few slices of bread, written very lively; the second chapter, Bloom while frying the waist in butter, while making tea - this "heavy taste" way of tea, Langley may be difficult to identify. If Joyce is writing about the problem of fullness, the tea drinking described in the poem "Snow Water" is obviously not to meet simple material needs, to "quench thirst" or fill the stomach, but to create an artistic realm.
Fourth, tea and life affinity or alienation
Tea is the medium of Langley's lyrical thoughts, to borrow mr. Zong Baihua's words, it is a specific object, the poet "appreciates its hue, order, rhythm, harmony, in order to glimpse the reflection of the deepest soul of the self." This is a process of "turning the real scene into a virtual world" and "creating an image as a symbol". The series of norms, installations and rituals of tea drinking are thus transformed into a virtual, symbolic aesthetic experience – this is the "artistic realm". It is primarily about beauty, not the satisfaction of material needs. Langley is particularly respectful of the elegance of Chinese culture. In this collection of poems, immediately followed by Snow Water, is a poem titled "Mooncake", in which it reads:
A small wooden house on top of a detached mountain
It was I who continued to paint the apricot blossoms
Place with plum blossoms until they are hanging old.
(Late winter, covered with snow,
Hard-to-reach full moon
Illuminated my dilapidated study);
Here I drank jasmine tea
Full of mooncakes (a dessert with a complex recipe).
Touched by mooncakes and jasmine tea, he imagined a Chinese-style, otherworldly and secluded life, built a house surrounded by apricot blossoms and plum blossoms on the top of the mountain, and painted a scene of snow and moonlight. This is reminiscent of the mountain life of the three wise men on Qianlong-era Chinese sculpture described by his predecessor, the great Irish poet W. Yeats, in "Lapis Lazuli"—perhaps a deliberate innuendo. Images of mountain peaks, old people, and apricot blossoms create a quasi-Oriental Zen aesthetic that does mean "transcendental" as described in the poem. This detachment is both spatial and psychological: a person always has to have a way to adjust a boring life, there must always be relaxation and leisure outside of work, and there must always be room for transcendence from biological needs such as survival and reproduction. Even if you just drink a cup of tea, you can have the joy of being on the beach. Such a deep love affair, such an entertaining self, must be the most aesthetic, the most emotional, the most interesting aspect of life.
In addition to the pure, dusty oriental imagination, tea can also be embedded in various life experiences, expressing a rich variety of emotions or states of thought. English poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy wrote:
Jasmine tea, pearl tea, Assam tea, earl tea, Ceylon tea,
I love the name of tea. Which tea do you prefer? I say
As long as it is you, any tea can be, please at any time of the day,
The tea picker is on the slope of Wuyi Mountain
Harvest the sweetest tea leaves,
And I, your lover, fascinated by you, are filtering your tea.
Unlike the sense of detachment described in traditional Chinese culture, this is a love story. Tea has both a kinship with everyday life and an alienation beyond everyday life. This seemingly paradoxical feature laid the foundation for different literary expressions. Even the shape of the tea leaves can be included in poetry, becoming the object of contemplation and contemplation. American poet Dale Littlebush's collection of poems, Far Away from the Temple of Heaven (2006), includes a poem titled "Green Tea", which is illustrated with stretched silver tea leaves, which is interesting to read:
It's me occasionally
Tea that can be drunk,
Dragon Silver Millimeter,
Curled up tightly
Like little curled roots,
A gray-green color.
When soaked, it blooms
Just like when you woke up this morning,
Stretch your body and hands
Put it behind your head, straighten your back,
Toe up, soak together
A smile in the ceremony, a celebration,
Open your arms.
The poem beautifully describes the appearance of the tea leaves slowly stretching when brewing, and uses this process to compare the form of a person who gets up in the morning to stretch his waist, which is very vivid and lively, and let us sincerely admire the ingenuity.
From The Locked Tea Box of Hogarth, to Langley's Boiled Snow Tea, to this concrete and slight, slowly stretching silver millimeter — from the sign of showing off wealth to the object of contemplation, in the past three hundred years, the development of Chinese tea in the West has undergone profound changes. With the increasingly close material exchanges, more and more people can get a glimpse of the mystery of Chinese tea culture and touch the extra taste of a cup of green tea. In a heterogeneous context, people's acceptance of tea continues, spreads and expands its charm. As a result, tea is also separated from the usual cultural and social chains and has a new meaning.
Guangming Daily (2022-04-14 13 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily