Text/Cui Qichang
One autumn three years ago, when a friend came from afar and gave me a beautiful set of kung fu tea sets, it was only then that I really started to do some research on tea. Before, I have always liked tea, in the unit or home, every bite of dry tongue, always love to brew a pot, work surplus, then taste slow drink; there is a hurry, grunt, grunt to take a few sips. Drinking tea, quenching thirst is the main thing.
Northerners generally have a habit of drinking tea, enamel large teapot or a large teapot that can hold half a warm bottle of water at once, put it there, put half a handful of tea leaves, fill it with boiling water, and then it is usually said to drink tea. In recent years, the information channels have become more and more smooth, coupled with the fact that people's living standards have improved to varying degrees, many "Taoisms" in the tea drinking in the south have been successively passed on to the north as tea art, and the style of the northerners when drinking tea has become gentle and elegant. However, there are still many compatriots who, like me, regard tea tasting as a quenching thirst. The sun rises three rods, makes a pot of tea, drinks for half a day, quenches thirst and reduces dryness, although the method is vulgar, it is also self-enjoying.
In fact, in the north, people love tea and like to smell tea to no less than southerners. Like my hometown jiaodong area, although it is not a tea producing area, there is no shortage of tea in every household. Tea shops and tea stalls can be seen everywhere in urban and rural streets, and the business is also good every year. In the early years, I lived with my parents in the countryside, and the village was not very large, but in terms of the degree of love for tea, it was not inferior to a family.
My father especially loved to drink tea. When I remember, my father worked as an epidemic prevention doctor in the commune health center more than 10 miles away, and he went home two or three times a week. Every time I go home, especially on the autumn days when melons and fruits are fragrant, a "tea party" will be staged in my small courtyard. At that time, my father brewed tea and told his neighbors about the old days, and his happiness and harmony were strong, and the aroma of tea and friendliness rose and spread in the courtyard, making people drunk and drunk.
While waiting for my father to come home, my mother cleaned the tea set early and put enough jasmine tea that my father and the neighbors loved to drink. When I came home from school in the afternoon, I would always diligently look for grass straw or branches around the roots of the outside wall of the house, and then bring a quick pot, fill the water and light the fire, and when the water boiled, the bell of my father's bicycle to the house rang on time on the top of the village.
After dinner, the moon is thin and the autumn insects are mooing. In the courtyard, the huge gourd racks are full of vines and leaves, and the speckled silver glow of the moon sprinkles through the gourd racks on the tea table placed by the father. At this time, his father's confidants had arrived uninvited from the West House, the North House, the Back of the Village, and the South of the Village. Refilling water and making tea, the father is busy in an orderly manner, and the neighbors happily create a kind of good love situation that belongs to the countrymen in the taste of tea. Among them, there is no distinction between the noble and the lowly, no distinction between rich and poor, no suspicion of deception, and some are just the peace and duty that the people of the countryside can pass on to the world.
When I was a soldier, my father was still doing sanitation and epidemic prevention work in the township, and the village implemented the "big bag of dry", and drinking tea with my father at our house was still a livelihood for the neighbors to sneak around. In the fourth year of the army, my father wrote a letter saying that two "tea friends" from the same village who often came to the house to drink tea had unfortunately died of illness, and whenever they lifted their tea cups with other neighbors, an inexplicable feeling would arise in their hearts. I remember replying to my father in time, and I said that the floating life was like tea. People's life is like tea, the first time you encounter water, tea can release the strong aroma and mellow sweetness from the heart. When it is late twilight, it is no longer sweet, and the fragrance is gone. As for life, there is nothing more than that. The key is to see if he is like tea, whether he can leave some thoughts for future generations in the journey of life, these thoughts, like the color of tea, or, such as the aroma of tea...
More than a decade ago, my parents and I moved to the city with my family. After that, there were no more shallow courtyards in our house, no more green gourd racks, and no more neighbors who often came to the house to drink tea with my father. The father and mother of the elderly flower armoured live in a room with no courtyard in the downtown area, listening to the noisy sound of the city, smelling the ubiquitous car exhaust, idle, the father drinks tea as usual, using the way the northerners used to drink tea, day and night, consistently.
One year, when I went to visit my parents, I told my father a story about tea that I had encountered. I said that one of my friends who loves to drink Da Hong Pao once got a few bubbles of different brands of Da Hong Pao tea leaves, when brewing and tasting, he felt that the amber tea soup, steady and transparent, mellow and gentle, fragrant cup bottom sitting incense, refreshing; when the entrance, the top note presents a distinct floral and fruit fragrance, moderate roasted fire incense in the middle, the tail note reproduces the floral and fruit aroma, the overall is very stable and smooth, making him feel relaxed. Friends feel that when tasting this tea, the body has not moved, the heart has been far away, as if they are instantly in nature, mountains and rivers...
"Did he quench his thirst?" I was talking hard, but my father asked this question. Yes! Did he quench his thirst? I really don't have the answer to that. After my father took a sip of tea, he turned to me and said that the main purpose of drinking tea is first of all to quench thirst, that is, to meet the needs of the human body, in addition, those artificial preaching is the homework completed by the literati and inkers, although the rhetoric is gorgeous, it is not as good as quenching thirst in time, it is affordable, I drank most of my life tea, it is used in the function of quenching thirst.
Thinking back to my father's words and looking back at my own tea drinking process, I seemed to have learned something from it. A person who used to only bow my head and move forward, it seems that I slowly understand how to put it down, understand life, gradually try to look down on some things, give myself a period of time, a bowl of tea.
Summer has arrived, and summer is a season of lush vegetation. At this moment, I want to sit down, brew a pot of tea, first calmly watch the color of the tea, and then, smell the tea...
(Image from the Internet)
【About the Author】 Cui Qichang is a member of the Shandong Writers Association, the Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Association, and a member of the Prose Creation Committee of the Qingdao Writers Association. Essays, essays and reportage works have been scattered in Economic Daily, Workers Daily, China Ocean Daily, China Natural Resources Daily, Dazhong Daily, Rural Public, Lianhe Daily, Qingdao Daily, Reader, Qingdao Literature, Times Literature, etc. Published the essay collection "Cultivating landscape in the heart", and co-authored and published 4 collections of essays.
Sponsored by the Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Society, Contemporary Prose is a bimonthly prose journal, which mainly publishes the works of members of the Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Association, and welcomes Shandong prose writers to apply to join the Shandong Provincial Prose Association. The Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Association holds various prose activities throughout the year to provide book publishing services for writers. Contact number: 13853164811, 18765312921, 18653131587; submission email: [email protected]
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