What color was the tea cup that Su Shi saw

Ding kiln red porcelain year han three friends printing plate

"Trial Courtyard Sencha" is a representative work of the Northern Song Dynasty poet Su Shiyong tea poem, and the discussion of Dingyao ceramics involved in the poem has always been the focus of scholars' attention. For example, the understanding of "Dingzhou flower porcelain red jade" includes "Dingzhou red porcelain saying", "Dingzhou white porcelain saying", "Dingyao rabbit millidian saying", "Dingzhou porcelain hard and dense theory" and "tea color quality theory", which one is more in line with Su Shi's original intention, but also need to be analyzed in combination with the content of the whole poem.

Wing cha is the focus of Su Shi's "Trial Courtyard Sencha", and the tea culture of the Northern Song Dynasty involved in it is a very important historical background. The poem begins with sencha in the courtyard, describes the various links of decoction, milled tea, and luocha, and expresses the poet's frustration of poverty and depression in the stark contrast between public and personal sencha. Despite this, Su Shi's self-sufficiency in using brick hearth stone to make sencha still exudes the kind of allegory of things, without paying attention to things. The content that best reflects the tea culture of the Northern Song Dynasty is: "The crab eye has been born through the fish eye, and the fluttering desires to make a pine wind sound." The fine beads fall out of the mist, and the glare flies around the Ou snow lightly. Silver bottle soup boasts the second, not recognized by the ancients frying water. Jun did not see the past When Li Sheng was hospitable and self-fried, Gui sent a new spring from the live fire. And I don't see the current Lugong Sencha learning Western Shu, Dingzhou flower porcelain carved red jade. ”

Crab eyes, fish eyes, and pine wind sounds are a kind of grasp of the fire of frying water in tea culture, also known as soup weather. Huang Tingjian Sencha Shiyun: "The wind stove Xiaoding does not need to be urged, and the fish eyes come with the crab eyes." ("Feng Tong Sixth Uncle Shangshu Yong Tea Milling And Cooking Three Songs", part ii) is similar to The soup written by Su Shi. However, Huang Tingjian uses Xiaoding Sencha, which has a wide mouth and can directly identify the water color form with his eyes. Su Shi, on the other hand, uses a stone-capped Sencha, which is generally heard first and then colored. The Ming Dynasty Xu Cishu said this more clearly: "As soon as the water enters the chole, it must be boiled urgently." Wait for a loose sound, that is, go to the cover to message its old tenderness. After the crab eye, the water has a slight wave, which is for the time. The waves boiled and swirled to silence, which was obsolete. "After the crab eye, the water has a slight tao" is what Su Shi said about "fish eye raw", the water at this time is suitable for sencha, if the heat is too late, it will become an old soup. According to the order of the soup, the stage of fish eye growth should be regarded as the second boiling, which is the meaning of the chant of "silver bottle soup praise second". However, in Su Shi's view, this may not be in line with the original intention of the ancient sencha. He made it clear that the ancients did not fry tea when frying water, which is different from the Tang Dynasty Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" method of boiling tea powder into boiling water. On the one hand, he valued the Tang Dynasty Li Yue's emphasis on water quality and fire color when sencha, and advocated "living fire and new springs". Live fire is the use of charcoal fire flame sencha, new spring means to cook tea to choose high-quality mountain spring water. On the other hand, he admired the ancient Shu Sencha method of Shi Wenyanbo. His brother Su Rui said in the poem "Hezizhan Sencha": "The old method of Sencha came out of the Western Shu, and the sound of water and fire can still be understood." According to legend, sencha only pans water, and the tea is still flavorful. In the view of the Su brothers, in addition to the Western Shu Sencha method, in addition to being well versed in the sound and heat of water, the most important one is to regard decoction as an independent process of tea art, so as to maximize the preservation of the tenderness and sweetness of the tea soup, so as to give full play to the unique taste of tea. This method actually represents the different tea culture tendencies of the Tang and Song dynasties.

In view of this, tea making is relatively another process. The "Trial Courtyard Sencha" mentions that "the fine beads fall out of the mist, and the vertigo flies around the Ou Fei Snow Lightly", which is a vivid description of the "milled tea" and "Luo tea" in the northern Song Dynasty tea culture. Cai Xiang's "Tea Record" has a clear record of these two processes, that is, first use clean paper to wrap the tea cake tightly and crush it, and then immediately and repeatedly crush it, and the tea color will turn white. When the tea is made, the pores are fine, and the tea powder will float on the water; the hole is rough, and the tea powder will not sink to the bottom. Song Huizong's "Treatise on Daguan Tea" believes that when luocha is tea, it should be repeated tirelessly, so that the tea powder can be lightly spread on the tea soup and show the color of the tea. Su Shi Sencha is naturally indispensable to this link, in the poetic expression of language, he crushed out a beautiful bead, but also out of the light fluttering snow. The appearance of the white tea powder swirling around the Ou is exactly the tea-making effect pursued by the Song people.

Of course, the Sencha process also requires the necessary utensils, which is also an indispensable part of tea culture. The "Tea Classic" lists 25 kinds of "tea utensils", and the "Tea Record" lists 9 kinds. In the Song Dynasty, what kind of utensils to use to cook tea and taste tea have a certain amount of attention, such as soup bottles advocating gold and silver texture, and tea cups are expensive to green and black. The soup bottle of gold and silver texture is a representative of identity status, and the folk tea is often made of iron or porcelain stone products. The choice of tea cups is more important to meet the needs of tea color. "Daguan Tea Theory" believes that the tea color is pure white as the best, followed by green and white, gray white, yellow and white, so when ordering tea, you should choose a tea cup with a blue-black glaze, especially if the glaze has a rabbit-like fine texture as the first choice, such a tea cup is easy to show the light color of the tea color. The "Tea Record" also holds this theory, which is based on the rabbit cup in the black porcelain of the kiln, which mainly sets off the white color of the tea. On the contrary, the blue-and-white tea cup is not easy to show a brown color, and it is not used by tea fighters. In this way, in the "Trial Courtyard Sencha", the impressive Dingyao tea cup that Su Shi saw at Wen Yanbo was not necessarily Dingzhou white porcelain. According to the degree of elegance of the Song people's tea tasting, Wen Yanbo, who was the prime minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, since he pursued the ancient method of Sencha in the Western Shu Dynasty, he should not use the qingbai cup or the Dingyao white cup in the choice of tea cups.

The question now is, what is Dingzhou flower porcelain, and what is the relationship between "Dingzhou flower porcelain" and "red jade"? Many scholars have noticed that Liu Qi's "Gui Qianzhi" of the late Jin Dynasty said that "Dingzhou flower porcelain Ou, the color of the world is white", so they believe that Su Shi's so-called "Dingzhou flower porcelain" is the designated kiln white porcelain. Some people have further discerned that "flower porcelain" refers to various fancy patterns decorated on the walls of fixed porcelain, rather than referring to color. The Qing Dynasty "Notes on the Southern Kiln" said that the Dingyao kiln "came out of the Northern Song Dynasty Dingzhou builder, white clay glaze, there are tear marks are good, there are three kinds of prints, arch flowers, pile flowers, the name Dingzhou flower porcelain is also." Dingyao originated from Quyang, Dingzhou, belongs to the white kiln system, affected by the northern water and soil climate, known as "white as jade, thin as paper, sound like a chime" reputation. After the Song Dynasty, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, had a large number of imitations of the Northern Song Dynasty official kilns, including ding kilns, due to differences in geographical environment, the south ding kiln showed a different blue and white color from the north, because of its glaze like powder, also known as "powder ding". The decoration technique of the northern kiln is mainly based on engraving, printing and scratching, and pays attention to the operation and carving of the carving knife, rather than using multicolor embellishment. Fancy content is mostly peony, xuancao, flying phoenix, plate mite for more, Xu Zhiheng's "Drinking LiuZhai Porcelain" believes that this craft originated from Qin Jing, its Yan details are not owned by the world, belongs to the exquisite products in ancient porcelain. Although Chen Liu's "Kuiya" of the Qing Dynasty believes that there is a color painting in the decorative technique of "fanding" ceramics, at least in Dingzhou kiln ceramics, the concept of "flower porcelain" still points to the decorative characteristics of plain knife carving texture.

Admittedly, the meaning of "Dingzhou flower porcelain" does not only refer to white porcelain. Written in the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, the "Jingdezhen Pottery Record" records Dingzhou kiln ceramics in Baiding, Hongding, Ziding, And Heiding, and believes that the Song people focused on red and white. However, in the Ming Dynasty's "Treatise on Ge Gu Zhi", "Zunsheng Eight Notes", and the Qing Dynasty's "Ancient Kiln Instrument Examination", "Wenfang Wanton Examination Tu" and Qianlong's Yongding kiln poems, Hongding was almost in a state of absence, so that Gao Lian and the Qianlong Emperor were highly suspicious of the existence of Hongding, and turned the problem directly to Su Shi's understanding of "Dingzhou Flower Porcelain Red Jade". Gao Lian changed "Qiu Hongyu" to "Qiu Ru Jade", that is, he determined that there was no red porcelain in the kiln. The Qianlong Emperor believed that the porcelain in the world was white, and Su Shi's poem "Pondering Red Jade" was under-considered, and it was suspected of exaggeration. Mr. Chen Wenzeng, a contemporary revivalist of Ding kiln and a master of Chinese ceramic art, pointed out that the reason why the ancients doubted the existence of Hongding was because they had not really seen Hongding. He has been engaged in the restoration of the kiln for more than 30 years, and he knows the production of the kiln and its kiln change law very well, and the red porcelain of the kiln is the kiln discoloration of the black glaze of the kiln, the cause is complex, and the success rate is relatively low, but the Song Dynasty's north and south kiln factories can produce this kind of kiln change porcelain is beyond doubt. He himself had successfully tried a ruddy red ding, so he was convinced of the existence of red ding. As a poet, his understanding of Su Shi's "Dingzhou Flower Porcelain Red Jade" is also different from that of his predecessors. He believes that "pondering red jade" is the upside-down writing method of poetic art, which means that Dingzhou flower porcelain is carved on translucent and soft carnelian jade.

Regarding Dingzhou red porcelain, the Song people have clear records. Shao Bowen of the Northern Song Dynasty said in the "Records of Shao's Smell and Seeing" that after Song Renzong saw Dingzhou red porcelain in Zhang Guifei's pavilion, he asked her where the artifact came from? Zhang Guifei replied with Wang Gongchen's offering, and Emperor Renzong smashed the concubine on the grounds that she should not accept gifts from the chancellor. Zhou Hui of the Southern Song Dynasty recorded in the Qingbo Magazine that he himself had seen Dingzhou red porcelain during his mission to the Jin Dynasty, which was more vivid than the kiln turning red in Jingdezhen, Raozhou. It can be said that in the northern region of the Song and Jin Dynasties, there were red dings in the production of ding kiln ceramics. In the eighth year of the Yuan Dynasty, Su Shi, who was frustrated in the political dispute, was sent to Dingzhou in the northern northern northern Northern Song Dynasty to manage military and political affairs, and his footprints also reached Quyang. He would not be unfamiliar with ding porcelain, and the reason why Wen Yanbo used the ding kiln tea cup impressed him was presumably not the ordinary white ding, but a rare kiln discoloration. Judging from the white tea powder produced when the tea was milled and the Pure White Tea Color advocated by the Northern Song Dynasty, its so-called "Red Jade" naturally does not refer to the color of the tea, but to the color determination associated with the aesthetics of the instruments in the tea culture of the Song Dynasty. This inference can only point to Dingzhou red porcelain.

All in all, understanding the Northern Song Dynasty tea culture in Su Shi's "Sencha in the Trial Courtyard" is the key to interpreting the "Dingzhou Flower Porcelain Red Jade". Dingyao ceramics belong to the white kiln system, in the Northern Song Dynasty tea culture, Dingyao white cup is not as suitable as black jianzhan as a tool for grinding tea. On the contrary, the kiln-changing porcelain produced by the Ding kiln, such as Red Ding, Zi Ding, and Hei Ding, catered to the aesthetics of the Song people.

(Author: Chen Bohan, Assistant Researcher, Institute of Ethnic Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)