A Tea Reader Read Online Free Page A

Tea
    BY L U T’ UNG, AS TRANSLATED BY S TEVEN D.
O WYOUNG FOR C HA D AO 1
    The sun is as high as a ten-foot measure and five; I am deep asleep.
    The general bangs at the gate loud enough to scare the Duke of Chou! 2
    He announces that the Grand Master sends a letter; the white silk cover is triple-stamped.
    Breaking the vermilion seals, I imagine the Grand Master himself inspecting these three hundred moon-shaped tea cakes.
    He heard that within the tea mountain a path was cut at the New Year, sending insects rising excitedly on the spring wind.
    As the emperor waits to taste Yang-hsien tea, the one hundred plants dare not bloom.
    Benevolent breezes intimately embrace pearly tea sprouts, the early spring coaxing out buds of golden yellow.
    Picked fresh, fired till fragrant, then packed and sealed: tea’s essence and goodness is preserved.
    Such venerable tea is meant for princes and nobles; how did it reach the hut of this mountain hermit?
    The brushwood gate is closed against vulgar visitors; all alone, I don my gauze cap, brewing and tasting the tea.
    Clouds of green yielding; unceasingly, the wind blows; radiantly white, floating tea froth congeals against the bowl.
    The first bowl moistens my lips and throat.
    The second bowl banishes my loneliness and melancholy.
    The third bowl penetrates my withered entrails, finding nothing except a literary core of five thousand scrolls.
    The fourth bowl raises a light perspiration, casting life’s inequities out through my pores.
    The fifth bowl purifies my flesh and bones.
    The sixth bowl makes me one with the immortal, feathered spirits. The seventh bowl I need not drink, feeling only a pure wind rushing beneath my wings.
    Where are the immortal isles of Mount P’englai? I, Master Jade Stream, wish instead to ride this pure wind back to the tea mountain where other immortals gather to oversee the land, protecting the pure, high places from wind and rain.
    Yet, how can I bear knowing the bitter fate of the myriad peasants toiling beneath the tumbled tea cliffs!
    I have but to ask Grand Master Meng about them; whether they can ever regain some peace.
    Reprinted with permission from Stephen D. Owyoung and Cha Dao . Originally published in the April 2008 issue of Cha Dao as part of “Lu T’ung and the ‘Song of Tea’: The Taoist Origins of the Seven Bowls.”

Footnotes
    1 chadao.blogspot.com
    2 The Duke of Chou was also known as the “God of Dreams.” “Dreaming of Zhou (or Chou)” meant you were sleeping.

Ode on Tea
    BY K IEN -L ONG , E MPEROR OF C HINA AND T ARTARY FROM 1735–1796
    Written in 1746. Translated/published in the Public Advertiser , March 9, 1772. 1
    How tenderly striking to the Eye, is the Flower Mey-hoa ! 2
    How sweet the Scent exhaled from the delicate Plant of Fo-tchow ! 3
    How aromatic the Flavor of the invitingly odorous Fruit of the Pine 4
    Song-tchow !
    Three admirable Gifts of Nature these,
    For Pleasure to the Sight, the Smell, and Taste! With these at hand; let there upon a moderate Fire,
    Stand placed a tripod Boiler,
    Well fashion’d, and whose Color shall attest its seasoning for Service:
    Filled with the limpid Water of melted Snow
    When it shall have boil’d just to the Heat,
    That serves to whiten the Flakes of the finny Tribes 5
    Or redden the black Shell of the coated Kind; 6
    Then, into a Cup of the rare Porcelain of Yvay, 7
    Pour it on the fragrant Leaves of the Tea tree;
    Let it stand ‘till the fervent Steam
    That will, at first, have risen, like a thick Cloud,
    Shall have evaporated to a thin Mist:
    Then may you, leisurely, sip the fine-flavor’d Liquor;
    Nothing more powerful to dispel any of those Uneasinesses,
    That may have proceeded from their five Causes;
    Then may you regale your Smell and Taste;
    But inexpressible is the placid Calm,
    That steals upon the Senses, from that virtuous Infusion. Deliver’d, for a while, from the Tumult of Affairs,
    I find myself, at