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FRONT
COVER: Cloud Bowl #2, photograph © 1997 James Henke (www.jameshenkel.com)
BACK COVER: From The Modern Japanese Tea Room (by Michael Freeman,
Damiani Editore, Bologna),
photograph © 2007 Michael Freeman (www.michaelfreemanphoto.com)
KJ#71:
Tea
– a
glimpse, a journey...
This
issue was guest edited by Gaetano Kazuo Maida, executive
director of the nonprofit Tea Arts Institute, former
organizer of the American Premium Tea Institute and publisher of the
industry journal Tea Trade. (He is also a founding director
of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, and is
executive director of the International Buddhist Film Festival, www.ibff.org.)
The Art Director of this issue is Ayelet Maida, principal
of A/M Studios, and creative director of the International Buddhist
Film Festival. Contributing Editors: Lauren W. Deutsch, Josh Michaell
and Winnie Yu.
Baisao:
The Old Tea Seller by Norman Waddell
At a time when the word “tea” for most Japanese still meant
powdered matcha, Baisao was serving a new variety that came
to be known in Japan as sencha, a word that translates literally
as “simmered tea.” The term was used to refer to loose-leaf
teas in general, and could indicate the tea itself, the method of preparing
it—simmering or steeping—and, later, the elegant pastime
of drinking it (the “Way of Sencha”).
I’m
not Buddhist or Taoist
not a Confucianist either
I’m a brownfaced whitehaired
hard up old man.
people think I just prowl
the streets peddling tea,
I’ve got the whole universe
in this tea caddy of mine.
Going far away to China
to seek the sacred shoots
Old Eisai brought them back
sowed them in our land.
Uji tea has a taste infused
with Nature’s own essence
a pity folks only prattle
about its color and scent.
Brewing
tea in a cluster of pines
customers one after another
imbibing for a single sen
one cupful of the spring;
Friends, please don’t smile
at my humble existence,
being poor doesn’t hurt you,
you do that on your own.
(Translations
© by Norman Waddell)
12 Darjeeling
by Kevin Gascoyne
Darjeeling is bound to its reputation as the “Champagne of teas.”
The 87 Darjeeling tea gardens form the tea equivalent of a French wine
appellation. (The price for good whole-leaf Darjeeling tea may seem
high next to a grocery store tea bag, but a big pot of Darjeeling, even
one made from tea that retails at $400 per kilo, is cheaper than a quart
of domestic beer.) A hectare of Darjeeling bush will yield a mere 500
kilos of tea each year.
14 Yixing Ware by
Terese Tse Bartholomew
The stoneware teapots of Yixing have long been acknowledged by the tea
connoisseurs of China as the best vessels for brewing tea. They are
highly prized for their ability to retain the taste, color and aroma
of the tea leaves. It is believed that even in hot weather, tea left
overnight in a Yixing teapot will stay fresh.
16 Verandah by Hirokazu
Kosaka
Installation and story
17 Tea at Shaolin by
Bill Porter
“When new monks at Shaolin ask me about the Dharma, I tell them
to have a cup of tea. If they still don’t understand, I tell them
to taste the tea. The Way is in everything we do. Drinking a cup of
tea, eating, shitting, it doesn’t matter, it’s all the Way.
You can read all the books you want, but unless you find the Way in
your daily life, you’re wasting your time. It’s the same
with martial arts. Every kick, every blow is the Way. You can’t
separate yourself from what you do. If you do, it’s not the Way."
”
21 Ming Horses, Tea and the Third
Dalai Lama by Martha Avery
In the same year that Tibetan authorities agreed to the Mongolian entitlement
of the Dalai Lama, the Chinese granted official permission to Mongolians
to trade in tea. In the fall of 1577, tea was for the first time officially
sold by China to the Mongolians.
25 Temple of Tea, Temple of Thirst
by Jon Oda
Desert meditations at Burning Man
30 Uji Green by
Amanda Mayer Stinchecum
The concentrated flavor of gyokuro is sweet, fresh, thick and
rounded. Protecting the new leaves from the sun's rays enhances the
production of theanin, an amino acid that's the source of tea's natural
sweetness.It also inhibits the formation of catechin (tannin), responsible
for the astringency of tea grown in uncovered fields.
34 Teatime by
Pico Iyer
Within the tearoom itself, every detail sang the shifting of the seasons.
The poem in the tokonoma alcove spoke of hearts resembling
the autumn moon. An incense holder reproduced the circle of the harvest
moon. The seven autumn grasses poked, haphazardly elegant, out of a
long-necked vase.
35 One Series by
Pierre Sernet
Tea ceremony as portable public performance art
40 Landscape
by Chitfu Yu
41 Lu T’ung and The Song
of Tea by Steven D. Owyoung
The “Song of Tea” is one of the most beloved poems known
by tea-drinkers the world over. Its verses on “seven cups”
of tea remain as famous today as when written in China during the T’ang
dynasty (618–906 AD). The Song was composed by the poet Lu T’ung
(775–835 AD), a Taoist recluse and connoisseur of tea. Lu T’ung
was inspired by a gift of rare tea from one of his patrons, an official
high in the ranks of the imperial court. The tea was named Yang-hsien,
after the imperial estates where it was grown for the exclusive use
of the emperor.
49 Masala Chai by
Matteo Pistono
Take-out tea with a whole new meaning
50 Yun Wei by
Chongbin Zheng 
56 Pu-er by
Wing Chi Ip, Ming Yi Wang, Roy Fong
Unlike any other tea, pu-er is designed to be aged for years after it’s
picked, and is regarded almost as a living being, with personality.
It displays one set of characteristics when young and continues to mature
and change as time passes; as with people, the environment in which
it “grows up” affects the way it matures. This unique characteristic
inspires passion and attachment to pu-er unmatched by any other tea
in the world.
60 Sri Lanka Pilgrimage
by Matteo Pistono
The rapid development of the tea industry in the 1890s drastically changed
the physical and social face of Sri Lanka’s central highlands.
Laborers in the coffee industry were seasonal workers who were local
Sinhalese. Tea production occurs throughout the year, therefore a massive
workforce was needed to meet both the demand and annual cycle of tea
production in Sri Lanka. This led the British to encourage Tamil emigration
from South India, drastically altering the regional demographics. Today,
60% of the population of the central highlands is Tamil.
64 Cha by
Kazuaki Tanahashi
65 The Name Game by
Winnie Yu
For the Chinese understand that without nature, man is inherently insignificant.
It is therefore understandable that of all of the thousands of teas
in China, none were specifically named after a person, not even after
any of the many emperors who were often responsible for naming them.
(There was no audacious Chinese person the equivalent of Earl Grey!)
Most individual teas are named after their places of origin, the most
common being the mountains where many are found.
68 Humility by
Todd Walton
69 Teahouse Renaissance in Taipei
by Donna Lo
In the 1980s, Taiwan was still under martial law in response to threats
from mainland China. However, there were no rules at that time if you
did not touch on political issues, especially if you claimed you were
looking for traditional values or cultural foundations. So it seemed
acceptable, for instance, for a guy to renovate his dad’s dormitory
even if that old Japanese house had been assigned to him for residential
use by the government. Thus began the teahouse called Wisteria.
71 The Gaiwan by
Winnie Yu
The gaiwan is also called the Three Marvels Bowl, for Heaven,
Earth, and Man. The lid is on top, therefore heaven, the saucer supports
everything, therefore earth, and living between heaven and earth is
mankind, and therefore, the bowl. This vessel embodies in microcosm
the Chinese philosophical thought: “Heaven covers, Earth supports,
and Man nourishes.”
Downloadable PDF fileof this article here
ADVENTURES IN THE TEA TRADE by
tea merchants Winnie Yu and Sebastian Beckwith
29 Moguk, Burma
63 Phoenix Mountain, China; Wuyi, China
76 Treasure Mountain, Anxi, China
77 Darjeeling, India; Tung Ting, Taiwan
78 Taiping, China; Wenshan, Taiwan
79 Phongsali, Laos
Mr. Yan recounts how, as a youth, he used to get water for his tea bushes
when there was drought. Two huge pails would hang on either side of
a bamboo pole, and descending from the top of the mountain took around
six hours, and coming back on the ascent full of water, a little longer.
He started learning to harvest tea at age eight, to help dry and toss
the leaves by age ten, and apprenticed with his uncles and older brothers
by age fifteen to process by wok fire. By eighteen, he was allowed to
learn to judge and grade the finished product. Now in his late fifties,
Mr. Yan is training his grandnephews and the next generation of tea
masters in the meticulous nuances of judging and grading Tieguanyins.
IN REVIEW
9 Lauren W. Deutsch on Tan Dun’s
opera Tea: A Mirror of Soul
38 Josh Michaell on The Modern
Japanese Tea Room, by Michael Freeman, and Contemporary
Teahouses in China
46 Lauren W. Deutsch on Americans
Studying the Traditional Japanese Art of the Tea Ceremony: The Internationalizing
of a Traditional Art, by Barbara Mori
48 Josh Michaell on All In
This Tea, directed by Les Blank and Gina Liebrecht
52 Lauren W. Deutsch on The
Ancient Tea Horse Road: Travels with the Last of the Himalayan Muleteers,
by Jeff Fuchs [Errata: P.54, second column, second par
“...Fuchs recalls" should read: "In a distant echo of
news from the first caravans, he recalls..." – “he”
refers to Jason Rush.] See also Addenda.
73 Josh Michaell on The Time
of Tea, by Dominique Pasqualini and Bruno Suet
REGULAR FEATURES
FICTION
82 Hunger by
Sushma Joshi
POETRY
85 Two Poems in Praise of Enka
by Kevin Simmonds
87 Four Poems by
Kim Seung-Hee
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Lee Hyung-Jin
IN
TRANSLATION
90
The
Wrong Paradise by Rabindranath Tagore
Translated from Bengali by Srinjay Chakravarti
SPECIAL ONLINE FEATURES FOR THIS ISSUE
Tea
“Beyond” Japan: Chanoyu in the Diaspora
By Lauren W. Deutsch
I am not your typical or natural tea student: a left-handed, cross-country
skiing, Jewish feminist. Studying chanoyu for the past 24 years
has been both challenging and intriguing for all those reasons. I have
been fortunate to find a great teacher who can teach me. I
have been encouraged by her to make the practice my own within her very
formal teaching.
In 1987, after having studied Urasenke chado in Los Angeles
for almost three years as one of less than a handful of students of
non-Japanese heritage of the Distinguished Tea Master Sosei Matsumoto,
sensei, I was invited to apply to the Midorikai program for non-Japanese
people at Konnichian in Kyoto for the first of three short-courses (i.e.
part-time); the others being in 1989 and 1991. Now 24 years into the
practice, I’m anxious to write the next “chapter”
about American tea practitioners of chado.
continued...
The
New Way of Tea by
Junji Ito
Much
Ado About Matcha: Appreciating the Taste of Powdered Green Tea,
by Lauren W. Deutsch
The Epic of Tea –
a scanned pdf reprint of Daniel Kane's Tea essay in KJ's very first
issue....
The Colonel
Gets a Visitor – fiction by Sushma Joshi
KJ Blogology of Tea
Online Reviews
by Lauren W. Deutsch:
The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment
in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-presenting the Past, and
Japanese Tea Culture: Art History and Practice,
Etsuko Kato; Morgan Pitelka, ed.
The Korean Way of Tea: An Introductory
Guide, Brother Anthony of Taizé and Hong Kyeong-Hee
The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzo
and Liquid Jade: The
Story of Tea from East to West,
Beatrice Hohenegger
Tea
and Tourism: Tourists, Traditions and Transformations
edited by Lee Joliffe
Delamu
directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang.
Links
to previous KJ content on Tea:
KJ 1 Daniel R.
Kane: "The Epic of Tea"
(PDF scan, 2.6Mb)
KJ 12: Robert Brady: "Sen-no-Rikyu
Hits the Ceiling"
KJ 51 Andy Couturier: "Living
the Abundance of Less"
KJ 56 Marc P. Keane: "Miwa-an,
the Arbor of Three Wheels"
The
New Way of Tea
by Junji Ito
from The New Way of Tea, International Chado Culture Foundation,
in collaboration with Ikko Tanaka, ©2002 Used with permission
Today, combining contemporary art and regional culture has become
a common methodology, and there is an active moment to create futuristic
expressions of traditional aesthetics through digital technology.
But compared to the West, which underwent a revolution of the notion
of the plastic arts in the Renaissance, interpretations and expressions
of postmodernism in Asia are far from uniform, and because of the
significant cultural differences from region to region, a uniform
repertory of past styles to serve as references cannot exist. The
expressive style of the period shifting toward post-postmodernism,
which embraces even modernism, but the tendency toward a free intermingling
of time and space that is common to all of Asian culture can be regarded
as quite similar to postmodernism’s affirmation of all styles...
continued...
CONTRIBUTORS'
URLs
www.teaartsinstitute.org
www.teance.com
www.inpursuitoftea.com
www.imperialtea.com
www.camellia-sinensis.com
www.simonchaput.com
www.jameshenkel.com
www.lockcha.com
www.jaccc.org
www.farleaves.com
www.matthewlondon.com
www.tealchemy.com
www.waytotea.com
www.pierresernet.com
www.underthetablebooks.com
www.zenandtea.com
www.medicinebuddhas.org
www.rngco.com
teapersonality.blogspot.com
chadao.blogspot.com
yoonheekim.com
kevinsimmonds.com
sushma.blogspot.com
www.sushmasfiction.blogspot.com
China
Spring
black rice of the Se people on Tai Mu Shan
white tea on the bush in Fuding
T’ang tombs in the hills facing south and the sea
sun, mist, men and earth in our cups…
– © Gaetano Kazuo Maida
KJ
Special On-line Feature: FICTION
The
Colonel Gets a Visitor
Sushma Joshi (see also "Hunger" in KJ #71)
Hello? Yes? A visitor? I’m not expecting any visitor at this
hour. It’s a young man? Ask him his name, you dhindo-eating
idiot. Dinesh Neupane? I don’t know any Dinesh Neupane. Ask
him—ASK HIM what he wants. He wants to meet me. Well, what’s
new? I’m a popular man around these parts. This doesn’t
mean I meet with every Dinesh Neupane who drops by to see me. He works
for Jagriti, you say? Jagriti is trashy, like all
newspapers, but at least they print both sides of the story. I see
they ran a story about the police IGP’s abduction the other
day — all those other Maoist rags never print anything about
anything. Trash, complete trash. That’s all they ever print.
He’s a staff writer? Oh, that young man. Yes, I remember him.
A very pleasant young fellow with glasses, and a soft-spoken voice.
Yes, indeed, I remember him. He has a brother in our prison. Absolutely,
I recall the boy now, clearly. Why didn’t you tell me that before,
Kalay? Do you expect me to remember the name of every street journalist
working for a one-paisa rag? Let him in, let him in. And
yes, bring us some tea as well, we’ll be talking for a while.
continued...
Sushma Joshi is a filmmaker and writer based in
Kathmandu, Nepal. Her company, Sansar Media, has produced documentaries
and short films.
In
the U.S.A., preorder this issue through Teance, here
Subscriptions
(in Japan, just 3,200 yen for 4 issues, postage included!)
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