Cultural History

[internet_jen]

I took a class on Chanoyu and the Wabi Aesthetic in association with the Uresenke school. My Sensei studied there in Japan and he lectured about the history of tea, but mostly just followed the events that led to chado chanoyu (religious/social, political & agricultural). The devlopment and proliferation of oolong (or black) tea wasn't covered, it was only a 10week course and lecture was already jam packed enough!

I'm sure oolong has a cool history and I am looking for books and or websites to gain a coherent picture of how tea went from leaves accidentally falling into a pot to contempory growing and drinking practices.

I think having this context will help me better explore and understand the differences in teas. And if there is a cool history I'd rather know it than to not. It seems tea is more of a practice than a just a beverage.

I'm really into getting to know my food, in the past few years I've started to attend coffee and beer tastings. Next on the list is cheese and wine! I need a better paying job though.

[Herb_Master]

There is quite a problem here, there do not seem to be any good thorough accounts of Oolong history. Culture abounds, the 4 main Oolong centres have distinct cultures of their own.

Without being written down for many centuries the history has become shrouded by legend and myth. But these are great fun, trying to establish in your own mind which legends is most likely to be nearest to the truth - if any.

The main legends concern
:- the naming of oolong itself, from Wu Long or Black Dragon. 3 Popular versions exist.
:- the naming of Da Hong Pao, several similar versions exist
:- the naming of Tie Guan Yin, several similar versions exist
:- the discovery of the Great Feng Huang teas by a certain Song Dynasty Emperor
:- the discovery of the Shui Xian bush in Fujian as opposed to the Fenghuang Shui Xian

Most of these legends appear in good books.

But there are very few good books. Out of 20 books that I have bought I wish I had not bothered with about 12 of them

My 2 favourites - are

"All The Tea In China" by Kit Chow and Ione Kramer
which includes a few pages on Oolong

and best of all

"The Story of Tea" by Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J Heiss
which has some nice articles running to several pages on Oolong

The internet has a few sites that throw up info, but probably best is to follow the Blog associated with the Online Shop TeaHabitat - the Blog is called TeaObsession

Another impressive online source is to be found at SevenCups - they have an education section which includes 20 plus videocasts on various aspects of tea, these include some on Oolong and how to brew it.

[gingkoseto]

This guy wrote a book about oolong which I think is really good.


The book is called Oolong Tea of China


The second half of the book talking about brewing techniques which are very generic, not even as specific as many posts in this forum, I think

But I really like the first half of the book a lot. He talked about origin of oolong, origin of Chinese and English tea terms in language evolution, and subtle differences and folds of meanings of terms. Many points are of academic values and with good literature references. Overall I think this is a book worth translating to English. However, now in Chinese market, I have seen a few touristic kind of tea book published in English, while many good tea books are left behind.

[ABx]

Herb_Master is right that there aren't very many good books, though I have to stipulate that there aren't many good books in English. It's an integral part of Chinese culture and history, so there are far more books in Chinese, but the West has only really been (re)introduced to Chinese tea in the past 10 years.

The Story of Tea is a good one, though, and does go through the history a bit. If you want to go farther, then it would at least give you enough to start looking for books on more specific subjects that go farther in-depth.

[chrl42]

Oolong was invented and drunk by farmers. That's why it is hidden with so many legend IMHO. Even Wuyi's Long Feng Duan Cha (tribute tea) wasn't Oolong but green.

Oolong only came to the surface recently, back then what Chinese drunk mostly was Green.

Back then, the main center of Chinese tea was Jiangnan (Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangsu etc) provinces like Yunnan, Hunan, Guangdong had their own unique tradition, not written from historical document. If you get to read some old Chinese script, you would see how much chauvinism existed in China, that is literally shocking - seems like still happening in China. Minorities are not very much accepted in mainland, in public transport, the only people the Chinese won't yield their seat would be people in minority custom. Tibet and bus terror in Xinjiang, the most Chinese on internet posed aggressive attitude, claiming them as 'terrorist'. So you can say the world pretty much hate the Chinese for that...

[Herb_Master]

And here is what looks like a good book on Taiwan Oolong

but it is in Chinese

http://www.tillermantea.com/formosa_oolong_tea.html

Any of you Chinese readers care to buy it and post weekly translations of each chapter

Is this a new tea site, I see it is going online (order wise) soon

can anybody recommend "Tea and Chinese Culture" by Ling Wang

http://www.tillermantea.com/tea_and_chi ... lture.html

I highly rate the only other 2 books that Tillerman are selling, the Formosa oolong book looks specialised, so am interested to see if this is in the same league.