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The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by futurebird » Apr 1st, '13, 12:20

I'd like to read this book... butt it's quite hard to find!

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by victoria3 » Apr 1st, '13, 12:50

futurebird wrote:I'd like to read this book... butt it's quite hard to find!
You can get it new or used at amazon
http://www.amazon.com/The-Classic-Tea-Y ... 0316534501

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for digital books with expired copyrights;
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura and a few other books on Tea
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/398

And in Chinese Yu Lu under Tea
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/2210

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by Muadeeb » Apr 1st, '13, 12:56

Speaking of books, I just started Sarah Rose's 'All the Tea in China' yesterday, and it's a fascinating account of the guy who smuggled tea out of China for the British so they could break the Chinese Monopoly on tea production. Robert Fortune was the 19th century's most interesting man in the world.

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by teaisme » Apr 1st, '13, 13:57

impersonating a Chinese, illegally smuggling tea plants/native species out of China to benefit British economy, going places outside of permitted trade ports at that time to illegally collect plants...

Though he did bring some nice things to the west...the means he went about it was like a crook in some regards

Like a child who can't follow rules and wants to pick up everything he/she sees and put it in their pocket :wink:

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by Muadeeb » Apr 1st, '13, 14:12

I'm not defending him, just reading a book about him. :)

I'm only a few chapters in at this point, but there are a lot of parallels with today's world in there. East India Company was one of those "too big to fail" companies that lost its own monopoly on the goods it brought back and had to adapt. Industrial espionage was just as common back then as it is now, but they didn't have the same moral code as we do now so it manifested itself in different ways. The British traded opium for tea, for one example. China isn't as concerned with honoring trade secrets and intellectual property as it was back then.

History is filled with scoundrels and frauds. The ones who become successful have their stories redefined, if for no other reason than to justify their actions so we can sleep better at night. :roll:

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by teaisme » Apr 1st, '13, 14:22

yeah for sure, most of our recent past has been a lot sketchier then we would like to admit.

We have been very naughty these past few centuries :(

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by Muadeeb » Apr 1st, '13, 14:45

teaisme wrote:
We have been very naughty these past few centuries :(
The argument could be made that this is the most peaceful time in human history. We still have wars, of course, but it's not like every European country is at war with each other as they used to be. Globalization and diplomacy have tempered our violent ways- just a little bit.

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by yanom » Apr 1st, '13, 15:20

While Europe was fighting, Asia was far more peaceful under the Chinese hegemony. :D

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by futurebird » Apr 1st, '13, 15:50

victoria3 wrote:
futurebird wrote:I'd like to read this book... butt it's quite hard to find!
You can get it new or used at amazon
http://www.amazon.com/The-Classic-Tea-Y ... 0316534501

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for digital books with expired copyrights;
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura and a few other books on Tea
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/398

And in Chinese Yu Lu under Tea
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/2210
Yeah this is just the problem my options seem to be learn Chinese or pay $628.70 for the book... though I can get it used for $78.. which still seems a little high.

There is this blog that has been covering parts of it...

http://www.teanamu.com/2010/07/lu-yu-cl ... chapter-1/

good stuff.

$78 isn't so bad... I have math books that cost way more than that. But, maybe there is another source. I wish it was on kindle for less like most books.

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by teaisme » Apr 1st, '13, 16:11

nice link thanks!

http://www.tsiosophy.com/category/history/

This site has a few translations of some excerpts from various books, you all may like it

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by Tobias » Apr 2nd, '13, 09:55

Dragon Tea House has a bilingual edition for sale:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Classic-Tea-Seq ... 35be36290e

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by gasninja » Apr 6th, '13, 09:42

there was a download for kindle on one of the links above.

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by gingkoseto » Apr 6th, '13, 11:22

The classic of tea, maybe you can find a fine English translation online for free. This book was written long before the time intellectual property right existed, and most people could get Chinese versions for free. I'm sure there are English tea enthusiasts who have translated it for free too.

All the Tea in China, my problem of this book is reflected by an Amazon comment made by another reader - the author of this book didn't make it clear whether this book is a non-fiction or historical romance. A lot of deliberate details of the stories are entirely based on Robert Fortune's own personal writing, which I suspect is very much historical romance - I won't blame him on it... who doesn't want to describe himself as a hero when he sits down to write a memoir at an old age? :mrgreen: But using these stories as facts in a modern book generates a problem.

A basic deviation from reality is that China never forbade export of tea. Tea was introduced to Japan and Korea a thousand years earlier than Robert Fortune's action. Why wouldn't Japan and Korea count as tea cultivation out of China, until the tea was under the control of western colonists? Robert Fortune had to spy on tea because he was from a then- enemy state that first exported banned drug (opium) to China and later on brought up a war against China blaming China for refusing to importing opium. Robert Fortune had to disguise himself basically no matter what he did in China, and the disguise was not just because tea was some sort of guarded treasure.

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by Evan Draper » Apr 6th, '13, 17:00

Yes, we are sorely lacking an accessible English translation of Lu Yu's "Tea Classic." The Francis Ross Carpenter translation has been out of print for a while so used editions are quite expensive, but you can still find them in libraries. The "Library of Chinese Classics" translation sold by Dragon and other retailers is god-awful, I'm told, but at least it's transliterated, so maybe you want to use it as a basis for making your own translation. The tsiosophy site is Stephen Owyoung; he has been working on a translation as a "pet project", but I heard him lecture on the topic a year ago, and you can bet his will be the landmark translation once it gets published.

I think score-settling regarding Robert Fortune and Opium Wars-era tea history is quite inappropriate here, but I just want to mention that you can find Robert Fortune's books in various editions in libraries and for sale. Sarah Rose's book is quite unnecessary if you can get the original texts, but it's a good read if that's too much hassle.

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Re: The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu ... where can I get it?

by Evan Draper » Sep 16th, '13, 15:09

Evan Draper wrote:Yes, we are sorely lacking an accessible English translation of Lu Yu's "Tea Classic." The Francis Ross Carpenter translation has been out of print for a while so used editions are quite expensive, but you can still find them in libraries.
Woot, finally snagged one of these for under $25. Don't know why, but you can find some cheaper copies now....

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