The use of lemon slices by the Russians,
who learned to take tea from the Chinese caravansaries,
points to the survival of the ancient method.
It needed the genius of the Tang dynasty to emancipate Tea
from its crude state and lead to its final idealization. With
Luwuh in the middle of the eighth century we have our first
apostle of tea. He was born in an age when Buddhism,
Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking mutual synthesis.
The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to
mirror the Universal in the Particular. Luwuh, a poet, saw in
the Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned
through all things. In his celebrated work, the "Chaking"
(The Holy Scripture of Tea) he formulated the Code of Tea.
He has since been worshipped as the tutelary god of the
Chinese tea merchants.
The "Chaking" consists of three volumes and ten chapters.
In the first chapter Luwuh treats of the nature of the tea-plant,
in the second of the implements for gathering the leaves, in the
third of the selection of the leaves. According to him the best
quality of the leaves must have "creases like the leathern boot of
Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold
like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by
a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain.
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