At present, there are some differences, vagueness and even confusion about many concepts of tea culture, such as what is tea culture, what is tea ceremony, and what is tea art, and the relationship between tea ceremony and tea art. There is no unified understanding, and discussion is needed to obtain * * * knowledge.
Before discussing tea culture, we must first understand what culture is.
According to the definition of culturology, the commonly used cultural meanings can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense.
Culture in a broad sense refers to the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human society in historical practice, that is to say, everything created in the process of transforming nature and society belongs to the category of culture.
Culture in a narrow sense refers to social ideology, that is, spiritual wealth, such as literature, art, education, science and so on. , including social systems and organizations.
Therefore, tea culture should be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. Tea culture in a broad sense refers to the sum of material and spiritual wealth in the whole process of tea development. Tea culture in a narrow sense refers to its "spiritual wealth" part. Professor Wang Ling advocates a narrow sense in the book Tea Culture in China. She emphasizes: "The study of tea culture is not the study of natural phenomena such as tea growth, cultivation, production, chemical composition, pharmaceutical principle and health care function, but the work of natural scientists. Nor is it simply to add tea science to the history of tea archaeology and tea development. Our task is to study the cultural and social phenomena produced by the application of tea. "
According to the study of culturology, culture can be divided into two systems: technology and value. Technical system refers to the technical, instrumental and impersonal objective things produced by human beings dealing with nature; The value system refers to the normative, spiritual, individual and subjective things formed by human beings in the process of processing nature and shaping themselves. These two systems form a unity through language and social structure, which is culture in a broad sense. So the value system of culture has a narrow sense of culture.
The internal structure of culture includes the following levels: material culture, institutional culture, behavioral culture and psychological culture.
The material cultural layer is the sum of human material production activities and products, and it is a tangible cultural thing with material entities.
Institutional culture layer is a variety of social behavior norms established by human beings in social practice.
The behavioral culture layer is a behavior pattern in the form of customs and folk customs established in interpersonal communication.
Mentality culture is the subjective factors such as values, aesthetic taste and way of thinking bred by human beings in social consciousness activities, which is equivalent to the concepts of spiritual culture and social consciousness that people often say. This is the core of culture.
Then, tea culture should also have such four levels.
1. Four levels of tea culture
Physical culture-the sum of human activities and products in tea production, that is, tea cultivation, manufacturing, processing, preservation, chemical composition and curative effect research. , including tea, water, tea sets, tables and chairs, tea rooms and other tangible items and buildings used for tea tasting.
Institutional culture-social behavior norms formed by people in the process of tea production and consumption. For example, with the development of tea production, rulers of past dynasties have continuously strengthened management measures, which are called "tea administration", including tribute, taxation, monopoly, domestic sales, foreign trade and so on. According to "Eight Records of Huayang Country", as early as Zhou Wuwang's attack on Zhou Dynasty, "tea, honey, turtles ... all paid tribute" in Bashu area. After the Tang Dynasty, the share of tribute tea became larger and larger, with various names. From the first year of Jianzhong in the Tang Dynasty (AD 780), tea was taxed: "The tax on tea, lacquer, bamboo and wood in the world is one tenth." ("Old Tang Book"? In the ninth year of Daiwa (AD 835), the tea monopoly system was implemented, that is, Cai introduced tea from the Song Dynasty, and merchants paid taxes when introducing it, and then they could pick it up at the designated place. From the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, in order to control the supply of tea to ethnic minorities in northwest China, Tea and Horse Department was set up to carry out tea-horse trade, so as to achieve the purpose of "governing the border with tea". Tea trade in Han areas is also strictly restricted and developed in many ways.
Behavioral culture-people's established behavior patterns in the process of tea production and consumption are usually expressed in the form of tea ceremony, tea custom, tea art, etc. For example, Du Lai, a poet in the Song Dynasty, famously said, "Guests come to tea for wine on a cold night", which shows that it is a traditional etiquette for guests to worship tea in China. Sending tea thousands of miles away shows the nostalgia for relatives; In the old days, people took tea as a gift, which was called "tea gift", and sending "tea gift" was called "taking tea". There is an old saying in ancient times that "women don't eat two teas", that is, after receiving the "tea gift", their families will no longer accept other bride price; There are also tea worship Buddha, tea sacrifice and so on. As for the tea-drinking customs of all ethnic groups around the country, it is even more colorful, with various tea-drinking methods and tea art programs blooming.
Mentality culture-subjective factors such as values, aesthetic taste and way of thinking bred by people in the process of tea tasting. For example, the aesthetic taste of people drinking tea soup, the artistic conception and charm in the process of tea art operation, and the rich associations arising therefrom; Literary and artistic works that reflect tea production, tea area life and tea drinking interest; Combining tea drinking with philosophy of life, it rose to the height of philosophy and formed the so-called cha de, tea ceremony and so on. This is the highest realm and the core of tea culture.
Therefore, tea culture in a broad sense should be composed of the above four levels. And a complete and systematic science-tea science, referred to as tea science for short, has long been formed at the first level (physical culture). The second level (institutional culture) belongs to the research category of economic history, and it is also remarkable and fruitful. Therefore, as a new discipline, tea culture should focus on the weak third and fourth levels in the past, that is, tea culture in a narrow sense.
From this point of view, the narrow tea culture we want to study belongs to the so-called "spiritual civilization" category, but it is not completely divorced from the "material civilization" culture, but combined together. Tea ceremony, tea ceremony, tea ceremony and tea custom are all reflected in the process of using tea. Without it, there would be no tea culture.