A Tea Reader (23 page)

The Tea Gardens of Shanghai

A
NONYMOUS
S
PECIAL
C
ORRESPONDENT

Excerpted from
Hunt's Merchant Magazine
,
1858.
¹

A special correspondent of the
London Times
,
writing from Shanghai, 23rd October, 1857, describing the manners and customs of the Chinese, writes of the tea gardens of Shanghai thus:

We bustle our way through the narrow streets. We pass the temples and the
yamuns,
²
unentered, for we have seen a hundred such before, and we reach the tea gardens of Shanghai city. These are worth a visit, for they are the best I have seen in China. A Chinese garden is usually about 20 yards square, but these cover an area of ten acres. It is an irregular figure flanked by rows of shops, rudely analogous to those of the Palais Royal. The area is traversed in all directions by broad canals of stagnant water, all grown over with green, and crossed by zig-zag wooden bridges, of the willow pattern plate model, sadly out of repair, and destitute of paint. Where the water is not, there are lumps of artificial rock-work, and large pavilion-shaped tearooms, perhaps twenty in number. Here self-heating kettles of gigantic proportions are always hissing and bubbling; and at the little tables the Chinese population are drinking tea, smoking, eating almond hard-cake or pomegranates, playing dominoes, or arranging bargains. There are interstices also of vacant land, and these are occupied by jugglers and peep-show-men. From the upper room of one of these teahouses, we shall have a view of the whole scene, and A'lin will order us a cup of tea and some cakes for lunch. The jugglers and gymnasts below are doing much the same kind of tricks which their brethren of England and France perform. M. Houdin and Mr. Anderson would find their equals among these less-pretending wizards. I am told that these peep-shows which old men are looking into and laughing, and which young boys are not prevented from seeing, contain representations of the grossest obscenity.

Here is a ventriloquist, who, attracted by our European costumes at the casement, has come up to perform. “Give him a dollar, A'lin, and tell him to begin.” That dirty, half-clad wanderer would make another fortune for Barnum. He unfolds his pack, and constructs out of some curtains a small closed room. Into this he retires, and immediately a little vaudeville is heard in progress inside. Half-a-dozen voices in rapid dialog, sounds, and movements, and cries of animals, and the clatter of falling articles, tell the action of the plot. The company from the tea-tables, who had gathered round, wag their tails, with laughter, especially at the broadest sallies of humor, and at the most indecorous
denouements
.
In truth, there is no difficulty, even to us, in comprehending what is supposed to be going on in that little room. The incidents are, indeed, somewhat of the broadest—not so bad as the scenes in our orthodox old English comedies, such as “The Custom of the Country,” for instance, or “The Conscious Lovers;” but still they are very minutely descriptive of facts not proper to be described. The man's talent, however, would gain him full audience in Europe without the aid of grossness.

“Ho lai”—“fire there.” Shall we light a cheroot and stroll about? Don't make too sure, Mr. Bull, that the gentleman in the mandarin cap, who is holding you by the button and grinning in your face, is saying anything complimentary about you. In a journey up the country a fat Frenchman, who had equipped himself in an old mandarin coat, a huge pair of China boots, and a black wide-awake,
³
was leaning upon a bamboo spear, while his boat was being drawn over one of those mud embankments, which serve the purpose of our locks. He also was very much flattered at the politeness of an old man who prostrated himself three times before him, and chin-chin-ed him. Unluckily an interpreter was present, who explained that this old man took our French friend for the devil, and was worshipping him in that capacity according to Chinese rites. In fact, the Frenchman in his antique disguise rather resembled a Chinese idol. But ask the French consul at Shanghai about this; he can tell the story better than I can.

Originally published in the
London Times
on October 23, 1857 and reprinted in the
Hunt's Merchant Magazine
in April 1858.

1
[Certain British spellings and archaic terms have been amended. Ed.]

2
A “
yamun
” is a residence that is given to officials of the Chinese government.

3
A “wide-awake” is a type of soft felt hat.

In The Footsteps Of Cho
Å­
i

BY
B
ROTHER
A
NTHONY OF
T
AIZÉ

A Korean Tea Pilgrimage

I love drinking Korean tea and I love visiting the places where it is produced: the Hwa
ŏ
m-sa and Ssangye-sa temples in Chiri Mountain in the southern regions where tea was first planted in the ninth century, and the modern tea fields of Hwagye Valley and Hadong, as well as Pos
ŏ
ng and Cheju Island. There is nothing more beautiful than Korean tea fields in springtime. But the Korean Way of Tea is not simply a matter of drinking tea. There is a rich tradition of tea literature inherited from the past that my friends who “do tea” in Korea insist must be studied. There are tea poems, treatises about tea, even a tea rhapsody! These classics of tea are regularly read in Korea at the same time as the Chinese
Classic of Tea
by Lu Yü.

The main problem for me is that all these texts are written in Classical Chinese, while I can only read modern Korean. Still, I have recently been preparing English translations of the three main Korean tea classics, based on Korean translations by a tea friend. The two most famous, the
Chronicle of the Spirit of Tea
and the
Hymn in Praise of Korean Tea
,
are from the brush of the Venerable Cho
Å­
i, who in the nineteenth century shared tea with some remarkable scholars at a time when the Way of Tea had been largely forgotten. I persuaded the publisher of the translations that we had to include in our book photographs of the places associated with the writers, and last autumn we set out to visit the places where Cho
Å­
i lived—the publisher, a photographer, my tea friend, and myself. The story of Cho
Å­
i's life kept us company on our travels round the far southwestern region of Korea; it was an unexpected autumnal tea pilgrimage.

Cho
Å­
i was born on the fifth day of the fourth lunar month, 1786, in Singi Village, Samhyang District, Muan County, in the southwestern region of South Ch
ŏ
lla Province, just outside Mokp'o city. His family name was Chang; his given name was
Ŭ
i-sun. Today the site of his original home is being developed as a memorial park, with grandiose plans for a series of halls and museums devoted to every aspect of Korean tea history and practice. The little house in which he spent his first years has been restored near the entrance but it is dwarfed by the new buildings rising on the hill above it.

We arrived rather late in the afternoon. It was getting dark and we were fortunate to be welcomed by the Venerable Yongun, who is the inspiration for this project. He is probably the greatest scholar of Korean tea history now alive. His room is lined with books, from floor to ceiling, and he has edited many of Korea's most important tea-related texts. Sharing tea with him and talking quietly was probably far more enriching than visiting all the displays in glass cases in the surrounding buildings.

In his sixteenth year, Cho
Å­
i first became a monk at Unh
Å­
ng-sa temple on the slopes of T
ŏ
kyong-san in Tado District, Naju County, South Ch
ŏ
lla Province, under the guidance of the Venerable Py
ŏ
kbong Mins
ŏ
ng. At that time, the temple must have been an impressive sight, with a series of ancient halls rising up the hillside. Alas, time and the Korean War (1950–1953) have demolished everything and we arrived to discover that at present, just one monk is living there, in a very simple house at the end of a rural lane. A single new temple hall has recently been built on the site of the original main hall. Nothing else remains.

Along the slopes of the valley beyond the hall, however, we were amazed to find large plantations of tea growing completely wild and very little tended. The Venerable Hyew
ŏ
n, the monk living there, explained that the bushes are growing from roots that are centuries old, that almost certainly already existed when Cho
Å­
i became a monk there. He gave us tea he had made using their leaves and it was touching to imagine the young Cho
Å­
i arriving in this very isolated spot to begin his quest for enlightenment surrounded by tea! We ate soft per-simmons from a tree that might be descended from one he knew, and one huge ginkgo loaded with nuts was almost certainly there then. I enjoy finding such continuities.

In his nineteenth year, after an enlightenment experience in Y
ŏ
ng'am hermitage on the nearby W
ŏ
lch'ul-san Mountain, Cho
Å­
i received ordination from the S
ŏ
n (Zen) master Wanho Yunu at the temple of Taedun-sa (now known as Taeh
Å­
ng-sa). The rocky heights of W
ŏ
lch'ul-san (the name means “moonrise”) once sheltered dozens of hermitages. A few temples remain, and scattered pagodas indicate where others stood. Just below one ancient temple there is a large, newly created tea plantation belonging to the Amore-Pacific group's Sulloc tea company, the largest producers of tea in Korea.

In 1806 Cho
Å­
i first met the great scholar and thinker Tasan Ch
ŏ
ng Yak-Yong (1763–1836), who was living in political exile in his mother's native town of Kangjin, only seven or eight miles away from Taedun-sa. Soon after his arrival in Kangjin, Tasan had met one of Korea's last surviving tea masters, the Venerable A'am Hyejang, the head monk of the nearby Paegny
ŏ
n-sa temple. It was from him that Tasan learned tea. The simple house in which Tasan spent much of his exile still exists on the far side of the hill from Paegny
ŏ
n-sa temple. In the temple, too, there remain a couple of buildings that Tasan and Cho
Å­
i must have seen.

Wild tea grows in the hillsides all around, a sign of the long history of tea cultivation in this area. Indeed, the name “Tasan,” meaning “tea mountain,” was originally the name of the hill on which his house stands. From the temple, there would have been a fine view out across the bay, but now much land has been reclaimed from the sea. We did not linger long here, but it was interesting to learn that the head monk of Paegny
ŏ
n-sa is attempting a modern revival of what Koreans call
ttok-ch'a
,
caked tea, the form of tea familiar from the classics of China and Korea, and which Tasan and Cho
Å­
i drank, whereas modern Korean tea is almost entirely leaf tea. There are similarities with Chinese
pu-erh
tea.

In 1809, two hundred years ago, Cho
Å­
i spent several months in Kangjin, learning the
Book of Changes
and classical Chinese poetry from Tasan, who seems to have learned more about tea from him in return. They became close friends, although Tasan was socially superior and a Confucian scholar who had been deeply influenced by the S
ŏ
hak (Western learning) that included Catholicism. Usually such men had little or no sympathy with Buddhism. In addition to scholarly learning, Cho
Å­
i was a skilled painter in both scholarly and Buddhist styles, and a noted performer of Buddhist ritual song
(
p
ŏ
mp'ae
)
and dance.

In 1815, Cho
Å­
i first visited Seoul and established strong relationships with a number of highly educated scholar-officials, several of whom had been to China, who became his friends and followers. These included the son-in-law of King Ch
ŏ
ngjo, Haeg
ŏ
Doin Hong Hy
ŏ
n-ju
and his brother Y
ŏ
nch'
ŏ
n Hong S
ŏ
k-ju, the son of Tasan, Unp'o Ch
ŏ
ng Hak-yu; as well as the famous calligrapher Ch'usa Kim Ch
ŏ
ng-h
Å­
i (1786–1856) with his brothers. It was most unusual for a Buddhist monk, who was assigned the lowest rank in society, together with shamans and
kisaengs
(female entertainers), to be recognized as a poet and thinker in this way by members of the Confucian establishment. Since he was a monk, Cho
Å­
i was not even allowed to enter the walls of Seoul and instead received visits from these scholars while living in Ch'
ŏ
ngnyang-sa temple outside the eastern gate or in a hermit-age in the hills to the north.

Once he was in his 40s, Cho
Å­
i withdrew to the mountain above Taeh
Å­
ng-sa temple, outside the township of Haenam, in the far southwest of Korea, built a hermitage known as Ilch'i-am in 1824, and lived there alone for the next 40 years, practicing meditation in a manner he developed and wrote about. After his death the hermitage ceased to exist. In the late 1970s, scholars involved in the twentieth-century tea revival discovered where it had been. They built a couple of small halls on the site, and monks with an interest in tea began to live there, cultivating a tea field. I had been there once before, ten years ago, and retained the image of a tiny thatched tea room and a small wooden hermitage lost on a wild mountainside.

It is a steep climb from the main temple, I was gasping a bit by the time we reached the hermitage, but not as much as some of the younger members of our group! Recently several additional halls and buildings have been added and we were welcomed for tea by the Venerable Muin, who is currently living there. The views from the hermit-age across the late-autumn colors of the mountainside were wonderful and we soon recovered. The Venerable Muin is also in charge of the ‘temple-stay' program at the main temple, and organizes tea-making sessions for groups of international visitors in the spring months of April and May. We drank tea with him and were touched by his ready welcome. He certainly sees many more people in a year than Cho
Å­
i did, and from many different countries!

In 1828, during a visit to Ch'ilbul S
ŏ
n (Zen) Hall in Chiri Mountain, several miles to the north, Cho
Å­
i copied out from a Ming Chinese encyclopedia dating from the late sixteenth-century the
Ch'asinj
ŏ
n (Chronicle of the Spirit of Tea)
,
a simple guide to the basic principles involved in making and drinking tea. In 1830, back at Ilch'i-am, he prepared a clean copy of his rapidly written text. Ch'ilbul-sa (temple), as it is now called, lies high up in peaceful isolation at the very end of the road that climbs through Hwagye Valley, the site of many recently planted tea fields. Its old buildings were burned during the Korean War and it is now much larger than when Cho
Å­
i was there. A modern monument in one corner of the lower car-park commemorates his visit. It always reminds me that we are not being very authentic, zooming up in a car along a smooth modern road while Cho
Å­
i had to climb several miles up a rough mountain path.

I visit the Hwagye valley every year. In it is the home of the woman who produces my favorite tea; its name is
Kwan Hyang
—
vision of fragrance! She makes my favorite Korean meals, too, from fresh mountain herbs. When we visit her house, we almost always drive on up to Ch'ilbul Temple and I have slept there several times, too. The sound of night birds singing among the trees in the intense silence that follows the morning chanting at around 4:00
A.M.
on spring mornings is quite wonderful. And well hidden from visitors on a slope above the temple is a modern meditation hall, where monks continue the meditation practiced by Cho
Å­
i.

In 1831 Cho
Å­
i once again visited his friends in Seoul, reading and writing poems with them. He then returned to his hermitage and in 1837 he wrote his
TongCh'aSong
(
Hymn in Praise of Korean Tea
)
, at the request of Hong Hy
ŏ
n-ju. This is an impressive poem in classical Chinese, designed to affirm that Korean tea is equal in quality to Chinese tea. Its main text is broken into short sections by many prose annotations and explanations added by Cho
Å­
i while he was writing. In 1838 we find him climbing to Piro Peak, the topmost peak of the Diamond Mountains (now in North Korea), before visiting the hills around Seoul. In his fifty-fifth year, he received the honor of being recognized as a Great Monk by King H
ŏ
njong. In his fifty-eighth year he visited his childhood home and saw his parents' graves covered with weeds, an event he marked in a poem.

From 1840 until 1848, the scholar and calligrapher Ch'usa Kim Ch
ŏ
ng-h
Å­
i was exiled to the southern island of Cheju and during those years, Cho
Å­
i visited him no less than five times, once staying for six months, bringing him tea and teaching him about Buddhism. When Ch'usa was freed, he visited Cho
Å­
i at Ilch'i-am as soon as he arrived on the mainland on his way back to Seoul. Ch'usa died in the tenth month of 1856 and a little later, when he was already 71, Cho
Å­
i visited his grave near Asan, to the southwest of Seoul. Ch'usa's family home still stands close to his grave and can be visited. The house on Cheju Island where Ch'usa lived also survived until the mid-twentieth century, when it was burned in the troubles that heralded the approach of the Korean War. It has now been rebuilt and I love to go there in February when the special Cheju narcissus is in flower in the garden, with its extraordinary jasmine-like perfume.