[Global Times reporter Chen Qianzhong Yuhua] Editor’s Note: On the evening of November 29th, Beijing time, at the 17th regular session of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, China’s declared "China’s traditional tea-making skills and related customs" passed the evaluation and was included in the UNESCO representative list of human intangible cultural heritage. Human beings need harmonious coexistence and elegant and poetic habitation. China tea culture pays attention to "tea and the world", and its concept of "quietness and elegance" meets the needs of today’s world.
Non-legacy projects mainly come from four major tea areas.
"Traditional tea-making skills and related customs in China" refers to the knowledge, skills and practices related to tea garden management, tea picking, hand-made tea and tea drinking and sharing. Wang Fuzhou, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Art and director of the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, told the Global Times reporter that the project included 44 small projects from 15 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) across the country. This declaration covers traditional tea-making techniques such as green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, black tea, yellow tea, reprocessed tea, etc., and also includes related customs such as jingshan tea banquet and tea-driving field, which can be called the "largest volume" in all previous human heritage declaration projects in China. According to the local conditions, tea makers have developed more than 2,000 kinds of tea products with different colors, smells, tastes and shapes, using tools such as frying pan, bamboo plaque and baking cage, and using core techniques such as deactivating enzymes, suffocating yellow, piling, withering, fermenting and scenting.
The tea maker is withering the Fuding white tea.
Wang Fuzhou said that traditional tea-making techniques are closely related to geographical location and natural environment, mainly concentrated in the four major tea-making areas of Jiangnan, Jiangbei, Southwest and South China, south of the Huaihe River in Qinling Mountains of China and east of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, including Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui, Hubei, Henan, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and other provinces (cities, autonomous regions); Related customs are widely spread all over the country and shared by many ethnic groups.
A document submitted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to UNESCO states that tea is ubiquitous in the daily life of China people. People drink tea in homes, workplaces, teahouses, restaurants and temples by soaking and boiling. Tea is an important part of social activities and ceremonies such as weddings, apprentices and sacrifices.
As a member of this application project, Wang Fuzhou said that the selection of "China traditional tea-making skills and related customs" as this application project is due to the fact that tea has traditional skills, its geographical distribution is wide, its heritage types are rich, and it has the historical significance of East-West exchanges such as the ancient Silk Road and the ancient tea-horse road.
Yu Jinlong, a cultural scholar, told the Global Times reporter that the western lifestyle that consumes a lot and pays attention to material things is no longer suitable for human development. Humans need a richer spiritual life. The excellent Chinese traditional culture just meets human needs, and tea culture is an outstanding representative.
China tea is connected to the whole world.
Zou Jiaju, president of Yunnan Tea Industry Association, told Global Times that China was the first country in the world to grow and make tea. Tea has been associated with China people for thousands of years, which has been verified in many historical materials, including Shennong Herbal Classic, China’s first drug monograph, Tea Classic written by Lu Yu in Tang Dynasty, and Su Shi, a great poet in Song Dynasty’s discussion on drinking tea in his poems. Tea has a long history in China, which is not only deeply integrated into people’s daily life, but also becomes an important carrier for inheriting Chinese culture.
Jiang Song, a cultural scholar, told reporters that the earliest tea was basically drunk by some nobles and elites. Subsequently, the development and popularization of tea drinking culture was related to religion. It can be found from some literature records that Taoism and Buddhism were very popular in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Taoists and monks all followed a way of clearing up after noon and drinking tea to refresh their minds. In the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism spread widely, and ordinary people began to drink tea, forming a mass tea drinking culture, which reached its peak in the Song Dynasty. From Zhang Zeduan’s "The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival", we can see many teahouses. In the Northern Song Dynasty, drinking tea in teahouses has become an important social way. In the Song Dynasty, there was an elegant way of fighting tea, in which the tea-fighters took their own good tea, cooked it in turn, and evaluated each other to compete. Tea fighting includes tea fighting products, tea fighting orders and tea games. One of the links of tea fighting is to crush the tea cake, then fry it, and then use boiling water to break the tea with special tools. The longer the foam lasts, the better the tea is.
Zheng Changling, deputy director and secretary-general of China Folk Culture Innovation and Development Center, told the Global Times reporter that people in China discovered tea very early and widely produced and served their lives, leaving behind the ancient tea-horse road, which is talked about by people today.
As a famous commercial road, such as Silk Road, Maritime Silk Road and Wanli Tea Ceremony, the ancient tea-horse road is a link between different regions, different nationalities and different cultures, a historical witness to the prosperity of the Chinese nation and an important symbol of Chinese civilization.
The Yunnan-Tibet line and Sichuan-Tibet line of the original Tea-Horse Road crossed the Hengduan Mountain and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for the first time in the form of an expedition road, extended to the western regions, and joined the Silk Road. The phenomenon of multicultural interaction and exchange formed on the Tea-Horse Road, which became one of the powerful arteries connecting ancient and modern China with the outside world. More than 20 ethnic groups, including Han, Tibetan, Dai, Yi and Naxi, inhabit the area radiated by the Tea-Horse Ancient Road, which is a collection of Central Plains culture, Tibetan traditional culture, Baye culture, fire culture, Dongba culture and other cultural forms, and Tibetan Buddhism and Zen have also left different degrees of influence.
Yu Jinlong, a cultural scholar, told the Global Times reporter that as the origin of tea trees and the birthplace of tea culture, China’s tea, tea trees and tea culture spread all over the world with the development of cultural exchanges and commercial trade. It was introduced to Japan, Korea, South Asia, Southeast Asia and other regions in the Tang Dynasty, and spread to European countries, the American continent, the Middle East, Russia and other regions in the 16th century. Under the direct influence of China’s tea culture, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Morocco have also formed their own tea culture. Among them, Japanese tea ceremony and Korean tea ceremony are most influenced by Chinese tea culture.
Jiang Song said that in the Tang Dynasty, when Jian Zhen traveled eastward, Buddhism brought tea to Japan, which changed the Japanese way of life. Among the western countries, tea has had the most influence on Britain since the 17th century, which in turn has affected the whole of Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the whole national economy of Britain was affected by the tea trade. According to statistics, 10% of British national income was used to buy tea, which became an important luxury. Some elites thought that the British people were too extravagant in tea consumption, so they suggested that they reduce drinking tea. However, drinking tea has become a way of life, not only because the British diet with more meat needs tea to improve digestion, but also because drinking afternoon tea has become a social way, and then a large number of teahouses have appeared. At that time, a housewife was not a qualified housewife if she could not cook tea for her guests.
By the 19th century, Britain’s national economy was closely related to two kinds of plants, one was to spend silver to buy China tea, the other was to control the huge trade deficit, and began to grow poppies in India to make opium, and later even launched two opium wars.
In order to narrow the huge trade deficit, Britain decided to steal tea seeds. In the late Qing Dynasty, Robert Fujun, a British plant hunter, smuggled China tea trees to India. At present, tea is grown in at least 50 countries around the world, and more than 120 countries import tea from China. The number of people who like tea in the world has exceeded 5 billion. It can be said that tea and tea culture originated in China have spread all over the world.
The closed-door policy was adopted in the late Qing Dynasty, and China’s tea-making techniques and other related tea cultures began to lag behind Japan in commercial marketing and communication. However, the tea-growing techniques and tea-making techniques inherited by China people for thousands of years are profound and profound, and they are still second to none today.
Non-genetic inheritor: Successful application for World Heritage is only the starting point.
Fan Shenghua, a provincial representative inheritor of the picking and production skills of the national intangible cultural heritage project "West Lake Longjing Tea", participated in this application. He told the Global Times reporter that the success of the application means heavier responsibility and better inheritance. After 48 years of frying tea, in order to pass on the "frying tea skills left by ancestors from generation to generation", Fan Shenghua began to go to surrounding schools and vocational skills training units to train the production skills of West Lake Longjing tea in 2015. "It takes patience to stir-fry tea, which is what I often emphasize with young people." Yang Feng, the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Zhenghe white tea making skills, once participated in the production of Bai Mudan, the national gift of the G20 Hangzhou Summit in 2016. He told the Global Times reporter that the success of this application is enough to prove the value of China tea and tea making skills, which is an important example of Chinese culture’s self-confidence.
Successful application for the World Heritage is conducive to promoting the sustainable and healthy development of the global tea industry, deepening the integration and mutual learning of tea culture, and letting more people know and love tea, enjoy the fragrance of tea and share a better life. At the same time, tea culture will have a far-reaching impact on moral cultivation and personality shaping. Promoting the exchange and mutual learning of world civilizations through the Silk Road will play an important role in the sustainable development of human society.
At present, Yang Feng’s tea factory cooperates with international organizations to provide a study tour mode of "labor for accommodation". Over the past few years, hundreds of volunteers from more than 10 countries have been attracted to live in tea factories and experience life with the workers. These volunteers have also brought their understanding and good memories of Zhenghe white tea to all corners of the country.
Yang Feng told the Global Times reporter, "The application for the World Heritage is only the starting point. We should focus on the quality of tea and cherish the value of the brand. With the country ‘ The belt and road initiative ’ The implementation of the initiative responds to the call for China culture to go abroad. I hope that international friends who love tea can walk into Chashan to learn about China’s tea culture and bring our tea, century-old tea taste and our customs to all parts of the world. " Zheng Changling told the Global Times reporter that through this application, we can not only see the profound tea culture in China, but also need to see the ideas, wisdom, experience, emotion and spirit of understanding nature and pursuing harmony with the natural society, promote the inheritance and spread of cultural heritage, promote the public’s Chinese cultural consciousness, and further establish cultural self-confidence with more concrete substantive connotations.
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