Dōngxī shìchá lù 東溪試茶錄
Records of Tea-Testing at Dōng-xī by 宋子安 (Sòng Zǐ’ān, 撰)
About the work
A one-juàn mid-Northern-Sòng monograph on the Jiànān tea-region, by Sòng Zǐ’ān 宋子安 of Jiànān, fl. c. 1064–1066. The work supplements the Chátú of Dīng Wèi 丁謂 (the lost foundational Sòng tea-treatise) and Cài Xiāng’s Chálù (KR3i0020) by providing detailed micro-geographical information on the Jiànān tribute-tea production-zone — specifically the named tea-mountains around Beìyuàn and their relative ranking. The work is divided into eight chapters: (1) Zǒngxù bèimíng 總敘焙名 (Overview of Roastery Names); (2) Beìyuàn; (3) Hèyuán 壑源; (4) Fólǐng 佛嶺; (5) Shāxī 沙溪; (6) Chámíng 茶名 (varieties); (7) Cǎichá 採茶 (gathering); (8) Chábìng 茶病 (tea-defects).
Tiyao
The combined tíyào covering KR3i0022 and this work is in KR3i0022. The relevant portion (translated): We submit that the Dōngxī shìchá lù in one juàn — the old recension inscribes it as by Sòng Zǐ’ān of the Sòng; it is recorded in Zuǒ Guī’s Bǎichuān xuéhǎi*. But Cháo Gōngwǔ’s* Jùnzhāi dúshūzhì gives it as “Zhū Zǐ’ān” — we do not know which is correct. However the Bǎichuān xuéhǎi is an old printing, and the Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì also gives “Sòng Zǐ’ān” — we suspect the “Zhū” of the Dúshū zhì is a copyist’s error for “Sòng” (the characters being graphically similar). The book supplements the omissions of Dīng Wèi’s and Cài Xiāng’s two tea-records. Dōngxī is likewise a place-name in Jiànān. It is divided into eight items: Overview of Roastery Names; Beìyuàn; Hèyuán; Fólǐng; Shāxī; Tea-Varieties; Tea-Gathering; Tea-Defects. The great idea is that for the connoisseurship of tea, one should distinguish the place of production — sometimes places only inches apart may differ sharply in quality. Hence within this record, the local roasteries’ distances from each other are given most exhaustively. The Sòngshǐ Yìwénzhì records: Lǚ Huìqīng’s Jiànān cháyòng jì in two juàn*; Zhāng Bǐngwén’s* Hèyuán chálù in one juàn*; Liú Yì’s* Beìyuàn shíyí in one juàn — all now lost in transmission. For investigating the outline of Jiàn-tea, only this work together with Xióng Fán’s two-treatises remain. Submitted Qiánlóng 46 month 10 (1781).
Abstract
The work is the principal Sòng source on the micro-geography of the Jiànān tribute-tea production-zone. Its detailed mapping of the named tea-mountains — Beìyuàn proper, Hèyuán (the prime sub-zone), Fólǐng (Buddha-Ridge), Shāxī (the adjacent inferior zone), Yuányāngfólǐng, etc. — with their distances from the central Beìyuàn roastery is the most precise pre-modern Chinese commodity-geography survey to survive.
The work’s date is securely fixed by internal evidence to the early years of Yīngzōng (r. 1064–1067) or the very early Shénzōng (1068+), based on (a) its citation of Cài Xiāng’s Chálù (final form 1064), (b) its non-citation of any post-1068 Wáng Ānshí-era figure, and (c) the Sòngshǐ placement.
The work is one of the principal sources for early-Sòng báichá 白茶 (white-tea, the variety of Camellia sinensis with white-glassy young leaves) — Sòng Zǐ’ān reports that the báichá trees were rare, that they appeared only sporadically in the wild, and that one farmer named Wáng Miǎn 王免 had a single great wild-tree that he protected each spring with a covering-shed against wind-and-sun. This anecdote is one of the principal early references for what would become Huīzōng’s favoured tribute-tea variety (cf. Huīzōng’s Dàguān chálùn 1107, where the emperor declares báichá “first under heaven”).
The Chábìng (Tea Defects) chapter of this work is the immediate precursor to Huáng Rú’s Pǐnchá yàolù (KR3i0021) ten-fault inventory. Sòng Zǐ’ān gives only brief notice of the most common faults (wūdài 烏蔕 black-stems, báihé 白合 white-clouded leaves, the under-steaming problem), but his outline framework is what Huáng Rú later expanded into a full ten-fault treatise.
Translations and research
- Benn, James A. 2015. Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History. Honolulu: U Hawaii Press.
- Shěn Dōngméi 沈冬梅. 2007. Sòng-dài chá-wén-huà 宋代茶文化. Běijīng: Xué-yuàn chū-bǎn-shè.
- Suzuki Tetsuo 鈴木哲雄. 1989. “Sōdai chasho no kenkyū 宋代茶書研究”. Komazawa University.
Other points of interest
The micro-geographical precision of the work — its insistence that tea-quality varies by tens of feet within a single mountain — anticipates the terroir concept of European viticulture by some seven centuries. The work is also the principal source for the institutional structure of the Sòng tribute-tea bureaucracy: the relationship between the guānbèi 官焙 (official-roastery, Beìyuàn) and the satellite sībèi 私焙 (private-roasteries, including Shímén, Rǔjí, Xiāngkǒu) that fed processed leaf to the central roastery.