China News Service, Beijing, April 14 (Reporter Ying Ni) The musical "Tea Ceremony: One Leaf of the Universe" premiered in Beijing for two consecutive nights from the 12th to the 13th.
The play uses "tea" to carry "Dao", travels through dreams, and tells the story of China's long-standing tea culture.
The play takes a "tea dream" by the protagonist "Hua Yan" as the main line, uses symphony + dance + story as the artistic expression method, and integrates 3D holographic technology.
The audience will follow "Hua Yan" through the five important periods in the development of tea culture in the "Ancient Pan Gu Period", "Ancient Shennong Period", "Tang", "Song", and "Ming Qing". Through his experience and growth, he will appreciate and pursue the tea ceremony. The connotation-tea ceremony is the way of heaven, tea ceremony is the way of humanity, tea ceremony is the way of heart.
"Tea Ceremony: One Leaf of the Universe" Stills Photographed by Ni Ying
In the play, "Hua Yan" is both a dreamer and a dreamer.
He first became Pangu, presenting a magnificent scene that opened up the world, witnessing the birth of the first tea; then he became Shennong, who tasted herbs every day to save the people troubled by poisons, and finally found the sacred grass-"tea" on the top of the mountain; From the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, he experienced the life of "tea saint" Lu Yu's sorrows and joys, and wrote three volumes of the "Tea Sutra"; and came to the Song Dynasty, where "the tea ceremony is the heart", to appreciate the flourishing age of tea entering the world, and to reproduce the best of Zen tea. The famous koan-the allusion of "going to eat tea"; in the Ming and Qing dynasties, he set foot on the Silk Road and escorted Chinese tea ceremonies to all over the world, and then the plot was based on three scenes in Japan, Britain, and Sri Lanka. To clear the source, one of the cores of the play, the tea ceremony, originated from China, and will surely flourish in China again.
Through the "Hua Yan" journey through the field, the audience can learn a series of rich tea culture knowledge such as the preparation method, usage and drinking method of tea.
In addition to vividly explaining the history of tea culture, the whole play also displays the use of tea basically in accordance with the time axis, including: the raw food method in the ancient period, the tea brewing method before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the sencha method in the Tang Dynasty, The method of ordering tea in the Song Dynasty and the method of making tea after the Yuan and Ming Dynasties.
At the same time, the audience can also understand the evolution of Chinese tea ceremony schools from the play: with the development of history and under different cultural backgrounds, four unique tea ceremony schools in the country have successively formed, namely, noble tea ceremony, elegant tea ceremony, Folk tea ceremony and Zen tea ceremony.
After watching the complete play, Zhong Chengxiang, a librarian of the Central Museum of Literature and History and a well-known literary critic, believes that the large-scale tea culture epic musical "Tea Ceremony: One Leaf of the Universe" produced by Xinhuanet has a good idea and theme!
It is quite difficult to express the history of tea culture that spans thousands of years in the form of an epic musical.
And the spirit of Chinese philosophy and aesthetics carried by the tea ceremony, humanity, and avenues is extremely rich and profound.
The play made useful explorations and innovations in this regard.
"Tea Ceremony: One Leaf of the Universe" Stills Photographed by Ni Ying
Luo Pengpeng, executive director of the Chinese Tea People Association and director of the China International Tea Culture Research Association, commented: "The whole play verifies the fact that the hometown of tea is China, and the tea ceremony comes from China. In fact, tea has three levels that can bring joy to people. : The first is the physiological level, through the taste of tea, which brings us physical pleasure; the second is the spiritual level, the tea ceremony is to bring us the pursuit of life cultivation through a kind of spiritual enlightenment; finally there is another very important At the level, tea can bring people peace. There is a saying called'tea and the world', tea can bring people harmony and tranquility." (End)