Jingshan Tea Banquet
"'Seven soups to order tea' means that in the process of ordering tea, water is added to the tea cup 7 times. After each hot water is added, the surface of the tea soup is quickly hit with a tea bamboo." Take the teapot, quickly flick the tea soup in the cup, and then lift the teapot slightly, the color of the tea soup will gradually thicken, and the foam will gradually come out...
Every weekend and holiday, in Jingshan Village, Yuhang District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the Jingshan Tea Banquet intangible cultural heritage project will be held.
Visitors can not only feast their eyes, but also experience the fun of ordering tea in person.
"The performance of ordering tea made me feel the beauty of traditional culture. It turns out that the literati of the Song Dynasty were so elegant and exquisite in drinking tea." Xiao Liu, a tourist, sighed.
Jingshan has beautiful scenery and is famous for tea. Lu Yu, the "tea saint" of the Tang Dynasty, once traveled here and wrote the "Tea Classic".
Jingshan Tea Banquet originated from Jingshan Wanshou Temple. It is a unique ceremony to entertain guests with tea instead of wine. It began in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty. It has a history of more than 1,200 years.
There are more than ten procedures for the Jingshan Tea Banquet, from making a tea list, beating the tea drum, respectfully inviting you into the hall, offering incense to the Buddha, decocting soup and ordering tea, walking and sharing tea, saying verses and eating tea to thanking the tea and leaving the hall.
The Jingshan Tea Banquet is inherited from the ancestors and abbots of the Jingshan Temple.
After the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the gradual decline of Jingshan Temple, the Jingshan Tea Banquet was almost lost.
For a long time, Jingshan tea banquet only existed in scattered historical records.
Since the 1980s, people of insight in the Zhejiang tea industry have tried to revive this traditional ceremony.
In 2011, Jingshan Tea Banquet was included in the third batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
"In order to restore the Jingshan tea feast, Jingshan Temple has done a lot of homework, not only collecting and sorting out various ancient books and materials, but also traveling to Japan to visit the temples where the Jingshan Dharma line is inherited, and observe and learn the tea ceremony of the Song Dynasty that they have preserved to this day." Jingshan Temple Trail According to Shi Dingxian, director of the Shan Chan Culture Research Institute, in recent years, Jingshan Temple has gradually established the process and utensils of the Jingshan tea ceremony by holding a summit forum on Zen tea culture and inviting tea experts to repeatedly demonstrate.
Today, Jingshan Temple holds one or two solemn Jingshan Tea Banquets every year.
"I hope that the Jingshan tea banquet will be passed down and the ancient Zen tea culture will last for a long time." Shi Dingxian said.
Jingshan Village, located at the foot of Jingshan Mountain, has been organizing the folk version of Jingshan Tea Banquet since 2012 to promote tea culture.
One of the initiators of the folk version of Jingshan Tea Banquet is Yu Ronghua, Secretary of the General Party Branch of Jingshan Village and non-genetic inheritor of Jingshan tea frying skills in Yuhang District.
Yu Ronghua is a native of Jingshan. He learned tea-frying skills from his parents since he was a child. The family lives by growing and selling tea, and has a deep affection for Jingshan tea.
"We hope that by holding the folk version of Jingshan tea banquet, Zen tea culture can enter the homes of ordinary people and become the cultural gold card of Jingshan." Yu Ronghua said.
Under the guidance of the master of Jingshan Temple, Yu Ronghua and many tea industry people in the village created a tea banquet ceremony.
They consulted experts everywhere, learned about Jingshan Zen tea culture and the history of Song Dynasty, and constantly explored the presentation form of tea banquets.
Yu Ronghua put all his energy into the selection of tools such as the stone mill for grinding tea, the cups used for ordering tea, and the tea pot, as well as the design of the entire tea banquet process.
"On the busiest day, I ran 8 points non-stop, buying cloth, customizing tea utensils, choosing tables and chairs, driving hundreds of kilometers from Hangzhou to Anji, and didn't go home until late at night."
In April 2015, the first Jingshan tea feast tasting session was held in Jingshan Village Cultural Auditorium. The contents of Tang Dynasty tea making, Song style tea ordering, Jingshan tea brewing and thanksgiving for tea were displayed on site. Audience praise.
Yu Ronghua's team carried out innovation and development on the basis of the traditional Jingshan tea banquet, adding ikebana, incense, calligraphy, matcha making skills, etc., and gradually established a set of Jingshan tea banquet performances, attracting many tourists to visit and experience.
In recent years, Jingshan Village has vigorously promoted the integrated development of culture and tourism, integrating Zen tea culture into every corner of the village.
The pursuit of the Zen world, the connection between the stops, the last dream of Su Zi... Jingshan Village combines the landscape of the village with the legends and allusions into a chain, and builds the "Ten Scenes of Zen Village", allowing tourists to experience the charming Zen tea culture in the changing scenery. .
Jingshan Village also introduced Jingshan tea frying techniques, matcha tea making techniques, tea shaver making, tea food making and other non-genetic inheritors into the village, and established workshops to display the intangible cultural heritage techniques related to tea culture in a lively manner.
Chen Jinxin, the non-hereditary inheritor of Yuhang District's tea whisk-making skills, was one of the first craftsmen to settle in the workshop.
Chen Jinxin is from Dongyang, Zhejiang, and he used to be engaged in bamboo weaving.
In the 1990s, he took orders from Japanese merchants to make Japanese tea ceremony tools - tea shabu.
"The making of tea spinners was originally a traditional Chinese technique, but this technique was lost in the Ming Dynasty, so I can only imitate it by comparing the samples of Japanese tea spinners." Chen Jinxin said.
In the first two years, his tea bamboo was used as a street stall in the Japanese market because the production skills were not good enough.
But Chen Jinxin didn't give up. He spent 6 years of trial and error, constantly improving the craftsmanship, and finally developed a tea bamboo as thin as a hair, which amazed Japanese merchants.
The tea bamboo used in the Jingshan Tea Banquet is also from Chen Jinxin's factory.
"I visited Jingshan Temple for the first time in 2003. I saw a picture of a tea pot on a stone tablet in the temple, and I was very excited. In this hometown of Zen tea, I found the roots of tea pot making skills." Chen Jinxin said.
In 2019, Chen Jinxin entered the Jingshan Village intangible cultural heritage workshop.
In the workshop, he not only introduced the history of tea whisks to visitors and displayed intangible cultural heritage skills, but also selected several apprentices to teach the craftsmanship of tea whisks carefully.
Today's Jingshan Village has picturesque scenery and bursts of tea fragrance. Every household has a small tea table, waiting for tourists from all over the world at any time, so that everyone can drink a cup of fragrant Jingshan tea when they enter the door.
Wang Xiaoxiao