With a desire for tea, I rise to brew it. Boiling water in an iron kettle, I slowly pour it over the leaves, and soon the fragrance fills my study, making the surroundings come alive with vibrant energy. The freshly brewed tea is a bit too hot, so I usually wait for it to cool down a bit before drinking, which allows me to better appreciate its subtle flavors. While waiting for the tea to cool, I can quietly admire the beauty of the tea itself. For a long time, I had the habit of drinking the tea immediately after brewing and refilling as needed, without pausing to truly savor it.
The rich red tea is poured into a transparent lotus-shaped glass cup, taking on the shape of the vessel. The cup and the tea meet each other, illuminating one another like a lamp in the study, subtly changing the light. Watching the petals of the cup unfold is delightful. Seen against the light, the tea becomes even clearer, and the red color more vibrant. Holding the cup in both hands feels like embracing a liquid warmth. This is akin to Wang Yangming's words: “When you look at this flower, its color becomes clear.”
What is tea color? As a child, I often described “a teacher wearing a pair of tea-colored glasses” in my essays. Tea color is a brown-orange to light brown hue, slightly redder than chestnut. However, now it seems that the color of tea is incredibly rich and subtle. For example, there is a type of amber from Myanmar called “tea amber,” which is divided into green tea, Black Tea, Yellow Tea, and purple tea, among others. Why use the term “tea” to describe these colors?
The tea color here is like a layer of tea broth, or the color seen through the tea. There is no “scientific” description for this; beauty is created through analogy and imagination, and we cannot help but marvel at the wonders of nature.
There are six major types of tea, each with different varieties and their own unique colors. Chinese Tea presents a vast array of hues. Whether it's the green tea represented by West Lake Longjing, Biluochun, Huangshan Maofeng, or Liuan Guapian, or the black tea represented by Zhengshan Xiaozhong, Keemun, and Yunnan black teas, or the oolong tea represented by Shui Xian, Rougui, and Dahongpao, each variety has a relatively standard color, almost like a color standard.
Observing the tea leaves, tasting the flavor, and appreciating the color of the tea broth, the latter is an option often overlooked in the Chinese tea-drinking system. But within the spectrum of tea broth colors, the pale green of Longjing, the clear light blue-green of Liuan Guapian, and the bright orange-yellow of Zhengshan Xiaozhong each have their unique visual language. Some are bright, some elegant, some warm, and some understated. The tea broth conveys aroma and taste between the lips and teeth, as well as a subtle emotion embedded in color.
There is no doubt that the color of Pu'er tea broth is the most diverse, and with the addition of time as a dimension, the language of the tea broth becomes even more intriguing to ponder. Imagine a color that evokes a sense of time's passage—how fascinating! The colors of raw Pu'er tea broth range from bright yellow, light green, dark green, yellowish green, to pale yellow. As raw tea ages, with each passing year, the color of the tea broth changes. After five years, ten years, we can usually judge the storage age directly from the color. And with aged teas, from the first infusion to the tenth, each infusion has a different color. In older teas, the broth is a rich red or reddish-brown, the flavor evolving over time, the color settling within the years, harmonizing with the aged aroma, imbuing our emotions within a single cup of tea.
We excel at finding emotional anchors in colors. Colors with emotion hold the aesthetic code of traditional Chinese colors. The colors in “Dream of the Red Chamber” evoke vivid imaginations: “The soft smoke silk comes in four colors: post-rain sky, autumn fragrance, pine green, and silver red. If used for curtains or window screens, they appear like mist from afar, hence the name ‘soft smoke silk.' The silver-red variant is also called ‘rosy gauze'.”
In the traditional Chinese color palette, every color has a beautiful name, such as “Canglang,” the green of young bamboo in spring, or “Autumn Fragrance,” a blend of the concrete yellowish-brown and the abstract notion of autumn. “Zhu Yan Tuo” refers to the blush on a woman's face when she is tipsy. At this point, color is not just a code in modern design language but a detailed portrayal of life. Even more, colors contain poetic emotions, lively stories, and subtle legacies. When looking back at the tea broth on the desk, we move from “seeing mountains as mountains, seeing water as water” to “seeing mountains not as mountains, seeing water not as water,” and finally to “seeing mountains again as mountains, seeing water again as water.”
Originally published in “Pu'er” Magazine
May 2022 Issue