After the Laba Festival, the New Year atmosphere gradually thickens. At this time, tea shops in the capital also enter their peak season. Long queues for purchasing tea reappear in front of many old-established tea houses. Why do ordinary people concentrate on buying tea at the end of the year? On the one hand, it is to keep it for entertaining distinguished relatives and friends who come to celebrate the New Year; on the other hand, it is to prepare it as a gift when visiting during the New Year.
However, when giving tea as a gift, we not only need to consider quality but also packaging issues. For a long time, we have had a misunderstanding that plain-packaged tea is fine for personal consumption, but if it's a gift, it seems a bit lacking. To cater to such consumer psychology, the tea packaging available on the market can be said to be dazzling and varied. Taking the material of tea caddies as an example, metal ones are common, and hardwood ones are not uncommon. Some, to highlight their grade, wrap real leather around the outside of the tea caddy, and some even inlay them with jade. Frankly speaking, the cost of such tea caddies often exceeds the value of the tea itself, truly an instance of buying the case instead of the pearl. For us ordinary people drinking tea, it's better to be pragmatic.
Compared to today's exaggerated gift tea packaging, the tea caddies of old tea houses a hundred years ago were not so flashy, simple, practical, and yet not devoid of aesthetics. On the occasion of the New Year, the author, combining his collection of various old tea caddies, will discuss the subtleties and anecdotes of tea packaging back then.
In Qian Hui'an's “Tea Brewing and Inkstone Washing Figure,” a young servant stands by the hearth, holding a palm fan, fanning the wind over a small red Clay stove to brew tea. On the stove is a Dongpo handleless Teapot, and by the side sits an elegantly colored tea caddy.
Since ancient times, good tea needs careful preservation
A small tea caddy actually carries a heavy burden. It must package tea, making it convenient for customers to give gifts to relatives and friends, and can also promote the brand name, helping merchants to promote their brands. But fundamentally, the primary task of a tea caddy is to ensure the flavor and taste of the tea. No matter how good the tea is, once it becomes tainted or spoils, it's all wasted. Therefore, the study of tea caddies must start from the Chinese tea culture's approach to preserving good tea.
Due to the limitations of ancient tea tree cultivation techniques, we could basically only harvest and produce fine teas in spring. Rarity makes things precious, and spring teas produced in this season became cherished gifts. In Tang Dynasty poetry, there are numerous famous works praising fresh spring teas, such as Lu Tong's “Hastily Written Verse in Thanks to Meng Jianshi for Sending New Tea,” Bai Juyi's “Thanks to Li Liuchang Zhong for Sending New Shu Tea” and “Xiao Yuanwai Sends New Shu Tea,” Liu Zongyuan's “Venerable Xun Sends Bamboo-Intervened Self-Collected New Tea and I Repay Him with Verse,” and others.
Due to low production capacity, spring tea was a luxury that money couldn't buy in ancient times. Tea-producing areas were concentrated in southern China. However, tea drinkers were spread throughout the country. The scarcity and inconvenience of transportation made the ancients especially cherish spring tea. The preservation of tea naturally became a subject of concern and study for tea lovers since ancient times.
The spoilage of fresh and precious spring tea was often due to poor storage and moisture, leading to excessive water content. To prevent tea from spoiling, the best method is to reduce its water content. “The Classic of Tea,” written by Lu Yu in the Tang dynasty, the world's first specialized work on tea, already records detailed methods for preserving delicate spring tea. In other words, Chinese ancients began paying attention to the storage of tea as early as 1,300 years ago.
In the “Two Implements” chapter of “The Classic of Tea,” there are more than five tools recorded for drying tea, including “Qi,” “pu,” “pei,” “guan,” and “peng.” Among these, the most important tool is “pei,” which is described in the original text of “The Classic of Tea” as follows:
“Pei, dig two feet deep, two feet five inches wide, ten feet long, build a short wall above it, two feet high, and plaster it.”
On top of the pei, a peng is placed to hold the dried tea cakes. This is the earliest record in literature about the method of storing tea.
Drying tea
Ceramic tea caddies have many subtleties
It should be particularly noted that steamed green tea cakes dominated the tea world in both the Tang and Song dynasties. As for today's mainstream loose tea, it did not become popular until Zhu Yuanzhang proposed “abolishing compressed cakes and promoting loose tea” in the early Ming dynasty. Changes in the form of tea naturally led to changes in storage methods and utensils. Since the early Ming dynasty, various types of loose tea have been primarily stored in tea caddies.
Speaking of how Ming people stored tea, there is an anecdote. When building the Xin'an River Hydropower Station in the 1950s, archaeologists excavated a large jar from an ancient pagoda in Suian County. Based on the shape of the jar and the inscriptions on it, they determined it to be a large jar from the Ming dynasty. They carefully opened the sealed lid and found a jar full of black charcoal inside. After removing the charcoal and lifting off a thin layer of peach blossom paper, a fragrant smell of tea wafted out. The green tea in the jar, after four hundred years, had not only not decayed or spoiled, but still retained its fragrance. How exactly did the ancients use specific techniques and methods to preserve such delicate spring tea for centuries without spoilage? We don't know today. Presumably, quite a lot of financial and mental resources would have been required to achieve this? Perhaps precisely because it was not easy to popularize and promote, the magical tea storage method of the Ming dynasty was eventually lost.
Like the unearthed large jar, ceramic was the main material used for tea caddies in the Ming dynasty. Among the many ceramic tea caddies, Yixing purple clay was considered superior due to its excellent breathability. In Xu Wei's poem “A Certain Duke Son Bestows Tiger Hill Tea in Appreciation,” there is a line that reads, “The spring tea of Tiger Hill is marvelously steamed, why worry that seven bowls won't ascend? Old green bamboo wrappers are inscribed with Grain Rain, new purple clay jars are bought in Yixing.” The “new purple clay jars” mentioned in the poem are the old names for what we now call “purple clay tea caddies.”
During the Qing dynasty, in addition to ceramic tea caddies, tin tea caddies also gradually became popular. But whether they were earthenware jars, porcelain jars, or tin jars, their costs were quite expensive, and the methods of use and maintenance were relatively complex. As household items for officials and nobles or desk decorations for literati, this is of course not an issue. But if tea shops used them to package goods, the cost would clearly be too high. Therefore, only extremely high-grade teas were packaged and sold in purple clay jars, blue-and-white jars, or tin jars by tea houses.
Blue-and-white “Fu and Longevity Pattern” tea caddy from the Yongzheng period of the Qing dynasty, collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Bamboo tea caddies are more popular
In comparison, bamboo tea caddies were widely used due to their low price. Since the Republic of China, bamboo tea caddies were mostly made directly from bamboo joints, using their hard outer surface and hollow interior to store tea. Craftsmen polished the inside and outside of the bamboo joint smooth, painted red lacquer on the outer wall as a base, then