The record of tea as a tribute and sacrifice can be extrapolated to the period of King Wu of Zhou, or the pre-Qin period, while the record of tea as a commodity did not appear until the Western Han Dynasty according to the available information.

This is Wang Bao's unintentional statement in the article "The Covenant" that "Wuyang buys tea".

In the first month of the third year of Emperor Xuandi of the Western Han Dynasty (59 years ago), Wang Baoke, a native of Zijin (now Ziyang, Sichuan), lived in the house of a widow named Yang Hui in Anzhili, Chengdu. The Yang family had a bearded slave named "Ben Li", and Wang Bao often used him to buy wine. thought that Wang Bao was an outsider, and he was very reluctant to run errands for him.

Finally, one day, he came to the man's grave and complained: "Doctor, when you bought me, you just asked me to guard the house, but you didn't let me buy wine for other men." ”

When Wang Bao learned about this, he was very angry, and on the fifteenth day of the first month, he spent 15,000 yuan to buy the ben from the Yang family. Although he was reluctant, he had no choice, but he demanded: "In this case, you have to write down what I should do in the contract in the future, as the Yang family did when they bought me, otherwise I won't do it." ”

In order to learn a lesson, Wang Bao wrote a contract entitled "The Contract of Servants", which was about 600 words long, listing a variety of labor items and the arrangement of working hours, so that he could not be idle from morning to night, and such a heavy work made it difficult to bear.

He wept bitterly and pleaded with Wang Bao, saying that if he worked like this, he would not be tired to death in a short time, and if I had known this, I would rather buy sprinklers for you every day.

Judging from the tone of the text of "The Covenant", this is just the author's pastime, because there are many teasing and humorous sentences in it. However, Wang Bao inadvertently left a very important mark in the history of Chinese tea.

There are two mentions of tea in the "Covenant", that is, "Fish and turtles, cooking utensils" and "Wuyang buys tea, Yang's bears the load". "Cooking utensils" means frying tea and preparing clean tea sets, and "Wuyang Mai Tu" means rushing to Wuyang in neighboring counties (now Shuangjiang Town, Pengshan County, south of Chengdu) to buy back the tea.

Therefore, according to the "Huayang Guozhi ▪ Shu Zhi": "Nan'an and Wuyang are famous for tea", we know why Wang Bao let him go to Wuyang to buy tea.

Explaining Zen with tea is just as interesting. These are all things that Nong Tianyi has experienced.

A cup of empty tea.

Once, Nong Tianyi was most impressed when he went to the nunnery, and the nun master invited him to drink tea, put the dendrobium and the stone cup away, and sat there ready to drink tea, but the nun master did not come.

After a while she came, sat down and said, "Please, please, drink!" After saying that, she gradually picked up the stone cup and drank it.

Nong Tianyi didn't know how to drink it, and asked, "Master, there is nothing in the tea bowl, and there is no tea, how to drink it?" ”

She added, "Drink, please." As he spoke, he took another sip of empty tea.

Nong Tianyi continued to ask, "Master, the cup is empty, how can I drink it?" ”

She said, "Little brother, if you have something in your heart, there is tea in your cup. There's tea in the cup, and if you don't have the heart, you don't have any of that. ”

Nong Tianyi realized from this: love is like this, friendship is also like this, and compatriot-like friendship is like this.

So, the feeling of Zen Buddhism, when I drank this empty tea with the nun master, I suddenly realized that family, friendship, lovers, and friends are all like this, just like a cup of empty tea, all the same.

Nong Tianyi's experience this time is very unique, before drinking tea, to experience the heart washing.

One day, when it was time to learn the tea ceremony, Nong Tianyi was first arranged to come to a single tea house, which was a hermitage, with no windows or holes, only a single tea door, and everyone had to climb in.

Before entering this teahouse, everyone has to listen to the sound of the water, and splash the water on their hands to wash their hands, and then their hands hang over the stones, and the water flows down the stones, directly into the ground, and there are very large and small tanks that catch the droplets of water flowing through the stones, and it takes five to ten seconds for the water to flow down through the stones, and the sound of the dingdong dongdong water harp overflows when it flows down.

- This process is called heart washing!

Before starting to drink tea, the host must first wash the drinker's heart once before he can start drinking.

The joy of a cup of tea.

In today's morning class, Nong Tianyi talked to the students about the fun of tea.

Zhang Yuan of the Ming Dynasty wrote in the "Tea Record": "Drinking tea is expensive to have few people, and the guests are noisy, and the noisy is elegant. ”

According to its meaning, Nong Tianyi summarized it as: one person drinking tea is "god", two people drinking tea is "winning", three or four people drinking tea is "fun", and more than five or six people are "noisy", that is, noisy and noisy. Therefore, it is not advisable to drink tea with many people.

Nong Tianyi understood it this way, so he preached to his students:

When a person tastes tea, the spirit is easy to concentrate, and the emotions are easy to be sublimated with the fragrance of fragrant tea, Zhuangzi's "Journey to the North" wrote: "The beauty of the original heaven and earth reaches the principle of all things". That's why some people call it "the only thing that wins God".

The two of them called it "victory", expressing a kind of artistic conception, as the saying goes: "Life has to be a confidant is enough", and the confidant to taste tea together, put their hearts in their hearts, pour out their hearts, have a soul, infinite fun, all in it.

Three or four people drink tea for "fun", Confucius said: "threesome, there must be my teacher", and a few intimate friends to taste tea, communicate with each other, communicate ideas, enlighten the mind, ridicule life, communicate with each other, learn from each other's strengths, and benefit a lot.

More than five or six people are not impossible, but to avoid miscellaneous, as long as friends are like-minded, you can also enjoy tea, sip, and enjoy delicious.

In fact, most tea tasters pursue a kind of artistic conception. Tang Dynasty poet Wang Changling's "Poetry" cloud: "In the environment, the vision is in the heart." In the palm of his hand, and then with his thoughts, he understands the situation, so he has to resemble it." Chinese tea art requires that when tasting tea, the environment, the art environment, the human environment, and the mood should be beautiful. In order to seek full of interest, the scene is blended, and the tea people are one.

In people's daily life, Nong Tianyi believes that there are no more than two ways to drink tea: one is to quench thirst, and the other is to taste tea. Quenching thirst is thirsty, and without any method, reason or circumstance, you can drink a cup of refreshing tea at will, and you generally drink it all at once to achieve the purpose of quenching your thirst. This is a common behavior for the average person.

Tea tasting is different from quenching thirst, it requires tea tasters to feel with their hearts, taste carefully, taste slowly, each tea has its unique charm. Different seasons, production areas, and groups of people have different requirements for tea, and the benefits of tea tasting are naturally different.

Therefore, Nong Tianyi said that tea runs through daily life, is ubiquitous, and has many benefits and interests.