Tea Gong Academy
日本語

Chapter 3

The Fundamentals of Tea

Tea as medicine, tea as chemistry

Tea was medicine first. It appears in the Shennong Bencaojing among the bitter herbs; Lu Yu settled on the character 茶 for it in The Classic of Tea; Eisai wrote in Kissa Yōjōki that tea is the elixir of long life. The cup in front of us today rests on that lineage.

This chapter runs to eight lessons. The first half deals with the history of tea as medicine, and with the side of it caught in the phrase “tea and Zen, one taste.”

The second half changes register. Minerals and chlorophyll, catechins, theanine, caffeine, dietary fibre — what these compounds actually do in the body and the brain, and how their proportions shift with the type of leaf and the way it is brewed. We finish with water, the other half of every cup.

Lessons in this chapter (8)

  1. 01 Tea Was Medicine From the legend of Shennong and the bitter herb 荼 of the Shennong Bencaojing, to Lu Yu settling on the character 茶 in The Classic of Tea. How tea rose out of medicine into a culture of its own.
  2. 02 Tea Is the Elixir of Long Life Eisai brings tea seed back from China in the Kamakura period and writes Kissa Yōjōki. Reading the regimen of health built on the five-phase theory, in which bitterness works on the heart.
  3. 03 Food for the Mind Taking "tea and Zen, one taste" as a starting point: alcohol clouds consciousness while tea clears it. Why tea is food for the mind, and why it and meditation are inseparable.
  4. 04 What Is in Tea, Part One Minerals, chlorophyll, vitamin C and beta-carotene. Sorting out what dissolves into the liquor from what you only get by taking the whole leaf, as with matcha or powdered tea.
  5. 05 What Is in Tea, Part Two Catechins, the source of bitterness and astringency. The antioxidant action of EGCG, the anti-allergic action of methylated catechins, and how the balance shifts with the type of tea.
  6. 06 What Is in Tea, Part Three Theanine at the heart of umami, and the caffeine behind the bitterness. Their action on the NMDA receptor, and how their proportions shift with cultivar, picking season and water temperature.
  7. 07 Dietary Fibre and the World the Microbes Make Body, viscosity and roundness. The dietary fibre that shapes texture rather than taste or aroma, and the microbial metabolism at work in post-fermented teas such as pu-erh.
  8. 08 Tea and Water Hardness, pH, boiling and temperature. Calcium binds with catechins, magnesium bears on umami. The other half of every cup, and how to prepare it.