[KS] Korean Tea Ceremony and other wonders

[Brother Anthony]

As so often happens with our List, I did not receive Lauren's original mailing, nor David's little note. The first I got was Frank's more developed piece. 

I would not be qualified to comment on what Daniel Burkus has written, which depends upon a very personal reading of sources I have no access to. Instead I would simply note that the current issues being discussed (??) in Korean Tea circles center on what Prof. Jeong Min (Hanyang U) has written in his recent (2011) very well-documented book Saero sseuneun Joseonui chamunhwa to the effect that there was absolutely no "tea culture" in Korea from the very start of Joseon, no "tea ceremony" of any kind that is documented anywhere. The standard Chinese character "cha" came to refer to any kind of drink made (usually) by adding boiling water to some substance (as in 'barley tea' and 'ginger tea') but he quotes more than one source from the 18th century who, themselves aware that the Chinese character cha originally refers to the Camellia Sinensis bush, say that nobody in the regions where it grows knows it by that name, if they recognize it at all. The only written records from Joseon that refer to this kind of 'tea' either refer to processed tea coming from China or record its use in a 'hanyak' (herbal medicine) context. Dasan himself, in the poem he wrote on first meeting the Ven. Hyejang in Baengnyeon-sa in 1805, clearly says he needs tea leaves to treat his chronic indigestion. There is no written record to support the myth that Hyejang taught Dasan the "Way of Tea" (and I will have to correct my books when I get the chance). It was Dasan who found a way of drying tea in cakes that provided a pleasant drink; he taught that to the Ven. Cho-ui who then brought caked tea to Seoul in 1830 and provoked a little "Cho-ui Boom" that led to his enduring close friendship with Chusa Kim Jeong-hui. Since Prof. Jeong Min will be spending the next year in Harvard, David and Frank will be able to ask him about this directly.

When it comes to Joseon gardens, Peter Bartholomew (who may not be an academic but knows a lot about Joseon architecture) points out that every government compound in Joseon (and there were an awful lot of them) was landscaped in a garden style with lotus-ponds, pavilions, rocks, plants . . . so that we would have to assume that people knew what they were doing even if they saw no need to write treatises about it. Probably the plans of these compounds preserved in Kyujang-gak would have at least some information about the garden features?

Brother Anthony
Sogang U / Dankook U / RASKB etc