The immortal Dan Chew abandoned eating jade elixirs, picking tea instead. He drank and grew feathered wings. The world is unaware of the mansion of imminent and hidden immortals. People do not know of the palace of transmuting bone into clouds. The lad of Cloudy Mountain blended it in a gold cauldron. How hollow the fame of the Man of Chew and his book of Tea. Late on a frosty night, breaking cakes off fragrant tea brood to overflowing of the pale yellow frock. I sip and am reborn, Bestowed by the gentleman. This tea dispels my suffering, cleansing my mind from worry and fear, come mourning. The emotions of the fragrant brazier remain intoxicated. Still we walk across the clouds reflected in tiger stream in high song, I send the gentleman off well to stuff to blow your mind. Production of my Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. That is from a song of Drinking Tea On the departure of zing wrong by Jao Ran. This particular bit of Chinese poetry UM, I came across when I was reading a blog post four ancient Chinese poems on t in one symphony. This was on the website Tranquility Tuesdays, and I found this one interesting because the the author of this piece pointed out that the piece that we opened the first episode off with the seven bowls of tea is just very well sided. You'll find it referenced in just about any history of tea. Uh, it's it frequently shows up on tea blogs and so forth. The author here noted that, you know, given that it is you know overm cited, uh, that one should also include other poems of note, and this is one such poem well so in the original poem, I'd say the major theme was sort of the mounting levels of of experience that come with each successive cup of tea up until you hit the danger zone, crossing the threshold from the sixth to the dreaded seventh cup. In this case, what what would you say? The main themes are I see here um kind of a kind of a community or a filial aspect to to the tea talking about you know, the lab bruise it, and then these two drink it together, though I'm not sure exactly who these two people are supposed to be. Yeah, there's definitely more of an earth bound since here I'm getting you know. It is of course beautifully written and has that kind of ethereal quality to it as well. But the Tea is not just taking you and transforming you and into into an immortal and sending you to a mythical land. Uh, It's it's making you feel reborn, but also all of the world as well, or at least that's my interpretation of it. So anyway, Yeah, this is part two of our look at T're we're already hearing from some folks regarding our first episode, and in the second episode we're gonna continue the journey. So go back and listen to part one if you haven't heard it yet, because in that last episode we discussed the botanical facts concerning T as well as some myths about its origin. But now that we've established what T is and where it's spring from and reference some of the mythological ideas about te and read a couple of poems. Uh. This most recent was the most tank dynasty by the way. Um. At this point, I think it's time to discuss the history of t uh in a little more detail, especially as it concerns the ways that it can be prepared and was prepared across time. So I think that it makes sense, first of all, to just look at some of the steps that are frequently employed in preparing tea uh in uh you know, after it's been harvest what happens between it growing on the plant that we discussed in part one and somehow making it into a cup or bowl of tea the beverage, right, and so one thing we talked about in the previous episode is how different types of tea that you get, say black tea versus green tea versus wide or oolong, they will usually be from the same plant or the same of a couple of variants of this plant Camellia sinensis. There there's one t plant, and so the differences you get in the different tea s are based on how it is processed and prepared, right right. So um. One of the books that I've been looking at here is Laura C. Martin's A History of Tea, and I think the author here does a fabulous job laying out the history and and also the different steps involved in creating these beverages of tea. She points out that no matter what sort of tea preparation you're talking about, certain steps are common, too many of them. Not all varieties of tea involve all the steps, but it's worth going over them all and then we can say, well, this one doesn't involve this step, and this one does involve this step. Okay. So it starts, of course, with the gathering of the leaves. Usually on tea farms, they will be collected as flushes, these sort of top buds of a couple of leaves and a shoot coming off the top of the plant. Uh. Those will be harvested and the rest of the plan will be left there to produce new flushes in the future. And so you gather a bunch of these flushes of leaves, and then what do you do with them? Yeah, you could, I guess, just stick them in your mouth. But here's the thing. If you do that, and certainly we have some of these tales of some of these mythical origins of tea saying that's what happened. People stuck it in their mouth, and and you know that might well be connected to some of the original ways that that human beings explore the natures of the tea plant leaves and even gain some of the effects. But if you just stick them in your mouth and start chewing, it's going to be really bitter. So this is at this point we have the first step of withering. So the freat green leaves and buds are dried out, either in a heated room of some sort or they're left in the sun, and this causes the starch and the leaves to begin transforming into sugar and the moisture content drops by, and this allows the next possible step to take place, which is the rolling of the tea leaves and then be able to roll it without breaking the leaves. Um. This is something you might have to think back to your childhood days of like playing with leaves and sticks. But sometimes if a leaf is fresh and you go to like roll it up, it's going to it's gonna break, m all right. The rolling hard here is often done via machines today but is historically done by hand, and the rolling without breaking here twists and crushes the leaves in a way that releases sap, exposes it to oxygen, and stimulates fermentation. Additional rolling and or sifting may take place here as well, so that's step two. Now. One reason you might be roll ling or or sort of bruising these leaves in some way and essentially handling them roughly is in order to stimulate oxidation. Oxidation in general refers to a broad class of chemical reactions that take place when molecules are exposed to oxygen or another oxidizing agent. And a core feature of an oxidation reaction is that the molecules that are getting oxidized are losing electrons, but that doesn't tell us much. It's usually it's some type of chemical reaction. Now, it's interesting that the deliberate oxidation of tea leaves is an important stage, and they're processing especially for producing darker tease, not less so for greener teas, because most often oxidation in foods is not something you want. It's an undesirable outcome associated with spoilage and rancidity. So some examples, and I guess these would be the closest analogies their oxidation reactions of various types, Like there's oxidation of of ats and so forth in in oils. But for an analogy in plants. Think about when you cut an apple. So you cut an apple in half and you leave it out on the counter, what happens brown right, Uh? And this browning is not generally considered good. It's not something that makes the apple harmful to eat, but most of the time people don't find it very appetizing. It changes the appearance and sometimes the flavor and texture as well. And uh, you know, taste can vary, but most people would not say that is a type of browning that they seek out on purpose. And this is actually true of many foods, especially fruits. So you can think of the way avocados brown wants they're cut or smashed and left out on the counter, or or potatoes or any number of other plant based foods. The chemical reaction taking place here is a form of oxidation called in sematic browning, and in sematic browning is due to an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase. Fruits and vegetables have compounds in them called phenol compounds, and when these compounds get exposed to both oxygen and to that enzyme to polyphenol oxidase at the same time, they react with the oxygen and go through a multi step transformation process that ends with them turning into melanin. Melanin is a natural brown pigment that you can find in all forms of life. It's in plants, it's in fungi, it's in animals including us. It's the brown pigment in human hair and skin and inner irises. And so that process naturally takes place once once you cut an apple or a banana or any any of these foods. But how come this chemical reaction turning phenolic compounds into melanin doesn't happen once they when the apple is just like sitting there on the counter uncut. How come it only happens once you cut it. This is because in order for the reaction to happen, we need three different substances to come into contact with one another. So you need the phenolic compounds the base molecules were transforming. You need the enzyme, which in this case is polyphenol oxidase, and you need the free oxygen in the air. And when all three elements are present there together, then you get this browning process. So in plant tissue, the enzyme, the polyphenol oxidase, and the phenolic compounds are usually kept separate from one another. But damage to the plant, such as cutting it open or bashing it and bruising it will rupture cells and cause these chemicals to blend together in unite, and then you expose them to air and the oxidation happens. Now, coming back to what I said earlier, in somatic browning is considered undesirable in lots of foods like uh, you know you do you, But most people would rather eat their apple slices, bananas, avocados, and so forth before they sit out on the counter for a few hours and turn brown. The browned versions of these plants kind of look and taste degraded, not exactly fresh. But in other plants, the brown unning process has a desirable outcome. It is used on purpose to achieve desirable improvements in appearance, texture, and flavor. One example would be in certain dried fruits like raisins go through enzymatic browning it deliberately in order to create new and interesting flavors that people like. And another example might be in seeds or leaves used to bruce strongly flavored caffeinated beverages. Oxidative browning is specifically sought out as part of the preparation process for tea leaves. So you can think about the process of say, rolling tea leaves around, like smashing them or rolling them in a in a tumbler of some kind in order to kind of like bruise and uh, and just rough up the leaves to get these get these different compounds coming together and expose them to oxygen to to trigger this browning process. Yeah. I like to come back to the apple example, the apple that that's spilled, it falls out of the bowl and falls off the owner and rolls across the floor. Uh. You know that's the one that gets all bruised up, and those bruises are brown. That's the oxidation taking place. Yeah, exactly. And again you know you don't usually want that in an apple, but it turns out you do it to a tea leaf, and oh it's producing all these nice, interesting new aromas and flavors. It's making the tea taste. I think a lot of tea producers would say it makes it. It sort of takes away some of the fresh, grassy flavor of green tea and introduces these complex sweet flavors that taste more like a floral aromas or like fruits. Yeah, it creates this this whole additional dimension of flavor. Now, this this stage of oxidation here, Martin stresses that it's it's super important for determining the flavor destination of the tea. It typically takes about three hours. Uh. If it is done, the leaves are left on trays and a cool, damp place often and the oxidation causes them to turn from green to kind of a copper color. Uh. They also heat up during this phase. And you also and you have to depending on exactly what you're doing with the tea leaves, you may have to halt it as well, because you don't want the oxidation to go too far, because then you'll end up with what's described as kind of a burnt taste. It's also really important to note here that not all teas go through this phase. Um, and this should seem pretty obvious that black tea does go through the oxidation phase and is therefore fully oxidized. Uh. Yet that is why it is this black or red color. Yeah. And to and to pick up on and clarify something you said a minute ago. Heating, I think is usually specifically used to stop the oxidation process. So if you want a green tea that has a nice fresh, sort of grassy vegetable flavor and keeps its green color, those are usually going to be heated earlier to stop the oxidation from progressing any further, whereas a black tea you would let go through way more oxidation before heating it in uh, in a little oven. Now, just this is a cultivation note, but I ended up throwing it in my notes here, so I'm gonna read it before I forget about it. Um. Originally tea trees were, of course wild, and they would grow in the wild, and they grew quite tall. Uh. The higher leaves were obtained by simply cutting down the tree. Uh. This wouldn't work long term, of course, and so with cultivation comes the pruning and the non lethal harvesting of the leaves. So I just found that interesting. Okay, So that's why you get this process of like taking the flushes off of the top instead of fully culling the plant. Yeah, but back to the process. Okay, so we've had we we've had the first step here of withering, than rolling, than oxidation, and then we get into the step of drying. This is a quick drying to stop the oxidation of desired levels, So we've kind of alluded to this already as well as to remove enough moisture to prevent mold from forming. But you also can't dry it out too much or the tea could again taste burnt or on the other end of the spectrum, you could lose its flavor, all right, And then with the fourth step done, we're under the fifth, and this is grating and sorting. Basically, what you're left with. You've got to figure out what you've got, and generally what you have is you have whole leaves, you have broken leaves, you have you have the dinnings, and you have dust. Whole is the best, that's the highest quality while um and then then the broken leaves, and then fannings and dust that tends to go into cheaper things like you know, tea bags and so forth. Again, not all teas go through all of these phases. Black tea goes through all five. Oolong tea is partially oxidized. Green teas are dried after rolling to prevent oxidation at all. White tea doesn't go through withering, fermentation or rolling. Now, this doesn't cover anywhere near all the teas out there in the different types of tease. There are plenty of sub varieties of each, and then there are blends as well, Like one common example is English Breakfast Tea, which is a blend of black teas. Thank thank Now there's a whole other class of complex chemical reactions that tease undergo, separate from the baseline oxidation process we've been talking about, which is fermentation, a whole other thing where you are deliberately introducing microbial growth to further create complex flavors and aromas. That's right, And at this point, I want to mention the puerities. Um, these are a special case. These are again one of my favorite tea varieties. And actually our producer j J I was chatting with him he also really likes these. Uh, and I imagine we have a number of listeners who are fond of these as well. But these are fermented teas, right, yeah, it's um. So these teas are generally made from larger, older leaves that I believe Martin described as almost being kind of like hairy, you know, they're they're they're they're really big old leaves. Um. And also there's an enough moisture is allowed to remain in them so that they can continue to ferment for years. Uh. This is this is the only variety of tea that improves with age. Uh. The tea stored away in bricks or cakes. Also, they're often various wrappings, like sometimes it's like a like a bamboo type in situation, or some sort of fabric wrapping, and and ends up with just a wide beret of flavors that are, at least in my experience, unlike any other tease I've tried. Uh, they often have the ones I've I've keep coming back to have kind of often kind of like a barnyard flavor, kind of straw or hay to them. Um. One of them that I really love is just especially dark. It's like it's like a bowl or a cup of midnight. And like I said, they're often you'll often you'll find these in kind of like a loose leaf situation, but you also find them in a little pucks, little bricks, big cakes that you have to chip away with a special little ornate knife. I mean you could use a normal butter knife or your car keys, I guess, but you know, get into it. This is tea we're talking about. UM. But these have a fascinating history, not only is just being tea bricks, but being used as money as well, with the prime example being uh taking place in Tibet. As Wolfgang Birch points out in the use of tea bricks as currency among the Tibetans in the Tibet Journal, the Chinese introduced tea to Tibet sometime prior to seven eight c E. And while it was first used as more of a pure bartering commodity, uh, you know, I'll trade you a brick of tea for this, that or the other, it eventually took on a form that we might reasonably refer to as currency, a regimented system of tea bricks based on the tease quality and pureness, and eventually imprinted with trademarks and seals. So you might think of it almost like you know, you think of like a bar of gold that has been imprinted with governmental information, like here's the seal of the of the governing body saying like this is an approved grade of gold, the amount of gold, etcetera. It's the exact same thing with these tea bricks. Uh. The the governing authority has said this is such and such tea of such and such quality, and it is a certain amount of it. Uh, it's usable as currency in this scenario. That's interesting and it makes me think, I don't know this, but I'm wondering. So in this case, would this have been a fermented type of tea since its int form? That makes me think about how, you know, if you're going to try to use a commonly consumed save food or drink item as a currency, it would be difficult to use one that quickly degrades in quality for like its use value. So if it's something where freshness really matters, you would not want the use value of your currency to degrade fast over the course of a few months. But if it's like a fermented tea, you mentioned that these get better with age rather than rather than declining, so you can at least hope your currency there keeps its value. Is it Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, it would keep its value. Of anything, it would increase in value, though I don't remember reading anything about how that would be decided upon, like but but I guess it would be subject to to like the going rate for tease of the particular harvest and um and maturity level, you know, like you all the information would be there on the seal. This is a side note. I wonder how economies are different when they have a currency that does have in in some cases a use value of its own, like you know, if you're not going to use it for trade, you would use it for something else, like you would literally eat it or drink it, versus economies that just have a currency that is purely useless on its own, it's only for facilitating trade, like like U S dollars. Yeah, I mean for gold, I guess is not quite an example of that, because even historically gold was still desired as something that could be used for ornamentation, whereas today it also has um technolog electronics uses as well. Um. I think the other really good example of this is the the the the use of chocolate in some um Mesoamerican cultures, where the chocolate was such a highly regarded commodity and and one that I guess had kind of generalized sizes and measurements that it could be used as currency as well. Yeah. Interesting question. Maybe we'll come back to that one day. Yeah, so at this point that we might get more into the timeline of tea with the primary interest in sort of the evolution of the way that it is prepared and and ultimately consumed. As we explored in the last episode, the origin of tea drinking is more mythology than historical fact. It's one of those things where if you if you try and answer the question of like, well, who invented te who came up with this? Uh, it's basically lost to two prehistory. These are things where we have some interesting myths that kind of sum up some of the general ideas and and ultimately some of the general realities of how human beings experimented with and chronicled the nature of their botanical world. But in general we can't answer there. There's no one person um though again, some of some of these accounts do have a sort of an interesting shred of truth to them, like one of the ones that, in addition to the ones we discussed in the last episode, there's one that Michael d. Co brings up in seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient World, Uh, in a chapter about I Believe chocolate and tea. UH. There's another myth where a past Chinese emperor was boiling some water and some wild leaves just kind of blew into his water boiling in the pot. Thus creating tea that of course sounds like pure myth and is not like a real story, But it reminds me of our episode and the invention of the cauldron, and about how like a cauldron or any kind of container, even like a skin of boiling water, like what an essential laboratory that is for humans in in ancient times, figuring out what things are and what they can be used for. Now, the question that may come up for some of you might think, well, there's a great deal of Chinese literature out there going back quite a ways. Can't we just see when people first started writing about t uh And I think this is a reasonable question to ask. But as Martin explains in the book, it's it's not quite that simple. And part of the problem is that the Chinese character um associated with t was previously used again in literature in writing to refer to other shrubs and plants. For example, there are mentions of of t dating back to the fifth century b C. But it's thought that the character in question here is just referring to south thistle, a plant sometimes used in Chinese cuisine and native to Europe and Western Asia. Okay, so that's frustrating trying to understand the history. Yeah, yeah, so we we have to think about the fact that anytime something like this comes along, like it's not just oh, well, we have this new thing, let's get a new word for it that's in any language. That's not necessarily how it works. I'm reminded of all the different apples that that Europeans began to discover in the world and from port back, yeah, palm to tear m hm. So again, we can't pinpoint a time when tea drinking began in China, but we can likely say it was certainly a thing by the Hun dynasty two oh six BC through UH. I'm granted that's a large period of time, but by by that period people were drinking tea. It most likely began in Sichuan Province in southwestern China and spread gradually to the rest of China and would have reached northern China by the Tang dynasty UH that period six eighteen through nine seven. By the third century, though, according to Martin, we we do have mentioned in the literature of tea that we can more firmly connect actual tea drinking, which points out that Hatwo and noted physician who may have also developed one of the earliest forms of anesthesia. Also wrote about tea quote, to drink tea constantly makes one think better. That checks out. M Well, it depends on what you mean by constantly. Yeah, I'm not sure about the particulars of the translation. There. By the way, the the anesthesia that he supposedly invented, I think they was reading that the name literally transplates to cannabis boiling powder, but we still don't know exactly what this supposed anesthesia contained. Also, a general from the third century lu Kun wrote that he felt old, depressed and needed some real tea. And just the impression here that he's out out doing the military thing and he just realizes, Man, I'm I'm just I'm old, I'm sad, and I would just kill for an actual cup of tea instead of I guess boiling various other things that we're finding in the nature around us, So you could have you could have fake teas. There's like, if you can't get real tea from Camillius and instus, you might just try boiling other plant matter. Yeah, I mean, the history of of tea is kind of full of these examples. Uh, and not not only the history of tea, but I guess the the history of of like pharmacology and no pharmacology in general. I think we've touched a little bit on this before talking about psychedelics, where you'll have some historians think you'll have one particular custom of using a particular um herb or plant that is growing in the natural environment. But what happens when people move? What happens when there is a migration. Yes, in many cases you can bring your plants with you. Uh, sometimes those plants don't survive though, Sometimes they can't be brought anyway, or you just so that the people that bring them are not able to keep those plants going in these new places they moved to. And in those cases you might try to find some sort of reasonable fac similar like what's something else that does something that changes me a little bit when I boil it in water and drinking. So we may come back to some of that in a bit. And then Martin also points it by let's say, around three fifty c E there's a more detailed description of the tea plant that we seem pretty sure is an actual description of off tea, and this is provided by Gopu. Again around three fifty s. Thank thank Now, I guess one thing I wonder is, um, it's one thing to talk about, Okay, we're taking leaves of this specific plant and and boiling them to make tea, But it's another thing to think about, like all of the complex preparation process steps and and the different varieties of tea produced today. Do you have any idea when that sort of thing started to come online, or at least when we have the earliest evidence of that. Yeah, this is this is interesting because one thing that that Martin points out is that early on tea was probably not good. It's not would have been nothing like what we're having today. It would have been we can almost think of it more as kind of this herbal soup, and you'd have various things added to it in an attempt to improve the flavor profile. And and you might be thinking, oh, like delightful flowers and stuff. No things like onions might be added. Is just a way to improve the flavor. And I believe in Martin, I believe mentioned that this probably also didn't work. It was just so strong a flavor you couldn't really improve on it all that much. But you drank it because, uh, you know it was there were already something like helpful um associations with it, and you know, and maybe it wasn't making it was sick because it was boiled, et cetera. But during the time of the Northern Way Dynasty three eighties six through CE, apparently that the tea processing had improved, at least to what we might think of as a basic level. There mentions of cakes been made of tea leaves that have been roasted. It was probably still a lot cruder compared to things that we're gonna come or certainly cruder than things that you would think of today as a desirable tease. But the journey toward more complex flavors was under way, and I'm assuming you were maybe not having to put onions in your tea anymore now. During the fifth century, see there's also examples of tea tributes being made to the imperial court and to the emperor himself. Uh. And also the emperor was said to have his own tea reserves as well, like these were places where just the emperor's tea was grown. So already uh, it was you know, presumably flavors are improving, and also the ruling class, the elites of society are really getting attached to the idea of tea. But then the Tang dynasty six eighteen through nine oh seven, this is the period in which we see Chinese tea in the form of baked bricks of green tea, which are ideal for travel, spreading to new parts of the empire and beyond. Martin also writes that this widespread technique also greatly improved the flavor um. The popularity of tea spread so much during this time that it was no longer just a drink of the elite of the emperor and his court. It was a drink for everybody, even peasants. By this point we're we're getting in on tea culture. That doesn't mean everybody would have access to the same tea, of course, you're the type of tea you drank would would be intrinsically linked to your place in society, as would the various paraphernalia that were used in tea preparation and tea consumption. But uh, it was. It was essentially something that could be found throughout society. Um Also, this would again have been exclusively green tea, as red black tea would not be developed for centuries to come, and this is the time of an individual by the name of Lou You. This would have been in the eighth century. Uh He was known as the Immortal of Tea, the Sage of Tea, and he was author of the Classic of Tea, the Classic of Tea. I see a similarity in the English naming convention of some of these great old Chinese texts, similar to like the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Exactly, yes, I forget exactly what that is translated from, though, Like what what are all the range of meanings in uh In in the original? Yeah? Yeah, but it But but certainly this is a common translation of some of these important books, I would think you could. You might roughly think of it the same way that that important books might in the Western traditions might be preferred to as like the book of such and such or a chronicle of such and such. Now this is a This is an interesting figure Lou You, though, because there are a number of legends about him as well. You know, he's definitely a historic individual and author. It seems that folks agree on that. But they are all these additional stories, um, such as that he was abandoned and subsequently adopted by Buddhist monks. Also, there's this other story that he um. I think these all kind of work together, or at least were eventually stitched together into one narrative that he was then trained. He then trained to be a clown in the opera, and this was his lifelong ambition, but then he ended up coming a scholar instead. Uh. He started spending a lot of time in tea houses, which was a popular hangout at the time, And this reminds me a bit of of accounts of tea and coffee houses in later European history as a kind of like cultural incubator in a place where like the poet resides. Yeah. Yeah, And so he has this this supposed trajectory that's pretty interesting, Like he starts off as um as an abandoned child, becomes a monk, then becomes a clown, then becomes a scholar, and then essentially becomes the immortal of tea. It implies tea being kind of like the highest level achievable. Yeah, it does, and I think that matches up with the way that he was received and regarded. But but it goes beyond like you might think, Okay, he wrote this scholarly work about tea, and I bet the scholarly class really loved it. But as Martin points out, this work had a huge impact on tea in society as it gave agriculturalists and farmers the first real written account of how to cultivate and process tea. Everything before the Classic of tea was just orally transmitted or was, you know, unknown to individuals who might want to partake of it and uh and cultivate their own tea. His work made tea cultivation accessible, and it included everything that was known at the time about tea, where you could grow it, how to grow it, how to harvest it and prepare it, the culture of drinking it, the twenty four implements required to prepare tea in the home, that sort of thing. Whoa, that's a lot of implements, yeah, and and a lot of just sort of advice on what is proper like. For instance, I was reading in Martin that he he was a big fan of using blue glazed cups to enhance the green color of the tea, while he thought that white cups or bowls would give it a distasteful pink color. M hmm. This is interesting in part because it reminds me of uh like the passages in Plenty of the Elder where he's like, Hey, if you're gonna boil like some sweet sappa to drink, you better do it in a lead pot instead of a copper one, because the copper makes it bitter, the lead makes it sweet. I know, I assume he's not talking about actual changes in uh flavor here, but truly just appearance. But this is also quite observant because uh, I think as like chefs and people who work in restaurants will tell you the appearance and color of your your plates really does affect how people perceive the food. Oh yeah, absolutely. And then of course there's so much ritual on on top of all of this. Uh you know. Martin stresses that while some of this might seem just you know, over the top and and and perhaps too fancy, we have to remind ourselves that this is a world um where individuals like lu you are striving for universal perfection. Uh So that's and we have to think about it too in light of of Confucianism, Dalism and Buddhism as well, which are all important energy in the world surrounding this uh, this growing tea culture Now, the popularity of the Classic of Tease not only spread the word of tea, it also further enhanced its popularity and pushed both greater tea trade and greater advancements in how it was cultivated and prepared. Tea also spread throughout China during this time because it had become just so embraced by Buddhist practice and culture. Um. But it's also meant that when Buddhism fell out of favor during the decline of the Tang dynasty, tea culture did as well. And this would this is a trend that would recur when foreign invaders would control parts of China, Tea culture would suffer in that area. Interesting, does that mean it was replaced by something or I wonder what caused that correlation? It's it based on what I was reading. And there may be more nuanced to this and more more to this, but it would just be a situation where uh, it was linked with the with the ruling party. You know, it's kind of like a top down um cultural um practice and without without t culture emanating from uh sort of you know, in radiating waves from the ruling body. It kind of falls out of favor and you have people maybe falling, and you're gonna have cultural trans transmission taking place there too. Of course, because you also see in the in the histories where UH, you know, some some groups, say the Mongols becomes the ruling body in a part of China, they also become more Chinese as they rule, So you know, the trans cultural transmission goes both ways. But it seems like you would have these situations where a foreign power would would take control for a while and yet just key popularity would wane. But then when inevitably um Chinese rule was restored in these areas, you would see the reverse. And one of the examples of this would be nine sixty s UH. The the the rule of the song honesty brought tea back to the forefront. It's trade during this period became so important that the Imperial Court found that they could just restrict or manipulate the flow of tea two outlying regions UM if deemed necessary. So it would would be a way to control UH and manipulate other groups, such as determining how much tea goes to say to bat door, to the Mongols, or to the Turks and others, almost kind of like a spice trade. Of dune sort of scenario. Um, you know, and certainly that's the sort of thing that that Frank Herbert was was thinking of when he was writing do maybe not tea specifically, but but obviously this control of of a of a desired or vital resource by one particular body. Yeah. It's also during this time period, Martin rights, that we enter the second school or phase of tea. So this first phase had been the brick era. Again we're talking about those bricks of tea, you know, how it's dried and then often stored, etcetera. But then we're entering at this point the whipped school. And it's called the whipped school due to the creation and popularity of dried and powdered green tea that was then whipped in boiling water until it's foamy. This is what we typically call mach it ti today, and it was a huge hit during this time period. Of course, has remained with us. Oh that's interesting, Okay, I guess I do associate uh mache ti with looking kind of foamy, but I didn't realize why that was. So it's like typically more of a powder form that that is whipped into the water vigorously yeah, yeah, like generally you'll have and we'll we'll probably come back around him to macha here in a bit and talk about it in a special in relation to Japanese tea culture. But yeah, even if you get it today, you're probably gonna get some sort of one, one variety or another of macha, perhaps like a ceremonial grade tea. You're gonna put that in your in your bowl or cup, and once you have the hot water, you're gonna you're gonna want to whip it up. There's gonna be a special implement do that. And this, of course can also be quite exceptional. Okay, so we go from brick to the whipped powder and then does it does it change after that? Because that still doesn't resemble the most of the tea preparation I can think of today, which is based on steeping, right right, Well, that is going to eventually be the third school, the school of steeping, as in like loose leaf tea especially, and we are still in this school today, Martin, right. Still, of course, all three of these are still used. I don't know if there's gonna be a fourth phase of tea. I don't know. The laser school of tea. Thank thank al Right, there there's more to the history of tea, and we'll keep going with the history of tea in a future episode here, but I thought it might be fun at this point to discuss tea and health. Now. I mentioned earlier how Martin pointed out that by the fourth century, cet consumption was probably part of daily life for many in China. But it wasn't good. You were having to mask it with things like, you know, sometimes things like citrus or ginger, which doesn't sound that bad, but other times you're putting salt and onions in it, all to try and make it more palpable. But you were consuming it because it had perceived health benefits. You also might just eat your tea leaves straight like a vegetable in this time still, though again it would have been bitter. It would not have been a pleasant experience. You Also, I was surprised by this. You also might have sniffed it like snuff so um. That would be a sort of a you know, an approach to powdered tea that I didn't think about. Also not what I'm saying anyone needs to try, but but it was one method that was used as was sometimes using it externally, uh, like you know, applying it just to the skin, or or perhaps to some sort of skin irritation like a poultice. Yeah. So it was widely used during this time, again not because it was necessarily pleasant to to have, but first of all, it was associated with wakefulness and digestion, which I think these are both agreed upon effects of caffeine. If you've had caffeine, or or explored caffeine, or even been around people that have that use caffeine, you probably know that this is the case. Like caffeine can can wake you up, it can make you more alert. It can also speed up digestion and um. Yeah, and that's why if you go to a coffee house or a teahouse these days, there may be a weight at the bathroom and there may be a lot of people with you know, a lot of crackling energy. But it's worth it because, as Lou Tong said, what it searches the dry rivulets of the soul helps you find the stories of five thousand scrolls. Yeah, I'd say that still checks out caffeine effects on cognition. Yeah. At the same time, though it was also used during this time as a treatment for everything from poor eyesight, skin, and oregon issues. It was also considered a strong preventative medicine and something that positively impacted one's cheese. So we again, so we're seeing like the full spectrum here of possible and saved uses for tea that benefited your current ailments, preventage other ailments, and maybe even affected sort of spiritual energy. Uh, concepts regarding the functionality of the human body. Yes, now, uh, because we've raised the question in the historical context here of beliefs about tea and it's positive impacts on health, I think it's worth looking at what some of the modern major nutrition science findings on the health effects of t R. But strong caveat I'm not going to go deep on this because I just feel personally, like you know, we look at a lot of different domains of science, and I feel like there is no quicker way to lose your mind than looking for scientific papers on a question of is this common food or drink either good or bad for your health? Coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, a million other things. It always seems like there are just reams of conflicting results, some of which sound prima facy absurd and probably are you know, like a study show uh wine cure's heart disease or something like that. And and I detect the presence of persistent methodological problems with attempts to look at this kind of thing specifically, like does a common food or drink item that people consume for pleasure or for other reasons have uh, you know, x broad health effect. But uh, with that caveat, I'm going to cite the findings of a major meta analysis that I looked at from twenty nineteen. So. This was by Mengshi Yi called t Consumption and Health Outcomes Umbrella Review of Meta Analyzes of observational studies and Humans. This was published in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research and twenty nineteen. Uh So, this study is an umbrella review also known as a review of reviews, which kind of gives you an idea how much research there is on the topic, so to picture where this rests in the research hierarchy. Of course, you can have individual studies or experiments on uh, you know, the effect of TE on some particular outcome, and then you can have a paper a level above that, which is a review or a meta analysis which compares and analyzes and usually averages the results of many different individual studies of a bunch of you know, it collects everything it can find in the literature and says, when you compare all these what results poke out? And then if you have enough of those reviews within a subject area, you can have an umbrella review, which is a review of reviews. And sometimes umbrella reviews are going to have like a broader question. So, for example, you can have a meta analysis of studies on the relationship between tea and cardiovascular disease, and another one comparing studies on T and various cancers, and then you can maybe have an umbrella review looking at all those meta analyzes to understand the relationship between tea and health outcomes more generally. Okay, so sorry about all that preamble, But anyway, what did this umbrella review find in the existing literature as of twenty nineteen. Well, it looked at nine si AT analyzes addressing forty different health outcomes, and it concluded that overall, studies showed greater evidence for health benefits than for harm to health from T consumption. So, uh, they say, quote dose response analysis of T consumption indicates reduced risks of total mortality, cardiac death, coronary artery disease, stroke, and type two diabetes melitas with increment of two to three cups per day. Beneficial associations are also found for several cancers, skeletal, cognitive, and maternal outcomes. Harmful associations are found for esophageal cancer and gastric cancer when the temperature of intake is more than fifty five to sixty degrees celsius. Uh So. This leads them to the conclusion that except for the upper digestive cancer risk that may be associated with drinking very hot tea and again greater than fifty five to sixty degrees c is about one thirty one to one forty degrees fahrenheit. Unless you're drinking tea that hot or hotter. Normal levels of tea consumptions, such as two to three cups per day, appear safe, and those levels of tea and take are even associated with a broad range of apparently positive health effects. The ones I mentioned a minute ago, however, this is a very important thing to stress. They acknowledge the difficulty in disentangling regular dietary t consumption from possible confounding variables, and so they argue that to really conclude that the observed associations or causal, so you know, for example, finding that uh T consumption of two to three cups per day might be associated with like reduced risk of cardiac death or something like that. In order to really be sure that that that the T is the cause of that and not just some random association, you would need to do randomized control trials. And this is often true. I think when you're looking at connections between like common food or drink items and health outcomes, you might find that any random thing, people who eat kelp on a regular basis have a lower risk of pancreatic cancer, But that doesn't actually show that it's the kelp that makes the difference. It could be that people who have a lower risk of that cancer also for some reason, just happen to eat more kelp. And the best way to establish the kelp is the cause would again be to do a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard used for testing new drugs and so forth, uh but not always used to examine the health effects of common food and drink items such as coffee, chocolate, tea, all these things that you see a million conflicting study results on you know, uh T helps this health effect, and then another study says maybe it doesn't. So in the end, I think it's hard to get very uh solid results on on these kind of food and drink items. But at least the existing research today makes it look like broadly tea is pretty safe to drink as long as you're drinking it within moderation and not super hot and uh and may in fact have some positive health benefits associated with it, but don't bank on those too much. M hm, Well, these are all great points. Like depending on the study, you might be it might be a situation where it's the tea cakes that are causing all of the positive health effects, right, Yeah, it may not be causal about drinking the tea at all. Maybe it's that people who have lower risk of whatever are also just for some reason cultural or otherwise more likely to drink tea. Or it could be that the act of sitting down and drinking something warm from a cup. I mean, I don't know what all they compared it to, what controls they used on all these different experiments, because there have been a lot of them. But that's where the research show looks like it lands today. But but I did want to note that positive health effects of tea could exist and might also be construed, not in an absolute sense, but in the sense of comparing tea to alternatives, to other things you could consume instead of tea. Yeah, And in this I want to turn to a quote from the herbal classic that I think we referenced this work in the last episode. It is attributed to Shinnong again and the divine farmer with the crystal uh stomach Uh. That is one in some of the myths is attributed as discovering tea, and the quote reasons follows in translation, quote Tea is better than wine, for it leadeth not to intoxication, neither does it cause a man to say foolish things and repent thereof in his sober moments. It is better than water, for it does not carry disease. Neither does it act like poison as water does when it contains foul and rotten matter. Hey, that's the couple of I would say, quite solid observations. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's fair to agree that the over indulgence of tea is less of a public or health or safety issue compared to the consumption of alcohol. Yeah, and then, as Martin points out and in her book, this last bit is also certainly true. T prepared with boiling water would rid the water of many of the inherent pathogens. So if you're just looking at the difference between having a hot cup of tea and drinking lane or rain water or something um or or any kind of water that might be on hand for pure drinking purposes, the tea is a healthier choice historically speaking, that seems quite true as long as people are, of course not consuming that seventh cup of tea and uh, you know, rapturing themselves to the Holy Mountain. Right, Yeah, you don't want to accidentally fly to pung Li before you get to work in the morning. Right And and yet to your point, just the the idea of your drinking tea, then what are you not drinking If you're not drinking alcohol, you're not drinking wine, you're not drinking water, that may, you know, given the circumstances, might not be the purest or the healthiest choice at that time. Uh yeah, this is all fascinating. I think that's going to do it for part two, right, Yeah, I think this is all we have time for in this episode, but we'll come back for a part three. We're gonna look a little more at the history and evolution of tea and possibly going into some other tea cultures as well, and we'll see what else comes up. In the meantime. We'd love to hear from everyone out there, because I know we have a lot of tea drinkers out there, tea drinkers from different parts of the world, different tastes, different experiences. We'd love to hear everything you have to say about the matter. H So right in let us know, I'd love to hear from you. Reminder that core episodes of To Blow Your Mind published on two days and Thursdays. Monday is listener Mail. Wednesday is a short form artifact or monster fact, and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your mind. It's production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio. This is the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen me to your favorite shows.