Two Men Could Barely Encircle It: Tang Tea Trees and Living Ancient Trees

Photo: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Thesis

Chapter One speaks of tea trees in the Bashan gorges so thick that two men could barely encircle them; people cut the boughs to reach the leaves. Two facts follow: large arborescent tea trees existed in the south-west, and picking required cutting because the canopy was too high.

Wild and cultivated ancient tea trees still survive in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, and their girth and height can be compared with the text. But “ancient tree” is not a synonym for “good tea”: age is one variable among cultivar, ecology, picking and processing.

Lu Yu’s observation also has limits. He writes about the Bashan gorges, not every tea region; his sample is local. The passage is more useful as a species map than as a myth of origin.

Source: 百度百科·茶经

This piece pulls “Two Men Could Barely Encircle It: Tang Tea Trees and Living Ancient Trees” back into the text. The first move is to limit the claim: Lu Yu writes about Tang tea, Tang soil and Tang brewing; change the conditions and the conclusion has to be rewritten.

From the making side, a small change in plucking standard changes the sweet-bitter balance in the cup. The sentence is not a study-room abstraction; it has an operational background.

Modern tea science can split it into cultivar, soil, light and plucking variables, but the variables must be put back together. Using one of them to prove the whole passage is over-reading.

Textual caution still matters. Chapter One has variants, especially around 其字, 其名 and the plant description; cite the edition or the argument may rest on sand.