The Tea God

Deep in the Cloud-rest Mountains grows a patch of wild tea. Not the neat rows of a plantation, but shoots that push up from the stone cracks on their own — a clump here, a cluster there, with thick veins and white down upon the underside of the leaf. The mountain folk pick it for their own drinking and never sell it.

The keeper of this tea is an old man, surnamed Ge, with a bamboo basket on his back and a wooden staff in hand, in a grey cloth gown worn through all four seasons. He will not call himself a tea-farmer, only says he "watches the tea for the mountain." Old Ge has a strange temper: the very same tea, fired by his own hand, will fill the mouth of a man who truly knows flavor with fragrance and leave a sweet return at the throat's root; but to a vulgar guest who cares only for the word "rare," that same tea turns astringent enough to lock the throat and bitter enough to curl the teeth — not a particle of good in it.

The first to meet this oddness was Fatty Qian, the rice-shop keeper down in the town below. Hearing tell of the Cloud-rest wild tea, Qian thought it must be a curiosity with which to court the county magistrate; so he brought silver, hired men to carry a bamboo sedan, and jolted up the mountain. Old Ge does not brew in an iron pot; he takes a length of old bamboo, splits it into a stove, sets it upon a hearth of three piled stones, and draws his spring water from a cliff crevice — it falls into the pot with a clear clink. The fire he kindles with pine needles, blue and smoke-less. He poured a cup and offered it. Qian took one gulp and knotted his brows. "This — this wretched tea, so astringent!" Old Ge was not vexed; he said quietly, "The tea is the same tea; the tongue is each man's own." Qian went down the mountain sullen, and told everyone the Cloud-rest tea was overrated.

The next year came a young fellow, surnamed Liu, a failed examination candidate who taught in the village school below — so poor his shoes were broken. Drawn by the mountain's quiet, he followed the scent of tea up the slope, not for the tea but to escape the world's annoyances for a while. Old Ge kept him two days and brewed for him each morning. At Liu's first sip his eyes lit. "Old sir, this tea holds the breath of orchids, the cool of the stone-spring, and —" he paused, "a little of the bitterness of pre-rain pine-needles. How is it that the more I drink, the sweeter it turns?" For the first time Old Ge smiled. "You heard it. This tea unfurls only before one who can hear."

Liu asked him why. Old Ge said, "The mountain has its own mind. This tea has drunk a hundred years of cloud-breath and taken a little spirit. It will not open its leaves for those who curry favor and climb; it will only, for one who will sit down and taste slowly, shake loose all the fragrance it carries. You are poor, yet you are not hurried; being unhurried, your tongue is clean; a clean tongue tastes the sweetness heaven and earth hand down."

After that, whenever Liu was troubled he climbed to sit with Old Ge — one cup of tea, half a day of talk. The more he tended his tongue, the clearer it grew, and his writing lost its sourness; his students all said the master had lately become lucid.

In a year of great drought the mountain parched and the wild tea nearly died. Night after night Old Ge carried a clay jar three li to the stone-spring and watered it, ladle by ladle. Liu helped him, and the two of them stood drenched in moonlight, saying nothing of weariness. When the spring rains came the next year the tea grew all the lustier, and the white down on the new leaves shone like a film of thin frost.

Liu later passed the examinations and was to take office far away; before leaving he climbed to say farewell. Old Ge walked him to the ridge-mouth and pressed a packet of tea into his hand. "Take it. When you are busy and muddled in your post, brew a cup. This tea knows you; do not you forget it." Liu knelt and bowed, and kept the tea close to his breast.

The Chronicler says: tea itself has no feeling; it grows warm or cold only by meeting a man. What Old Ge keeps is no tea, but a spirit that will not be compromised. Fatty Qian's astringency was not the tea's but his own heart's, soured first; Liu's sweetness was not the tea's but his own heart's, stilled first. So it is with most good things in the world — they choose neither poverty nor rank, only whether you will slow down, wash your tongue clean, and become a man again.