♥If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies♥

"Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world." - T'ien Yiheng

Although this is perhaps his best known quote & one of the most often used in relation to tea, there is very little known about the man that gave us this wisdom

Different sources give his date of birth circa 1570 to an exact date in 1766

However – whether this was written in the 1600’s or around 1750, his gems on tea was surely born out of the high regard for these leaves, that by all accounts was discovered by his ancestors in 2737 B.C.

• According to legend the second emperor of China, Shen Nung, discovered the swig when tea leaves wafted into his cup of hot water & he savoured the remarkable taste of the amber liquid

(Tea was cited in a Chinese dictionary for the first time as Erh Ya in 350 A.D. )

Admiration for the delicates leaves is almost tangible in this charming quote by Lu Yu, the great Chinese scholar and writer :

“The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen,
curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock,
unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine,
gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr,
and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain “

All this has me quite craving a cup of horseman’s’ boot myself now.....