Tea and the highly-cultivated art of tea drinking epitomize Chinese philosophy.
“One of my fondest memories of visiting my grandparents in Chaozhou 潮州, the ‘city of tides’,[1] consists of drinking endless rounds of strongly brewed, highly fragrant, and boiling-hot gongfu cha 工夫茶 in their lake-front courtyard house. Served in a set of three small, shallow porcelain cups, the clear, caramel-colored oolong tea, poured from a hand-sized clay teapot in the shape of a persimmon, had an airy, aromatic scent, a robust flavor, and a long-lingering sweetness, after initially slight bitterness.” — From “Tides High and Low”
[1] Folk etymology translates Chaozhou as ‘a place of rising and falling tides.’
In “Tides High and Low: The Changing Landscapes of Gongfu Cha Tea Culture in Contemporary China,” a chapter in The Cultural Politics of Food, Taste and Identity: A Global Perspective (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), I investigates the landscape of gongfu cha tea culture among the local and diaspora Chaozhouese communities in contemporary China and in relation to gongfu, the philosophical concept used by the Song-Ming Neo-Confucians as a general term for their Confucian learning.
In “China’s Emerging Food Media: Promoting Culinary Heritage in the Global Age,” an article in Culinary Globalization and Heritage Politics: China, Japan, and South Korea, a special issue of Gastronomica (2017), I examine the re-presentation of food in today’s mainstream Chinese media and the effects of its aesthetics in China and around the globe.
Huayan, from Huayan jing 華嚴經, or The Flower Ornament Sūtra (Avataṃsaka-sūtra) is one of the most representative schools of Sinicised philosophical Buddhism. Known as Hwaeom in Korea and Kegon in Japan, the Huayan School of Chinese Buddhism had a remarkable influence on Chan Buddhism as well as East Asian philosophy in general.
First established in 738, in the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang dynasty (618–907), Kaiyuan Temple in the city of Chaozhou is the oldest Buddhist Temple in Eastern Guangdong. Originally named “Lifeng Temple” (荔峰寺), it was renamed “Kaiyuan Wanshou Chan Temple” (开元万寿禅寺) during the Yuan dynasty (1172–1638) and “Kaiyuan Zhenguo Chan Temple” (开元镇国禅寺) in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
Click to read “Chaozhou Cuisine: A UNESCO-Recognized Gastronomic Heritage” by Lynn Hatem for Beijing Times