ІСТОРІЯ РОЗВИТКУ КИТАЙСЬКОЇ ЧАЙНОЇ ТРАДИЦІЇ, ШЛЯХИ ЇЇ ПОШИРЕННЯ ТА АДАПТАЦІЯ В ІНШИХ КРАЇНАХ

Abstract

The article presents and analyzes the history of the development of the Chinese tea tradition, from ancient times to modern times. In China, over the millennia, tea drinking has gone through several stages of reform. First of all, the philosophy of tea leaf consumption changed many times, which led to the transformation of production and brewing of tea. Tea was originally used as a medicinal herb, as a component of soup, after China switched to drinking pure tea infusion and the production of loose leaf tea. At almost every stage of development, special rituals of preparing a dish or drink from tea leaves were formed, in which special utensils were used. When tea eras changed, these brewing methods in China either died off and were forgotten, or transformed into new ones, or continued to exist in the narrow framework of small ethnic groups, falling out of the general cultural paradigm. But analogues of ancient Chinese rituals and ceremonies are preserved in the cultures of other countries, although in a somewhat transformed form. Based on historical data on the distribution of tea to other regions, the article shows the relationship between the stages of the development of tea culture in China and its adaptation among other nations. Tea tradition, falling into a new cultural environment, underwent a number of changes, which led to the formation of unique ethnic variants of brewing tea leaves based on the Chinese method of this period. As a result, the world has formed a variety of different ways to consume tea leaves, which over time began to serve as a presentation of the cultural characteristics of the nation. To illustrate this trend, the article examines only a few such adoptions that have remained at the level of national heritage: in Myanmar, Tibet, Russia, Britain, Japan, and in China itself. In the maps attached to the article, with an indication of the area of distribution of tea drinking at different times, it is also possible to find a connection between the borrowed method of tea consumption in China and the established national tradition.