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refuge in the village of Huzhou, in present-day Zhejiang Province—an unexpected turn of events that proved to be fortunate for this clown-turned-scholar. Among other things, the climate of this region was perfect for growing tea. The weather was warm, there was plenty of moisture, and the ground was rich and fertile. Tea gardens and teahouses were in abundance.
    Like other young men, Lu Yu was attracted to the tea-houses, where, as was the custom of the day, men gathered. These establishments throughout the country were places where friends and scholars came together, not only to drink and talk about tea, but also to discuss art and listen to music. In the best teahouses, the air was perfumed with rare incense and flowers, and only the finest teas were served. In such an atmosphere, one could relax and enjoy the most subtle nuances of aesthetic pleasures, including an appreciation for the taste of the best-quality teas.
    After a time, Lu Yu became friendly with a man named Jiao Ran, who owned one of the teahouses of the Zhejiang region, and before long Lu Yu grew fascinated, then obsessed, with tea. It was here in the teahouse of his friend that he found the perfect outlet for his scholarly ambition. He was soon not only running the teahouse for Jiao Ran, but also learning as much as he possibly could about tea.
    Lu Yu’s Tea Classic
    Tea became the focus of Lu Yu’s life. He was relentless in his quest to learn everything there was to know about tea. The result of this consuming passion was the three-volume, ten-part book called Ch’a Ching , the Tea Classic , published in 780 .
    The book deals with the following aspects of tea:
Origin of the tea plant
Tools for gathering the leaves
Production and manipulation of the leaves
Description of the twenty-four implements necessary to serve and enjoy tea
How to make a cup of tea (methods of infusion)
Rules for drinking tea
Historical summary of tea and its usage
Sources of tea, plantations, and so forth
Nonessential tools
Illustrations of tea utensils
    Farmers and agriculturists interested in learning to cultivate tea found an unlikely hero in Lu Yu, the man who’d gone from monk to clown to scholar to tea master. With an increased demand for tea came a corresponding demand for information about how to grow it. Although tea had been cultivated in the Szechwan district for hundreds of years, by the mid-tenth century, the practice of growing tea had spread through the Yangtze Valley and along the coast as well. With a growing market, farmers planted tea wherever they could find a patch of land, and by this time, tea cultivation was common and widespread. Nonetheless, knowledge about how to grow the plants and harvest the leaves was still spread only by word of mouth, passed from one generation to the next or from one neighbor to another.
    There was a resulting need for information about how to propagate and care for tea plants, how to prune the shrubs, harvest the leaves—in short, how to take tea from a shrub to a valuable commodity. In his Tea Classic , Lu Yu provided this information in written, accessible form.

    The work begins with a description of the tea plant and its habitat. Lu Yu reports that tea plants growing naturally on the hills and beside the streams in the province of Szechwan are “sometimes so big that it takes two men to encircle them with their arms.” He goes on to say that the flowers of the tea plant are like “white cinnamon roses” and the seeds similar to those of the coconut palm. After describing the plant, he offers advice as to the best places to grow it: The most favorable is in “the soil of disintegrated stones,” the next best is where gravel is present, and the least favorable soil is yellow clay.
    As for taste, Lu Yu decidedly prefers the leaves of the wild plants to those of trees growing in “confined spaces”—a comparison impossible for modern tea drinkers to make, since any wild tea