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chá · caa4

tea

Where it comes from

Grass on top, a person in the middle, a tree below: a person picking leaves between the bushes — tea. The character is younger than the oracle bones (tea conquered China later), but it is built from pieces you know. Look closely at a tea field and you will see the drawing: pickers waist-deep in green rows.

A piece of culture

The man who wrote the book of tea
Around 760 CE, an orphan raised in a monastery wrote the world's first book about tea: the Chájīng (茶经), the Classic of Tea, by Lu Yu. Ten chapters on growing, roasting, grinding, the twenty-four proper utensils, and which water to use — mountain water best, river water second, well water last. It turned tea from a drink into a civilization: tea houses, tea ceremonies, tea-horse roads across the mountains to Tibet. Lu Yu was honored as the god of tea; sellers kept a small statue of him and poured tea over it when business was slow.

Use it in a real word

茶水
cháshuǐ ·
tea (as a drink) — tea-water, served everywhere from trains to teahouses
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