Lu Yu

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Lu Yu, the "god of tea"

Lu Yu ( Chinese  陸羽  /  陆羽 , Pinyin Lù Yǔ ; born 733 in Jingling, today Tianmen , Hubei Province , died 804 in Wuxing ) was a Chinese scholar and writer of the Tang period . His work Chajing ( 茶 經  /  茶 经 , chá jīng  - "The Book of Tea", published 780) is a classic in Chinese literature and a fundamental work on Chinese tea culture . Shortly after his death he was worshiped as the "god of tea" ( 茶神 , Chá Shén ).

life and work

Fictional portrait of Lu Yu by Haruki Nammei (1841)

According to the earliest sources, Lu Yu was adopted by the monk Zhiji at the age of three in the 23rd year of the Kāiyuán period (713-741) of the reign of Emperor Tang Xuanzong (685-762), i.e. was born in 733. According to legend, the Zhiji orphan boy was found on the bank of a river. He grew up in the Buddhist monastery of Jingling, today's Tianmen in Hubei Province. In his autobiography, Lu writes that a life as a Buddhist monk for himself is not in accordance with Confucian traditions. In 745, at the age of 13, he escaped the strict discipline of the monastery by fleeing. At times he is said to have lived with a show troupe and wrote plays, but remained in contact with Buddhist scholars throughout his life.

His literary talent was discovered and nurtured by Jingling Prefect Li Qiwu (died 762) when Lu was around 14 years old. In 751 or 752 Li Qiwu returned to the capital Chang'an , but Lu Yu soon met other writers. From 755 onwards, the An Lushan Rebellion shook China. Lu Yu fled to Wuxing, where he stayed the rest of his life and devoted himself to tea and writing. In Wuxing he met famous writer monks such as Jiaoran, with whom he was to become a lifelong friend, and his pupil Lingche (746-816). From around 759 he traveled to the regions around Yangzhou and Zhenjiang and examined the water from various sources with regard to its suitability for making tea. On a trip to Mount Qixia , an important Buddhist center to study the tea grown there, he made friends with the poets Huangfu Ran (714–767) and his brother Huangfu Zeng (died around 785), who were among the most important poets that time counted. Both dedicated poems to him that have come down to us in the Three Hundred Tang Poems .

In 760 Lu Yu retired to the mountains around Huzhou , where he built a hut on the banks of the Tiaoxi River. He began with the writing of the Chá Jīng and other works that are now lost. In his autobiography, he stylized himself as a scholar in simple clothes who spent his days talking to eminent monks and scholars. From 762 to 764 he stayed again in Wuxing and made further study trips from there to taste tea. He also grew tea himself in different locations to study the growth of the plant under different conditions. In 772, Lu made the acquaintance of another important scholar of his time, the statesman and intellectual Yan Zhenqing (709–785), who had gathered a circle of scholars and intellectuals around him.

The Chá Jīng was published around 780. After he had previously avoided public office, Lu worked from 780 to 783 as a tutor to the Crown Prince (Taizi wenxue), then returned to the south and built a house in Fuzhen in Shangrao County in 785 . Lu Yu died in Wuxing in 804 and was buried near the Jiaoran stupa on the banks of the Tiao River in front of the Miaoxi Monastery on Mount Zhu.

Sources for biography

Exact information on Lu Yu's life is scarce. At the age of 29 (761) he wrote his own autobiography of the teacher Lu (Lu wenxue zizhuan). The text has been handed down in an anthology from the early song period , the flowers and blossoms of the Garden of Literature (Wenyuan Yinghua). This work is one of the oldest autobiographies in Chinese literature. The poet Qiji mentions in a footnote to his poem Walking Past Lu Hongjian's former home that the autobiography text was carved into a stone near the house. A biography is also included in the New Book of Tang (Xin Tang shu), the official history of the Tang Dynasty; there he is mentioned in the chapter on the hermits. The Buddhist chronicler Nianchang (1282–1344) dedicated an entry to Lu Yu in his work Detailed History of the Buddhas and Patriarchs (Fozu lidai tongzai). Around 1300, another important source on the biography of Lu was finally created, the "Biographies of the Talents of the Tang Empire" ( 唐 才子 傳  /  唐 才子 传 , Táng Cáizǐ Zhuán ) of the Yuan- era statesman and poet Xin Wenfang. In addition to these more detailed texts, a number of anecdotes from Lu Yu's life have been preserved in texts from the 9th century, some of which were embellished in later centuries like legend.

literature

  • James A. Benn: Tea in China. A religious and cultural history . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2015, ISBN 978-0-8248-3964-2 . - with numerous information from original sources.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Laura C. Martin: Tea: The drink that changed the world . Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon, VT 2011, ISBN 978-1-4629-0013-8 .
  2. ↑ Benn (2015), p. 96.
  3. ↑ Benn (2015), pp. 103-105
  4. ↑ Benn (2015), p. 106
  5. ↑ Benn (2015), p. 107
  6. ↑ Benn (2015), p. 109
  7. ^ Aaron Fisher: Way of Tea: Reflections on a life with tea . Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon, VT 2010, ISBN 978-1-4629-0022-0 , pp. 63–67 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ↑ Benn (2015), p. 111
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Bauer: Das Antlitz Chinas: The autobiographical self-portrayal in Chinese literature from its beginnings until today . C. Hanser, Munich 1990, ISBN 978-3-446-15221-2 , pp. 244-249 .
  10. ↑ Full text of Tang Caizi Zhuan in the Chinese Text Project
  11. ↑ Benn (2015), p. 100
personal data
SURNAME Lu, Yu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 陸羽 (Chinese); Lù Yǔ (Pinyin)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese scholar and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 733
PLACE OF BIRTH Jingling, today Tianmen
DATE OF DEATH 804
Place of death Wuxing (Huzhou)