Gazing the mountains, tasting tea; the relation between landscape culture and tea culture in song china

Abstract

This article aims to create bonds between landscape culture and tea culture in Song China.

With this paper we wish to apply a new interdisciplinary methodology to the study of Chinese landscape culture. We will try to unify differing manifestations, such as gardens, mountain settlements, paintings and landscape literature, within the concrete period of the Song dynasty (960-1279). For that purpose we will look at the close relationship between the Chinese tea culture and the landscape culture, at the intertwined aspects and at how the two cultures influence each the other. We start with a historiographical review of the topic of Chinese landscape culture, followed by the analysis of its relations with tea culture, remarking how this relation has not received proper attention. Then we will examine tea culture, including its economic and social dimensions, which serve to connect with the aesthetics aspects. The experience of landscape was in intimate relation with the development of both the socio economic and the aesthetic dimensions of tea culture