Drinking tea is often called "sipping tea" or "drinking tea". So, why did "Ming" become the general name of tea? It turns out that tea has many names in ancient books, such as Yi, Yi, Yi Meng, Yi Cha, Yi, Tea and Ming. The ancient word for tea is "tea". In the Tang Dynasty, people removed the word "tea" and named it "tea". The word "Ming" appeared a little later than the word "tea".
according to the different picking time, Lu Yu's Tea Classic divides tea into five categories: "First, tea, second, third, fourth, and fifth", and notes that "tea is taken early, and tea is taken late". Subsequently, people used "tea" and "Ming" as general terms for tea for convenience. According to Lu Ji's "Mao Shi, Plants, Birds, Animals, Insects and Fish", it can be seen that in ancient times, the northern dialect area of China was generally called tea, while the southern area called tea Ming. Later, with the communication between the North and the South, tea and Ming refer to the same thing.
In A Dream of Red Mansions, Jia Baoyu was surrounded by five pages, and then the other four pages disappeared, leaving only a tricky and eccentric baked tea. Many people don't understand why the author gave this page such a name. In fact, baking tea is closely related to the accumulation of the author's tea culture.
The Tea Classic divides the tea-making process into seven processes: picking, steaming, pounding, patting, baking, piercing and sealing. The so-called "baking" means baking tea cakes, that is, evaporating the water in tea leaves through baking to get dry tea, and then grinding the tea. Jia Baoyu's five pages have elegant names: baking tea, drawing water, sweeping flowers, picking clouds and accompanying cranes. The first words are all verbs-baking, leading, sweeping, picking, and companionship, plus tea, spring, flowers, clouds, and cranes. It can be seen that Cao Xueqin has an ulterior motive.