Tea and Chinese Cultural Aesthetics

The UCLA Center for Chinese Studies presents a lecture by Pei-kai Cheng on the change and continuity of “The Way of Tea” (chado) during ancient China.

Pei-kai Cheng is the founding director and professor of the Chinese Civilisation Centre at the City University of Hong Kong and author of the recent two-volume publication, The Complete Annotated Collection of Chinese Tea Books, explores the cultural significance of tea drinking during the Tang period (618–907 CE). Cheng discusses the change and continuity of “The Way of Tea” (chado) from the Tang-Song period to the Ming-Qing period, revealing the cultural diversity of the tea-drinking ceremony as influenced by various social entities and institutions and by agronomical and technological advances. This talk also examines how aesthetic appreciation and choice of wares for tea ceremony influenced the development of Chinese porcelain-making technology.