Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History

I can only agree 100% with Matthew London's review (the only other one so far). This is a major work. It covers tea in China from the beginning through the Ming Dynasty; it is best on Tang and Song. It draws on a vast range of Chinese sources, almost none of them previously mined in any detail by western writers. It does indeed, as London says, avoid the tired myths; it breaks new ground and provides us new translations throughout. Benn shows that tea was closely associated with Buddhism from the beginning through Song. He provides details on differing ways of brewing the stuff over the centuries. He has some fun with the incredible lengths of tea connoisseurship, which resemble wine snobbery today. For anyone interested in tea, or in the history of Chinese consumption, this is an indispensable book.

excellent book - well researched, and full of fascinating details

great book

James Benn has written a scholarly masterpiece which has earned a prominent place of honour among my exhaustive collection of tea books. Dispensing with the usual (and quite sad) tendency to repeat the tired myths about tea as if they were absolute truths, he has dug down deep into the sources and refreshingly returned with clarity and eruditness to not only dispel the false, but more so, to paint a new picture of the evolution of tea and tea culture in China. This is a very valuable book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED- Matthew London - Photographer and Author of THE SPIRIT OF TEA: An Offering to Tea Lovers

An important essay for those who are interested in chinese poetry and tea culture as well. Full of quotations. A useful bibliography.

Maybe I was hoping to finally have found a book giving information on the Chinese origins of the Japanese tea ceremony, but this book has left me dissatisfied. The author has visibly done extensive research on the subject of tea consumption in China, but his essay is much too academic; it is too factual for its own good and the interplay between different buddhist, taoist and literati sensibilities for drinking tea gets lost in the unending gallery of anecdotes to support the author's not so clear thesis.J'avais espoir d'avoir enfin trouvé un livre pouvant m'informer sur les origines chinoises de la cérémonie de thé japonaise, mais ce livre m'a laissé insatisfait. Visiblement, l'auteur a fait beaucoup de recherche sur le sujet de la consommation de thé en Chine, mais son livre est beaucoup trop universitaire; les éléments factuels s'empilent au détriment de l'analyse sur l'interaction entre les sensibilités des bouddhistes, des taoïstes et des lettrés, qui se perd dans une galerie sans fin d'anecdotes servant à soutenir la thèse un peu confuse de l'auteur.