Under the direction of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, China-CEEC Libraries Union was established in October 2018 in Hangzhou, China, with its secretariat permanently set in Hangzhou Public Library. 60 libraries from China and CEEC, on a voluntary basis, seek common progress made on the principle of "equality, mutual benefit, inclusiveness and openness".

The Very Collection in My Library aims to introduce treasures kept in each member library to audience in China and Central and Eastern European countries and bring ancient books into the limelight, through of which people could enhance their understanding of cultures and histories of other countries.

This episode here is presented by Wang Long, the director of Sichuan Provincial Library, introducing you the rare ancient book The Classic of Tea.

(The Very Collection in My Library is updated on Cooperation between China and CEEC official website http://www.china-ceec.org/ and CHINA CULTURE.org https://cn.chinaculture.org/.)

The Classic of Tea by the Tang dynasty writer Lu Yu, is the earliest and most comprehensive ancient Chinese text on tea, and is the first monograph dedicated specifically to tea in both China and the world. The book is a comprehensive survey of tea’s characteristics, and how people harvest, process and drink tea before and during the Tang dynasty. It laid the foundation for the theoretical framework of tea studies, and substantially contributed to the development of tea production. The Classic of Tea is, therefore, a pioneering work on Chinese tea lore. This precious edition from Sichuan Provincial Library’s early book collection is part of the Song dynasty book series “Rivers Converging into the Sea of Knowledge” (bai chuan xue hai in Chinese) and the earliest existing edition. Only two copies of this edition are known to exist today. Red seals of Zhang Daqian (also spelled Chang Dai-Chien), a prodigiously gifted Sichuanese painter and the book’s previous owner, can be found inside, stamped with Zhang’s various names including “Daqian”, “Zhang Yuan” and others, demonstrating genuine local historical and cultural value.

The Classic of Tea is important to Sichuan. This province is among the significant cradles of tea and tea culture in China and globally, occupying a position in the world history of tea. At the beginning of The Classic of Tea, Lu wrote, “Tea is from a grand tree in the South ... In the rivers and gorges of the Province of Szechwan are trees whose girth is such that it requires two men to embrace them”, a record of huge tea trees growing in ancient Sichuan. In the chapter “Tea-Producing Areas”, Lu mentioned Peng Zhou, Mian Zhou and Ya Zhou, major producing areas of Sichuanese tea. It quoted writings from Guang Ya by Zhang Yi during the Three Kingdoms period, Fan Jiang Pian by Sima Xiangru and Book of Dialects by Yang Xiong. Among them, Sima and Yang were both Sichuanese who lived during the Western Han dynasty, and the selected quotations present the long history of tea production, consumption, and trade in Sichuan. Together with quotations from other historical records, the time-honoured tradition of tea is brought to life vividly in front of us, as if we are now sniffing its delicate fragrance.

Note: The text from The Classic of Tea is quoted from the translation by Francis Ross Carpenter (The Ecco Press, 1974).