How Does Wu Kuan Use A Tea Outsider In Civil Service?

Wu Kuan (1435-1504), the top scorer of the civil service examination held in 1472 and one of the three cultural heroes in Suzhou at the time, also shared the same fondness for Tang-style tea with this group of drinkers. Furthermore, he even owned a tea estate, and picked and baked tea himself. His literary collection contains a “Love song to tea,” which “extols his companion’s devotion to the beverage.” The poem says, This Old Man of Decoctions loves tea as he loves alcohol, Thinking nothing of three sheng or even five dou When “before Spring Hall” is opened, there are no surplus item, Just a tea stove and a tea mortar (the original translation is ladle). In the hall, tea is brewed with nothing extra, To the end of the day, teacups are never far from my mouth: The only servants at this banquet are the tea boys; The only people who come in the gate are companions in tea. In thanks for tea there are poems and we study Lu Tong;
On the other hand, as James Benn has pointed out “his self-conscious enjoyment in a kind of nostalgic tea connoisseurship that celebrated the verse of Lu Tong and Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), while reveling in the total absorption in the minutiae of expertise in the topic of tea.” Besides the nostalgia of the Tang and Song tea connoisseurs, Wu Kuan communicated with his contemporaries through the medium of tea. For example, he sometimes received the Yangxian cake tea sent by Wu Lun, and he left many records and poems of enjoying tasting this tea in many different circumstances, such as his trip to the Mount Hui and his stay in Beijing as the Minister of Rites. In his poem titled “Tasting Yangxian Tea”, Wu Kuan expressed the confidence of his skill of brewing Yangxian tea, because he was trained by a recluse, which referred to Wu