An exhibition providing a journey to the teal culture of the Ming Dynasty made a debut in China National Tea Museum, which for the first time placed a show on the webs. It is also the first show of a sort centering around the culture of this era.

This exhibition is jointly curated with another 12 cultural facilities, including the Palace Museum, National Library of China, Shanghai Museum, and Zhejiang Provincial Museum, etc. Over 180 items (sets) and more than 700 pictures, covering tea sets, paintings, calligraphy works, ancient books, are in the collection.

China’s traditional tea culture, by the time of the Ming period, had undergone transformations unlike any before. Tea books of this era, made upon the knowledge in earlier times, encompassed a broad array of topics such as tea cultivation and processing, and encapsulated experience, new technologies, and theory updates in diverse facets. They not only helped advance tea studies to an unparalleled high but led to the nationwide popularity of roasted green tea, a trend whose influence persists even today. The tea export to Europe in the late Ming Dynasty paved the way for the nation’s worldwide tea trade during the Qing era.

To help further understand Chinese tea culture, the exhibition delves into the Ming-time tea culture in three aspects, i.e. tea technologies, drinking ceremonies, and global trade. A panoramic picture unfolds with the country’s tea culture in details, covering the tea plantation, processing, and storage, the evolution of tea-drinking customs, the trade via the ancient tea-horse trails, and overseas spread of tea culture over the globe. It is a grand, holistic unveiling of the significant role and far-reaching influence of the Ming-time tea culture in scientific, social, and global outreach progress.

So the access? Log onto the official account of the China National Tea Museum, click the “Micro Website” at the bottom to choose the “Digital Exhibitions”. The banner “Tea Culture of the Ming Dynasty” is right in place.