After reading these three texts, my views on tea expanded to become aware of its origin and unique purpose. I never thought about tea in this light before I took this course or read these texts, but I find the legend of Shennong quite interesting. Tea is such an old invention and because of this we will never be completely sure how or why it came to be and at whose hands, but the speculations of these questions are intriguing. I like that these texts link it to medicinal purposes because it shows how much it has stayed the same and changed at the same time. Currently, I dont know of many people who drink tea to cure illness, but I have had a cup of tea when I was sick because my mom said it would clear my sinuses or soothe my throat. We still see it to be physically beneficial, but we mostly see it as a leisurely drink. The story of how Shennong poisoned himself everyday, although just a story, seems as though he knew what he wanted to find, but had not figured out how yet. I love when things have interesting backstories like that because tea is not just a beverage. It has a deep past of creation, art and healing that I was never aware of. This class is allowing me to realize how we can come into contact with something as seemingly ordinary as a cup of tea and miss an entire world of literary works about its origin and effects on the world today. In class when we analyzed the texts, I remember the words tradition, medicinal and the process of morphing into new things. Medicinal turned to aesthetic, and tradition to preference. This linked to the almost modern text on tea written by George Orwell. He is the aesthetic, and the preference, while the three texts and stories of shennong are closer to the old, the traditional and the medicinal.
