汲江煎茶 Brewing New Season Tea by a Spring Stream

汲江煎茶

原作: 苏轼（字子瞻, 号东坡居士; 11世纪北宋）

英译: 闵晓红(2024.01)

活水还须活火烹，

自临钓石取深清。

大瓢贮月归春瓮，

小杓分江入夜瓶。

雪乳已翻煎处脚，

松风忽作泻时声。

枯肠未易禁三碗，

坐听荒城长短更。

Brewing New Season Tea by a Spring Stream

Chinese original by Su Shi

English version by Julia Min(Jan. 2024)

The finest tea is brewed over a fresh fire,

With water drawn from a flowing stream.

At the end of the fishing rocks on the pier,

I try to source clear water from the deep—

The dipper steals the moon into my urn,

The scoop feeds the kettle a share of stream.

Soon it boils to a creamy top, a snowy foam.

Tea grounds puff out an aroma, rich and sweet.

Then I pour a thin stream of spring to my bowl—

A soothing sound, like breeze through pineries.

The ‘three-bowl limit’ is never my cup of tea

To kill long nights in a town, barren and bleak.

Notes:

1. new season tea: likely referring to Grain-Rain Tea in spring, a conventional preference of southern Chinese green tea lovers. Tea leaves picked before the Grain Rain (mid-April) taste refreshing and have a delicate fragrance, while those after the season are rich and sweet, with a more sophisticated aroma, often used to make black tea. Su Shi could be making teas with the postseason Grain Rain tea.

2. a cream top of snowy foam: likely referring to matcha (tea grounds/powder抹茶) made from tencha (碾茶) in a small wooden or stone tool. Boiling tea leaves won’t produce a creamy top, but tea grounds do.

3. ‘three-bowl limit’: a well-known remark by Lu Tong (卢仝), a poet from the Tang Dynasty – “the first bowl moistens the mouth. The second bowl drives away loneliness. The third bowl opens your mind to creativity. …”

Appreciation:

This tea poem was composed during spring in 1100 on Hainan Island — "the end of the world," as ancient Chinese writers often called it. The new-season tea was likely from local friends or students. Though banished as far as his political opponents could manage on the Song map, Su Shi found peace of mind within his surrounding world, wild and desolate as it was.

Tea culture has been a vital part of Chinese tradition, much as silk adorns fine garments. In just a few lines, Su Shi paints a moving picture of tea-making during the Song Dynasty — a scene that clearly differs from today's methods.

Introduced to Britain largely during the colonial period, tea was highly appreciated by the upper class in its early decades before becoming affordable to common people. I vividly recall a 1998 visit to a castle in Scotland, where I saw a crafted tea drawer that locked away tea to prevent servants from stealing it — tea was a privilege for masters and their guests only.

A similar understanding of tea's civilising power appears in the words of William Gladstone (British Prime Minister, 1809–1898), though his poem "Brew a Cup of Tea" takes a different tone — not the shared wild stream of Su Shi, but a private solace from a troubled world:

“When the world is all at odds./And the mind is all at sea,/Then cease the useless tedium/And brew a cup of tea./There is magic in its fragrance,/There is solace in its taste;/And the laden moments vanish/Somehow into space./And the world becomes a lovely thing!/There's beauty as you'll see;/All because you briefly stopped/To brew a cup of tea.”

Su Shi asks for no locked drawer, no escape from the world. He brings his kettle to the stream, steals the moon in his dipper, and brews not despite his exile — but within it. That is the difference between tea as a privilege and tea as a companion.

My English version does not seek literal fidelity but living presence. Su Shi wrote from exile at "the end of the world", yet his poem is light, defiant, and intimate. The playful pun in line 11 ("my cup of tea") is a deliberate wink to the contemporary reader. Dongpo was never a man to be limited by rules or formalities; He would wish his lines to reach contemporary hearts, not remain locked in scholarly amber. Just as the Bible has been simplified into countless versions to respect the change of readership, so must a book, or a poem, to stay alive. That is Nature's Way.

Reference:

1. baikebaidu.com 百度百科

2. picture from the website: 《澎湃新闻》澎湃号·湃客