Emperor Huizong, by Patricia Buckley Ebrey

A book review is coming! I'm almost half way through this book about one of the most important emperor in Chinese history. For us, tea lovers, he's an example and a reference: Huizong is the only Chinese emperor to write a book about the tea preparation technique of his time (Song dynasty). And his book is still relevant if you wish to understand how tea used to be whisked back then! Huizong was also an artist and, again, the first and only emperor to create his own calligraphy style! And he could paint and make verses, too!

To many Chinese, though, Song Huizong is better know for being the emperor who lost half the country (the northern part), to his enemies, even though China was the most advanced nation on earth at that time. For the Monday morning quaterbacks, everything he did led to the disaster and he should not be an inspiration for current or future leaders. The author disagrees with this view and wishes to present Huizong in a more positive light in this biography.

So far, Patricia Ebrey is doing a good job describing the emperor and his difficult job of governing his court. A good example of how 'complex' life in the palace could be is shown in the first mention of the word tea in the book: "The adoptive mother (of emperor Zhezong, Huizong's brother) was accused of writing 'happiness' on a piece of paper, burning it, and putting the ashes into tea served to Zhezong as a way to get him to shift his affection." In the same affair, a "eunuch was accused of drawing a picture of Consort Liu and then driving a nail through her heart in the picture, hoping in this way to kill her." The voodoo practices didn't have much effect, but the accusations were so grave that the accused were henceforth executed! 

For the book review, I'll whisk some green tea in the style of the Song dynasty. This time, I simply used this set of celadon cups with stands, made by David Louveau some ten years ago. He found his inspiration in the Song and Yuan dynasties. That's the reason why I used them when presenting this book! These tall stands have the same function as good books: to elevate tea or our minds!