On a cold winter night, a guest suddenly came to visit, so I quickly entertained each other with tea instead of wine. The stove is burning brightly, the charcoal fire inside is red, and the water in the pot is boiling.
The "bamboo stove" here refers to a small bowl filled with charcoal fire. Simply put, it is a small stove with bamboo strips woven on the outer layer, which is very elegant and deeply loved by "tea customers".
When it comes to "making tea and boiling snow", we will talk about a man named Gu Tao in the Northern Song Dynasty. It is said that one day it suddenly snowed, and Gu Tao was very clever. He made tea with snow water, and the tea he cooked was especially fresh and sweet. So many people think that he is the pioneer of "boiling snow to make tea".
In fact, as early as the Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi wrote a poem of "Leng Yong Shuang Mao Sentence, Idle Taste of Snow Water Tea", full of praise for "Snow Water Tea". This also shows that the practice of cooking tea with snow has a long history, and it only became popular in the Song Dynasty.
Snow tea is also mentioned in A Dream of Red Mansions. Jia Baoyu went to the jade palace, drank Miaoyu's tea and praised it again and again. Miaoyu explained: "This is the snow I picked from plum blossoms when I lived in Pan Xiang Temple of Xuanmu five years ago."