Living Memory

The tea literature includes three parts: epic of tea, legend of tea , and the song of tea, which contributes the ethical culture and carries the ethic memory. Though the observation of comparative perspective, we search the basic character and founction of tea literature. Based on the study of The Jino ethnic minority, Tibetan ethnic minority, De'ang ethnic minority group, and Hani ethnic minority, whose tea literatures are quiet prosperity, this dissatation foucs on investigating each fuction of epic of tea, legend of tea , and the song of tea in the ethnic life and culture.Tea literature conserves the vivid memory of ethic culture. First of all, all the tea literature, no matter the epic of tea, or the legend of tea, or the song of tea could be known only through oral expression, which determines the character of vitality, open, and solid. Secondly, the tea culture is combined with the ethic life style, which has it's own space time to practice. And there are special rituals concerning with faith in some peoples. Tea literature finally stored by idividual memory contains not only historical memory, but also collective memory, which contributes to the ethnic identity with other cultural factors.The epic of tea is a kind of special epic which survives in southwest of china, depending on particular environment. To the epics of tea, tea mountains are their geographic condition; the commercial activity of tea exchange is their economic surrounding; the movements such as tea party are the local tradition; the system of tea epic is their inherent power. The epic of tea could be divided into special and board epic of tea. The special tea epic covers the core memory of an ethnic, which usually describe the kin relationship between tea and the ancestor. As a result, special epic of tea contributes a lot during ethnic identification proccess. of De'ang ethnic minority could illustrate those functions exactly.The legend of tea influence from mouth to mouth. In the oral narration, only the core factors are preserved, thus the legends are usually quite curt. One ethnic group may have several legends of tea which was born in different times in history, take Tibetan ethnic minority, De'ang ethnic minority group, and Jino ethnic minority for example. The different editions of tea legend reflect culture and idea in history, and the acception of differet editons reflects the changing of mental identity.The song of tea is the creation of individuals, which express the personal emotion directly. Compared with tea epic and legend, the song of tea has got tow characters: first, the tea songs are tightly contacted with emotions; secondly, tea songs are often sung in fixed space time, such as tea party, which gathers people into together to share the collective memory, and agglomerates the ethic group as a whole.