Reddit reviews Chinese Art of Tea

Aaron Fisher's The Way of Tea is destined to be a classic.

John Blofeld's The Chinese Art of Tea is a classic.

> If you have sources for the things you've posed here, I'd be glad to read those too.

See below on this thread for some examples.

For the history of tea in the West, the authoritative source for a long time was Ukers, All About Tea, which is fabulously expensive but you might be able to get a copy via interlibrary loan. That's how I finally got it.

As to the comment about blends and why they predominate in consumer markets, I don't have anything handy but probably there is some commentary in Ukers.

[EDIT] I see that you have already found one of the Zhang papers, and you link it from his blog. You will find a lot of historical information there: I suspect he is the "expert on tea history" that you have been in contact with, and is a much more credible authority than anyone you are likely to find here when it comes to familiarity with Chinese-language sources on tea history. If you will read his whole blog you will learn a lot more than by asking question here.

As additional support for /u/Selderij's point above, there is a copy there of probably the earliest description of gongfu technique in English, which was written in 1937. It includes the remark

> The above is a strict description of preparing a special kind of tea as I have seen it in my native province, an art generally unknown in North China. In China generally, tea pots used are much larger, and the ideal color of tea is a clear, pale, golden yellow, never dark red like English tea.

John Blofeld was an English traveller in China during the early 20th century: in the 1980s, near the end of his life, he wrote a book on Chinese tea culture that included possibly the next description of gongfu published in English (sorry I can't reproduce it, I don't have a copy anymore). He also makes it clear that this was an obscure regional style. If you want a description of how tea was consumed in various parts of China during the early Republic (which would have been like the late Qing) you could do a lot worse than to read that.