Among Chan monks, one does not set a table with starter-main-dessert: one receives in a single bowl (the *patra*) what heaven and the faithful offer. Everything is vegetarian (素 *sù*), taken in silence before noon, then the belly fasts until the next day. The structure is not a succession of dishes but an economy: a cereal base (rice in the South, wheat and millet in the North), a clear broth, a few vegetables — fermented to last — and the tea that keeps the mind awake. Eating is a practice, not a pleasure: one takes just enough to get through the day of sitting.

Legend has it that Bodhidharma, overcome by sleep during his wall-gazing meditation, cut off his eyelids and threw them to the ground: from them grew the first tea plant. True or not, this story makes bitter tea the monk's totem ingredient — drunk not for taste but to stay lucid. Together with white rice and fermented soybeans (豉 *douchi*, a permitted source of umami), it forms the flavor backbone of all Bodhidharma's cuisine.