Abstract: Cultural identity refers to the essential character of an ethnic group’s culture, which never stop creating and changing. Since tea has been widely accepted by different classes of society from various ethnic around the world, tea culture is abundant with diversity. As history tells us, the development of tea culture has been in maturity since the Tang Dynasty, which defined a time period, as well as an identity of major ethnic in China. This paper takes the Tea Saint Lu Yu, the founder of Chinese classic tea study, as a symbol for time division. By reviewing literature from the Tang Dynasty, it explains the reclusion as a cultural identity of drinking tea lifestyle in that period. That not only delivers a qualitative analysis for tea culture particularly in Tang Dynasty, but also lays a basic foundation for the study on relationship between Lu Yu and the tea. With this application of cultural identity theory, it involves the study on tea into the context of cultural research, thus to promote the study on tea culture in a more academic and professional way.

Key words: Tang Dynasty, lifestyle of drinking tea, reclusion, cultural identity, Lu Yu