History of tea
[4] An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text written by Chinese physician Hua Tuo.
[7] Camellia sinensis originated specifically around the intersection of latitude 29°N and longitude 98°E, the point of confluence of the lands of southwest China, Tibet, north Myanmar, and northeast India.
[8] On morphological differences between the Assam and Chinese varieties, botanists have long asserted a dual botanical origin for tea; however, statistical cluster analysis, the same chromosome number (2n=30), easy hybridization, and various types of intermediate hybrids and spontaneous polyploids all appear to demonstrate a single place of origin for Camellia sinensis—the area including the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of China, and northern part of Myanmar.
A variant of the legend tells that the emperor tested the medical properties of various herbs on himself, some of them poisonous, and found tea to work as an antidote.
[11] A similar Chinese legend states that Shennong would chew the leaves, stems, and roots of various plants to discover medicinal herbs.
In this telling, Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan Buddhism, accidentally fell asleep after meditating in front of a wall for 9 years.
They fell to the ground and took root, growing into tea bushes, the leaves of which could make a drink to keep people from falling asleep.
[14] The samples were identified as tea from the genus Camellia particularly via mass spectrometry,[14][15] and written records suggest that it may have been drunk earlier.
The word tu 荼 appears in Shijing and other ancient texts to signify a kind of "bitter vegetable" (苦菜), and it is possible that it referred to several different plants, such as sow thistle, chicory, or smartweed, including tea.
[9] Laozi, the classical Chinese philosopher, was said to describe tea as "the froth of the liquid jade" and named it an indispensable ingredient to the elixir of life.
[23] Legend has it that master Lao was saddened by society's moral decay, and sensing that the end of the dynasty was near, he journeyed westward to the unsettled territories, never to be seen again.
[27] There are products sold today that claim to be harvested in this manner, but no reliable commentators have observed this firsthand, and most doubt that it happened at all.
The first sentence states, "Tea is the ultimate mental and medical remedy and has the ability to make one's life more full and complete."
Eisai was also instrumental in introducing tea consumption to the warrior class, which rose to political prominence after the Heian period.
In 1835, Kahei Yamamoto developed gyokuro (玉露), literally jewel dew, by shading tea trees during the weeks leading up to harvesting.
Records from the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) show that tea offerings were made in Buddhist temples to the spirits of revered monks.
Toward the end of the Joseon dynasty, commoners joined the trend and used tea for ancestral rites, following the Chinese example based on Zhu Xi's text formalities of family.
In 1557, Portugal established a trading port in Macau, and word of the Chinese drink "chá" spread quickly, but there is no mention of them bringing any samples home.
In the early 17th century, a ship of the Dutch East India Company brought the first green tea leaves to Amsterdam from China.
By 1689, tea was regularly imported from China to Russia via a caravan of hundreds of camels traveling the year-long journey, making it a precious commodity at the time.
[citation needed] Portuguese priests and merchants in the 16th century made their first contact with tea in China, at which time it was termed chá.
With its mild weather, soil quality and fresh spring water, Lahijan stands to have the largest area of tea cultivation in Iran.
The first record of tea in English came from a letter written by Richard Wickham, who ran an East India Company office in Japan, writing to a merchant in Macao requesting "the best sort of chaw" in 1615.
[45] In 1657, Thomas Garway, a "tobacconist and coffee-man" was the first to sell tea in London at his house in Exchange Alley, charging between 16 and 50 shillings per pound.
[48] The marriage of King Charles II in 1662 to the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza brought the tea drinking habit to court.
[48] It was initially promoted as a medicinal beverage or tonic[48] but by the end of the 17th century was taken as an all-purpose drink, albeit mainly by the elite, as it was expensive.
[48] In China, the Qing dynasty Qianlong Emperor wrote to King George III in response to the Macartney Mission's request for trade in 1793: "Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders.
However the technology and knowledge that was brought from China was instrumental in the later flourishing of the Indian tea industry in Assam and Sri Lanka.
[67] Canadians were big tea drinkers from the days of British colonisation until the Second World War, when they began drinking more coffee like their American neighbors to the south.
[74] The Somali Ajuran empire which established bilateral trading ties with Ming dynasty China in the 13th century brought with them a myriad of commodities including tea.
