Chinese Tea History, Tea Types and Tea Culture

History of Chinese Tea

According to popular chinese believes, tea was discovered by chinese Emperor Shennong in ancient times. It looks like a legend, as his name Shennong (神农) can be translated into english as "Divine Farmer". He is also considered to be ancient chinese father of agriculture.

As legend says, once he was resting under a Camellia trea and boiled some water to drink. Dried tree leaves fell into the boiling water and infused with it, so Shennong tried some first tea and found its taste interesting and refreshing.

In the beginning tea was mostly used for rituals. As time passed, during Sui dynasty (581-618), tea was used for medical qualities. Some time later, in Tang dynasty (618-907), tea drinking became an art form and a drink enjoyed by all social classes in China. At the same time, a monk Lu Yu wrote The Book of Tea, where he recorded a detailed ways to cultivate and prepare tea, tea drinking customs, the best water for tea brewing and different classifications of tea.

DID YOU KNOW?

Whipped powdered tea. That type of tea became fashionable during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), but disappeared completely from Chinese culture after the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), when many other aspects of Song culture were erased. Chinese tea customs were exported to Japan during that time, and so whipped powdered tea still remained popular there. It is also called as Matcha. Later chinese people became accustomed to drinking steeped tea from leaves and continue to drink it this way today.