Tea History

History

China has several stories about the origin of tea, the most famous being the story about Emperor Shennong who was drinking hot water in the year 2737 B.C. When the wind blew a leaf into his hot water, the color of the water suddenly changed. Curious about this colored water, the emperor took a sip and was pleasantly surprised by the delicious flavor. The leaf was of the camellia sinensis plant, and the first cup of tea was created. Nowadays we assume, however, that the first tea comes from Xishuangbanna in the South of Yunnan, where the oldest living tea-tree exists and is 2700 years old. Originally, tea leaves were used as spices in the food, but later the people in Xishuangbanna began to mix the tea leaves with hot water. The dried leaves of trees are thus our first experience with tea. Later on, the ancient Tea-Horse Road played an important role in spreading tea to both the high plateaus of Tibet and the mountains of Sichuan. Eventually, they were growing throughout southern China. The botanical name of tea is Camellia sinensis, the name sinensis indicating that this species has origins in China. This is despite the stories that tea originated from India or Vietnam.

In the West we still had to wait for a long time, before we discovered the pleasures of tea drinking. After the 16th century cautious trade relations between East and West were launched, when the Portuguese discovered tea in Japan. In 1610 the Dutch shipped the first tea to Europe. These were only small, very precious amounts. However, from the 17th century started to use Batavia (in Indonesia), for trading larger quantities of Chinese tea to Europe. Since China was not too generous with providing their precious tea, the Dutch started soon to grow their own tea in Java and Sumatra. The British did the same in Sri Lanka and India. Nowadays, most tea still originates in countries like India, Sri Lanka and Kenya (Africa). The quality of Chinese loose tea has however always remained the highest. As Chinese are lovers of Chinese tea themselves, and even these days only a small part is exported.