Early History
"Better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one." (Chinese proverb)
Tea originated in the Yunnan Province in Southern China long ago in 2737 BC.
According to a common legend, tea was said to have been discovered by China's mythical second emperor, Shennong, who accidentally brewed tea one day after a dead leaf from a wild tea plant fell into his cup of boiled water, turning it a brownish color. The emperor drank the tea and found he enjoyed the taste and tea was born. Shennong, became an agricultural god who is also known as the inventor of Chinese medicine. He experimented by tasting herbs and teas, often becoming poisoned by them.
Another version of this story is that he was detoxified by accidentally eating a tea leaf. The historical origin of tea however dates back to recorded tea use during the first millennium BC, during the Han Dynasty (206 BC -220 AD) when tea was mostly used as a medicine and an elite beverage amongst the nobles due to its rarity at the time. During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), Lu Yu (729-804 AD) wrote Cha Jing, or Tea Classic, in which he describes tea drinking as a widespread social imperial beverage in the very first book about tea. This early work describes how and where to grow tea plants as well as how the tea leaves were processed and prepared for drinking. It was Lu Yu who accredited Shennong for the origin of tea consumption.
During this era, tea was processed and prepared differently than it is commonly done today. The tea leaves were steamed and ground and compressed into "teacakes" or bricks of tea. The cake tea was then ground in a stone mortar into a powder and cooked in hot water. These tea cakes were later used for border trade bargains with the Mongolians, and Tibetans during the Tang Dynasty often in exchange for horses. The culture of tea slowly transformed from medicinal and thirst quenching consumption to tea tasting, an artistic and sophisticated cultural activity. This transformation, due largely in part to the Tea Classic, created not only a calm medium for cultivating one's behavior and temperament but set a precedent for the many tea ceremonies and rituals known today.
Tea drinking methods gradually evolved from the tea cake cooking method to the ever more popular process of steeping loose tea throughout the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). During this time, the Japanese assisted in elevating tea's status to a true art form, when Buddhist monks brought tea to Japan because they found the stimulant properties useful in their meditations.
