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 The history of tea

A legendary origin

The first documents that mention tea date back to the period between the seventh and sixth centuries BC. The inhabitants of ancient China in this period sang of the excellence of Tu, the name given to the group of plants which we now know as tea. This is the official origin, although if we give credit to popular legend, tea has been around since approximately the year 2700 BC.

Between the years 206 BC and 221 AD, during the Han dynasty, improved methods of gathering and preparing tea leaves made tea a popular beverage of the royal family. Its prestige among the nobility grew, reaching its peak in the period of the Three Kingdoms (221–277 AD), when tea served as a substitute for wine at the court’s banquets.

Emperor Chen Nung

The French writer Maxence Fermine describes, in his novel Opium, the discovery of tea in China: “One day, more than four thousand years ago, the emperor Chen Nung was traveling with his guard through a distant region of his great country. As the journey was long and tiring, he ordered them to let him stop to rest in the shade of some trees to protect them from the sun.

The convoy stopped and the emperor sat cross-legged under an unknown bush. Immediately, he asked for a bowl of boiling water, as he was thirsty and it was the best remedy he knew to quench his thirst. His servants hurried to bring it to him. At that moment, a leaf fell into the emperor’s bowl. Chen Nung drank the water without notice, and when he did a sweet yet bitter aroma filled his throat. Intrigued, he looked into the bowl and found the leaf that gave this fascinating scent and flavor. And thus tea was born.”

Tea in China

The general population would wait another five centuries before experiencing the goodness of this virtuous plant, since it wasn’t until the Tang dynasty, from 618 to 907 AD, that tea became the national beverage of China. Proof of this is that a philosopher of the time, Lu Yu, wrote the first account of its history, cultivation, and preparation in 780 AD: the Cha-Ching.”

Tea’s reputation reached every corner of China, thanks to caravans of merchants that crisscrossed the country. In 705 AD, Camellia sinensis crossed borders for the first time and was introduced in Japan by a monk named Dengyo Daishi. During this same time period, tea arrived in Tibet and was a great success. There they boiled tablets of pressed tea and then mixed it with butter and salt. It wasn’t until the start of the twentieth century that tea in the form of infusion became popular there, although there are still many Tibetans that prefer the traditional preparation.

Tibetan style tea

In his memoir, Seven Years in Tibet, mountain climber Heinrich Harrer (played in the movie by Brad Pitt) describes the local custom of drinking tea mixed with yak lard, a combination that he found horrifying. The author commented that some Tibetans claimed to drink more than a hundred cups a day.

Beyond China

Tea had begun to cross borders at the beginning of the ninth century when the first shipments arrived by boat to Korea and Japan. There, a Buddhist monk called Yesai published the first Japanese book on tea in 1191. Both countries began to cultivate tea in the humid, mountainous regions, and their inhabitants soon learned of the therapeutic properties of the infusion. Zen monks incorporated tea in their routines in the temple, in combination with meditation that lasted all day.

Tea Collection -Black Green Burgundy white Tea

Regarding the union between Buddhism and tea, the legend tells that an Indian prince named Drama had decided to devote his life to prayer. Abandoning his home, he began a pilgrimage toward China and Japan. Exhausted from the hard days of journeying, he succumbed to a deep sleep along the banks of a river and slept for a long time.

Upon waking, he felt horrified by his laziness and meted himself a severe punishment so as not to succumb to sleep again: he cut off his eyelids and buried them in the place where he had slept. Many years later, returning to his home, he passed that same place and discovered that a strange bush was growing where he had buried the eyelids. The monk chewed a few leaves and realized that they helped keep the mind awake. Since then, the Zen monks have always cultivated tea in the monastery gardens.

From “cha” to “tea”

The names given for the word “tea” are very similar throughout Asia: in Japan, it’s called cha, in Russia caj, in India tschaj and in China, ch’a. Some linguists maintain that it’s possible all these names come from the word for “vitality” in Chinese, chi.

In the Fukien province of China, the Dutch learned the word tay, which means “tea” in the local dialect, and this sound was introduced to Europe. In fact, in Ireland and England, it was pronounced tay until the start of the eighteenth century, after which the word was derived to tee and then tea—as we know it today.

In many European languages, the same word is used as a generic term for herbal teas or an infusion of herbs.

Apart from making the most of tea’s curative properties, the Japanese nobles also began to include tea in their social meetings. Thus was born the Cha no yu, the tea ceremony, a delicate and demanding ritual lasting several hours, for which the hosts would have expensive and precious utensils.

English Tea Preparation

Tea arrives in the West

The first record of the existence of tea in the West dates to the year 851 AD. It was written by an Arab merchant named Suleiman in his book Relations in China and India, where he defined it as “an aromatic herb with a bitter taste that is drunk with boiled water in the East.”

Apparently, westerners did not hear about this infusion again until 1529, when the Venetian Giambattista Ramusio wrote in his book Navigazione e Viaggi about the existence of a plant in the East that “calms pain of gout and also guarantees good stomach function.” Jesuit missionaries that visited China and Japan in the sixteenth century also spoke of a plant with a sweet taste that the natives called chai.

An Indian Old Man Enjoys Tea

The East India Company

In the seventeenth century, the European powers competed to claim the new markets in Asia. During this process, the Dutch East India Company brought the first shipment of tea to Europe in 1606. Later, the ships of the English East India Company achieved a monopoly on tea and began to distribute it in France, Germany, and Portugal as well as England. In 1657, the first teahouse opened in London, and financial transactions involving the plant took place on its upper floors. But tea became popular in England a few years later, when King Charles II married Catalina de Berganza, a great fan of the beverage.

The Portuguese princess brought with her dowry the port of Bombay, one of the most important hubs of maritime commerce between Asia and Europe, which became key in the tea trade between the two continents. The infusion began to be served in the court and, during the following century, became the most popular beverage in England, winning over even beer and gin.

In 1834, the East India Company lost its monopoly on tea after the implementation of a British governmental resolution. With free competition between companies, the speed of the ships became more important, so large ships gave way to small, lightships called clippers. This produced true competition to be the first to arrive in port and be able to sell at the best price, resulting in all kinds of incidents and adventures on the high seas, as the typical passage took about a hundred days.

The custom of adding milk to tea—so deeply entrenched in England today—was introduced by the Dutch in the early seventeenth century and then spread to France and England. The Japanese and Chinese never add milk to tea because they believe it ruins the flavor, original color, and aroma of the infusion.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, tea was drunk at any time of day. The creation of the British afternoon tea—at five o’clock—is attributed to the Duchess of Bedford, who after drinking it in the afternoon with a snack found it so delicious she instituted the ritual with all her friends.

Mango Tea

The spread of tea

In 1810 the Chinese began to cultivate tea on the island of Formosa, in modern-day Taiwan. A decade later in Assam, in the northeastern region of India, Robert Bruce and his brother discovered vast thickets of tea growing naturally and established the tea industry in the then-British colony, including the Darjeeling region.

In other parts of the world, tea arrived under more difficult circumstances. In Ceylan, modern-day Sri Lanka, the cultivation of tea began in earnest after a plague affecting coffee trees devastated all the plantations on the island—at that time it was the second-largest producer of coffee in the world.

Collection of Tea Around the world

In each country, tea has been introduced differently, with many local variations. The Maghrebis, for example, inherited tea from the English and their national drink is mint tea. It is served in a glass with a lot of sugar and accompanied by honey cakes. Proper etiquette dictates that the host should drink at least three glasses of tea, with the last one being stronger than the previous.

In 1900, with the inauguration of the Trans-Siberian railroad, tea was no longer transported by camel from Peking to Russia. And four years later, Richard Blechyden presented a refreshing invention at the St. Louis World’s Fair: iced tea.