Module 1 – History & Culture of Tea

According to legend, some 5,000 years ago, Emperor Shen Nung who was travelling around the Chinese countryside had asked for his water to be boiled as it was foul and unfit for drinking. A breeze caused a leaf to separate from the branch of a plant, which then fell into his cup of hot water. The curious emperor let the leaf steep, then sipped the brew. Tea, brewed from the Camellia Sinensis plant came to being.

Historians have traced the purposeful cultivation of tea to Szechuan, China, around the year 350 AD. The use of tea evolved. It was first revered as medicine; it became so precious that it replaced currency and by the second half of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), tea took its place side by side with painting, calligraphy, poetic and music composition, and other scholarly pastimes.

The first tea-specific manuscript, The Classic of Tea (Cha Jing), commissioned by tea merchants and written by the poet Lu Yu was published. During this period, tea had become such an important cash crop that the government imposed the first known tea tax.

Tea made its way to Japan late in the sixth century, along with Buddhism. A Japanese monk by the name of Saicho (767-822) brought a few tea shrubs from China and planted them at the base of the sacred Mt. Hiei.

In China, teas evolved into different forms and types. Versions ranged from sun dried, steamed green, baked green and stir roasted green to non-fermented (yellow tea); to lightly fermented (white tea), semi-fermented (oolong / blue-green tea), fully fermented (red tea) and fermented-aged (Pu-Erh).

“Immortals, hear and said jove and cease to jar! Tea must succeed to wines as peace of war. Nor by the grape let man be set at odds, but share in tea, the nectar of the Gods.”
Peter Antine Motteaux, A Poem Upon tea.