Story of Tea

Story of Tea

Tea plants are native to East and South Asia, and probably originated around the meeting points of the lands of north Burma and southwest China, Statistical cluster analysis, chromosome number, easy hybridization, and various types of intermediate hybrids and spontaneous poly-ploids indicate that there is likely a single place of origin for Camellia sinensis, an area including the northern part of Burma, and Yunnan and Si-chuan provinces of China. Tea drinking likely began during the Shang Dynasty in China, when it was used for medicinal purposes. It is believed that, soon after, "for the first time, people began to boil tea leaves for consumption into a concen-trated liquid without the addition of other leaves or herbs, thereby using tea as a bitter yet stimu-lating drink, rather than as a medicinal concoc-tion.

No-one is sure of the exact inventor of tea, but Chinese legends attribute the invention of tea to Shennong in 2737 BC. A Chinese inventor was the first person to invent a tea shred-der. The first recorded drinking of tea is in China, with the earliest records of tea consump-tion dating to the 10th century BC. Another early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text by Hua Tuo, who stated that "to drink bitter t'u con-stantly makes one think better." Another early reference to tea is found in a letter written by the Qin Dynasty general Liu Kun. It was already a common drink during the Qin Dy-nasty (third century BC) and became widely popular during the Tang Dynasty, when it was spread to Korea, Japan and Vietnam. In India it has been drunk for medicinal purposes for a long but uncertain period, but apart from the Himalayan region seenis not to have been used as a beverage until the British introduced Chinese tea there