Tea from China - History

Just finished my Skype session with the instructor and other class participants.  WOW!!  Is there ever a lot to know in this module.  The book is like three times the size as the Tea 101 materials and of course the tea list is huge!!  I'm going to summarize here the history of tea in China.

China is the birthplace of tea.  It was discovered in 2737 by Emporer Shen Nong.  He was sitting in the shade of a tree and boiling some water when a breeze came up and blew some of the leaves from the tree into his pot of boiling water.  Instead of dumping it out he drank it and found it to be delish!!  Tea was born, as the tree he was sitting under was a tea tree.

The Chinese also have an answer for how the tea trees came to be:  It was because Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen decided that he was going to sit in front of the Shaolin Temple in China and meditate for 9 years.  Unfortunately he dosed off a little and was so upset with himself (Doesn't seem very Zen like) that he sliced off his eyelids and threw them to the ground.  From those eyelids grew the first tea bush!!

Tea was first brewed by boiling it to death.  This resulted in, as you can imagine a very strong and bitter liquor that was used primarily for medicinal purposes.  It must have worked because they started to cultivate it due to the demand for its medicinal uses.  The first cultivation of tea started in the Szechwan province.  by the mid 4th century.  The imperial court even put a levy on the tea called a 'tea tribute' - the first form of tax on tea.  The unfortunate reality was that the tea tribute was so important that the peasants had to focus on tea growing, and little to no focus on growing food, and for the poor in China it meant many people died of famine.  (Every country's history has something to this effect in their history - how can we be so unjust to each other?).

The first teas were pressed into cakes and then roasted until hard and red in color.  Tea was traded.  The Tibetans traded war horses for tea, and was such as sought after commodity that they used the hardened tea bricks as currency.  They also used tea in their meals as a flavour additive.

The Tang Dynasty in China 618 - 907 was a period of aesthetic quality - it was refined and sophisticated.  Tea was brought to a whole new level.  The brewing, and cultivating and the manufacturing of teas began to be turned into an art.  Fruit juices were being added to sweeten the flavours, and more attention was given to brewing a tea that had distinctive aromas and flavours.

LuYu - the patron saint of tea writes the first book about tea, its origins, methods and tools used for plucking and processing, preparing and serving.  He documented how it should be prepared, served and appreciated.  He was the first to document tea.

Now in China independent privately owned coops share local resources for labour, harvest, processing and distribution.  The government regulates much of the tea and still typically harvests and operates large scale farms.  China has a significant portion of the worlds tea gardens-about50%, but only produces about 20% of the world output.