The history of Tea.

for the duration of an extended day spent roaming the wooded area in search of edible grains and herbs,

the weary divine farmer Shennong accidentally poisoned himself 72 times.

however earlier than the poisons should give up his life,

a leaf drifted into his mouth.

He chewed on it and it revived him,

and this is how we observed tea.

Or so an ancient legend goes at the least.

Tea would not truly cure poisonings,

but the story of Shennong,

the mythical chinese language inventor of agriculture,

highlights tea's importance to ancient China.

Archaeological evidence indicates tea become first cultivated there

as early as 6,000 years ago,

or 1,500 years before the pharaohs built the superb Pyramids of Giza.

That original chinese language tea plant

is the same type that is grown around the arena nowadays,

but it became at first fed on very otherwise.

It become eaten as a vegetable or cooked with grain porridge.

Tea handiest shifted from food to drink 1,500 years in the past

while people found out that a combination of warmth and moisture

may want to create a complicated and varied taste out of the leafy inexperienced.

After hundreds of years of variations to the training technique,

the standard have become to warmth tea,

% it into portable cakes,

grind it into powder,

blend with warm water,

and create a beverage known as muo cha, or matcha.

Matcha have become so famous that a wonderful chinese tea way of life emerged.

Tea was the situation of books and poetry,

the favorite drink of emperors,

and a medium for artists.

They might draw extravagant photographs inside the foam of the tea,

very much like the coffee artwork you might see in coffee shops today.

inside the 9th century at some stage in the Tang Dynasty,

a japanese monk delivered the first tea plant to Japan.

the japanese in the end developed their personal particular rituals around tea,

main to the advent of the japanese tea ceremony.

And inside the 14th century all through the Ming Dynasty,

the chinese emperor shifted the usual

from tea pressed into desserts to unfastened leaf tea.

At that point, China nevertheless held a digital monopoly on the world's tea trees,

making tea one among 3 essential chinese export goods,

along with porcelain and silk.

This gave China a notable deal of power and monetary influence

as tea consuming unfold around the arena.

That spread commenced in earnest across the early 1600s

when Dutch traders brought tea to Europe in large portions.

Many credit score Queen Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese noble girl,

for making tea famous with the English aristocracy

whilst she married King Charles II in 1661.

at the time, outstanding Britain changed into within the midst of increasing its colonial impact

and turning into the brand new dominant international power.

And as amazing Britain grew, hobby in tea spread round the sector.

by 1700, tea in Europe offered for ten times the price of espresso

and the plant became nonetheless most effective grown in China.

The tea alternate become so lucrative

that the sector's fastest sailboat, the clipper deliver,

was born out of excessive opposition among Western buying and selling corporations.

All were racing to deliver their tea returned to Europe first

to maximize their profits.

in the beginning, Britain paid for all this chinese tea with silver.

whilst that proved too steeply-priced,

they suggested buying and selling tea for every other substance, opium.

This brought about a public fitness problem within China

as humans have become hooked on the drug.

Then in 1839, a chinese reputable ordered his guys

to smash huge British shipments of opium

as a declaration against Britain's impact over China.

This act brought on the first Opium war among the 2 countries.

fighting raged up and down the chinese coast until 1842

whilst the defeated Qing Dynasty ceded the port of Hong Kong to the British

and resumed trading on unfavorable phrases.

The war weakened China's global standing for over a century.

The British East India organization additionally wanted in order to develop tea themselves

and further manage the market.

so that they commissioned botanist Robert Fortune

to scouse borrow tea from China in a covert operation.

He disguised himself and took a dangerous adventure

through China's mountainous tea regions,

subsequently smuggling tea trees and skilled tea workers

into Darjeeling, India.

From there, the plant unfold further nevertheless,

assisting pressure tea's rapid increase as an everyday commodity.

today, tea is the second maximum consumed beverage within the global after water,

and from sugary Turkish Rize tea,

to salty Tibetan butter tea,

there are almost as many approaches of making ready the beverage

as there are cultures at the globe.