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History of tea in China Wikipedia

This article is about the history of tea in China.

Tea in Mythology

Lu Yu wrote in Cha Jing: "Tea as a beverage was originated from Shen Nong"

A medicine book "Shen Nong Ben Chao" stated that "Shen Nong tasted hundreds of herbs, he encountered seventy two poisons daily, he used tea as antidote"

In Chinese legend, Shen Dong died in Tea Hill (Cha Lin) county of Hunan province.

Tea plant was indigenous of China

• In 760 AD, Lu Yu already noted: Tea is a grand tree from the South, tall from one, two, and up to several dozen Chi. Some with circumferance up two meters.

• A Wilson in his exploration of South East area of China discovered tea bushes tall up to ten

feet in mountains in Sichuan

• In 1939, botanist discovered a 7.5 meter wild tea tree in Wuchuang county of Guizhou province.

• In 1940, on the Old Eagle mountain of Wuchuang county, a 6.6 meter tall wild tea tree was

discovered.

• In 1957, a 12 meter wild tea tree was discovered in Cheshui county of Guizhou.

I In 1961, a one thousand seven hundred years old, thirty two meter tall and more than one meter diameter wild tea tree was found in the rain forest of Yunnan, this is the king of tea trees.

• 1976, a 13 meter wild tea tree was found on Daozhen county, on a mountain at 1400 meter elevation.

• More wild tea trees were found in the mountains of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, many of them more then ten meters tall.

Although wild tea trees were also found in Assam( then belongs to Burma ), but in 1835, a contingent of botanist and geologists after analyse the tea trees in Assam, concluded that the Assam tea tree was an inferior variant of Chinese tea. Indian tea company decided to
import Chinese tea plants for plantation into India in large scale.
Japanese scholar used DNA technology to analyse China tea plants in Taiwan, Hainan Island,
Yunnan, Guanxi, Hunan, Sichuan, Thailand, Burma, and Assam/India. He concluded that tea plant originated in Sichuan and Yunnan in China, spread south thru Burma, then India.

Cleary Tea (Camellia sinensis ) was indigenous in China. China is the motherland of tea

China also has deep rooted tea culture, more than several thousand years old. There are abundant ancient Chinese historic records described the use of tea as medicine, as vegetable of food. There is no such ancient record exist in India. The history of tea in India is less then two hudred fifty years old.

Last Modified:   2005-03-02