History of Tea

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History of Tea
The origin of tea can be traced back to China. A Chinese emperor Shen Nung had been sitting under a tree as his servant was boiling water when leaves from the same tree fell on the water. As an herbalist, Nung decided to taste the mixture, and the tree turned out to be Camellia sinensis. The drink is now what is known as tea. It is difficult to establish the truth in this story. All this happened in 2737 BC, and tea drinking was commonly done in China before it spread to the west (Courtwright 20).
Tea containers could be traced in tombs since Han dynasty which ran from 206 BC to 220 AD, but it was between 618 AD and 906 AD when it became fully established as the China’s main drink. This is was under Tang dynasty (Courtwright 21). Writer Lu Yu dedicated a whole book about the tea called Ch’aChing in the eighth century. It was during this period that tea started to become popular in Japan after being tested by Japanese Buddhist monks who were present in China. Japanese embraced tea and became part of their culture, and they have a tea ceremony which is described in the Tea Classic (Courtwright 24).
It was until the sixteenth century when there was a short discussion of tea among the Europeans. They were mainly Portuguese who were missionaries and traders and lived in the East. The Dutch were the first people to establish a trading post at Java, and it is through Java where they shipped tea to Holland. From there it spread to European countries but remained a drink reserved for the wealthy because it was expensive (Courtwright 25).

The British took time to try tea because they were always suspicious of continental trends.
Work Cited
Courtwright, David T. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the making of the modern world. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 2001.