Tea Plant
Tea has been discovered and used in China for 4000 years. There is no doubt that tea originated in China.In recent decades, with the development of tea science and botany, more and more evidence shows that southwest China is the origin of tea.
As early as the early days of human civilization, China's ancestors had learned to distinguish beneficial and harmful plants or animals in productive and living activities such as gathering, fishing and hunting.
There are countless books about tea and tea culture in China. The study of tea in China has become a separate discipline, which attracting a large number of tea scholars, whose efforts enable us to understand tea better than the ancient people.
Emperor Shennong
In the Western Han Dynasty, tea became a daily commodity and began to spread to areas outside China. As Chinese culture gradually spread to the surrounding areas, more and more people began to know tea and drink tea. Nowadays, tea has been grown and processed in more than 60 countries, and people in more than 160 countries and regions have the habit of drinking tea.
Obviously, it is almost impossible for me to explain the origin of tea in detail in one article.
The detailed knowledge of any aspect of tea can form a thick book. I'm just going to give you some very brief information here.
Shennong found tea
Lu Yu (陸羽) said in his famous works 'The Classic of Tea' (completed between 760 and 780) , “the first man to discover what tea can do is Emperor Shennong - one of the three ancient emperors of China”. He is considered to be the legendary inventor of agriculture and medicine. He tasted a large number of herbs and taught the ancients about medicine and agricultural knowledge. It is recorded in Shennong's Herbal Classics that "Emperor Shennong tasted many herbs and was poisoned, tea healed him". That is where the well-known Chinese story of "Shen Nong Tasting A Hundred Plants" came from. If so, Shen Nong is presumed to have lived more than 7,000 years ago.
It is said that Shennong's belly is transparent. He can see the reaction of various plants in his stomach. Therefore, he could taste many kinds of plants to distinguish their effects. With this unique ability, he has learned a lot about Chinese herbal medicine. Of course, his achievements are not limited to his medical knowledge. He also taught people how to grow food and raise livestock. Because he was mainly engaged in farming, he was honored as "Shennong(the Chinese agriculture god)", and the later generations wrote a book named after him in the Han Dynasty. This book is the earliest Chinese medicine book Shennong Herbal Classic, which is listed in the four classic works of Chinese medicine.
Of course, it is almost impossible for us to find clues to infer the exact time and place of tea discovery through the legend mentioned in the previous paragraph. By studying historical materials, we can know tea as a kind of daily beverage has gone through a complicated development process, from boiling fresh tea as a tea soup to making loose teas and compressed teas as exchange commodity, from single green tea to a wide variety of teas on the market today, from traditional handed tea-making techniques to modern mechanized tea-making method. In short, in the whole history of tea development, the production methods and types of tea have been evolving.
The origin of the tea
As for the origin of tea, historians, botanists and tea scholars have studied it by various scientific means, proving that the origin of tea tree is in the southwest of China. From the perspective of botany, the concentration of a certain specie in a certain region indicates that this region is the origin center of this plant specie. There are 23 genera and more than 380 species of Camellia Sinensis found in the world, while there are 15 genera and more than 260 species in China, and most of them are distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. There are more than 60 varieties in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau alone, most of which are Camellia Sinensis. The high concentration of theaceae and Camellia plants in southwest China shows that southwest China should be the birthplace of tea plant.
Tea-making steps in the traditional way
1.Tea at the beginning of human civilization
Lu Yu and fragments of his works
Tea was first used as food. Especially in the primitive society where materials are scarce,
tea is more likely to be a food.
Tea is used as a food
In primitive societies, people lived mainly by hunting and gathering wild fruits and some edible plants, so tea was likely to be found and used as food. The reason is simple. In the primitive society where life was difficult and food was not enough, tea would never be used as a drink first, nor could it be used as a medicine. Therefore, it is highly likely that tea was first recognized as a food.
In fact, tea are non-toxic and edible, especially the fresh tea buds and leaves. It is recorded in Yanzi's Spring and Autumn Annals that, in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), Yanzi the prime minister of the State of "Qi", used to make simple vegetarian dishes with tea leaves and eat them with brown rice and other meat dishes. To this day, many Chinese still use the phrase "粗茶淡飯（coarse tea and brown rice）" to describe a simple lifestyle. There is also a record in the "Book of Jin (晉書)" that the Wu (吳 222-280) people (lived in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River today) used to pick tea leaves and cook them into a daily simple dish called tea congee.
In the 21st century, the Jinuo people living in the southwest border of china still keep the habit of eating green tea leaves, and the Dai, Hani and Jingpo also have similar habit. They process fresh leaves into "bamboo tube tea" as a dish.
Tea is used as a medicine
After tea was known to early humans as a food material, its medicinal effects were gradually discovered and recognized, and tea then became a health and healing herb.The medicinal value of tea was recorded in many ancient Chinese medicine books. The ancient Chinese believed that tea could refresh the mind and improve memory.
Until today, some health and medicinal functions of tea are still utilized by people.
2. Tea as a beverage From Han Dynasty
Later, people gradually found that the medical efficacy of tea was very weak, but it had a certain exciting effect, so tea began to be a drink. It was not until the Han Dynasty that tea drinking became a new trend and permeated all sectors of society.
During the Three Kingdoms period (222-280), the simple tea processing appeared in the State of Wei (220-265). The picked tea leaves are first made into tea cakes, and then dried in the sun or dried with fire for convenience of storage and transportation. So far, the germination of Chinese tea making technology has appeared and the appearance of the tea also changed.
From steaming tea cake to dragon-phoenix tea cake
In The Three Kingdoms Period, Zhang Yi from the State of Wei recorded in his monograph Guang Ya: "In some parts of Sichuan Province, farmers picked tea leaves and made them into cake shape, which then mixed with rice soup for later use. Tea cake made in this way can be roasted until it turns red, then pounded into small pieces and mixed with spices such as scallions, ginger and orange peel to make a dish or drink to appease hunger or provide refreshment." Tea cakes directly processed from fresh leaves n this way have a strong grassy flavor, which makes the tea less attractive. Later, an innovative tea-making technique - "steaming-green" method was born based on repeated practices. According to this method, fresh leaves are first made into tea cake with a small hole in the middle, and then people string the tea cakes together with strings to dry and remove the grassy smell. Even so, the strong bitter taste is annoying. To reduce bitterness, the steps of washing tea with cold water and squeezing out leaf juice with heavy force were added in the tea making at that time.
Patterns of silver molds recorded in ancient books
During the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and Song Dynasty (960-1279), the industry of making tribute tea for the emperor gradually prospered. For making good tea, the imperial court established a special organization, similar to the current tea factory, and there were a number of tea makers organized by the government to improve tea making technology, which is conducive to the evolution of tea making methods. By the Tang Dynasty, the "steaming green" method was further developed, and a set of relatively systematic tea-making procedure was formed. As recorded in The Classic of Tea written by Lu Yu between 760 and 780, the complete steps of the "steaming-green" method include: steaming tea, decomposing tea pieces, pounding tea, loading into the mold, pressing, removing from the mold, drying, threading tea cakes on a string, baking and packaging.
In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), there were varied types of tea, among them the most representative is Dragon-Phoenix Tea Cake (龍團鳳餅) which has dragon and phoenix patterns on the surface so it got this name. To make Dragon-Phoenix Tea Cake, the picked fresh leaves need to go through six processes: steaming, squeezing tea, grinding, forming, yellowing and baking tea. That is, soaking tea leaves in water, selecting the good buds and leaves for steaming, rinsing them with cold water after steaming, then squeezing the water slightly, squeezing the tea juice out greatly, then putting them into the tile basin, grinding them with water, and then shaping them into tea cake with Dragon-Phoenix mould, drying. Although the rapid washing of tea leaves with cold water can maintain the green color of tea leaves and improve tea quality, the practice of soaking and squeezing tea juice out causes the loss of many components contained in tea leaves, which has a great negative impact on final tea.
A picture of ancient Chinese brewing tea
From ball or cake tea to loose tea
In order to reduce bitter taste and improve tea flavor, the steps of kneading and pressing were gradually abandoned in the "steaming-green" method, resulting in steaming loose green tea. Then came the quality requirements and evaluation methods for loose tea. In addition to the most famous ball/cake tea (as tribute tea), there were also non-cake/non-ball teas such as coarse tea and dust tea in the Tang Dynasty. The change from "steaming green cake tea" to "steaming green loose tea" mainly occurred in the Song Dynasty. From the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), cake tea, Dragon-Phoenix Tea and loose tea coexisted at the same time. In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), steaming green loose tea was very popular because Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, ordered to abolish Dragon-Phoenix Tea and promote the production of loose tea in 1391.
From steaming tea to frying tea
Compared with "steaming-green ball or cake tea, the aromatic substance could be better preserved in" steaming-green " loose tea. Another shortcoming of the latter is that the fragrance is still not strong enough. To overcome this, the technology of using heat or hot air to fry fresh leaves to improve the aroma of tea came into being. Historical records show that frying green tea appeared in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).The technology of frying green tea was further developed in the song and Yuan Dynasties. In the Ming dynasty, the frying method of green tea was becoming more and more perfect. The main steps include:fixation / kill-green (rapidly stop the tea leaf oxidation with heat ), rolling, re-frying, baking. These steps are very similar to modern tea making process. It can be seen that ancient tea-making technology in China was constantly improved in the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties.
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