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A Brief History of Tea
The first tea plants known were thought to be grown in
Yunnan Province in southern China. From there they spread to
other parts of Asia that had the right types of soil and
weather conditions. The custom of drinking tea is said to
have originated in China with the emperor Shen Nong.
Regarded as an iconoclast of Chinese medicine, he introduced
the tea plant to people around the year 2700 B.C. The
classic on Chinese Tea, Cha jing (The Book of Tea), written
by the scholar Lu Yu in A.D. 760, recounts Shen Nong’s
efforts to discover the medicinal effectiveness of over
three hundred varieties of roots, grass, and tree barks.
Legend has it that he would try all of them on himself first
and whenever he ingested something poisonous he would
cleanse himself by eating tea leaves.
It seems certain that tea leaves were initially eaten as a
medicine long before tea became a popular drink. In fact,
there are still some hill tribes in southern China,
Thailand, and northern Myanmar that still eat pickled tea
leaves, and only until recent times were they aware that a
drink could be brewed from the same leaves!
According to Kouga, the ancient dictionary written during
the Later Han dynasty (A.D. 25-220), people in Sichuan
Province of western China, compressed steamed leaves into
hard bricks to help maintain the quality of the tea over a
greater period (very handy when transporting, too). When
making a beverage they would season the mixture with ginger
or onion. However, this early concoction would not qualify
as a conventional beverage in the usual sense because its
intended use was medicinal.
During the Three Kingdoms period (221-65), the popularity of
tea saw a rapid increase. One cause for this was the
widening increase in the practice of Buddhism, which was
beginning to gain a wider following. Buddhism prohibits the
drinking of alcohol and so that naturally boosted the demand for tea.
During the Sui dynasty (581-618), the custom of drinking
tea, previously limited to the aristocracy and Buddhist
monks, began to filter through to other classes. In the
mid-eighth century, tea shops sprung up, and gradually tea
became an indispensable beverage for ordinary city-dwellers.
It was around this time that Lu Yu, who came from the tea
producing center of Hubei Province, wrote his treatise on
tea. The range of Yu’s work is impressive. It covers the
origins, methods of plant cultivation, the types of utensils
used, the best ways to prepare and drink tea, and tales
relating to tea and tea-growing. His expansive compendium of
information spanned three volumes, opening with the
propitious line: “There are good luck trees in the south
that are beneficial to a person’s health.” When published
the book met with great acclaim and is still looked upon
today as a bible of sorts concerning tea.
Tea arrived in Japan from China. It was brought by Japanese
Buddhist monks who accompanied the special representatives
sent to China in the early Heian period (794-1185). It
wasn't until 1191 that tea really took hold in Japan with
the return from China of the Zen priest Eisai (1141-1215).
Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism in
Japan, introduced powdered tea and tea seeds that he brought
back with him from China. The tea seeds were planted by his
friend the priest Myoe (1173-1232) at the Kozanji temple in
the hills northwest of Kyoto. Among
the monks who traveled to China were Saicho (767-822), Kukai
(774-835), and Eichu (743-816). The first record of the
custom of tea-drinking in Japan appeared in Nihon koki
(Notes on Japan), compiled in the Heian period. Eichu, a
priest at the temple of Bonshakuji in Omi, Aichi Prefecture,
returned to China in 815. The Nihon koki records that when
Emperor Saga (reign, 809-23) visited Omi, Eichu invited him
to his temple and served him sencha, suggesting that
drinking tea, a popular pastime in Tang times, had also
become fashionable in Japan’s intellectual circles. Roun-shu,
an anthology of Chinese poetry written in Japanese in 814,
also mentions tea-tasting.
At that time, tea probably came in the form of hard bricks,
as described by Lu Yu. Compressed into a brick shape into a
brick shape, tea was not only easy to transport but also
held up better during the long voyage from China. This was
most likely the type of tea brought to Japan, even though
leaf tea was also used in China at that time. The brick was
first warmed over a flame and then a portion was broken off
by hand or shaved off with a knife. The shavings were ground
with a mortar into a powder, which was added to a pan of hot
water and brewed and then was served in a bowl.
Emperor Saga tried to encourage the spread of tea by
demanding provinces in the Kinki region around Kyoto to grow
the plant. He established tea gardens in one district of
Kyoto, and started growing and processing it for the use of
physicians attached to the court. This imperial tea,
however, found use mostly in rituals performed by the
aristocracy; the beverage had yet to become an item for
consumption by the common people.
Ordinary Japanese only began to drink tea much later, after
Eisai (1141-1215), the founder of the Rinzai sect of Zen
Buddhism, brought back a new type of seedling from
Sung-dynasty China. With it he introduced a new way of
drinking tea which was known as the “matcha style.” Eisai
encouraged the cultivation of tea trees, and his Kissa
yojoki (Health Benefits of Tea) tied tea-drinking to
longevity and launched tea in Japan on a large scale.
-by Michael Ganzeveld
Methods of leaf
preparation
The history of green tea began some 3000 years ago
when the Chinese plucked fresh tea leaves from wild tea
plants and dried them by sunlight for storage. This is
understood to be the primordial processing of green tea. In the 8th
century the evaporation processing method was developed.
After that, the sauté processing method was developed in the
12th century. The current traditional processing methods
still remain to this day and are carried on by tea
technicians from generation to generation.
According to the different types of fixation and drying
processes green tea can be classified into five categories:
- Stir-fry green tea: Fresh tea leaves
sautéed in pan for drying. Examples of which being gunpowder tea, Young Hyson, Chunmee, which are mainly grown for export.
The higher quality pan-fired green teas are made from
tender fresh tea leaves. Many historically famous
Chinese green teas are processed by the pan drying method.
Some of these are Jade fire, Dragon Well, Mountain
Gorge, Pi Luo Chun, Lu'An Melon Slice, Xinyang Maojian. The character associated with stir-fry green tea is "high
fragrance and strong taste".
- Roast green tea: Fresh tea leaves dried in a
roast basket or roast chest .The common finished
products of roast green teas are usually used as
material for flower-scented teas. The well-known famous
roast green teas include: Huangshan Maofeng; Taiping
Monkey King, etc. The character for roast green tea is
"intact original shape and covered with white fluff".
- Semi-roast & Semi-fry green tea:
Combine the stir-fry method and roast method for drying.
Benefits of the special drying method are that the finished tea
product not
only achieves high fragrance and strong taste but it also
keeps its original shape and its body is covered with pretty
white fluff. Examples of this method are Jianzhai Emerald Eyebrow, Anji Baicha
and Wuzhi Xinhao.
- Solar dried green tea: Fresh tea leaves
that are dried by sunlight. Solar dried green teas are mostly used as
materials for compressed teas.
- Steamed green tea: Fresh tea leaves
steamed by high temperature as a means of drying. The representative steamed
green tea is the popular
Sencha green tea is mainly
grown for export to Japan.
Green tea is as varied and unique as wine. Their
uniqueness depends upon the growing region, the season's
weather, time of harvesting and type of processing.
When this page fully develops we will be adding all of the
regional types of tea to the left hand margin. First
we'll work on the Japanese teas and then we'll cover the
Chinese green teas so keep checking back.
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