The history of Chinese tea1 茶艺资料.docVIP

The history of Chinese tea The history of Chinese tea is a long and gradual story of refinement. Generations of growers and producers have perfected the Chinese way of manufacturing tea, and its many unique regional variations. The original idea is credited to the legendary Emperor Shennong, who is said to have lived 5 000 years ago. His far-sighted edicts required, among other things, that all drinking water be boiled as a hygienic precaution. A story goes that, one summer day, while visiting a distant part of his realm, he and the court stopped to rest. In accordance with his ruling, the servants began to boil water for the court to drink. Dried leaves from a nearby bush fell into the boiling water, and a brown substance was infused into the water. As a scientist, the Emperor was interested in the new liquid, drank some, and found it very refreshing. And so, according to legend, tea was created in 2737 BC. Chinese Tea, More Important than Rice People throughout China drink tea daily. Tea is to the Chinese as wine is to the French, as beer is to the Germans, as cigars are to the Cubans. It is true that the word for tea, cha, never appeared in ancient Chinese texts; the character cha was created by Lu Yu in the 8th century during the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.). Based on written records and more recently excavated archaeological evidence, we know that tea as a beverage had become rather popular in Central China along the Yangzi River and its tributaries during the Western Han period (206 B.C.-24 A.D.) at the latest. Chinese drink tea at meals and serve it to friends when they come for a visit. On such occasions, it is served continually as long as they remain together engaged in conversation, wrote Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), an Italian Christian missionary who stayed in China for 28 years, in China in the Sixteen Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583－1610. This beverage is sipped rather than drunk and it is always taken hot, Ricci wrote. He also remarked that