Tea is an ancient drink, and it is therefore no surprise that its origin is more of a myth than an historical fact. Legend has it that tea was discovered by Chinese Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC when some tea leaves inadvertently floated into his pot of boiling drinking water. He is believed to have drunk it and proclaimed that it gave ¡°vigor of body, contentment of mind, and determination of purpose.¡± However, early tribes of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia more likely first chewed tea leaves much earlier, mimicking nearby monkeys.
Tea was consumed in China and much of Southeast Asia for centuries before it began to be exported to Europe and Africa. Consumption spread throughout the Chinese countryside during the Tang Dynasty from 620-907 AD, aided by the publication of Lu Yu¡¯s The Classic of Tea in the eighth century. In 593 AD tea was introduced to Japan where it became a cultural staple by the 1300¡¯s after Shogun Sanetomo credited tea for curing a serious stomach ailment in the early 1200¡¯s. The Portuguese and Dutch explorers were the first to write about tea and bring some back to Europe 4See Sib Ranjan Misra, Tea Industry in India 1 (1986); Marian Segal, Tea: A Story of Serendipity, available at:
beginning in the mid-1500¡¯s. From there it spread through the social elite to France and, eventually, to England in the 1650¡¯s.10 By 1669 the British East India Company was transporting tea from China to England, and by 1721 it became the monopolist in the trade. At this time tea was also being imported into the American colonies from China via England. |
