History of Tea
By Catalina Alvarez/Jules Hojnowski
There are 2 schools of thought as to how tea began. One is a Chinese
beginning, that is an oral tradition placing tea with the time of creation
of the
Earth. It was brought down from one of the three Sovereigns, called, Shen
Nung, the
Divine Cultivator. He is supposed to have written in the "Pen ts'ao",
a medical book from 2737 B.C., that tea "grows in winter in the valleys by the
streams and on the hills of Ichow, and does not perish in severe winter.
It is gathered on the
third day of the third month and then dried." He also wrote, "It quenches
thirst.
It lessens the desire to sleep. It gladdens and cheers the heart." So
just like coffee, tea,
was considered to have an aura of the gods and was used as a combination
of medicine and elixir.
As written records began to replace the oral traditions, the mythilogical
stories began to
be a little confusing. In the border between myth and fact, it is said
that an aboriginal tribesman
living in the hills SW of China, made a drink by boiling the tea leaves and
drinking it. They also
ate it as a food in Thailand by taking steamed tea leaves with salt, oil,
garlic, pig fat and dried fish
and fashioning them into balls, very similar to how the African's made
their coffee balls. It is written
that in 350 A.D., is the first record of tea cultivation. This was in an
ancient dictionary called
"Erh Ya" by the Duke of Chou from the 18th century B.C. In another
dictionary called "Kuang Ya",
from 500 A.D., tea was said to be formed into cakes then pounded into bits,
put in boiling water,
onion, ginger and orange was added, and drank/eaten. Tea was also used as
money in China.
During the 5th century, tea was listed on trade lists and was elevated to
the role of a cultural symbol.
In the T'ang dynasty (618-906 A.D.) tea cups were painted blue to bring out
the beautiful jade
color of the tea. This was also the era of classical Chinese art. The
Sung dynasty (960-1280 A.D.)
was the romantic age of tea. It was called the "Pure Delight," "The
Pearl," or the "Precious Thunder."
It was flavored with either onions, pickle broth, ginger or orange, but
later these were eliminated so
that the pure beverage could be enjoyed. This timeframe was when whipped
tea was invented.
The Mongals came by (1368-1644) and changed the color of the tea cups and
how the tea was made.
The other story of how tea started was from Japan. It tells of an Indian
saint,
Daruma, who founded a Japanese Zen (Ch'an) school of Buddhism. In 520 A.D.
Daruma left India, to go to China, to meditate on the Wall for nine years.
One day he fell
asleep during his meditation, and when he awoke, he was very upset that he
slept,
that he cut off his eyelids and tossed them on the ground. It is said that
where
his eyelids touched the ground, that a strange and holy plant (tea)
appeared as
reminder of his weakness and a memorial to his sacrifice. He died in Japan
in 528 A.D.
There are many short stories about tea after the above two, all of Chinese
or Japanese
in origin that were all oral. On an interesting note an Oriental epithet
for an insensitive person,
it would say that the person has "no tea" in him, or on the other hand, if
he was an
over-emotional person they had "too much tea."
The first record of tea cultivation in Japan was by Gyoki, 658-749 A.D. He
built forty-nine temples,
that all had tea gardens in them. For about a century after that, Japanese
Monks worked to spread
tea througout japan. In 794 A.D. Emperor Kammu moved the capital of Japan
from Nara to Kyoto,
and had his new palace built with a tea garden in the likeness of a Chinese
garden. he even created
a new government position, a Supervisor of Tea Gardens! In 1477, Yoshimasa
(a shogun) made the
first rules of the tea ceremony, and a room to have the ceremony in. It
was not until teh 16th century
that tea was spread to the west for trade. In 1559 the book "Voyages and
Travels" had the first
mention of tea in a European printing. This was from a Persian merchant,
which went to a Venetian
Council, and continued to Spain, Portugal and on to France and Holland. By
the 17th century
the Dutch were having tea parties resembling bizarre parodies of the
Japanese tea ceremony.
the tea was equl to $100 per pound and served from silver and porcelain
containers with sugar
and saffron, which were sipped noisily from a saucer. After about 50 cups
of tea were drank by each
guest, brandy, sugar, raisins, and pipes were had by all, including the
women! Thus ending the party.
When tea went to London, the coffee houses there added it to their menus
which also had, tobacco,
coffee, sherbet and chocolate! This was 1657 at a Garway's Coffee House.
Long live tea!
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