Tea History PDF
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This document details the history of tea drinking, from its origins in China to its global spread and popularization. It describes several key historical milestones related to tea, including ceremonies surrounding brewing and consumption, changes in preparation methods, and the use over time.
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## Can You Imagine Life Without Tea? - Tea drinking began about 4,700 years ago when the Chinese Emperor Shen Nong. - He always insisted that water should be boiled before drinking, dried leaves from a nearby tea bush were blown into his pot. - The water turned a deep shade of brown, rather than th...
## Can You Imagine Life Without Tea? - Tea drinking began about 4,700 years ago when the Chinese Emperor Shen Nong. - He always insisted that water should be boiled before drinking, dried leaves from a nearby tea bush were blown into his pot. - The water turned a deep shade of brown, rather than throw the water away and start afresh, he insisted on tasting the brew and immediately hailed it as a refreshing drink. - For nearly five more millennia, we have been drinking tea. - The Japanese soon adopted Shen Nong's drink of tea, along with a ceremony in its preparation. - It was not until 4,000 years later that tea-drinking reached Europe. - Traveling merchants mentioned the properties of the tea bush, but no-one was sure how to use the leaf or how to serve it. - In 1560, a Portuguese missionary in China sampled a cup of tea, and 4 years later Portugal opened up the first official trade route to China. - Gradually, tea drinking became available around the world, but only to people who could afford it. - By the end of the seventeenth century, it became a tradition to drink tea mid-afternoon in some countries, and one tea drinker even added milk to the formerly black drink. - In London, tea became the main drink in the coffee houses, where penny customers could obtain a pot of tea and a newspaper. - The tea-drinking tradition then traveled across the Atlantic. - Until then, tea had been drunk steaming hot, however, in 1904 a heatwave in St. Louis, USA, meant that people were searching for a cooling drink. - A plantation grower poured buckets of ice into his brew of tea - the birth of iced tea. - Four years later, a tea merchant sent some samples of tea in aerated bags to restaurants. - The chefs should have opened the bags of tea to make a drink, but they found it easier to make the tea without opening them, and so the tea bag was born. - Today, whether black or green, with lemon or milk, life would be much duller without the humble tea leaf.
