Lesson: The history of tea

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• During a long day spent roaming the forest in search of edible grains and herbs,
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• the weary divine farmer Shennong accidentally poisoned himself 72 times.
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• But before the poisons could end his life, a leaf drifted into his mouth.
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• He chewed on it and it revived him, and that is how we discovered tea.
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• Or so an ancient legend goes at least.
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• Tea doesn't actually cure poisonings,
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• but the story of Shennong,
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• the mythical Chinese inventor of agriculture,
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• highlights tea's importance to ancient China.
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• Archaeological evidence suggests tea was first cultivated there as early as 6000 years ago,
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• or 1500 years before the pharaohs built the Great Pyramids of Giza.
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• That original Chinese tea plant is the same type that's grown around the world today,
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• yet it was originally consumed very differently.
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• It was eaten as a vegetable or cooked with grain porridge.
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• Tea only shifted from food to drink 1500 years ago
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• when people realized that a combination of heat and moisture
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• could create a complex and varied taste out of the leafy green.
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• After hundreds of years of variations to the preparation method,
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• the standard became to heat tea,
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• pack it into portable cakes,
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• grind it into powder, mix with hot water,
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• and create a beverage called muo cha, or matcha.
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• Matcha became so popular that a distinct Chinese tea culture emerged.
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• Tea was the subject of books and poetry,
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• the favorite drink of emperors, and a medium for artists.
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• They would draw extravagant pictures in the foam of the tea,
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• very much like the espresso art you might see in coffee shops today.
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• In the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty,
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• a Japanese monk brought the first tea plant to Japan.
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• The Japanese eventually developed their own unique rituals around tea,
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• leading to the creation of the Japanese tea ceremony.
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• And in the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty,
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• the Chinese emperor shifted the standard from tea pressed into cakes to loose leaf tea.
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• At that point, China still held a virtual monopoly on the world's tea trees,
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• making tea one of three essential Chinese export goods,
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• along with porcelain and silk.
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• This gave China a great deal of power and economic influence
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• as tea drinking spread around the world.
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• That spread began in earnest around the early 1600s
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• when Dutch traders brought tea to Europe in large quantities.
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• Many credit Queen Catherine of Braganza,
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• a Portuguese noble woman,
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• for making tea popular with the English aristocracy
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• when she married King Charles the second in 1661.
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• At the time, Great Britain was in the midst of expanding its colonial influence
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• and becoming the new dominant world power.
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• And as Great Britain grew, interest in tea spread around the world.
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• By 1700, tea in Europe sold for ten times the price of coffee and the plant was still only grown in China
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• The tea trade was so lucrative that the world's fastest sailboat, the clipper ship,
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• was born out of intense competition between Western trading companies.
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• All were racing to bring their tea back to Europe first to maximize their profits.
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• At first, Britain paid for all this Chinese tea with silver.
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• When that proved too expensive, they suggested trading tea for another substance, opium.
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• This triggered a public health problem within China as people became addicted to the drug.
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• Then in 1839, a Chinese official ordered his men to destroy massive British shipments of opium
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• as a statement against Britain's influence over China.
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• This act triggered the First Opium War between the two nations.
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• Fighting raged up and down the Chinese coast until 1842
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• when the defeated Qing Dynasty ceded the port of Hong Kong to the British
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• and resumed trading on unfavorable terms.
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• The war weakened China's global standing for over a century.
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• The British East India company also wanted to be able to grow tea themselves and further control the market.
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• So they commissioned botanist Robert Fortune
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• to steal tea from China in a covert operation.
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• He disguised himself and took a perilous journey through China's mountainous tea regions,
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• eventually smuggling tea trees and experienced tea workers into Darjeeling, India.
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• From there, the plant spread further still,
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• helping drive tea's rapid growth as an everyday commodity.
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• Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water,
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• and from sugary Turkish Rize tea,
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• to salty Tibetan butter tea,
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• there are almost as many ways of preparing the beverage as there are cultures on the globe.
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