Who the heck was this guy? The short answer is: a mythical Chinese emperor who lived in 2700BC. Legend has it that Chen Nung–also known as Shen Nung, Chien Nung, Shen Nong and countless other permutations–was once enjoying the sunshine in a meadow when a leaf from a nearby plant fell into his cup of boiled water. Never one to waste food needlessly, the good emperor drank the brew. Much to his surprise, it turned out to be extremely good and fortifying. From then on, he decided to steep the leaves into his boiled water and because he was an emperor and his word carried some sway, he sparked a fashion for it at his court. Thus was tea born.
The Indians, of course, disagree. Tea, they say, was invented by Bodhidharma. An Indian prince turned wandering Buddhist, Bodhidarma was on his way to China when, worn out by the vigils he kept every night, he fell asleep by the roadside. When he woke up, he was so horrified by the enormity of his body’s weakness that he cut off his eyelids and threw them away. Some time later, as he walked back along the same road, Bodhidharma discovered that a bush had grown on the spot where he had thrown his eyelids. He chewed a couple of leaves and discovered that not only did they have a good taste, but they also allowed him to stay awake. It was, of course, tea.
The slight problem with this charming story is that tea was introduced to India by the British. Although tea plants grew in the wild in Assam, everyday drinking and large-scale cultivation only came with Victorian settlers, who, like just about everyone else in the world, had acquired a taste for the brew from China.
Tea had been commonly drunk in China at least since the days of the Han dynasty (206 AD) and, over the centuries, they exported it across Asia. In the eighth century, when Chinese tea master Lu Yu wrote his seminal Cha Ching manual, tea reached the Japanese shores thanks to a group of Japanese Buddhist monks who came to appreciate the brew when they came into contact with their Chinese brothers. Through the monks’ network, the liquor finally made its appearance at the Japanese court, where it captivated the emperor.
Tea at the time was drunk Tang style–from the name of the dynasty under which this brewing method became widespread. Leaves were compacted into bricks, which were then roasted , then chopped and steeped in hot water. But the tea-drinking custom declined in Japan after the country’s diplomatic relationships with China deteriorated in the 9th century.
Another 200 years went by before another Buddhist monk, Eisai, reintroduced tea into Japan and the brew became hugely popular. By this time, China had swapped to drinking powdered tea which was whisked into hot water–and this preparation method became the basis for the Japanese tea ceremony.
By the mid 16th-century, tea became known to Europeans, but it only made its first appearance on the Old Continent in the early 17th century, when the Dutch imported a shipment into Amsterdam. After that, trade took off, but tea–rare, expensive, heavily taxed–remained the prerogative of the upper classes until a direct commercial route to China opened up in the early 18th century.
The rest, as they say, is history. Tea became Britain’s most popular drink by 1750 and the fashion soon crossed over the Atlantic. Tea gardens cropped up in the wealthiest cities of the colonies–and the taste for tea gave rise to a healthy smuggling business to avoid the heavy taxes imposed by the British government.
In a bizarre choice, the British decided that the best way to boost their taxation revenue–heavily hit by smuggling–was to further increase the tax on tea. The act was part of a wider move to tax British imports into America and caused enormous discontent in the colonies. And when the Dartsmouth, the Eleanor and the Beever, three British East India Company ships full of tea, anchored in Boston harbor in December 1773, a group of disgruntled patriots, disguised as Native Americans, boarded them over night and threw the leaves into the sea. It was the Boston Tea Party–and it lit the spark of the American War of Independence.
After the revolution, America started its own trade routes into China. What followed was the era of clippers, the fast, slender vessels that imported tea from China into America and Britain. Despite growing American competition, though, the British role in tea expansion wasn’t over yet. Britain had imported most of its tea from China until war broke out between the two countries in 1840. The British had already explored the possibility of planting tea in Assam a few years earlier, but the war with China gave this process a greater impulse. Plantations were established first in Assam, then in Darjeeling and in Ceylon, and tea from these areas quickly replaced China leaves in British homes.
The second half of the twentieth century saw a return of China tea on British shores, and, in recent years, a renewed enthusiasm for tea in America. Lesser known origins, such as Korea and Japan, and lesser-known varieties, such as white tea, became accessible across the world, fuelling the passion among connoisseurs. And now, it looks like Britain itself–the country that, together with China, has done the most to spread tea-drinking habits around the world–has joined the producers’ ranks. Defying infamous weather and a lack of altitude, Britain’s very first tea estate, Tregothnan, in Cornwall, harvested a crop last autumn. Its hugely expensive black tea has now hit the market to critical acclaim. Time will tell if this is a fluke or the first step towards a great new origin.
If you are interested in learning more about the history of tea, a great book is Alan and Iris Macfarlane’s Green Gold
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