Botanical origin '', 1897 Tea plants are native to East Asia and the probable centre of origin of tea is near the source of the
Irrawaddy River from where it spread out fan-wise into southeast China, Indo-China and
Assam. The natural home of the tea plant is considered to be within the comparatively small fan-shaped area between
Nagaland,
Manipur and
Mizoram along the
Burma frontier in the west, through
China as far as the
Zhejiang Province in the east, and from this line generally south through the hills to Burma and
Thailand to
Vietnam. The west–east axis indicated above is about 2,400 km long extending from longitude 95°-120°E. The north–south axis covers about 1,920 km, starting from the northern part of Burma, latitude 29°N passing through
Yunnan,
Tongkin, Thailand,
Laos and on to Annan, reaching latitude 11°N. Chinese (small-leaf) type tea (
C. sinensis var.
sinensis) may have originated in southern China possibly with hybridization of unknown wild tea relatives. Since there are no known wild populations of this tea, its origin is speculative. Assuming a generation of 12 years, Chinese small-leaf tea is estimated to have diverged from Assam tea around 22,000 years ago, while Chinese Assam tea and Indian Assam tea diverged 2,800 years ago. The divergence of Chinese small-leaf tea and Assam tea would correspond to the last
glacial maximum. Tea drinking may have begun in the region of
Yunnan, where it was used for medicinal purposes. It is believed that in
Sichuan, "people began to boil tea leaves for consumption into a concentrated liquid without the addition of other leaves or herbs, thereby using tea as a bitter yet stimulating drink, rather than as a medicinal concoction." Chinese legends attribute the invention of tea to the mythical
Shennong (in central and northern China) in 2737 BC, although evidence suggests that tea drinking may have been introduced from southwest China. The earliest written records of tea come from China. The word
tú appears in the
Shijing and other ancient texts to signify a kind of "bitter vegetable" (), and it is possible that it referred to many different plants such as
sow thistle,
chicory, or
smartweed, as well as tea. In the
Chronicles of Huayang, it was recorded that the
Ba people in Sichuan presented
tu to the
Zhou king. The
Qin later conquered the state of Ba and its neighbour
Shu, and according to the 17th century scholar
Gu Yanwu who wrote in
Ri Zhi Lu (): "It was after the Qin had taken Shu that they learned how to drink tea." Another possible early reference to tea is found in a letter written by the
Qin dynasty general Liu Kun who requested that some "real tea" to be sent to him. The earliest known physical evidence of tea was discovered in 2016 in the mausoleum of
Emperor Jing of Han in
Xi'an, indicating that tea from the genus
Camellia was drunk by
Han dynasty emperors as early as the second century BC. The Han dynasty work "The Contract for a Youth", written by
Wang Bao in 59 BC, contains the first known reference to boiling tea. Among the tasks listed to be undertaken by the youth, the contract states that "he shall boil tea and fill the utensils" and "he shall buy tea at Wuyang". The first record of tea cultivation is dated to this period, during which tea was cultivated on Meng Mountain () near
Chengdu. Another early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text by the Chinese physician
Hua Tuo, who stated, "to drink bitter t'u constantly makes one think better." However, before the
Tang dynasty, tea-drinking was primarily a southern Chinese practice centered in
Jiankang. Tea was disdained by the
Northern dynasties aristocrats, who describe it as inferior to yogurt. It became widely popular during the Tang dynasty, when it spread to Korea,
Japan, and Vietnam.
The Classic of Tea, a treatise on tea and its preparations, was written by the 8th century Chinese writer,
Lu Yu. The current Chinese word for tea (
茶) appeared in
The Classic of Tea by removing a stroke from the word
tu. Lu was known to have influenced tea drinking on a large part in China.
Developments Through the centuries, a variety of techniques for processing tea, and a number of different forms of tea, were developed. During the Han and
Six Dynasties, tea was steamed and pounded, shaped into cake form, slowly dried over low fire, and suspended to air dry. Chunks of tea were then boiled to drink, flavoured with orange peels,
jujube, mint, ginger or
scallion. Tea was similarly prepared in cake form during the Tang dynasty, but
Lu Yu disparaged the use of various condiments to flavour the tea apart from salt. By the
Song dynasty, loose-leaf tea was developed and became popular. During the
Yuan and
Ming dynasties, unoxidized tea leaves were first stirred in a hot dry pan, then rolled and air-dried, a process that stops the
oxidation process that would have turned the leaves dark, thereby allowing tea to remain green. In the 15th century,
oolong tea, in which the leaves are allowed to partially oxidize before being heated in the pan, was developed. Western tastes, however, favoured the fully oxidized
black tea, and the leaves were allowed to oxidize further.
Yellow tea was an accidental discovery in the production of green tea during the Ming dynasty, when apparently careless practices allowed the leaves to turn yellow, which yielded a different flavour.
Worldwide spread ,
Russian Empire, before 1915 Tea was first introduced to Western priests and merchants in China during the 16th century, at which time it was termed
chá. The earliest European reference to tea, written as
chiai, came from
Delle navigationi e viaggi written by Venetian
Giambattista Ramusio in 1545. The first recorded shipment of tea by a European nation was in 1607 when the Dutch East India Company moved a cargo of tea from
Macao to Java, then two years later, the Dutch bought the first assignment of tea which was from
Hirado in Japan to be shipped to Europe. Tea became a fashionable drink in
The Hague in the Netherlands, and the Dutch introduced the drink to
Germany,
France, and across the Atlantic to
New Amsterdam (New York). In 1567, Russian people came in contact with tea when
Cossack leaders (
atamans) Petrov and Yalyshev visited China. The Mongolian Khan donated to
Tsar Michael I four
poods (65–70 kg) of tea in 1638. According to
Jeremiah Curtin, it was possibly in 1636 that Vassili Starkov was sent as envoy to the
Altyn Khan. He was given 250 pounds of tea as a gift to the tsar. Starkov at first refused, seeing no use for a load of dead leaves, but the Khan insisted. Thus was tea introduced to Russia. In 1679, Russia concluded a treaty on regular tea supplies from China via
camel caravan in exchange for furs. It is today considered the
de facto national beverage. on her arrival on 14 October 1843 with a cargo of tea. The first record of tea in English came from a letter written by Richard Wickham, who ran an
East India Company office in Japan, writing to a merchant in Macao requesting "the best sort of chaw" in 1615.
Peter Mundy, a traveller and merchant who came across tea in
Fujian in 1637, wrote, "
chaa – only water with a kind of herb boyled in it". Tea was sold in a coffee house in London in 1657,
Samuel Pepys tasted tea in 1660, and
Catherine of Braganza took the tea-drinking habit to the English court when she married
Charles II in 1662. Tea, however, was not widely consumed in the British Isles until the 18th century and remained expensive until the latter part of that period. English drinkers preferred to add sugar and milk to black tea, and black tea overtook green tea in popularity in the 1720s. Tea smuggling during the 18th century led to the general public being able to afford and consume tea. The British government removed the tax on tea, thereby eliminating the smuggling trade, by 1785. In Britain and Ireland, tea was initially consumed as a luxury item on special occasions, such as religious festivals, wakes, and domestic work gatherings. The price of tea in Europe fell steadily during the 19th century, especially after Indian tea began to arrive in large quantities; by the late 19th century tea had become an everyday beverage for all levels of society. Traders from other nations then sought to find another product, in this case opium, to sell to China to earn back the silver they were required to pay for tea and other commodities. The subsequent attempts by the Chinese Government to curtail the trade in opium led to war. Chinese small-leaf-type tea was introduced into India in 1836 by the British in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. The Chinese tea plants he brought back were introduced to the
Himalayas, though most did not survive. The British had discovered that a different variety of tea was endemic to
Assam and the northeast region of India, which was then hybridized with Chinese small-leaf-type tea. Using Chinese planting and cultivation techniques, the British colonial government established a tea industry by offering land in Assam to any European who agreed to cultivate it for export. The British introduced tea industry to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1867. == Chemical composition ==