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    The History of Tea

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    Lê Mai Bảo Vy
    The history of tea began in China, where according to legend leaves from a Camellia sinensis tree blew into boiling water being prepared by a servant for the emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC. Tea drinking became established in China many centuries before spreading to other countries. It was first introduced to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhist monks traveling from China, and then reached Europe via Dutch traders in the early 17th century. Tea became a popular drink among the wealthy in western Europe but remained too expensive for most in Britain until tax cuts in 1784 made it more affordable and curbed smuggling.

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    The History of Tea

    Uploaded by

    Lê Mai Bảo Vy
    33 views4 pages
    The history of tea began in China, where according to legend leaves from a Camellia sinensis tree blew into boiling water being prepared by a servant for the emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC. Tea drinking became established in China many centuries before spreading to other countries. It was first introduced to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhist monks traveling from China, and then reached Europe via Dutch traders in the early 17th century. Tea became a popular drink among the wealthy in western Europe but remained too expensive for most in Britain until tax cuts in 1784 made it more affordable and curbed smuggling.

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    The history of tea began in China, where according to legend leaves from a Camellia sinensis tree blew into boiling water being prepared by a servant for the emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC. Tea drinking became established in China many centuries before spreading to other countries. It was first introduced to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhist monks traveling from China, and then reached Europe via Dutch traders in the early 17th century. Tea became a popular drink among the wealthy in western Europe but remained too expensive for most in Britain until tax cuts in 1784 made it more affordable and curbed smuggling.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    33 views4 pages

    The History of Tea

    Uploaded by

    Lê Mai Bảo Vy
    The history of tea began in China, where according to legend leaves from a Camellia sinensis tree blew into boiling water being prepared by a servant for the emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC. Tea drinking became established in China many centuries before spreading to other countries. It was first introduced to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhist monks traveling from China, and then reached Europe via Dutch traders in the early 17th century. Tea became a popular drink among the wealthy in western Europe but remained too expensive for most in Britain until tax cuts in 1784 made it more affordable and curbed smuggling.

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    The history of tea

    The story of tea begins in China. According to legend, in 2737 BC, the
    Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant
    boiled drinking water, when some leaves from the tree blew into the
    water. Shen Nung, a renowned herbalist, decided to try the infusion that
    his servant had accidentally created. The tree was a Camellia sinensis,
    and the resulting drink was what we now call tea. It is impossible to know
    whether there is any truth in this story. But tea drinking certainly became
    established in China many centuries before it had even been heard of in
    the West. Containers for tea have been found in tombs dating from the
    Han Dynasty (206 BC—220 AD) but it was under the Tang Dynasty
    (618—906 AD), that tea became firmly established as the national drink
    of China.
    It became such a favourite that during the late eighth century a writer
    called Lu Yu wrote the first book entirely about tea, the Ch’a Ching, or
    Tea Classic. It was shortly after this that tea was first introduced to Japan,
    by Japanese Buddhist monks who had travelled to China to study. Tea
    received almost instant imperial sponsorship and spread rapidly from the
    royal court and monasteries to the other sections of Japanese society.
    So at this stage in the history of tea, Europe was rather lagging behind.
    In the latter half of the sixteenth century there are the first brief mentions
    of tea as a drink among Europeans. These are mostly from Portuguese
    who were living in the East as traders and missionaries. But although
    some of these individuals may have brought back samples of tea to their
    native country, it was not the Portuguese who were the first to ship back
    tea as a commercial import. This was done by the Dutch, who in the last
    years of the sixteenth century began to encroach on Portuguese trading
    routes in the East. By the turn of the century they had established a
    trading post on the island of Java, and it was via Java that in 1606 the first
    consignment of tea was shipped from China to Holland. Tea soon became
    a fashionable drink among the Dutch, and from there spread to other
    countries in continental western Europe, but because of its high price it
    remained a drink for the wealthy.
    Britain, always a little suspicious of continental trends, had yet to
    become the nation of tea drinkers that it is today. Starting in 1600, the
    British East India Company had a monopoly on importing goods from
    outside Europe, and it is likely that sailors on these ships brought tea
    home as gifts. The first coffee house had been established in London in
    1652, and tea was still somewhat unfamiliar to most readers, so it is fair
    to assume that the drink was still something of a curiosity. Gradually, it
    became a popular drink in coffee houses,
    which were as many locations for the transaction of business as they
    were for relaxation or pleasure. They were though the preserve of middle-
    and upper-class men; women drank tea in their own homes, and as yet tea
    was still too expensive to be widespread among the working classes. In
    part, its high price was due to a punitive system of taxation.
    One unforeseen consequence of the taxation of tea was the growth of
    methods to avoid taxation—smuggling and adulteration. By the
    eighteenth century many Britons wanted to drink tea but could not afford
    the high prices, and their enthusiasm for the drink was matched by the
    enthusiasm of criminal gangs to smuggle it in. What began as a small
    time illegal trade, selling a few pounds of tea to personal contacts,
    developed by die late eighteenth century into an astonishing organised
    crime network, perhaps importing as much as 7 million lbs annually,
    compared to a legal import of 5 million lbs! Worse for die drinkers was
    that taxation also encouraged the adulteration of tea, particularly of
    smuggled tea which was not quality controlled through customs and
    excise. Leaves from other plants, or leaves which had already been
    brewed and then dried, were added to tea leaves. By 1784, the
    government realised that enough was enough, and that heavy taxation
    was creating more problems than it was words. The new Prime
    Minister, William Pitt the Younger, slashed the tax from 119 per cent to
    12.5 per cent. Suddenly legal tea was affordable, and smuggling stopped
    virtually overnigh
    Another great impetus to tea drinking resulted from the end of the East
    India Company’s monopoly on trade with China, in 1834. Before that
    date, China was the country of origin of the vast majority of the tea
    imported to Britain, but the end of its monopoly stimulated the East India
    Company to consider growing tea outside China. India had always been
    the centre of the Company’s operations, which led to the increased
    cultivation of tea in India, beginning in Assam. There were a few false
    starts, including the destruction by cattle of one of the earliest tea
    nurseries, but by 1888 British tea imports from India were for the first
    time greater than those from China.
    The end of the East India Company’s monopoly on trade with China
    also had another result, which was more dramatic though less important
    in the long term: it ushered in the era of the tea clippers. While the
    Company had had the monopoly on trade, there was no rush to bring the
    tea from China to Britain, but after 1834 the tea trade became a virtual
    free for all. Individual merchants and sea captains with their own ships
    raced to bring home the tea and make the most money, using fast new
    clippers which had sleek lines, tall masts and huge sails. In particular
    there was a competition between British and American merchants,
    leading to the famous clipper races of the 1860s. But these races soon
    came to an end with the opening of the Suez Canal, which made the trade
    routes to China viable for steamships for the first time.

    Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading


    Passage 1
    Use ONE WORD for each answer.
    Write your answers in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

    1 Researcher believed the tea containers detected in .................... from


    the Han Dynasty was the first evidence of the use of tea.
    2 Lu Yu wrote a .................... about tea before anyone else in the
    eighth century
    3 It was .................... from Japan who brought tea to their native
    country from China
    4 Tea was carried from China to Europe actually by the .....................
    5 The British government had to cut down the taxation on tea
    due to the serious crime of .....................
    6 Tea was planted in ..................... besides China in the 19th century
    7 In order to compete in shipping speed, traders used ..................... for
    the race.

    Do the following statements agree with the information given in


    Reading Passage 1?
    In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write
    TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
    FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
    NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

    8 Tea was popular in Britain in the 16th century


    9 Tea was more fashionable than coffee in Europe in the late 16th
    century
    10 Tea was enjoyed by all classes in Britain in the seventeenth
    century
    11 The adulteration of tea also prompted William Pitt the Younger to
    reduce the tax
    12 Initial problems occurred when tea was planted outside China by
    the East India Company
    13 The fastest vessels were owned by America during the 19th
    century clipper races

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