Lu Yu, from the first to the Tang Dynasty in Cha Sheng, China, wrote the world's earliest tea monograph "Tea Classic" around 758 AD, systematically and comprehensively discussing the methods and experiences of tea planting, tea making, tea drinking and tea tasting. According to Lu Yu's Tea Classic, tea trees have been discovered and used in China for more than 4,700 years.
During the Western Zhou Dynasty in China, tea was used as a sacrifice. In the Spring and Autumn Period, fresh tea leaves were used as food, and in the Warring States Period, tea was used as a medicine to treat diseases. In the Western Han Dynasty, tea had become one of the main commodities. During more than 300 years from the Three Kingdoms to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, especially in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Buddhism prevailed, and Buddhists used tea to relieve their drowsiness, so tea was widely planted in the valley next to the temple. Drinking tea promoted Buddhism, and Buddhism promoted the development of tea stoves, which is the source of the famous so-called "tea Buddha blindly" in history. It was not until the Tang Dynasty that tea was officially popularized to the people as a popular drink.
Since ancient times, tea has been the bond of friendship between the Chinese and Japanese people. During the Tang Dynasty, Japanese monks first came to the Congress Temple in Tiantai Mountain, Zhejiang Province to study Buddhism. When they returned to China, they brought back tea seeds and planted them in He Zi County (now Chishang Tea Garden) in Japan. The tea spread to the central and southern parts of Japan. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Japanese Buddhist monk Rong Xi visited Tiantai, Siming and Tiantong twice. Song Xiaozong gave him the title of "Thousand Light Magician". Master Rongshan not only has profound Buddhist attainments, but also has a good knowledge of China tea. He has a book "Drinking Tea for Health", which is regarded as the ancestor of tea by the Japanese people. In the opening year of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Japanese Buddhist monk Zen Master came to Jingshan Temple in Zhejiang to study Buddhism. After returning home, he brought tea props and tea tables from Jingshan Temple, and spread the tea banquet and matcha method of Jingshan Temple to Japan, which inspired and promoted the rise of Japanese tea ceremony.
In the Song Dynasty, Arab merchants settled in Quanzhou, Fujian to sell tea. When Zheng He went to the Western Ocean in the Ming Dynasty, tea was also sold to Southeast Asia and southern African countries. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Dutch merchant ships transported tea from Macau to Europe for the first time in 16 10, which opened the door for China tea to be sold to both sides.
The earliest record of teahouses in China is Feng Ji, which was performed during the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty. Among them, "from Zou, Qi, Cang and Li, gradually to Jingyi, the city opened more shops, cooked tea and sold it, and did not ask the vulgar, but invested money and drank it". After the Tang and Song Dynasties, teahouses selling tea were set up in many places. In the Qing Dynasty, folk quyi entered the teahouse and became a place for cultural entertainment and rest.
According to legend, the largest teahouse in China was the "Flower Tea Hall" in Sichuan, with three halls and four courtyards. Chengdu Teahouse has a big armchair, which is very comfortable for drinking tea, chatting or taking a nap.
Our people have always had the habit of "inviting guests to offer tea", which fully embodies the civility and courtesy of the Chinese nation. In ancient times, Qi Shizu, Lu Na and others advocated replacing wine with tea. In the Tang Dynasty, Liu praised "tea" as ten virtues, and thought that drinking tea can not only strengthen the body, but also "respect people with tea", "make tea more attractive" and "make tea feasible". During the Tang and Song Dynasties, many literati, such as Bai Juyi, Li Bai, Liu Zongyuan, Liu Yuxi, Pi Rixiu, Wei, Wen, Lu You, Ouyang Xiu and Su Dongpo, not only loved tea, but also praised and described it in their masterpieces.
The origin of tea
As early as in Liang Lumeng written by Wu in the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a saying that "people can't live without rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, wine and tea every day". Originally called "Eight Things". It was not until the Yuan Dynasty that "wine" was omitted and it became "seven things". In the lyrics of Yuan Dynasty zaju "Yuhuchun", "Hundred Tea Pavilions" and "Duliucui", we can see the phrase "Seven things to open the door in the morning, rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea", which has been passed down from generation to generation, showing the important role of tea in people's daily life.
Tea, belonging to Theaceae, is the bud leaf of perennial evergreen woody plants native to China. This evergreen shrub can be five or six feet tall, and its leaves are oval and serrated. There are white flowers and five petals between leaves, and the fruit is oblate and triangular. When it matures, it splits and sows seeds. Its young leaves can be picked in spring and autumn to make tea, and its seeds can also be pressed for oil. Tea tree can also be used for carving, because its material is very good.
There were many different names for tea in ancient times, such as: tea, tea, tea tea, MengMeng. It is generally believed that the word "tea" did not appear in ancient books before the Tang Dynasty. From the Tang Dynasty, it was seen that the ancient word "Cai tea" was subtracted by people in the Tang Dynasty to form the word "tea". "Tea" is an archaic word for "tea", which is differentiated from the word "tea".
China is the origin of tea trees, so it is also the hometown of tea, and it is the first country to drink and make tea in the world. Thousands of years ago, wild tea trees were discovered in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other places in China. Tea production in China has a history of several thousand years. Tea-producing countries all over the world directly or indirectly introduce tea seedlings and seeds from China, and send people to China to learn how to grow tea, and then develop their own tea production.
Lu Yu said in the Book of Tea: "Tea is a drink, which originated from Shennong."
"Shennong Materia Medica" in the Warring States Period said: "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs to cure diseases, and when he encountered 72 poisons every day, he got tea (tea) to solve it." By the time of Shennong, the primitive clan commune, which mainly collected wild plants, had discovered 72 kinds of toxic Chinese herbal medicines. By chance, the toxicity of these 72 kinds of toxic Chinese herbal medicines could be solved by the fresh leaf juice of wild tea trees. Since then, people have used tea to detoxify, that is, the beginning of tea. It can be seen that the earliest tea drinking started from medicine.
When did drinking tea change from medicine to drink? The ancients had different views. According to the Eight Records of Huayang Country in Changqu, after the age of115 BC was combined with all ethnic groups in Sichuan, the tea produced in Bashu was listed as a tribute, and the leaders of all ethnic groups brought tea as a tribute, which is the earliest record of tea in China.
A brief history of drinking tea
As early as the Western Han Dynasty, drinking tea was very common in China, and there was a special tea market. Wang Bao of the Western Han Dynasty once said in Tongyue that "make tea by all means", "buy tea in Wuyang" and "sell tea in Chengdu". Wang Bao not only cooked tea at home, but also asked him to buy tea in Wuyang, the tea market at that time, and sell tea in Chengdu, where the tea market was concentrated. It can be seen that tea was not only a drink at that time, but also a commodity.
By the Tang Dynasty, drinking tea had spread to the people in our country and became people's daily life custom. Before the Tang Dynasty, sesame, salt, melon seeds, peach kernels and other condiments were generally added to tea, so the tea name was also named as the main condiment. Since the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu put forward that cooking tea without seasoning is called "real tea" to show the true fragrance of tea. Like the Song Dynasty, the method of drinking tea at that time was to steam fresh leaves, pound them into cakes, and then string them together to dry them, which was called "cake tea", "tea cake" or "slice tea". When drinking tea, grind the cake tea into powder, boil it in a pot, and let the tea soak before drinking. Scholar-officials also crushed tea into small pieces and pressed them into small cakes as gifts.
At that time, the method of steaming, pounding and baking was invented to make pressed green tea, which was greatly improved compared with the previous method of "boiling with raw leaves", which could enhance the fragrance and improve the quality of tea.
In the Tang Dynasty, with the popularity of drinking tea, famous teas appeared one after another, and literati wrote books on water. Lu Yu, a famous tea taster in the Tang Dynasty, wrote the world's first monograph on tea, Tea Classic, which became the "Cha Sheng" and "Tea God" revered in previous dynasties. The world's first monograph on the relationship between tea soup and water quality-Zhang's Fried Tea Classic was also written in the Tang Dynasty, which occupies an important page in the history of world culture.
Tea drinking before the Tang Dynasty belongs to the era of extensive decoction and drinking, and it is an extensive way of drinking either medicine or quenching thirst. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, it was fine-frying and slow-drinking, and even formed the art of drinking tea for thousands of years.
In the Song Dynasty, tea tasting in the Tang Dynasty developed into a "tea fight", which reached a higher artistic stage of tea tasting.
In the Song Dynasty, when fighting tea, the cake tea was first smashed into small pieces, ground into fine powder, then put into scalded teacups, and then boiled water was injected to make tea cream. Then use a special tea basket (a tool shaped like a broom) to stir the tea soup while rotating the cup, so that the tea soup flowers appear in the cup, and compare the color, fragrance and taste of the tea soup. Finally, taste the soup flower, and the one with good taste wins. It is based on "fighting tea" to compete for the quality of tea, the color, fragrance and taste of tea soup, and the tea art and tea art of tea fighting people.
In Song Dynasty, Beiyuan in Fujian was an important tea-producing area in ancient times. Beiyuan tea is of excellent quality and has been listed as tribute tea since the Southern Tang Dynasty. In the early days of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the Northern Song Dynasty, in order to distinguish it from the folk tea making, the "Dragon and Phoenix Model" was specially set up, and the dragon and phoenix were used to make group tea, which was the famous "Dragon and Phoenix Cake" in history. Its color, fragrance and taste are top-notch, making it famous all over the world.
At that time, the "Big and Small Dragon Group" was a famous tribute tea in the Song Dynasty. The founder of "Dalongtuan" is Ding Wei Song Dynasty, a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Steamed buns cost 20 yuan a catty, which was initiated by Cai Xiang and Fujian Xianyou. Both were created when Fujian overseers made tribute tea.
Doucha, which originated in Jian 'an area of Fujian, can not only give people material enjoyment, but also give people spiritual pleasure because of its strong skill and interest.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, the method of making tea in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province also began to take shape, changing steaming into frying and grinding into kneading, and grinding paste-group tea into strip-shaped loose tea, which changed the appearance and quality of tea and laid the foundation for the production of green tea in China.
In the Yuan Dynasty, fresh leaves were put into a pot to make a whole leaf of loose tea, which was called "steamed green loose tea" every day.
In the Ming dynasty, the same method of making green tea as today finally appeared-fried green method. The method of tea tasting has also changed from frying to boiling water, which has become a major turning point in the history of tea drinking, thus opening the schools of tea drinking in past dynasties. "Take the essence of the bud, suck the spring in the tripod and drink it all at once", which has been passed down from generation to generation. At that time, green tea processed by frying method has become the main drinking object of people, and scented tea has gradually taken root in people's hearts. There were hundreds of books about drinking tea in Ming Dynasty.
In the Qing dynasty, there were many teahouses in the countryside, and the wind of drinking tea in the Ming dynasty prevailed. Tea became a treasure, popular among officialdom literati, and a large number of famous teas were born in time. During the light years of the Qing Dynasty, semi-fermented oolong tea and fermented black tea were invented one after another, white tea appeared, and the traditional pressed tea was further developed, thus forming six kinds of tea structures in China-green, red, flower, white, oolong tea and pressed tea.
In the Qing dynasty, guests came to provide tea, whether for business or private entertainment. Sending guests off with tea has become a specific etiquette and ostentation. Teahouses in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guang Chuan. Combined with snacks and snacks, rap artists such as storytelling and pingtan are hired to perform live, and it has developed into a popular trading, communication and entertainment place with unique local characteristics, strong local flavor and civilian flavor. At the end of the Qing dynasty, there were a group of down-and-out banners, who still drank tea to decorate the facade and show off their wealth in front of people. The literati, on the other hand, dissolved into the "cold night guests come to tea for wine, and the bamboo stove soup is more red and boiling at first." As usual, the window is bright and clean, as long as there are plum blossoms, it will be different.
The spread of tea
The customs of growing, making and drinking tea, which are widely circulated in the world today, are all from China. It is speculated that China tea has spread abroad for more than 2000 years.
Around the 5th century, during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, China's tea began to be exported to neighboring countries in Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia. In the 9th century, China tea seeds were brought back to Japan by Japanese monks and gradually became a popular drink in Japan. /kloc-In the 20th century, when Mongolian caravans came to China to engage in trade, they brought China's brick tea from China to Central Asia via Siberia. /kloc-At the beginning of the 5th century, Portuguese merchant ships came to China for trade, and tea trade with the West began to appear. The Dutch brought tea to western Europe around 16 10, and then to eastern Europe after 1650, and then to Russia, France and other countries, and then to America in 17 century. /kloc-At the beginning of the 0/8th century, drinking black tea gradually became popular in Britain, and even became an elegant expression. Tea has become a high-grade gift given to each other by British upper-class people. The famous British East India Company began to distribute China tea on a large scale in the18th century, and made huge profits. From 65438 to 0880, China exported1450,000 tons of tea to Britain, accounting for 60% to 70% of China's tea exports. /kloc-At the end of 0/8th century, when the British king sent a special envoy to China to discuss the development of trade, he got several tea seedlings from China and transplanted them to India to develop Britain's own tea production. After careful cultivation, China tea seedlings finally grew into a forest, and then Indian-made tea began to be sold in the London market.
/kloc-In the 9th century, China's tea finally went to the world and became a worldwide beverage.
After the founding of New China, China sent tea planting technicians to Mali, Guinea, Afghanistan and other countries to help them take root and settle down tea trees and tea seeds in hot areas that are not conducive to growth.
At present, China's tea has been sold to hundreds of countries and regions on five continents. Tea seeds and tea trees from China have been introduced to more than 50 countries in the world.1People in more than 50 countries and regions have the custom of drinking tea. In recent years, the annual output of tea in China has reached more than 500 thousand tons, of which more than one third is used for export.
Nowadays, many functions of tea beneficial to human health have been recognized by more and more people, and it is recognized as "the first natural health drink" and "the king of world drink in 2 1 century".
China tea area
China has 165438+ 10,000 hectares of tea gardens. Tea-producing areas are widely distributed, starting from the eastern coast of Taiwan Province Province in the east, east longitude 122 degrees, east longitude 19 degrees in Gong Yi, Xizang Autonomous Region, Yulin, Hainan Island, north latitude 18 degrees, and north latitude19 degrees in Rongcheng County, Shandong Province. 2 1 967 counties and cities in each province (autonomous region and municipality) produce tea. There are four major tea areas in China: Southwest Tea Area, South China Tea Area, Jiangnan Tea Area and Jiangbei Tea Area.
1, Southwest Food District
Southwest tea area is located in the southwest of China, including Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces and southeast Tibet, and is the oldest tea area in China. Tea tree is rich in variety resources, producing black tea, green tea, Tuocha, pressed tea, Pu 'er tea and so on. It is one of the main bases for the development of big-leaf black broken tea in China.
Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau is the origin center of tea trees. The terrain is complex, and some areas at the same latitude have great differences in altitude and climate. Most areas belong to subtropical monsoon climate, which is neither cold in winter nor hot in summer. Soil conditions are also suitable for the growth of tea trees. Sichuan, Guizhou and southeastern Tibet are mainly yellow soil with a small amount of brown soil. Yunnan is mainly lateritic red soil and mountain red soil. Soil organic matter content is generally richer than other tea areas.
2. South China tea area
South China Tea Area is located in the south of China, including Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Taiwan Province, Hainan and other provinces (regions), which is the most suitable area for tea tree growth in China. There are trees, small trees, shrubs and other types of tea trees, and tea resources are extremely rich. Black tea, oolong tea, scented tea, white tea and Liubao tea are produced, and the tea soup produced by Dayehong is of high concentration.
Except for a few areas in northern Fujian, northern Guangdong and northwestern Guangxi, the annual average temperature is 19℃ ~ 22℃, the monthly average minimum temperature is 7℃ ~ 14℃, and the annual growth period of tea is 10 months. The annual precipitation is the highest in China's tea areas, generally12o0mm. The soil in tea-growing areas is mainly latosol, and some areas also have red soil and yellow soil, with deep soil layer and rich organic matter content.
3. Jiangnan tea area
Jiangnan tea area is located in the south of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China, including Zhejiang, Hunan, Jiangxi and southern Anhui, southern Jiangsu and southern Hubei. It is the main tea producing area in China, and its annual output accounts for about two-thirds of the national total output. Tea produced mainly includes green tea, black tea, black tea, scented tea and famous teas with different qualities, such as West Lake Longjing, Huangshan Mao Feng, Dongting Biluochun, Junshan Yinzhen and Lushan Wu Yun.
Tea gardens are mainly distributed in hilly areas, and a few are in mountainous areas with higher altitude. The climate in these areas has four distinct seasons, with the annual average temperature ranging from 15℃ to 18℃, and the winter temperature is generally -8℃. The annual precipitation is 1400 mm ~ 1600 mm, with the most rainfall in spring and summer, accounting for 60% ~ 80% of the annual precipitation, and drought in autumn. The soil in tea-growing areas is mainly red soil, some of which are yellow soil or brown soil, and a few are alluvial soil.
4. Jiangbei Tea Area
Jiangbei tea area is located in the north bank of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Shandong and other provinces and northern Anhui, Jiangsu and Hubei. Jiangbei tea area mainly produces green tea.
The annual average temperature in tea-growing areas is 15℃ ~ 16℃, and the absolute minimum temperature in winter is generally around-10℃. The annual precipitation is less, ranging from 700mm- 1000mm, which is unevenly distributed and often causes drought to tea trees. The soil in tea-producing areas mostly belongs to yellow brown soil or brown soil, which is a transitional type of soil in the north and south of China. However, the microclimate in a few mountainous areas is good, so the quality of tea is no less than that in other tea areas, such as Luan Guapian and Xinyang Maojian tea.
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