1. Shennong period: Tang Lu Yu's Tea Classic: "Tea is a drink, which originated in Shennong." In the history of cultural development in China, the origin of all things related to agriculture and plants always belongs to Shennong. After coming back here, you can't push it up any more. Because of this, Shennong became the god of agriculture.

2. Western Zhou Dynasty: Jinchangqu's "Huayang Guozhi Bazhi": "Zhou Wuwang really got the teacher of Bashu, and ... tea honey ... paid tribute." This record shows that when Zhou Wuwang attacked the week, Pakistanis had paid tribute to it with tea and other precious products. The Records of Huayang Country also recorded that there were artificially cultivated tea gardens at that time.

3. Qin and Han Dynasties: Western Han Dynasty. Wang Bao's Tongyue: "Exhausting tea" and "Wuyang buying tea" are the teas after the exam. In recent years, in the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty in Mawangdui, Changsha, "? A "and"? " Textual research on bamboo slips woodcut "?" That is, the variant of "rhyme" shows that tea drinking in Hunan was quite extensive at that time.

We still drink the same drinks as our very old ancestors, such as Jiang Taigong and others, which is really exciting. Can give us a lot of reverie.

Textual research on the origin of tea drinking;

The exploration of this point often focuses on the study of the birthplace of tea trees. There are several sayings about the birthplace of tea trees:

1. Southwest said: "Southwest China is the origin and birthplace of tea trees." This statement refers to a large range, so it is more accurate.

2. Sichuan said: Yanwu's "Rizhilu" in the Qing Dynasty: "After Qin people took Shu, they only had tea." The implication is that before Qin people came to Shu, drinking tea was known in Sichuan today. In fact, Sichuan is in the southwest, and Sichuan says it is established, so the southwest says it is established. Sichuan is more "accurate" than the southwest, but the risk of correctness will be greater.

3. Yunnan said: It can be completely considered that Xishuangbanna, Yunnan is the birthplace of tea trees, and this area is the kingdom of plants. However, there is a risk of "humanism" in this statement, because tea trees can be local, and Chaze is the result of activating labor.

4. East Sichuan and West Hubei said: Lu Yu's "Tea Classic": "Bashan Xia Chuan embraced each other." Bashan Gorge and Sichuan are now East Sichuan and West Hubei. There is no evidence that anyone has used such excellent tea trees in this area as tea.

5. Jiangsu and Zhejiang said: Recently, it was suggested that it started from the ancient Yue culture represented by Hemudu culture. At present, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are the most developed areas of tea industry in China. If history can take root here, it is a very meaningful topic. In fact, I think there must be more than one place where tea trees originated naturally in ancient times. Where there are tea trees, the custom of drinking tea may not necessarily develop. As mentioned earlier, tea was invented by Shennong, so where does it live? If we find the intersection of "tea tree native place" and "Shennong activity place", we may have the answer, at least narrowing the scope of the answer.

Invent the way of drinking tea:

How did humans invent the habit of drinking tea? Or how did tea originate? The study of this problem has always been a "basic problem" of tea science. Because as any tea scholar or tea worker, it is not enough if you can't even explain "how tea came from". Now there are many answers to this question:

1. Sacrifice said: This view holds that tea and other plants were originally used as sacrifices, but later it was found that they were harmless to eat, so they were "eaten as sacrifices, but eaten as vegetables, but used as medicines" and eventually became drinks.

2. Pharmacology: This view holds that tea "originally entered human society as a medicine." "Shennong Hundred Herbs Classic" wrote: "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, and when he encountered seventy-two poisons every day, he was relieved by tea."

3. Food theory: "The ancients drank water like grass", "People put food first", and eating first conforms to the evolutionary law of human society.

4. Synchronous said: "At first, tea was used as chewing food or baking food, and it was gradually used as medicine." The comparison and accumulation of these ways will eventually develop into "drinking tea", which is the best way.

The most useless of the above statements is the fourth, which adds up the first three and becomes your own "foolproof" explanation. Perhaps this explanation is the most appropriate.

Now, we can think that tea has been recognized and used for a long time in China, as well as the cultivation and harvest of tea trees. However, it can also be verified that tea is widely used in all walks of life, probably after Lu Yu's Tea Classic was handed down in the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, there is a poem in the Song Dynasty that "since Lu Yu was born, the world has learned from each other's strengths and made spring tea". In other words, after the invention of tea, it was not known to the public for more than 1000 years.

The origin of tea tree:

China is the first country to discover and utilize tea trees, which is called the motherland of tea. Written records show that our ancestors began to cultivate and utilize tea trees more than 3000 years ago. However, like the origin of any species, the origin and existence of tea must have been discovered and used by people before they discovered and used tea trees, and it was a long time later. The experience of human beings in using tea has been passed down from generation to generation, gradually expanding from local areas, and it took a long time to be gradually recorded in writing.

The origin of tea trees has always been controversial. With the development of textual research technology and new discoveries, it is gradually recognized that China is the origin of tea trees, and southwest China, including Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, is the center of tea tree origin. Due to geological changes and artificial cultivation, tea trees began to spread all over the country and gradually spread to all parts of the world.

(1) Origin and country of origin

When did the tea tree originate? It must have been written more than 3000 years ago. The problem that historians could not prove was finally solved by botanists. They traced back to the source according to the method of plant taxonomy. After a series of analysis and research, they think that the origin of tea trees has a history of 60 million to 70 million years.

Tea originated in China and has been recognized by the world since ancient times. 1824 years later, wild tea trees were discovered in India. Some foreign scholars objected that China was the origin of tea trees, which caused controversy in international academic circles. These dissidents are all based on Indian wild tea trees and think that there are no wild tea trees in China. In fact, the existence of Erya wild tea tree was mentioned in China around 200 AD, but today's data show that 18 wild tea trees have been found in 198 places in 65,438 provinces and autonomous regions of China, among which one tree in Yunnan is about 1700 years old, and the trunk diameter in Yunnan Province is more than one meter. In some areas, even wild tea tree communities are as high as thousands of acres. Therefore, the wild tea trees discovered in China are the earliest in the world, with large trees, large numbers, wide distribution and different characters. In addition, through textual research, both the wild tea plants found in India and the tea plants imported from China belong to the varieties of tea plants in China. It is concluded that China is the origin of tea trees.

In recent decades, the combination of tea science and botanical research has made a more detailed and in-depth analysis and demonstration of the origin of tea trees from different angles such as tree species, geological changes and climate changes, which further proves that southwest China is the origin of tea trees. In short, the main argument has three aspects:

1. From the natural distribution of tea trees,

At present, there are more than 380 species of Theaceae plants in 23 genera, while there are more than 260 species of 15 genera in China, most of which are distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. There are more than 100 species of camellia, and there are more than 60 species in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, among which tea occupies the most important position. From the botanical point of view, the origin centers of many genera are concentrated in a certain area, which shows that this area is the origin center of this flora. The high concentration of Theaceae and Camellia plants in southwest China shows that southwest China is the origin center of Camellia plants and the birthplace of tea.

2. From the perspective of geological changes

There are many small landform areas and microclimate areas in the southwest of China, where the mountains are undulating, the valleys are criss-crossing, and the terrain is changeable. In the case of great difference between low latitude and altitude, the climate is so different that the tea trees originally grown here slowly separate in different climates of tropical, subtropical and temperate zones, which leads to intraspecific variation of tea trees and develops into tropical, subtropical big-leaf and middle-leaf tea trees, as well as middle-leaf and small-leaf tea trees in temperate zones. Botanists believe that the place where a species has the most variation is its origin center. The three southwestern provinces of China are the places with the most variation and abundant resources of tea trees in China, and are the centers of tea tree origin.

3. According to the evolutionary types of tea plants.

In the long history of its systematic development, tea trees always tend to evolve. Therefore, all areas where primitive tea trees are concentrated should be the origin of tea trees. The wild tea trees in the three southwestern provinces and their adjacent areas have the morphological and biochemical characteristics of primitive tea trees, which also proves that the southwest region is the center of the origin of tea trees.