Speaking of the origin of tea, people often quote "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, met 72 poisons a day, and got tea (tea) to solve it". Legend has it that Shennong often goes to the deep mountains and forests to collect herbs in order to cure diseases. Not only did he have to walk a lot, but he also personally tried the collected herbs to understand and identify their functions. One day, he tasted a poisonous grass while picking herbs. He felt thirsty and dizzy, so he quickly found a tree to sit down and closed his eyes to rest. At this time, a gust of wind blew a few fragrant leaves. Shennong picked up two leaves and chewed them in his mouth. He doesn't want to taste the fragrance. He felt that his tongue was full of saliva and spirits, and the discomfort just now was swept away. After careful observation, he found that the leaf shape and veins of this leaf were different from those of ordinary trees, so he collected some and took them back for careful study, and later named them "tea". This legend implies that tea has medicinal functions when it was first discovered.

In Chinese ancient books, the earliest recorded formula of medicinal tea is Guangya written by Zhang Yi in the Three Kingdoms period, which records: "Tea is collected between Beijing and Pakistan, made into cakes and fed on rice paste. If you drink it, you should turn it red first ... sober up and have no sleep. " By the Tang and Song Dynasties, medicinal tea had developed into single use and compound use, and compound use was more than single use. The administration method is also enriched from the original single decoction method to preparations, pills, powders, etc. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the application scope and production methods of medicinal tea were constantly updated and enriched, and the prescriptions for treating tea were more abundant, covering almost all aspects such as internal medicine, surgery, gynecology, pediatrics, ent, dermatology, orthopedics and health care. The dosage forms of medicinal tea are further developed into powder, pill, granule and herbal tea, and there are various ways to take it, such as drinking, mixing, taking, gargling and rubbing. At this time, a large number of effective tea formulas are widely used, such as afternoon tea, wolfberry tea, ginger tea, eight immortals tea and pearl tea.

Shennong Herbal Classic recorded the efficacy of tea, which was the first pharmacological monograph written in China during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Herbalists and medical scientists of all ages have regarded tea as a good medicine for disease prevention and health care. Medical Books, Hua Tuo's Food Theory and Tea Spectrum all record more than 20 functions of tea, such as quenching thirst, refreshing, promoting digestion, diuresis, relieving asthma, improving eyesight and intelligence, diminishing inflammation and detoxifying, and prolonging life. Chen Zangqi, a great medical scientist in the Tang Dynasty, even said in Herbal Supplement that "all kinds of medicines are medicines for all diseases and tea is medicines for all diseases", which almost deified the medicinal value of tea.

Tea is widely developed as food as well as medicine. During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhang Yi called drinking tea "making tea" in Guangya. In the Western Jin Dynasty, Fu Xian mentioned tea in "Silijiao" and called it "tea porridge", which reflected that people would collect fresh leaves of tea for cooking in Wei and Jin Dynasties and add rice, oil, salt, ginger, onion, pepper, red dates, dried tangerine peel and mint for seasoning. "Cooking tea is like cooking, and eating tea is like eating vegetables". Moreover, the habit of "warm drinking" tea has continued to this day. Many ethnic groups in China have similar habits, such as milk tea in Inner Mongolia and butter tea in Xinjiang. Bai Juyi's famous sentence "Whoever gets rich first, has no intention of keeping her, and went to Fuliang to buy tea a month ago" in Pipa Xing shows that tea business was quite common in the Tang Dynasty. We are familiar with the way of brewing directly with boiling water without seasoning, that is, "clear drinking", which appeared in the Ming Dynasty and gradually became popular among the people, especially literati, and became one of the main ways of drinking tea in China.

However, even if it is circulated as a beverage, the medicinal function of tea has not been annihilated. The prescription for treating tea is invented by Chinese medicine according to its efficacy and has a wide range of uses. With the intervention of modern medicine, related research has continuously confirmed the health care efficacy of tea. Because it has the health care functions of three antibodies (anti-swelling, anti-radiation, anti-oxidation) and three drops of blood (lowering blood fat, blood pressure and blood sugar), it is called "magical oriental leaves" by the west and is popular all over the world. The World Health Organization investigated the advantages and disadvantages of drinks in many countries, and finally concluded that "tea is the best drink for middle-aged and elderly people".