Who Were the First People To Drink Tea?

Tea is a beverage made by pouring boiling water over dried tea leaves. Tea ranks as the most popular drink in more contries than any other beverage. It is said that tea was discovered about 2737 B.C. by Emperor Shen Nung of China. The earliest written Chinese record of tea drinking goes back to the 10th century B.C. Tea was first brought to Europe by the Dutch in the early 17th century A.D. Britain became the only European country of tea drinkers rather than coffee drinkers, after the introduction of tea there in 1657. Tea was introduced into North America by early settlers but was heavily taxed, resulting in the well known Boston Tea Party of 1773, and it has never competed successfully with coffee as the staple beverage. Half of the people in the world drink tea. China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Japan are the main producers. Leaf buds and young leaves are used in making tea. The age of the leaves determine the taste and name of the particular commercial variety. Thus orange ...  more

In 2737 B.C., a Chinese emperor named Shen Nung was boiling a pot of water over a fire. One of the leaves from the fire floated into the pot. When the emperor drank the water, he found that it tasted delicious. What kind of leaf was it that gave the water its flavor? The leaf came from an evergreen shrub called Camellia sinensis — better known to us as tea! This story is only a legend. But tea was certainly discovered in China or neighboring lands thousands of years ago. It spread through the East, but for many centuries it was drunk only as a medicine. Then the Chinese learned how to roast the leaves — as Shen Nung's fire had done — to make the drink taste better, and people began to drink tea as a refreshing beverage instead of a medicine. Even though India is the world's largest tea grower today, tea wasn't grown there until the 19th century!  more