2
this paper to examine the role of tea in relation to opium and the resulting conflict. For tea, too, was an addiction of sorts, though perhaps without all the deleterious effects of opium.
Tea and the Chinese
The origin of tea is hidden in the remote mists of antiquity and more than enough theories of its discovery exist, mostly legendary. One date keeps cropping up - 2737BC - the legendary year that attempts to pinpoint the discovery, and attribute it to the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, the Divine Healer. Like many great discoveries, it was reputedly made by chance. Shen Nung, concerned about hygiene, used to boil his water for drinking. One day, while boiling water, a gust of wind blew leaves from a branch burning under the pot into the water. A marvellous aroma overtook Shen Nung. The branches came from a tree whose formal name today is Camellia sinensis.
While other theories may claim a different origin (a Buddhist connection has been suggested), no one questions that tea as an industry began in China. Did the plant originate in China? Chinese sources claim that the tea tree is indigenous to Hunan Province, in Southwest China, where it grew wild in the mountains, where no other plant could grow. Cultivation of tea, however, appears to have begun around 350AD along the Yangtze River, in Sichuan Province, spreading to Yunnan and through southwest China into the central provinces. By the 5th century AD, tea had joined other products as a popular article of trade. It is not surprising, therefore, that tea's excellent qualities were known to the Chinese since early times, and that drinking tea as a pleasurable pastime had spread throughout the country. A brief attempt to tax tea, in 780 AD, was met with wide public outcry and had to be rescinded. This was also the year in which the first book on tea was published - an important milestone in its history. It was a monumental work in which the author Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty dealt with tea in detail and from every possible aspect. One can only wonder at Lu Yu's deepest knowledge of the subject. His description of various shapes of different leaves verges on poetical. He described the code of conduct in relation to tea, from which the Japanese had probably derived their tea ceremony, and which in China had evolved into a social custom bordering on ritual. Some would assert that after the conquest of the Songs, at the end of the 13th century, the Tangs' romance of tea disappeared and tea
2
this paper to examine the role of tea in relation to opium and the resulting conflict. For tea, too, was an addiction of sorts, though perhaps without all the deleterious effects of opium.
Tea and the Chinese
The origin of tea is hidden in the remote mists of antiquity and more than enough theories of its discovery exist, mostly legendary. One date keeps cropping up - 2737BC - the legendary year that attempts to pinpoint the discovery, and attribute it to the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, the Divine Healer. Like many great discoveries, it was reputedly made by chance. Shen Nung, concerned about hygiene, used to boil his water for drinking. One day, while boiling water, a gust of wind blew leaves from a branch burning under the pot into the water. A marvellous aroma overtook Shen Nung. The branches came from a tree whose formal name today is Camellia sinensis,
While other theories may claim a different origin (a Buddhist connection has been suggested), no one questions that tea as an industry began in China. Did the plant originate in China? Chinese sources claim that the tea tree is indigenous to Hunan Province, in Southwest China, where it grew wild in the mountains, where no other plant could grow. Cultivation of tea, however, appears to have begun around 350AD along the Yangtze River, in Sichuan Province, spreading to Yunnan and through the southwest China into the central provinces. By the 5th century AD, tea had joined other products as a popular article of trade. It is not surprising, therefore, that tea's excellent qualities were known to the Chinese since early times, and that drinking tea as a pleasurable pastime had spread throughout the country. A brief attempt to tax tea, in 780 AD, was met with wide public outcry and had to be rescinded. This was also the year in which the first book on tea was published-an important milestone in its history. It was a monumental work in which the author Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty, dealt with tea in detail and from every possible aspect. One can only wonder at Lu Yu's deepest knowledge of the subject. His description of various shapes of different leaves verges on poetical. He described the code of conduct in relation to tea, from which the Japanese had probably derived their tea ceremony, and which in China had evolved into a social custom bordering on ritual. Some would assert that after the conquest of the Songs, at the end of the 13th century, the Tangs' romance of tea disappeared and tea
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