Tea 101: Where Did Tea Come From

Many people had been arguing about where tea came from for many years. Thanks to the development of techniques and new discoveries, experts gradually reached a consensus, that China is the origin of the tea.

According to the record, Chinese began to plant tea trees more than 3000 years ago, so China is called the motherland of tea. The data also confirm that the southwest China, including Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan is the center of the origin of tea plants. With the change of geological and artificial cultivation, tea trees began to spread spread to the east and south of China, finally spread throughout the country and all over the world.

In the Tang dynasty, tea began to spread to Japan and Korea, followed by the south sea to Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and other countries. After the 16th century tea was introduced to westerners with the development of Chinese commercial trade.

From China to Japan

According to the record, in A.D. 805, the Japanese monk Zuicheng graduated from Guoqing temple, Tiantai mountain, brought tea seeds back to Japan and planted tea seeds in Jinjiang. After that Japanese Monk called Nanpuzhaoming learned the Chinese customs of tea party and competition of tea, he brought them back to Japan and gradually formed a Japanese tea ceremony on the basis of Chinese tea customs.

From China to India

India is the country with the largest amount of broken black tea’s production and export trade, the tea also originated from China. Though India had wild tea trees, but the Indian people did not know about planting and drinking tea until 1780, when British and Dutch people began to transport tea seeds from China to Indian for cultivation.

Nowadays, the most famous country of origin broken black tea is Assam. And Assam started planting tea trees after tea was introduced by China in 1835. Chinese experts had gone to Assam guiding them the methods of planting and making tea. After the invention of tea cutting machine, broken black tea began to appear,and gradually became a global common drinks.

All in all, as the question – where did tea come from, the answer is China. The word “tea” in many languages of western countries is mostly originated from the maritime trade port in Xiamen of Fujian and Guangdong dialect pronunciation of “tea”. So ,we can say, Chinese has gave the name of the tea, the knowledge of the tea, the cultivation and processing technology of tea to all of the world. There is no doubt that the world’s tea is connected with Chinese tea, directly or indirectly.