Historical origin
According to a large number of existing physical evidence and historical materials, tea drinking habits and tea cultivation in other countries in the world originated in China. The birthplace of tea is in the mountainous areas of central and western China. Tang Lu Yu's Tea Classic said: "Tea drinkers originated in Shennong and began in Duke Zhou of Lu". "Tea drinkers, Jia in the south, are all one foot, two feet or even dozens of feet. Its Bashan Gorge and Sichuan are now in the west of Chongqing and Hubei, which is today's Shennongjia area. The two embraced and cut it down. Therefore, it is indisputable that the birthplace of tea is in China. In Britain, some people say that the habit of drinking tea was not invented by China, but by Indians. The fact is this: 1823, a major of the British invading army discovered the so-called wild tea tree in India, and some people began to think that tea originated in India. But these tea trees were actually stolen from China by the British-in the history of tea for thousands of years, no wild tea trees have been found in India, and no one has made tea locally. They all made a basic logical mistake. Other plants, including tea trees, have always existed, even longer than human history. It cannot be said that where there are tea trees, there is the birthplace of tea making and drinking. The earliest records of human tea making and drinking are all in China, and the earliest tea products are also in China. Of course, there are wild tea trees in China, and they are even older. An ancient tea tree 6000 years ago was unearthed at Tianluoshan site in Yuyao, Zhejiang. At present, China's wild tea trees are mainly concentrated in Yunnan and other places, including parts of Gansu, Hunan and Hubei.
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.
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 it is confirmed that southwest China, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other mountainous areas, is the center of the origin of tea trees. 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.
Origin and place of origin
When did the tea tree originate? It must have been written more than 3000 years ago. 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, since ancient times, 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.
Initiation time
There are different opinions on the origin of tea drinking in China: tracing back to the origin of tea drinking in China, some people think that it originated from Shennong in ancient times, while others think that it originated from Zhou, Qin, Han and Three Kingdoms. The main reason for the disagreement is that the orthographic method of the word "tea" was "tea" before the Tang Dynasty, and Lu Yu, the author of "Tea Classics of the Tang Dynasty", wrote "tea" by subtracting a picture, so some people say that tea originated in the Tang Dynasty. But in fact, this is just a simplification of words, and in the Han Dynasty, people already used the word tea. Lu Yu only summed up the history and culture of tea drinking by ancestors. The history of tea was many years earlier than that of the Tang Dynasty.
1, Shennong said
Yu's Tea Classic: "Tea is a kind of drink, which originated from Shennong." In the history of cultural development in China, the origin of all things related to agriculture and plants always belongs to Shennong. However, China's view that tea drinking originated from Shennong has different views due to folklore. Some people think that tea was discovered by Shennong when he was boiling water in a large pot outside the field. The boiled water is yellowish in color, which can quench your thirst and refresh yourself. According to Shennong's past experience of tasting herbal medicine, it was found that it was a kind of medicine. This is the most common statement about the origin of tea drinking in China. Another way of saying it is to attach it to pronunciation. It is said that Shennong has a crystal belly, and it can be seen from the appearance that food crawls in the gastrointestinal tract. When he tasted tea, he found that tea flowed everywhere in his stomach and the gastrointestinal tract was washed clean. So Shennong called this plant "tea" and then changed it into the word "tea", which became the origin of tea.
2. Western Zhou theory
Jinchangqu's Eight Records of Huayang Country: "Zhou Wuwang really is the teacher of Bashu, and ... tea honey ... is paid tribute." According to records, when Zhou Wuwang attacked Zhou, Pakistan (now northern Sichuan and Hanzhong) had already paid tribute with tea and other valuables. It is also recorded in Huayang National Records that there were artificially cultivated tea gardens. Huayang Guozhi is the first ancient book to record tea in words, so it is of greater historical significance and more reliable.
3. Qin and Han Dynasties
Wang Bao's contract in the Western Han Dynasty: The earliest and most reliable information about tea science was in the Han Dynasty, based on the contract written by Wang Bao. This article was written on the fifteenth day of the first month in the third year of Emperor Xuandi (59 BC). It is the most important document in the history of tea science before tea classics. The development of tea culture at that time was illustrated by the pen and ink in the article. The content is as follows:
There are guests in the house. Take a jar and hold it tightly. Draw water. Hello. Wash the whole box of cups. Pull garlic in the garden. Cut the breast with soy sauce. Establish meat and taro. It's hard to catch. There is everything you need to make tea. Feeding has covered up hiding. There are trees behind the house. When cut into boats. Go up to Jiangzhou. Go to the frying master. Ask government officials for money. Push spinning failure. Silly keyhole pavilion. Buy a seat and go back and forth. We should work for the interests of women. Sell it in a small market. Return to the capital. Open the bypass. Penny sells geese. Wuyang buys tea. Young's pool bears the load. Gather in the city. Be careful to protect thieves.
"brew tea is a perfect instrument" and "Wuyang buys tea" prove that this kind of tea is today's tea. It can be seen from the article that tea has become a part of the social diet at that time, and it is a rare thing to treat guests with courtesy, which shows the importance of tea in the social status at that time. In recent years, bamboo slips and woodcuts of "□" and "□" were found in the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty in Mawangdui, Changsha. After textual research, the variant of □ means □, which shows that there was a custom of drinking tea in Hunan at that time.