Three thousand years. According to one such legend, in the year 2737 BC, the Emperor of China Shen Nung accidentally added a few leaves, fallen from a wild tea tree, to his hot water. He then tasted the mixture and liked it so much that he went on to taste several hundred other varieties...

According to another legend, from India, in order to prove that he was in China to teach true Zen Buddhism, Prince Dharma vowed that he would not sleep throughout the entire nine years of his mission. Towards the end of the third year, however, he started to become drowsy. He chewed some leaves from a wild tea tree, which restored his courage and strength for the following six years. Truth to be told we don't really know much about the origins of this beverage, which second to water, is the most frequently consumed drink in the world. We only know that at the time of Confucius (6th century BC), tea (t'u) was used as a funeral offering and that several references are made to it during the Three Kingdoms dynasty (222-277) and that by the Six Dynasties period (385-589), it had become common practice to drink tea. We are fairly certain that it was during the Tang dynasty (618-907) that drinking tea became common in certain levels of Chinese society, in circles close to the court, and by Mongolians, Tartars, Turks and Tibetan monks..
This was the era when the tea ceremony became a refined art. Poet Lu-Yu wrote the "tchaking", a tea ceremony code which describes what utensils should be used, how the tea should be prepared (the leaves should be roasted then pulverized with boiling water and a touch of salt and formed into a kind of cake), not to mention, how it should be consumed.

It wasn't until the Song Dynasty (960-1279) that the tea leaves we use today became available, although prepared according to a somewhat different "recipe", as the pulverized leaves were added to water and whipped up into a foam with a bamboo switch. Although during that same period, Marco Polo refers to tea in his "wonders of the world", it was only for a select élite, as one had to be a Mandarin of at least seventh rank in order to buy it.

The Ming Dynasty, which brings us up to 1644, did not contribute much to the tea art, except that it was at this time that tea began to be consumed as it is today - infused in a recipient. It was also during the Ming Dynasty that the "Tea and Horse Bureau" was set up to supervise the tea trade, which was beginning to play an important part in the economy. It was towards the end of the Ming period that Europe discovered tea.

The East India Company was the first to make a reference to tea, in 1610 and imported some into Holland, then France and England. It seems that the first "coffeehouse" keeper to think of adding tea to the menu was Englishman Thomas Garraway, in 1657, after which, most coffeehouses became tea parlors.
England, as everybody knows, was to become the greatest consumer of this age-old beverage from China. Apparently the English felt that the best way to ensure a regular supply without becoming dependant upon Chinese producers was to flood China with opium, thereby creating a reciprocal dependency, which if necessary, could be used as bargaining chips. And in the same aim of gaining independence from China, the English set up trading posts in India and Sri Lanka at the beginning of the 19th century.

Just as coffee became a part of daily life in the West, tea became a part of daily life in China. One can see teahouses scattered on the streets of China, much like cafes on the streets of the West. The Chinese have such a close relationship with tea that a new cultural phenomenon relating to tea is rising up in China. It goes by the pleasant name of "Tea Culture". Tea Culture includes articles, poems, pictures about tea, the art of making and drinking tea, and some customs about tea.

Among the customs, a host will only fill a teacup to seven-tenths of its capacity. It is said that the other three-tenths will be filled with friendship and affection. Moreover, the teacup should be emptied in three gulps.

Tea plays an important role in Chinese social and emotional life. Tea is always offered to a guest immediately upon entering a Chinese home. Serving a cup of tea is more than a matter of mere politeness. It is a symbol of togetherness, a sharing of something enjoyable, and a way of showing respect to visitors. In some areas of China, it might be considered rude not to take at least a sip.

We normally think of tea drinking as an invitation to stay and socialize. In earlier times, however, the drinking of tea could signal the close to the social encounter. This was particularly true when one visited one's superior. When the guest reached the host's home, the host would offer his guest a cup of tea. They would then talk. When the host wanted his guest to leave, he would signal this by holding his own cup of tea and drinking it. The guest would then know that the host wanted him to leave and would ask to leave.

Although there has been an increasing amount of literature about tea in recent years, such literature is certainly not new. During the Song Dynasty, Lu Yu, who is known as the "Tea Sage", wrote the Tea Scripture. This scripture describes in detail the processes of planting tea bushes, harvesting tea leaves, preparing harvested leaves for the brewing of tea. Famous poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Bai Juyi created large numbers of poems about tea. Famous painters Tang Bohu and Wen Zhengming even drew many pictures about tea.

The Chinese give great attention to their tea and the way they drink it. People have high requirements for the quality of the prepared tea leaf, the water they use to brew tea and the wares they use to prepare and serve tea. Normally, the finest tea is grown at altitudes of 3,000 to 7,000 feet (900 to 2,100 meters). People select their water carefully. The Chinese emphasize water quality and water taste. Fine water must be pure, sweet, cool, clean, and flowing. Water from good springs is always considered best, as is rainwater from autumn and the rainy seasons.

Chinese prefer pottery wares to wares made of metal or other materials. The best choice is the purple clay wares made in Yixing and Jingdezhen, Jiangsu province. The purple clay of this region gives the wares their internationally-known purple color.

The spirit of tea ceremony
Clear, Respectul, Joyful, True

Clear means quiet,pure and uncluttered. The art of tea requires clear surroundings, especially the immediate surrounding like on the table, but more importantly a clear and uncluttered mind. The mind shoud focus on the beautiful steeped tea with its pleasant aroma and taste.

Respect is the root of everything on the earth. For people, respect embodies honesty in both attitude and actions toward each other. When drinking tea together, the host and the guests' minds must be synchronized.

Joyful means pleased, happy and content. Harmony is in forms and manners but joy is in the spirit and heart. When we drink tea, we can taste the pleasure of living thus training one's heart to be generous.

Ture means the truth and knowledge of spiritual mysterles and a holy mind combines truth with the apiritual unknown. In a word, we should make use of the scientific way to ambrace the sincerity of all things. The assence of drinking tea can enlighten our capacity and consciousness to achieve greatness and direction.

Tea ceremony

Drinking tea is naturally a refreshing and purifying experience that clears the mind. It helps to rid the mind of wicked thoughts and to gain peacefulness, defining the spirit and philosophical ideas of the East. Some wise celebrity figures like to drink tea to pursue the perfection of enjoyment. The Chinese tea ceremony focuses on the tea, and not the ritual, and is a way of keeping the mind in balance.We use the simple yet harmonious ceremony to promote friendship and nammners, simply by preparing and steeping, smelling, tasting, and thoroughly apprecaiting the tea.

　　It is the tradition for the Chinese people to serve tea to visiting guests. Any person, rich or poor, drinks tea on social occasions such as doing business, making friends, receiving guests and taking travels.
　　In rural China, a guest will usually be served a cup of tea along with some sweets when he makes a greeting call upon one's home during the Spring Festival. Such custom expresses the host's wish that the guest would have a sweet life in the coming year. In southeastern China, people usually entertain visiting guests with green tea. But when celebrating the Spring Festival, they will offer visiting guests green tea with two olives in it, which is an expression of New Year greetings. In north China and northeast China jasmine tea is often prepared for visiting guests, and in mid-south China high-grade oolong or Pu'er tea will be served. China's ethnic people are noted for their hospitality and pay much attention to etiquette. For example, when you are invited for dinner by a Mongolian family, the whole family will welcome you outside their house and serve you the seat of honor and delicious milk tea. Tibetan people will welcome you with milk tea, venison and deer milk. When you go to a village of the Bulang community, you will be served tea, peanuts and baked sweet potatoes.
　　Nowadays tea rituals have been much simplified so as to keep up with the fast tempo of modern life. For example, people drink tea simply with cups or glasses instead of a complicated set of tea-things. As for tea brand, Chinese people usually drink red tea, green tea or jasmine tea. Some who are enthusiastic about tea will choose high-grade tea such as oolong, Pu'er, etc. Chinese people are quite selective of tea brand. For instance, old northerners prefer jasmine tea while southern young ladies are more likely to drink green tea.
　　To serve tea to a visiting guest is not just a simple process of making tea and bringing them to the guest and that's all. Instead, the tealeaves should be fresh, the water should be good, the tea-things should be high-quality, the tea should be well made, and the host should be decorous when serving tea.
　　 It is not required to use high-grade tealeaves to serve guests, but the tealeaves must be clean, dry, fragrant and fresh. It is impolite to use stale tea, unclean tea or mildewed tea to entertain guests. In addition, the host should choose tea brand and make tea according to the guest's taste.
　　Tealeaves are not the sole essential element in making good tea. It also depends on the quality of water through which tea is infused. For instance, sodium-rich water makes tea taste salty, calcium-rich water makes tea taste puckery, and tea infused with iron-rich water looks black In addition, high-quality, delicately-made tea-things will preserve the fragrance of tea and will make drinking tea an artistic experience.
　　Making tea is a complicated process. First, you should select tea-things according to quality and grade of tealeaves. Second, the quantity and temperature of water should be determined in line with the quality of water and tealeaves. For instance, water should not be overboiled in case vitamin contained in green tea is destroyed. Whereas the temperature should not be too low, for it will make tea tasteless. It is usually the case that tea is made with 80 centigrade water which make up of two-thirds of the tea cup.
　　 Moreover, tea should be served to guests in a polite manner. First, tea-things should be clean. Second, tealeaves should be taken with measuring vessels instead of by hand. Soon after tea is infused, foam on the surface of tea should be cleaned away in time. Third, teacups should be accompanied with underpans. Forth, the person who serves tea should present tea to the guest politely and with smile. And the guest should stand up to receive tea and say "thanks". Finally, tea water should not be too full and should be neither overboiled nor too cold. And one should not be too excited but enjoy tea leisurely.

　　Biluochun has the natural quality of flower and fruit fragrance, its fragrance strong, its taste heavy, and its color bright. So it is labeled as precious tea.
　　Biluochun grows in the Dongting Mountain along the Tai Lake in Wu County in southeast Jiangsu Province. Dongting has had a long history of producing tea, and is famous for it. It is said that there was a peak called Biluo on the East Hill of the Dongting Mountain. on the side of which grew several tea trees, and every year people came here and pick tea leaves to process them and then drink. One year, in the tea picking season, the local people tea leaves grow luxuriantly. They picked and picked, and there was too much to be held in their crates. So they put the rest in their clothes. As the fresh leaves were heated by the bodies, they spread out strong fragrance which made all the pickers shout, "It is surprisingly fragrant!" After that, nobody used crates to hold tea leaves; instead they all carry them on their chests and named these tealeaves "frightening fragrance"(meaning strong fragrance). Among the pickers was one called Zhu Zhengyuan who was proficient in processing "frightening fragrance". One year, Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty came sightseeing in the Tai Lake, and the official Song Luo presented "frightening fragrance" to the Emperor. The Emperor was very pleased with its taste, but disliked its name. So he renamed it as "Biluochun".
　　Biluochun grows along the Tai Lake which occupies an area of about 2200 square kilometers. The Tai Lake, also called Lake Zhengze, is one of the five largest freshwater lakes. The lake has mists and ripples over it, and the water in it is very limpid. Su dongpo once wrote a poem about it: "I dreamed of boating on Zhengze, the white waves are flying to the sky." The East Hill of Dongting lies about 30 kilos southwest of Suzhou. It is a peninsula, sticking into the lake like a huge boat. Lying to its opposite, several kilos away, is the East Hill of Dongting. The west hill is an island standing in the lake, which is said to be the summer resort of Fuchai, the king of Wu in ancient China, and the queen Xishi. The two hills of Dongting, warm in winter and cool in summer, have mild weather, rising vapor and fresh air. The mists fill the whole hill. So it's very suitable for tea trees to grow there.
The tealeaves of Biluochun are very delicate, so you must be very cautious in picking them. High-grade Biluochun can be first picked around Chunfen (about March 23), and the best time is about April 4. You must select the leaves as soon as you have picked them home, throwing away those old, big, and ill-colored ones. The three processes as picking, selecting, and refining must be done very carefully. The two similar tealeaves, if processed in different ways of refining, will have pronounced differences in quality. Biluochun is a high-quality, man-made traditional tea which has a unique flavor.

　　The West Lake is not only famous for its beautiful scenery but also for its Dragon Well Tea.
　　The Dragon Well flower in West Lake is renowned as "green in hue, strong fragrance, mellow taste and beautiful appearance". It is soft but far, fragrant but fresh, having a distinctive style. Poets always express their ardent love for Dragon Well Tea using the beautiful words like "golden sprout" and uniqueness. So it's not strange that a poet wrote the following poem: " Such scenery is so wonderful that I'd rather be a tea grower than a poet."
　　Tea has long been grown in hills around the West Lake. In "Classics on Tea" written by Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty, the first treatise on tea leave production, the West Lake area was included as tea leave growing areas. In the Song Dynasty tea leave produced there was presented to the court as tributes. In the Ming Dynasty Dragon Well Tea was regarded as superb tea leave by tea drinkers. It is said that when Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty made a tour to southeast China in disguise, he drank Dragon Well Tea and enjoyed it very much. As a result, he ordered 18 tea trees be Imperial Tea Trees. After hard efforts of several generations of people, Dragon Well Tea now becomes top-grade tea leave and enjoys appreciation among Chinese people and people around the world.
　　The growing areas of Dragon Well Tea are distributed along the hillsides around the Longjin village on the southwest of the West Lake. Therefore it is called Dragon Well Tea of the West Lake. The Dragon Well Tea can be divided into four brands, namely, "Lion", "Dragon", "Cloud" and "Tiger", and "Lion" is the best which is yellowish green and has a strong fragrance and mellow taste. Tea leaves of the Dragon Well Tea is just like a bowl of pins, flat and graceful, smooth and even, fresh yellowish green. When soaked in the teacup, it stands straight high, looking like a flower. The tea is lucid and tastes sweet. And it contains a number of chemical elements that is beneficial to one's health.
　　 Growing areas of the Dragon Well Tea has favorable natural conditions. There the climate is amiable, the four seasons are distinctive and the rainfall is plentiful. In the spring planting growing season, it often drizzles and the growing areas perverse with clouds and fogs. Most of tea plantations distribute along valleys and hillsides. The soil there is sandy, fertile, damp, porous, permeable, rich in phosphoric acid which are conducive to the growth of tealeaves. When you come to tea plantations in the harvest time in the mid-spring, you will see that mountains and hills are covered with green tea leaves and girls are busy picking out tea leaves.

　　Huangshan, famous for its marvelous scenery, has more than 300 peaks which are higher than 1000 meters. The lofty and steep mountain stands straight high, covering an area of about 1200 square kilo.
　　The Maofeng tea garden of Huangshan lies above 1200 meters in elevation. The highest average temperature here is 28 degrees, and the lowest is 3-8. The annual precipitation is 2000 mm, centralized in March and July. Apart from plentiful rainfall, the soil here is thick which is suitable for tea trees to grow. Moreover, the sea-like cloud arising from the deep vale, and the humidity caused by brooks, the insufficiency of sunshine, and the good condition of trees and soil are also its advantages. When the weather is fine, there is fog everywhere, while when it rains, clouds cover everything. The tea trees are soaked everyday in the mists, never influenced by heavy sunshine or gusts of winds; thus the leaves are thick, able to withstand long time steeping. Besides, the tea growing area is sufficient in flowers, and the flowers are overpowering in tea picking season. Influenced by the flower fragrance, the tea fragrance is strong, and the taste is rich, thus making the excellent qualities.
　　Maofeng of Huangshan is divided into four grades: superfine, grade one, grade two, and grade three. The picking is very delicate. The superfine is picked around April 4, picking only one leaf in one bud which has just spread. Tea peasants call it "the slightly open sparrow tongue". A professional picker who can pick 50 kilos of common tea can at the most pick one kilo superfine fresh leaves. And these leaves must be selected, kept clean and pure. After being spread a bit, they should be stored carefully, waiting to be processed again. The first process is heat process, to vaporize those fragrant materials of low boiling point in high temperature, to eliminate the grass smell, and to express the tea fragrance. After slight spreading and wilting, the fresh leaves turn to pale yellow, and the carbohydrate is turned into sugar, adding to the sweet taste. The heating process can also destroy the enzyme activity, reducing the puckery taste. The color is turned to green mixed with yellow, maintaining valuable materials as vitamin C P. This process is important and arduous because such delicate fresh leaves have to be stirred in the temperature of 170 degrees. And if over-stirred, the taste may be bitter, and if the case is the opposite, the fragrance is not strong enough. And what's more, it is easy for leaves to turn yellow if they are not spread enough, and it's also easy for the edges to get scald. All these are dependent on the delicate hand-work. In making superfine and grade one, the leaves should be cured directly after heating, while in making grade two and three, leaves should be crumpled after heating. In curing, the temperature should not be too high. There are two processes. First cure to be 60 or 70 percent dry in the temperature of 80 degrees; and then get out and lay aside for several hours. Then cure in 40 degrees until leaves are 100% dry, and fragrance is being sent out. In tea season, when tea factories are curing tea, gusts of fragrance can be smelt which are sent out by the fragrant materials. That makes people think of the poem made by Gao Qi in Ming Dynasty: "where is the fragrance coming from? People over the ridge are curing tea!" It really puts people into contemplation. Maofeng of Huangshan thus made can be called treasure tea. Its shape is thin and long, a little folded, like a sparrow tongue wearing fine hair. The tea water is limpid with apricot yellow, and the fragrance lasts long like orchid, and its taste is rich and sweet.
Maofeng of Huangshan was first produced in Guangxu period in Qing Dynasty, around the year 1875, but the year Huangshan produced famous was much earlier. Even in Song Dynasty, people used to say "essence in early spring" and "tea water surpasses gold", which were from Shezhou. In 1607, Xu Cishu pointed out in "tea annotation" that the fragrant Huqiu of Wu and Longjin of Qiantang were really famous, and the following was Huangshan. From this we can see that Huanshan tea was famous 300 years ago. According to "Huangshan Records", tea trees grew in the stone beside Lotus Nunnery, the leaves of which sent out fragrance that could even make you feel lost. That was called Huangshan yunwu tea, which was the forefather of Huangshan Maofeng.