Why has tea become a world class popular beverage?

A Brief History of Tea

It is now recognized that tea originated in southwest China, and was used for food and medicine as early as the Shennong period in ancient times, and as a tribute in the Zhou Dynasty, while the earliest written record of tea as a drink was in the Han Dynasty, and then the decoction method in the Tang Dynasty, the point tea method in the Song Dynasty, and the boiling method in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Until today, tea has spread to various countries and regions around the world, forming different tea drinking methods, habits and cultures. For example, Japanese matcha, Japanese tea ceremony, the British black tea for mixing drinks, the soup (really soup, stew with meat) in the South Pacific region, the iced tea in the United States, while only in China, tea presents and exists themselves in people’s lives with different faces, such as roasted tea, ring tea, pot tea, ghee tea, worm tea, etc. The more famous events in global history about tea are: the Tea Horse Road, the East India Company, the Boston Tea Dumping Incident, the Lu Yu’s Tea Sutra, Japanese Sen Rikyu…

The Taste of Tea

Tea and coffee are both world-class beverages, and the core competencies that make both popular around the world are their taste and effect.

Looking at the entire human civilization, tea flavor is divided into two kinds: Chinese tea and English tea. Let’s talk about the latter first, because it is simple.

English tea has a wide influence but is relatively simple. United Kingdom, United States, Russia and other countries are basically black tea-based, rather than clear soup, they usually like to add sugar, milk, ice, fruit and other things to mix drinks, which forms a very clear tea flavor system: black tea as the bottom, spices to mix drinks.

Chinese tea influences mainly in the Japanese and Korean regions by its flavor, and the situation is also relatively much more complex. Because Chinese tea also divided into six categories (in order of fermentation from low to high: green, yellow, white, oolong, black, dark), the flavor of each tea is different, and Chinese tea soap drink purely its original taste instead of any modulation.

Although they are all tea, but the taste is different because of the different tea types. Even in the same kind of tea, there are also differences in taste, some differences are not traceable, some differences can be clearly distinguished. For example: different tea types, the taste of black tea and green tea is easy to distinguish the difference; the same kind of tea, such as oolong tea (green tea), the taste of Tieguanyin and Da Hongpao is also easy to drink out, but with the cinnamon hair crab (the same belong to the rock tea) put together to drink really do not see much difference.

Tea can become a world-class popular beverage, the core reason is the taste. There are many kinds of black tea, but the summary can be mainly concluded as: mellow and rich, sweet taste. The taste of other teas: green tea fresh, yellow tea similar to green tea, white tea simple fresh sweet, oolong tea aroma is rich and varied, dark tea taste levels are rich and varied.

Globally, people have the highest acceptance of black tea, which is a matter of human taste preference; while in China, where tea originated and where tea germplasm is the richest, there are more patterns.

At present, my personal preference for the six major tea categories are as follows: green tea bamboo leaf green, yellow tea (too little), white tea Taimushan white peony, green tea Oriental beauty, black tea wild red, black tea (currently really not used to drinking the stale taste produced by the fermentation of the pile).

The Healthy Functions of Tea

The functions of tea are many. Some people may say that they like to drink tea just to the taste, and it has nothing to do with its usefulness. Yes, there is no problem, but the tea’s inclusions determine the taste of tea, but also dominate the function of tea.

Green, organic and healthy, tea is rich in nutrients and medicinal ingredients. After modern scientific separation and identification, tea contains more than 450 organic chemical components, more than 40 inorganic mineral elements, and some of these compounds are essential components of the human body, as we called them nutrients. The healthy functions of tea are mainly summarized as follows: thirst quenching, refreshing; anti-free radicals, slowing down the aging process; cancer prevention, not treatment…

However, tea is not medicine, there is no such thing as drinking tea to cure all diseases, but because of the richness of the substances it contains, it does have a conditioning effect on the human body, it is always right to drink more tea.

The Culture of Tea

Tea make life healthy, which is by far the safest beverage. In China, tea is not only a beverage, but also carries the oriental wisdom that advocates the Tao of nature, the unity of heaven and man, and internal and external cultivation. A good cup of tea cannot only drink out of health, but also drink out of the taste and mood of life.

Lu Yu said in the Tea Sutra that tea is the most suitable for people who are frugal, Su Shi said in his poet that “a good tea is just like a good beauty”, and Bai Juyi said in his poet that “there is no reason to hold a bowl and send it to tea lovers”, these are just the manifestations of tea culture in Chinese literature. Customs, just in China, the north and the south are very different, in the brief history of tea part of the different tea is the tea culture in the living habits of the embodiment. Like in foreign countries, North Africa Morocco is like green tea with mint made of mint tea, the Russians always will prepare a set of gorgeous tea set at home dedicated to making tea.