The Chinese and the Indians each have their own myth about the discovery of tea. One legend attributes the discovery of tea to Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddism in India. According to this tale, Bodhidharma had decided to spend nine years in a sanctuary, contemplating a wall. Eventually, the story tells us, exhaustion overcame Bodhidharma and he fell asleep. As a penance, he cut off his eyelids and threw them to the ground where a strange bush sprung up. When he tasted the leaves of this bush, supposedly the first tea plant, he realized that they had the power to keep him awake and gave thanks to heaven for sending the miraculous plant. Another legend attributes the discovery of tea to Chinese emperor Shen Nung, who is said to have realized that his soldiers could stay awake and alert for as long as four days if only they drank enough of this wonderful beverage.

The fact that both of these myths have remarkable similar parallel to the myths about the discovery of coffee says more about the nature of myth-making than about the realities of either coffee or tea. When it comes to the real early history of tea drinking, there is agreement on only one thing - that the tea plant is indigenous to India where, for many thousands of years it grew wild on steep slopes in poor acidic soil that was incapable of supporting most crops. From here on, however, there is nothing but confusion. Some historians tell us that the Indian people did not realize that tea could be a drinkable beverage until the 5th century; others tell us that Indian peasants have been drinking it for many thousands of years. Some write that the Chinese have considered tea one of the most civilized and refreshing beverages for more than 5,000 years and yet others say that tea only entered China in the 3rd century, after the armies of the Han Dynasty conquered the subtropical regions south of the Yangtze valley.

What is known, from tax records and other sources is that by the eighth century, tea was widely consumed in both countries. There is also a great deal of evidence to indicate that by the ninth century a poet named Lu Yu and his disciples wandered about the Chinese countryside with cooking pots and a water tank to demonstrate methods of brewing the beverage. What is also known is that for nearly four hundred years, tea has been and continues to be the most universally consumed beverage in the world.

What surprises many is that when tea was first introduced to the Western world, it made its appearance in Portugal and Holland before it came to England and that rather than coming from either India or China, the first teas to reach Europe came from Japan. While the Dutch and the Portuguese both began importing tea in about 1610, the first record of tea in England appears only in 1637 and is found in the diary of William Tuttle, a sailor who returned from a trip to the Far East "with several packages of strange and exotic tea leaves" that he gave to friends and relatives. The next mention is found in the records of the East India Company which, in 1644 began purchasing tea from Chinese merchants.

When tea made finally its English debut it was consumed primarily by the members of the lower classes, who were convinced that it would cure migraine headaches, paralysis, vertigo, epilepsy, gallstones, syphilis and tuberculosis. Nor was tea considered a drink fit for consumption at home, and most people went to coffee houses to sip this quasi-forbidden beverage. Once it began to be accepted however, the rise in popularity of tea was astronomical. Between 1658, when the first public sale of tea took place in London, and 1700, more than 300 tea shops and 500 coffee houses were selling tea. By the end of the 18th century, 8 million kilos of tea were being consumed annually by the English, almost three quarters of which had been smuggled into the country to avoid the high taxes imposed by the Royal Family. Today, the English drink nearly 4.5 kilos per person every year.

The other European nation that took to tea drinking with an unbridled passion was Russia. In the 17th century, the Khan of Mongolia presented fifty kilograms of tea to the Russian embassy. Unlike the English, who thought there was something vaguely immoral about drinking tea at that time, the Russians greeted it warmly and even though it was then extraordinarily expensive, teabecame extremely popular, especially among royalty. In the 19th century, the opening of five Chinese ports to Russia, the cutting of the Suez Canal, the development of the Russian merchant marine and the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, came together to make tea so cheap that all Russians could drink it. If roast beef typified English meal and pasta the Italian, the gastronomic emblem of Russia was the samovar, a charcoal-heated bain-marie that assured that tea would be ready whenever it was wanted.

A Few Words About Tea Cups

The first cups designed especially for drinking tea were made in the 18th century in the city of Kronstadt and the bottom of each cup was decorated with a painted view of that city. When the proprietor of a teahouse stinted on the amount of tea he used the tea was so light in color that the picture could be seen clearly and customers would complain by crying aloud "I can see Kronstadt". The proprietor could not deny this because he was caught in flagrante delicto, so to avoid the problem it became customary for tea to be served in glasses, at the bottom of which there was nothing to see, let alone Kronstadt.

© Daniel Rogov