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Chinese Tea Culture
The History of Tea in China
China is the historical epicenter of tea. Tea has been a deep part of Chinese culture from ancient times. Much of Chinese legends have references to tea, and their legends about the advent of tea are fascinating. You can learn all about these ancient and mystical tea stories in my essay Eastern Tea Creation Stories.
Land of Tea Firsts
The ancient history of tea in general is in fact one and the same as the history of tea in China. Almost every important “first” in the history of tea occurred in China hundreds of years before anybody else in any other country had even heard about tea. The Chinese were the first to cultivate tea. They were the first to produce green tea, black tea, and oolong tea. They taxed tea and used bricks of tea as money. They were the first to write about tea. They were the first to use tea for its perceived medicinal value. Every tea plant in the world today comes from bushes that grew in China and Southeast Asia that were discovered by people thousands of years ago. Even the words “tea”, “chai”, and the most of the other words for tea in other languages come from the Chinese character for tea, “cha”. Check out the essay The Early History of Tea in China for more details.
Epicenter of European Tea History
Tea spread from China to Japan, Persia, the Arabic world, and other parts of Eurasia beginning hundreds of years after tea spread throughout China. It wasn't for many more hundreds of years, however, that Europeans were introduced to tea. Venetian traders and Marco Polo were some of the first Europeans to hear about tea. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade with China in 1557 from their center at Macao in Southeastern China. Although they didn’t trade for tea at first, Portuguese missionaries in China created a buzz back home about the Chinese drink called tea. In the first half of the 1600’s, the Portuguese, Dutch, and English all played important parts in the introduction of tea into Europe and the New World, but by the last half of the 1600’s, the British were the main players in the Chinese tea importing business, via the ultra-powerful British East Indian Company. Much of European history from the 1600’s through the 1800’s involved tea to some degree (for instance, the Boston Tea Party). Tea was not grown much in India and Ceylon until the late 1800’s, and Japan was totally closed off to the Western World during this time. The vast majority of tea consumed in Europe and the New World during this fascinating time in European history came directly from China. Even European history buffs uninterested in tea history should read The History of Tea Since 1500 – Enter the Europeans for a story that is as much about the exploration, discovery, and the beginnings of shipping and world trade as it is about tea.
Types of Chinese Tea
Most tea grown and consumed in China is green tea, although black tea and oolong tea account for about one third of tea production as well. The other two types of tea in China are scented teas, such as Jasmine tea, and brick tea, which is simply tea compressed into the shape of bricks or bowls.
Green tea, also called “Longjin tea”, is the staple tea in China. Many varieties of many levels of quality are grown all over China.
Black tea, also called “red tea”, accounts for most of the exports to the West. English breakfast tea, for instance, use Keemun tea as its base. As with Chinese green tea, too many varieties of black tea are grown across China to mention here, but a black tea called “Qi Hong” or “Qihong”, from the Annui province, is especially worthy of note as the main luxury black tea consumed by Chinese black tea aficionados.
Oolong tea, also called “Wulong tea”, is grown primarily in the southeast, directly across the Formosa Straight from the other important Oolong-producing country, Taiwan. Many of the world’s tea connoisseurs prefer oolong tea to all others.
Scented teas are created from green, black, and oolong teas. Jasmine tea, a favorite of many Westerners, is created by infusing jasmine flower essence into tea from one to many times. Many other scented teas are popular in China, examples including orchid, rose, magnolia, and plum. The effort involved and the quality of the resulting scented teas is much different than the “flavored teas” popular in the West, which are merely mixed with oils for flavor instead of the more time consuming process of letting the actual molecules responsible for the scents of flowers slowly evaporate off of the flowers and deposit into the tremendously porous processed tea leaves.
Brick tea is the main kind of tea consumed by the ethnic minorities in China’s eastern and northern periphery. The people of Tibet and Inner Mongolia are two fascinating and famous Chinese minorities that use tea in a compressed brick form. Brick tea is not popular anywhere else in the world or even elsewhere in China for that matter. Brick tea’s quality is not highly regarded, but it is easy to transport and store, something especially important to people living in the Chinese desert and the Chinese Himalayas.
Tea Culture in China Today
Tea has always been an integral part of life in China. It has been part of the daily life of commoners, Buddhist monks, and royalty in China for well over one thousand years. Almost all Chinese people today drink tea daily, especially after meals, and tea houses abound across China. Unlike in Japan, there are many different “Chinese tea ceremonies”, and the rules are not as strict as with the Japanese Tea Ceremony. One thing Chinese tea ceremonies have in common with each other and with the Japanese Tea Ceremony is the focus on harmony, oneness, and peace with the world. One important way that Chinese tea ceremonies differ from the Japanese Tea Ceremony is that the focus is less on the ceremony and more on the actual tea.
Although tea is a major part of Chinese life, more and more young people are choosing coffee and soft drinks over tea. The shift is large enough that total tea consumption in China has been relatively flat in the last few years despite the increased levels of wealth experienced by hundreds of millions of Chinese people in the last decade. Many coffee houses, including hundreds of Starbucks, have opened across China as an easy to monitor indicator of Chinese interest in Western beverages.
Chinese Tea Production and Exports
By the time you read this article, China will likely have already overtaken Sri Lanka and Kenya for total tea exports due to rapidly increasing tea exports due to several reasons. First, the total yield of tea per acre has been steadily increasing, due to the steady replacement of communist-era state-owned farms with those run by individual business owners. Second, the Chinese government has been giving massive subsidies and tax breaks to tea plantation owners in hopes of stimulating the economies of China’s many very poor rural areas.
There is much room for further steady tea production increases as well, since the communist-era farms are far from being entirely modernized and privatized. China’s increased exports and medium term production outlook has caused quite a bit of concern for some of the other major tea exporters, especially those countries who largely depend on tea exports, such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Kenya.
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