There is a long history of drinking tea in China, and it is impossible to find out exactly when it was, but there is a story about the general era. And we can also find evidence that it is true that the habit of drinking tea in many parts of the world was passed down from China. Therefore, many people think that drinking tea was initiated by China people, and the habit of drinking tea and growing tea in other parts of the world was directly or indirectly passed down from China.

But some people can find evidence that the habit of drinking tea was not only invented by China people, but also in other parts of the world, such as India and Africa. In 1823, a major of the British invading army discovered wild tea trees in India, and some people began to believe that tea originated in India, at least in India. Of course, there are records of wild tea trees in China, all of which are concentrated in the southwest, and some areas in Gansu and Hunan are also included in the records. Tea tree is an ancient dicotyledonous plant, which is closely related to people's lives.

In China, there are also disputes about the earliest origin of tea trees, and there are several opinions. Nowadays, many people believe that in Yunnan, a scholar asserted after careful research that Xishuangbanna, Yunnan < P > is the origin of tea trees. The earliest written record of artificial cultivation of tea trees began with Mengshan tea in the Western Han Dynasty. This is recorded in Sichuan Tongzhi.

it doesn't matter to us tea drinkers where it is. Maybe it has cultural significance. Let's take a look at some academic statements:

The origin time of tea drinking:

1. Shennong period: Tang Luyu's Tea Classic: "Tea is for drinking, and it originated from Shennong." In the history of China's cultural development, everything related to agriculture and plants is often attributed to Shennong. After returning here, you can't push it up any more. It is precisely because of this that Shennong became the god of agriculture.

2. Western Zhou Dynasty: Jin Chang Qu's "Huayang Guozhi Bazhi": "King Wu of Zhou Dynasty gained a teacher from Bashu, and ... tea honey ... were all paid tribute." This record shows that when King Wu of Zhou Dynasty attacked Zhou, Pakistan had already paid tribute to Zhou Wuwang with tea and other precious products. It is also recorded in Huayang National Records that there was an artificially cultivated tea garden at that time.

3. Qin and Han Dynasties: Western Han Dynasty. Wang Bao's "Tong Yue": "Make all the tea available", "Buy tea in Wuyang", which is the tea after examination. In recent years, in the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty in Mawangdui, Changsha, it was found that there was

"in the list of funerals? A "and"? "Bamboo slips and woodcuts have been verified"? " That is, the variant of "Yun" shows that tea drinking was quite extensive in Hunan at that time.

We are still drinking the same drinks as our ancient ancestors, such as Jiang Taigong and others, which is really exciting. Can give us a lot of reverie.

Textual research on the origin of tea:

The research on this point often focuses on the study of the birthplace of tea trees. There are several opinions about the birthplace of tea trees:

1. Southwest says: "Southwest China is the birthplace of tea trees and tea." This statement refers to a large range, so the accuracy is higher.

2. Sichuan said: Qing Gu Yanwu's "Record of Japanese Knowledge": "After the Qin people took Shu, there was only tea drinking." The implication is that before Qin people entered Shu, tea drinking was known in Sichuan today. In fact,

Sichuan is in the southwest. If Sichuan says yes, then the Southwest says yes. Sichuan is more precise than Southwest, but the correct one is more risky.

3. Yunnan said: It is entirely possible to think that the Xishuangbanna generation in Yunnan is the birthplace of tea trees, and this area is the kingdom of plants. However, this

statement has "humanistic" risks, because tea trees can be native, and Chaze is the result of activated labor.

4. Eastern Sichuan and western Hubei said: Lu Yu's Tea Classic said: "There are two people hugging each other in its Bashan gorge." Bashan gorge and Sichuan are the present eastern Sichuan and western Hubei. There are such outstanding tea trees in this area, whether someone

used them as tea leaves, and there is no evidence.

5. Jiangsu and Zhejiang said: Recently, it was suggested that it began with the ancient Yue culture represented by Hemudu culture. At present, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are the most developed areas in China's tea industry. If history can

take root here, it is a very meaningful topic. In fact, I think there must be more than one place where tea trees of natural origin existed in ancient times. Where there are tea trees, it is not necessarily possible to display the custom of drinking tea. As mentioned earlier, tea was invented by Shennong, so where does it live? If we find the intersection of "tea tree's native place" and "Shennong's activity place", we may have an answer, at least narrowing the "range" of the answer.

Invent the way of drinking tea:

How did humans invent the habit of drinking tea? Or how did tea originate? The study of this problem has always been a "basic problem" of tea science. Because as any tea scholar or tea worker, it's not enough if you can't even explain how tea came from. Now there are many answers to this question:

1. Sacrifice: This statement holds that tea and some other plants were originally used as sacrifices. Later, some people compensated for food and found that it was harmless, so they were "eaten by sacrifices, eaten by vegetables, and used by medicines" and eventually became drinks.

2. Drug theory: This statement holds that tea "originally entered human society as medicine." "Shennong Baicao Jing" wrote: "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, and when he encountered seventy-two poisons every day, he got tea and < P > solved it".

3. Food says: "In ancient times, people drank water like grass", and "People took food as their priority", which accords with the evolutionary law of human society.

4. Synchronous said: "At first, tea was used as chewing food, or as baked food, and it was gradually used as medicine." The comparison and accumulation of these ways

will eventually develop into "drinking tea" as the best way.

the most useless of the above statements is the fourth one, which adds up the previous three statements and becomes its own "foolproof" explanation. Perhaps this explanation is the most appropriate

.

Now we can prove that tea has been recognized and utilized for a long time in China, and tea trees have been planted and harvested for a long time. However, it can also be verified that tea was widely drunk at all levels of society, probably after Lu Yu's Tea Classic was handed down in the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, in the Song Dynasty, there was a poem that said, "Since Lu Yu was born in the world, the world has learned from each other about spring tea.". That is to say, tea was not known to the public for more than a thousand years after it was

Ming.

Origin of tea tree:

China is the first country to discover and utilize tea tree, which is called the motherland of tea. Written records show that our ancestors began to cultivate and utilize tea tree more than 3, years ago.

However, like the origin of any species, the origin and existence of tea must have been discovered and used by people before they discovered and used tea trees, and it was not until a long time later. The experience of human beings in using tea has been passed down from generation to generation, gradually expanding from local areas, and it has been a long time before it is gradually recorded in writing.

The origin of tea trees has always been controversial. With the development and new discovery of textual research technology, it was gradually recognized that China is the origin of tea trees, and it was confirmed that the

area in the southwest of China, including Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, was the center of the origin of tea trees. Due to geological changes and artificial cultivation, tea trees began to spread throughout the country and gradually spread to all parts of the world.

(1) Origin and place of origin

When did the tea tree originate? It must have been written more than 3 years ago. The problem that historians could not prove was finally solved by botanists. They traced back to the source according to the taxonomy of plants. After a series of analysis and research, they thought that the origin of tea trees has a history of 6 million to 7 million years.

Tea tree is native to China, and it has always been recognized by the world since ancient times. It was only after 1824 that wild tea trees were discovered in India, and some foreign scholars raised objections that China was the original < P > producing area 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, there were wild tea trees in China about 2 years ago, and the current data show that there are 198 wild tea trees in 1 provinces and regions in China, of which one in Yunnan is about 17 years old, and there are more than 1 trees in Yunnan Province with a trunk diameter of more than one meter. In some areas, even wild tea tree communities are as large as thousands of acres. Therefore, since ancient times,

the wild tea trees that have been discovered in China are the earliest in the world, with large trees, large numbers, wide distribution and different characters. In addition, through textual research, the wild < P > tea tree found in India and the tea tree introduced from China belong to the variety of China tea tree. Thus, it is concluded that China is the origin of tea trees.

in recent decades, tea science and botany have been combined to make 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 change, which further proves that southwest China is the origin of tea trees. The main arguments, in short, are as follows:

1. From the natural distribution of tea trees,

There are 23 genera and more than 38 species of Theaceae plants found at present, while there are 15 genera and more than 26 species in China, and most of them are distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. There are more than 1 species of

Camellia, and there are more than 6 species in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, among which tea species are the most important. From the botanical point of view, the origin centers of many genera are concentrated in a certain area, and < P > indicates that this area is the origin center of this flora. The high concentration of Camelliaceae and Camellia in southwest China shows that southwest China is the origin center of Camellia and the birthplace of tea.

2. From the perspective of geological changes,

There are many small landform areas and microclimate areas in the southwest region, where mountains are undulating, valleys are criss-crossing, and the topography is changeable. Under the condition that the low latitude and altitude are very different, the climate difference is great, so that the tea trees originally grown here are slowly separated in different climates of tropical, subtropical and temperate zones, which leads to the intraspecific variation and development of tea trees

. Botanists believe that the place with the most variation of a species is the center of the origin of this

species. The three southwestern provinces of China are the places with the most variation and abundant resources of tea trees in China, and they are the center of the origin of tea trees.

3. According to the evolutionary types of tea trees,

Tea trees always tend to evolve in the long history of its systematic development. Therefore, all areas where primitive tea trees are concentrated should be the origin of tea trees. The wild big tea trees in China's three western

southern provinces and their adjacent areas have the morphological and biochemical characteristics of primitive tea trees, which also proves that the southwest region of China is the center of the origin of tea trees.

second, the spread of tea

China is the origin of tea tree. However, China's contribution to human beings in the tea industry mainly lies in the earliest discovery and utilization of this plant, and it has developed into a splendid and unique tea culture in China, the East

and even the whole world.

The tea industry in China started in Bashu at first, and then spread to the east and south successively, so that it spread all over the country. In the Tang dynasty, it spread to Japan and Korea, and was introduced by the west after the 16th century. Therefore, the spread history of tea can be divided into domestic and foreign routes.

1. The spread of tea in China

Tea tree is a kind of "jiamu" in the south of China, so the tea industry in China was first bred, produced and developed in the south.

(1) Bashu is the cradle of tea industry in China (pre-Qin and Han dynasties)

Gu Yanwu once pointed out that "tea drinking began after Qin people took Shu", that is, China's tea drinking spread slowly after Qin unified Bashu, that is to say, China

and the world's tea culture first developed in Bashu. This statement has been recognized by most scholars now.

according to written records and textual research, the production of tea in Bashu can be traced back at least to the Warring States Period, when Bashu has formed a certain scale of tea area and made tea as one of its tributes.

The prominent position of Bashu tea industry in the history of early tea industry in China was not recorded until Wang Bao's Children's Covenant when the Western Han Dynasty became emperor, which contained two sentences: "Cook all the tea" and "Wuyang buys tea"

. The former reflects the area around Chengdu. In the Western Han Dynasty, not only drinking tea became the norm, but also special appliances appeared. As can be seen from the last sentence, tea has been commercialized, and there has been a tea market such as "Wuyang".

In the Western Han Dynasty, Chengdu not only became a tea consumption center in China, but also probably became the earliest tea distribution center according to the later literature records. Not only before Qin dynasty, Qin and Han dynasties and even the Western Jin dynasty, Bashu was still an important center of tea production and technology in China.

(2) The middle reaches of the Yangtze River or Central China became the center of tea industry (Three Kingdoms and Western Jin Dynasty)

After the Qin and Han Dynasties unified China, the tea industry was strengthened with the economic and cultural exchanges between Bashu and other places. In particular, the processing and planting of tea first spread to the southeast. For example, the naming of Chaling in Hunan, < P > is very telling. Chaling is a county established in the Western Han Dynasty, which is famous for its tea production. Chaling is close to the border of Jiangxi and Guangdong, which shows that tea production in the Western Han Dynasty has spread to the adjacent areas of Hunan, Guangdong and Jiangxi.

During the Three Kingdoms and the Western Jin Dynasty, with the development of Jingchu tea industry and tea culture in the whole country, and due to the favorable geographical conditions, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River or Central China gradually replaced Bashu in the spread of China tea literature, which became obviously important.

during the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Wu owned a part of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guangxi, and half of the land in the southeast of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang, which was also the main area for the spread and development of tea industry in China at that time. At this time, the scale and scope of planting tea trees in the south have developed greatly, but the drinking of tea has also spread to the Gaomen Haozu in the north.

The development of the tea industry in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the Western Jin Dynasty can also be proved by Jingzhou Tuji in the Western Jin Dynasty. It says, "It is the best to have tea in seven counties in Wuling", which shows that the tea industry in Jinghan area has developed remarkably in Ming Dynasty, and the advantage of Bashu being the only champion in the whole country seems to have disappeared.

(3) the development of tea industry in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the southeast coast (Eastern Jin Dynasty and Southern Dynasties)

After the Western Jin Dynasty crossed the river to live abroad, Jiankang (Nanjing) became the political center of southern China. During this period, due to the prevalence of tea worship in the upper class, tea drinking and tea culture in the south, especially in Jiangdong, developed greatly, which further promoted the tea industry in China to the southeast. During this period, tea was planted in the southeast of China, from the west of Zhejiang to the coastal areas of Wenzhou and Ningbo. Not only that, as recorded in the Record of Tongjun, "Xiyang, Wuchang and Jinling all produce good teas", and Jinling is Changzhou, and its tea is Yixing. Indicate the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern < P > Dynasty.