The History of Tea

“Tea for two and two for tea; just you for me and me for you…. alone”

Of course, when Doris Day, a popular American singer of the 1950s and ‘60s, sang those words, her mind was on love and romance but she also happened to be singing about the world’s most popular hot drink and the world’s second most popular drink of any kind. (Water is, naturally, number one.) Tea has an ancient history and plenty of health benefits but, first of all, what do we mean by ‘tea’?

In English, the word ‘tea’ can be used to talk about almost any herbs or leaves added to boiled water to make a hot drink. Chamomile, rose hip, and mint are just some of the types you can make. But, strictly speaking, these are not teas, rather they are ‘infusions’. Tea can only really be called ‘tea’ when you use tea leaves to make it, and these come from a bush, camellia sinensis (or tea plant) that makes its home on steep green hills in warm or hot climates with plenty of rain.

So, it’s no surprise that the original tea plants come from the area where southern China and northern Burma (Myanmar) meet. We don’t know exactly when people started to make and drink tea but it was at least 3500 years ago and almost certainly in the tropical Chinese province of Yunnan. Tea became so important to Chinese society and culture that there are myths and legends about it.

And, from its beginnings in Yunnan, it spread throughout China and the neighbouring countries. This rapid spread was, no doubt in part, because of tea’s subtle but attractive flavour, but there was another reason. When human civilisation forms large towns and cities, the great number of people brought close together will make the natural water supply dirty – often because they use it as a toilet – at the same time as they are using it for drinking. The result is dysentery, even cholera, and so whole cities can be destroyed. Boiling the water kills all the germs in it and makes it perfectly safe to drink although it may still have a bad taste. When you make tea, you have to boil the water and, so, you make a safe drink for people who are thirsty.

The tea leaves will give the water a nicer taste. Now, you can drink as much clean water as you like. You just need to keep making fresh pots of tea all day long. And, in tea-drinking societies, that’s exactly what people do. Tea also has a special ability to cool the body down by starting up the body’s natural cooling systems.

Tea became a major trade in China with compacted tea-bricks not only used to transport it but also used as a sort of money. Around 1600, European merchants to the Far East were given tea and some of them took a little back to Europe, where people started to like it, especially in Britain.

It is comical to report that, for the first hundred or so years, tea was imported ready-made in barrels. Customers in, for example, London would buy a barrel of tea and reheat a little as they needed it. Finally, someone realised that tea is very easy to make and that it really would be better for everyone if they brought the dried leaves from China in their compacted bricks and allowed the European tea-drinkers the fun and economy of making their own tea.

By the time the British had worked out how to make a cup of tea, they had also colonised India. Assam, in the far North-East of India, has just the right kind of hills and the right amount of rain for producing the leaves. In no time, British planters had turned Assam over to tea production, mostly for the British market.

And the British loved it. The word ‘tea’ gave its name not only to the drink but also to the light meal the British liked to take in the late afternoon. The ability to offer guests a ‘nice cup of tea’ was, and is, the mark of minimum respectability in British society. Even today, if you pay a visit to British people at home, they will almost certainly offer you a cup of tea, they may not even notice that they have done so. During times of economic recession, tea consumption goes up in the U.K. and this is encouraged because of its key psychological role in British society. Britain is the only place west of Russia where tea is more popular than coffee.

In more recent years, tea has enjoyed a boost in many traditionally coffee-drinking societies, like the U.S.A., when a series of health scares started around coffee from the late 1960s onwards. Both tea and coffee have caffeine in them but the typical cup of tea has a lot less of it than a cup of coffee. Tea also has certain flavonoids and amino-acids that are said to help prevent cancer and control body weight. Recent research by Reuters Health has shown that tea can kill viruses and is especially effective against the herpes virus. The health effects of tea are still being studied and there is new information about additional benefits every year. Some people point out that a lot of the research is paid for by the tea companies and may be too favourable as a result.

Some of these supposed health benefits only come from one kind of tea – you must choose from a long list. Green, black, yellow, oolong, pu-erh, etc. etc. But tea is not just about health and clean drinking water. More than any other hot drink, tea is the subject of ritual with strong ideas about how to make it, serve it and drink it. The Japanese tea ceremony, the Chinese tea ceremony and British ‘high tea’ are all examples of this.

And the tea trade continues to develop and grow. In 1905, the tea-bag was invented as a free commercial sample. The first ones were made of silk but now paper is used. In the mid-1940s, instant tea was invented but is really only used for making iced tea.

The world market continues to grow. In 2003, the world produced 3.21 million tonnes of tea; in 2010, that figure was 4.52 million tonnes. China and India are still the world’s biggest producers with Kenya in a very respectable third place. Indians are not only great tea-growers, they also drink more of the stuff than anyone else. Among non-tea-producing countries, the biggest consumers by weight are the Russians; the British come first in per capita consumption. It seems that tea not only has a long past but, also, a great future in front of it.