How did humans invent the habit of drinking tea?

There are many theories about the discovery of tea, in fact, there are many universities that will have tea majors, as well as specialized tea professionals, tea is no longer a simple tea, it represents the long history of our ancient civilization, but also represents the symbol of our ancient history.

There are many theories about the origin of the habit of drinking tea, such as the theory of medicine, which is due to the fact that at the beginning of medicine as a medicinal material for human treatment, but then it was found that the taste of tea after soaking in water was very fragrant, so people began to have the habit of drinking tea. There is also a saying, that is, the tea drinking itself, people find that drinking tea regularly helps their health, so the habit of drinking tea has slowly been handed down. There is also a theory of diet, which was originally eaten by people, but later gradually extended to drink tea.

There is also a theory that tea was used as a sacrifice in ancient times, and later it was slowly drunk by people.

The reason why the habit of drinking tea can be handed down from ancient times to the present is because drinking tea helps to keep the body healthy, and now people pay attention to health preservation, drinking tea is to maintain health care, and there are many places in the south of our country that are rich in tea.

1.Sacrifice Theory: This theory holds that tea and some other plants were first used as sacrifices, and later some people paid for it and found that it was harmless, so "from sacrifices, vegetables and medicines", and finally became drinks.

2.Drug Theory: This statement holds that tea "originally entered human society as a medicinal use." "Shennong's Hundred Herbs Sutra" wrote: "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons every day, and got tea to solve them."

3.Food said: "The ancients used grass to drink water", "the people took food as the sky", and food first conforms to the evolutionary law of human society.

4."The initial way to use tea may be as a chewing ingredient, or as a roasted food, and gradually as a medicinal drink. The comparison and accumulation of these methods eventually developed into the best way to "drink tea". ** From the network).

From ancient times to the present, the use of tea can be summarized into four ways: eating tea, blending, drinking, and brewing. Different ways of using them have obvious characteristics of the times, in addition to the change of dynasties, there is also a hidden logic of change:

As the toxicity of tea decreases, the way people use tea becomes easier.

Tea eating method, in the Shennong's period, directly eat the fresh leaves of the tea tree, and eat the tea as food. This method of eating tea lasted for a period of time, according to the records of the ancients: Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons a day, and got a solution.

Although tea has a lot of useful effects for people, the tea tree at that time had a certain toxicity, and if Shennong ate it every day, it was estimated that he would not be able to stand it, so he slowly changed the tea eating method to the drinking method.

Drinking method, from the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period to the early Wei and Jin dynasties, tea is no longer directly eaten raw, but boiled and eaten, either boiled in porridge, called porridge food, or directly drafted pants to take the tea leaves and a lot of condiments, ginger, garlic, pepper put together to cook. Why boil, because people find that high temperature can kill poison, boiled tea is more suitable for the mouth, will not cause physical discomfort, indicating that the tea at this time is still slightly toxic.

Tea drinking method, including boiling tea method and tea ordering method, was the most popular in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the tea boiling method was still boiled, and the tea method was not boiled, and it was directly soaked in water. There is a necessary process before boiling tea and ordering tea: sencha, the tea leaves are placed in the container of sencha, slowly roasted with charcoal fire, and roasted until the green and astringent taste of the tea leaves has receded, and the aroma key is simplified before it can be brewed.

Sencha is also the use of high temperature to reduce the toxic substances (alkaloids) in the tea, Yunnan still retains a lot of sencha way of local specialty tea, such as thunder tea, canned tea, etc.

After the Yuan Dynasty, loose tea was popular, and it was generally not used to decoction, but was directly brewed and drunk with water.

In addition to the influence of culture, politics and customs, the way of drinking tea has changed from high-temperature sterilization to direct brewing, which also shows from the side that in the process of artificial domestication and breeding of tea varieties, the toxicity of tea trees is getting weaker and weaker, and the way of drinking tea is becoming more and more rich and diverse.

1. Sacrifice theory: This theory believes that tea and some other plants were first used as sacrifices, and later some people tasted and found that the food was harmless, so "from the sacrifice, and the vegetable food, and medicine", and finally became a drink; <>

2. Drug theory: This statement believes that tea "originally entered human society as a medicinal use". "Shennong's Materia Medica" wrote: "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons a day, and got tea to solve them";

3. Food said: "The ancients drank water from grass", "The people took food as the sky", and food first conformed to the evolutionary law of human society;

4. Synchronously: The initial way of using tea may be as a chewing material, or as a roasted food, and at the same time, it is gradually used as a medicinal material; <>

5. Communication said: "Zaijingtang Collection" contains: "Tea, or attributed to Yaocao, or attributed to Jiamu, is a treasure among plants."

Ji Gu is known as 槚蔎茗荈. "Erya Shimu" said: "Bitter tea."

Herbs, vanilla also, tea fragrant, hence the name. Mingyi, the late picker of tea. Tea is also a common name for tea.

The use of tea is not only for medicine and food, but also for the needs of customers. There is a poem "Guest": "On the ninth day of the first month, the court bursts with geese and yellow willows."

Sit on the side of the fine **, cook tea fragrant wine. (Excerpted from "Zai Jingtang Collection: Jiangnan Jingshi Poems") This theory theoretically introduces tea into the track of treating people and things, highlighting a kind of elegance in the communication occasion, and the end of the "communication theory" of the cause of drinking tea. <>

Yan Pengxiang "Tea Yuan" Cultural and Creative Space Producer: Yan Longzhen Pengxiang Public Welfare Venture Capital**General Consultant: Yan Shaojin Chief Planner:

Yan Hongwei Director: Zhou Yi Trademark Rights: Yuwang Film and Television Operator:

Yan Pengxiang's "Tea Edge" Cultural and Creative Team Yan Pengxiang is a 2018 student majoring in tea science in Yan Jiaxian's class of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University.

It is generally believed that the use of tea by the Chinese is divided into three stages: 1. Eating the oldest way of using tea, due to the lack of written records in ancient times, so it is impossible to determine when it began (Shennong tastes a hundred herbs is similar to myths and legends, and cannot be accepted as evidence to determine the specific era), at this stage, the main way of use is to directly "chew and eat", or blanch with water and eat, as a dish to accompany the meal. Nowadays, the Kino people in Jinghong, Yunnan Province, still retain the custom of eating "cold tea vegetables", I have not eaten fresh Heshan tea, but it is estimated that the taste will not be too good, otherwise people will not use the word "Tu" to refer to tea at the earliest (the meaning of the word "Tu" in "Shuowen Jie Zi" is "bitter Zen Kai cavity dish"), so it is better not to eat directly, or not to eat directly, So, in the process of eating tea dishes, it has also begun to gradually change the way of eating tea, from direct eating, to a more "fine" method - Porridge is roughly in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, tea minc, also Sun Xian is porridge made of tea, which is basically a more common one in the diet of princes and nobles, and it is during this period that the medicinal value of tea is gradually excavated, and people begin to treat tea not only as a food, but also as a medicine. <>

When exactly did the history of tea in China begin? Over the years, there have been many different opinions on this issue. According to the "Book of Tea" by Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty:

Its name has five, one tu, two yi, three yi, four tea, and five yi, which is to say that the five names of tu, yi, yi, ming, and yi, refer to a thing. The same result will be obtained while looking up the meaning of these Chinese characters in the "Erya". And the thing of "Shan Cha Que Tu" is recorded in the Book of Songs, or if it is calculated in this way, the history of Chinese tea has a history of at least 2,000 years.

But Tu and what we now call tea are two completely different things, the early Tu is more like a refreshing and hangover medicine, rather than the common drink now, if not the patient, who will drink the medicinal soup as water? Like most herbs, Tu originally came from a wild plant and had no taste to speak of. Although it is unpleasant to drink and a rare thing, there are still people who take a good sip.

Jin Zhi Situ Wang Meng not only loves to drink, but also loves to force others to drink, so that people dare not go to his house as a guest, this Wang Meng concocted tea soup was once called Shui Er, passed on as a joke. It can be seen that this Tu is not a popular drink like tea.

The three volumes of the "Book of Tea" written by Lu Yu are a masterpiece of masterpieces, and it is also from that time that the tea ceremony has become a specialized science. After the Jin and Tang dynasties, the trend of scholars drinking tea prevailed, and there was no more water doom to say, and it could even be exaggerated to the point of drinking tea to the point of becoming a feather and ascending to the immortal. It is believed that this is not because of the rapid changes in the taste of drinkers, but because of the great progress in the technology of planting, making and brewing tea, so that tea has replaced the name of "tea" and has made a shining debut on the stage of Chinese culture as a drink, which continues to this day.

The custom of drinking tea for the public began in this prosperous era of the Tang Dynasty.

The mainstream method of cooking tea in the Tang and Song dynasties was boiling, which in Mandarin was to first dry or roast the tea leaves, mash them into powder, and boil them in a pig iron pot, but they should not be overcooked, and they should be controlled within the three boils. <>

Since Shennong's discovery of tea and its record as a medicine, the method of drinking tea has undergone a thousand years of transformation, from rough to elegant. The trend of tea is also a microcosm of the development trend of our national civilization. In the Spring and Autumn Period, tea was a vegetable, and people generally cooked it directly with water and then ate it with rice.

It may also be added with oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, etc., but I have never tasted it, so I am very curious about the taste. There are still some ethnic minorities such as "cold tea vegetables" and "oil tea", which probably started from that time. The ancients revered the heavens and gods very much, so at that time tea was still used as a sacrifice and offered to ancestors and gods.

The way of drinking matcha in Japan that has developed to this day is similar to this method of ordering tea, and it should be from the same source. During the Tang and Song dynasties, China was in the position of a cultural exporter, and it was reasonable for neighboring countries to follow suit. It is worth mentioning that this method of ordering tea is a hundred times more complicated than that of sencha, and later it even developed into a form of competition, that is, tea fighting.

This complicated method of making tea has built a mountain-high barrier for the popularization of tea drinking. In the social environment at that time, there was another kind of tea product, which was answered by the boy who ordered it. The idea that those who eat it are all common products, and this kind of behavior of the upper class people seeking differentiation has not changed for thousands of years.

The mainstream method of cooking tea in the Tang and Song dynasties was boiling, which in Mandarin is to first dry or roast the tea leaves, mash them into powder, and boil them in a cast iron pot, but they should not be overcooked, and they should be controlled within the three boils. This method of crushing the tea leaves and then boiling them is still alive today. When I was a child in Xinjiang, I often drank a kind of Hunan brick tea, which is also tea powder, which can be boiled directly in the kettle, which can be drunk directly or made into milk tea, and the taste is good.

Lu Yu said in the "Book of Tea" that the tea soup cooked in this way tastes mellow, and it is not necessarily an exaggeration.

There are some opinions that good tea will not be produced by crushing tea leaves into minced pieces or boiling them over fire. In fact, this view is very one-sided, and sticking to stereotypes will hinder the pace of personal tea tasting. For example, some aged Pu'er tea or Tieguanyin, the tea taste has faded, but if you add some cooking, you can force out the aroma of tea, and it tastes unique.

As for the tea powder, Europeans drink silver slag and lack a lot of Liang trembling with the end of tea, and the Chinese always take large-leaf tea as the top, but in fact, tea powder also has the advantage of being easy to brew the essence of tea. Sometimes when making my own blended tea or tea bags, there is no harm in some grinding, I often brew some fermented teas such as Yunnan red and Yixing black tea, and the taste is still very pleasing.

In the history of China's cultural development, the origin of everything related to agriculture and plants is often attributed to Shennong. The theory that Chinese tea drinking originated in Shennong has also derived different views due to folklore. Some people think that tea is Shennong in the field to boil water in a kettle pot, just a few leaves floated into the pot, boiled water, its color is slightly yellow, drink in the mouth to quench thirst, refresh the mind, to Shennong's past experience of tasting herbs, judge it is a medicine and discovered, this is the most common statement about the origin of Chinese tea drinking.

Another theory is to be attached to it from the phonetic, saying that Shennong has a crystal belly, from the appearance can see the food in the stomach and intestines peristalsis, when he tasted the tea, found that the tea flowed everywhere in the stomach, check and check, and wash the stomach and intestines cleanly, so Shennong called this plant "check", and then turned into the word "tea", and became the origin of tea.