Tea 茶

Tea (茶), is a beverage most of the people around the world are familiar with. Tea is made from the leaves of the tea plant Camellia sinensis. There are also herb teas that are not made of the tea plant leaves but herbs such as ginger, lemongrass or several kinds of flowers. In China, tea is classified into six main groups, each one is denoted with a color: green (green tea), red (black tea), yellow (yellow tea), white (white tea), black (post fermented tea or Pu-erh tea), and cyan (Oolong tea). There are many forms of tea - tea bags, loose leaf tea, compressed tea (such as Pu-erh tea bricks), instant tea, canned and bottled tea. I found that in the United States, most of the tea people consume is iced tea or lemon tea made from black tea (black tea is called red tea in China).

Tea is originated in China. In China, there is a phrase called the seven necessities, which is originated in the Song Dynasty (12th Century). The seven necessities are "firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea". Those things are considered to be essential in the everyday life of Chinese, and tea is one among them. The legend says that tea was invented by Shennong (Emperor of the Five Grains), who was a legendary ruler of China and the inventor of the Chinese medicine. When he was tasting different herbs for their medical properties, he discovered tea and its medical use and started to drink it. In the Classic of Tea written in Song Dynasty, the author Lu Yu mentioned in the first Chapter that tea was originated in the southern part of China, a place called BashanXiachuan, which is now in the east of Sichuan Province and west of Chongqing and Hubei Province. 

My hometown Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province, China) is a place famous for the production of Longjing green tea (as called Dragon Well tea). Tea is everywhere in the lives of people living in Hangzhou. People there usually drink plain loose leaf tea without the addition of things such as milk, sugar or honey. When going to visit someone, the first thing the host will do after the guests have entered the door and take seats is usually to go into the kitchen and pour cups of hot tea for the guests and serve them. In Hangzhou, there are many tea shops on the streets. Near the front door of most of the shops the shop owner will place a large black round bottom iron pan used to roast the tea leaves.This roasting process is to stop the oxidation process of tea so that the leaves can remain green, and you can usually see tea makers seating near the pan, roasting the tea leaves with their bare hands (sometimes they will wear gloves).

Dragon Well Tea Leaves

In my home, there are always three hot water bottles filled, waiting for making tea. My father's mug was filled with clear green liquid with tea leaves floating in the bottom 24 hours a day. In the Hangzhou dialect, drinking tea (喝茶) is called eating tea (吃茶). One of the possible explanations for this is that people usually drink loose leaf tea without removing tea leaves and just leave the leaves floating in the cup. Since the green tea leaves are very tender, people can just eat them if they accidentally go into mouth. In the mind of the elder people, the word tea even substitutes for water. When I came back to home after high school in China, my grandmother would sometimes pour me a cup of plain water and told me to have a cup of “tea” (吃杯茶).

A Cup of Tea

During the weekends or holidays when I was in China, I would go hiking with my parents, and we frequently saw tea fields along the path. Sometimes there were tea farmers picking tea leaves in the fields wearing straw hat with small baskets tied around their waist. They snapped off the young green buds of three delicate leaves on the top of each stem and threw them in the basket using both hands in a swift, repetitive and continuous motion. The best tea is picked before the Qingming Festival (in April), and it is called pre-qingming tea. It has lighter and subtler aromas that teas picked in later times. During that period it is usually rainy, and we could often see tea farmer working in the misty tea field wearing conical hat and Chusan palm raincoat.

Tea Field in Hangzhou (Zhishen Cao)

I had went into the tea field and picked tea leaves myself several times with my parents. My mother had the experience when she was young and she would teach me how to pick and choose the right tender leaves. After our bag was filled with tea leaves, we would go home and pan roasting those leaves by ourselves using the small iron cooking pan. This tea was not made by professionals but it still tasted wonderful to me.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea
http://baike.baidu.com/view/755169.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_necessities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_tea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_tea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oolong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh
http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E8%8C%B6%E7%B6%93/%E4%B8%80%E4%B9%8B%E6%BA%90
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Classic_of_Tea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shennong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingming_Festival