Tea is second only to water as the world’s most popular beverage. Using the dried leaves of Camellia sinensis to brew a steaming, soothing drink is an activity that has been going on for thousands of years. Tea’s species name, sinensis, is a reference to China, where both this bushy shrub and tea culture got their start. Precisely when
that occurred, however, is unclear, as tea’s historical origins are intertwined with considerable legend and myth.
According to one of those legends, the fabled Chinese emperor Shen Nong took the firstsip of tea by chance in 2737 when dried leaves of the tea bush accidentally fell into a pot of boiling water, tinting it a light brown and transforming it into a refreshing drink.
By the 4th century Chinese texts consistently mentioned tea in their pages, and within several hundred years it had become the national drink. Tea spread from China to Japan in the 12th century. The Dutch East India Company took the first tea to Europe in the early 1600s. Tea drinking soon became firmly entrenched in England and its North American colonies, where struggles over tea’s taxation and control of its trade helped ignite the American Revolution.
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