History UsefulNotes / TeaAndTeaCulture

The theme of tea-drinking coinciding with better health applies to Russia, too. During [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions the Russian Civil War]], the Red Army insisted on tea instead of alcohol (not least of which because the Whites controlled most of the vodka distilleries anyway), which helped them avoid typhoid and gave them an advantage. It was also rationed and distributed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII with the same care as the British. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, when many Russians left the country for political and economic reasons, or to avoid being mobilised, Russian tea culture came to spread to the countries where these emigrants settled in, like Serbia and Armenia, leading to conversations like this:

The theme of tea-drinking coinciding with better health applies to Russia, too. During [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions the Russian Civil War]], the Red Army insisted on tea instead of alcohol (not least of which because the Whites controlled most of the vodka distilleries anyway), which helped them avoid typhoid and gave them an advantage. It was also rationed and distributed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII with the same care as the British. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, when many Russians left the country for political and economic reasons, or to avoid being mobilised, Russian tea culture came to spread to the countries where these emigrants settled in, leading to conversations like this:

The theme of tea-drinking coinciding with better health applies to Russia, too. During [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions the Russian Civil War]], the Red Army insisted on tea instead of alcohol (not least of which because the Whites controlled most of the vodka distilleries anyway), which helped them avoid typhoid and gave them an advantage. It was also rationed and distributed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII with the same care as the British.

Canada, being a [[CanadaEh rather cold place]], sees a lot of hot beverage consumption. Like the States, the allure of cheap coffee turned the country into a coffee country. Tea is most common among the First Nations, who in earlier generations were largely supplied by the then-British Hudson's Bay Company. These days, tea is seeing a revival in Canada like in the States, and loose-leaf tea is starting to make serious inroads, but mostly you'll find store-bought varieties or stuff you can get from ubiquitous coffee chains like Tim Horton's.

* Southern-style sweet tea is very much an acquired taste, largely because it's ''very'' sweet. It's made by brewing the tea with sugar added to the pot, resulting in a concoction that can have twice as much sugar as Coca-Cola[[note]]A common ratio is 1 cup of sugar per quart of tea, which results in about 75g of sugar for a 12oz serving, as opposed to 39g for a 12oz can of Coca-Cola.[[/note]]. Lemon is commonly added as well. Iced tea is common elsewhere in the country (and was invented in St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1904 World's Fair, which also gave us the ice-cream cone), but it's nowhere near as sweet as the Southern variety. True to tea's association with SacredHospitality, sweet tea evokes Southern hospitality. Within the South, there's some debate as to whether you add the sugar when the tea is cold or hot (the latter slightly caramelizes the sugar for flavor). Despite being in the South itself, New Orleans (borrowing from Cajun culture) drinks its tea like the North, much to the consternation of other Southerners passing through town. ([[Series/GoodEats Alton Brown]], who is from Georgia, was truly stunned when he found this out firsthand in his ''Feasting on Asphalt'' series.) After the nation became more health-conscious, especially regarding sugar consumption, most restaurants in the South offer a choice of sweetened or unsweetened tea; many patrons opt to mix the two so the sweetness is still present but diluted. The addition of fruit-flavored syrups like peach or mango is also gaining popularity.

* Southern-style sweet tea is very much an acquired taste, largely because it's ''very'' sweet. It's made by brewing the tea with sugar added to the pot, resulting in a concoction that can have twice as much sugar as Coca-Cola[[note]]A common ratio is 1 cup of sugar per quart of tea, which results in about 75g of sugar for a 12oz serving, as opposed to 39g for a 12oz can of Coca-Cola.[[/note]]. Lemon is commonly added as well. Iced tea is common elsewhere in the country (and was invented in St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1904 World's Fair, which also gave us the ice-cream cone), but it's nowhere near as sweet as the Southern variety. True to tea's association with SacredHospitality, sweet tea evokes Southern hospitality. Within the South, there's some debate as to whether you add the sugar when the tea is cold or hot (the latter slightly caramelizes the sugar for flavor). Despite being in the South itself, New Orleans (borrowing from Cajun culture) drinks its tea like the North, much to the consternation of other Southerners passing through town. ([[Series/GoodEats Alton Brown]], who is from Georgia, was truly stunned when he found this out firsthand in his ''Feasting on Asphalt'' series.)

** Older Russian teas often had a smoky taste; the tea they could get from central Asia usually wasn't high-quality, so "smoking" it like ''lapsang souchong'' was necessary to make it taste good. Russians developed a taste for it and kept doing it even when they didn't have to. These teas got much harder to get after the Sino-Soviet split; now, most Russian tea comes from India (with a little domestic production in Krasnodar, in the extreme south of the country but still one of the northernmost tea-producing parts of the world).

* Tea is often drunk right after a meal; when it isn't it's usually accompanied by "tea stuff" -- the cakes, pastries, and biscuits that are a staple of British afternoon tea.

* Traditional Russian black tea is brewed in advance as a tea concentrate called ''zavarka''. This can sit on the leaves indefinitely and diluted to taste. It would sit on top of ''another'' pot of hot water, which was traditionally kept in a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samovar samovar]]. These would often be lavishly decorated; the modern equivalent, though, would be an imported Japanese automated hot water dispenser.

All things tea can be traced back to China. The tea leaf, the teapot, the teahouse and tea garden, even the tea ceremony -- not one like in Japan (although the Japanese one derives from a Tang Dynasty Chinese tea ceremony that is no longer practised in China), but its own tradition called ''gongfu'', where oolong or black tea is brewed several times over the course of several minutes, with short brew times and small cups to experience every nuance of flavor the tea has to offer. Like in Britain, the proliferation of tea in Tang Dynasty China also contributed to a population boom because it got people in the habit of boiling water; not surprisingly, the Tang era also saw the proliferation of many great artists and philosophers.

* There's a whole mid-afternoon light meal called "afternoon tea", famous for tiny sandwiches, scones, and precise etiquette. It's typically an upper-middle class thing, and it was essentially an invention of a rising middle class looking to feel "posher". Lower-middle class people just call it "tea". The upper class has ''multiple'' tiny meals it calls "tea", with afternoon tea being "low tea" and the later, middle-class timing "high tea". It gets confusing sometimes. The formal "afternoon tea" is very rare now in Britain, and generally something that posh hotels do for foreign tourists at sky-high prices.

* '''Oolong tea''', spelled ''wūlóng'' in Pinyin (literally meaning "black dragon tea"), is more oxidized than green tea but less than black; it can occupy any point in that spectrum. It remains the most popular drinking tea in Taiwan and China, and is one of two traditional types of tea for yum cha/dim sum in Guangdong. A shipment of it was [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution dumped into Boston Harbour in a(n in)famous incident]] and was the type most-consumed in Britain before the proliferation of Indian tea plantations in the late 19th century.

''Camellia sinensis'' - the tea plant. According to legend, tea was discovered in China by the Chinese god of agriculture, Shennong, who was boiling water in his garden and had some of the leaves fall into it. Or, according to another legend, the first tea plant sprang from the eyelids of Bodhidharma, the monk who brought Buddhism from India to China, who [[EyeScream cut them off]] to prevent himself from falling asleep during a long meditation.

For simplicity's sake, this page will concern itself only with ''real'' tea - liquid brewed from the plant ''Camellia sinensis''. Any other brewed drinks that go under the name of "tea", such as herbal tea, are more properly called "infusions" or "tisanes".[[note]]For the record, the word "tisane" has nothing to do with "tea". English got the word from French, which inherited it from Latin ''ptisana'', which itself was a loanword from the Greek πτισάνη (''ptisánē''), referring to an infusion of pearl barley (i.e. what we would call barley water).[[/note]] This includes the likes of popular "red tea" (made from the South African herb called Rooibos and first used as a tea substitute by Dutch colonists there, now famous as the redbush tea favoured by [[Literature/TheNo1LadiesDetectiveAgency Precious Ramotswe]]), yerba mate, honeybush, bissap, chamomile and so on.

* '''Tea bags''' are an affront to most serious tea drinkers. The tea is lower-quality, it's processed smaller leading to more air exposure (and flavor deterioration), and it's crammed into a space too small for the water to diffuse through properly. But in several parts of the world, including the U.K. and the U.S., tea bags are much more popular than "loose leaf" tea - they're easier to prepare since they come in premeasured quantities, and you won't end up accidentally drinking the potent-tasting leaves. Even places with advanced tea cultures can't resist the sheer convenience of tea bags. Tea aficionados in America consider them a necessary evil, as loose-leaf tea can't really be found outside specialty stores. The technology is improving, though, and larger "pyramid bags" and "tea sachets" are modest improvements as well.

** "Milk tea" is popular in Hong Kong, a former British colony. It's hot tea with evaporated milk, usually of the "Black & White" brand. Sugar is often added, and it's also frequently served iced. It's also common in Hong Kong to [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot mix this milk tea with coffee]] to make a drink commonly called ''yuenyeung'',[[note]]Literally meaning "Mandarin ducks" in Cantonese--in Chinese culture, the birds are a symbol of harmonious love despite differences because of the wildly differing appearances of the male and female ducks; this is analogised to the harmony between the coffee and the tea in the drink. Don't overthink it.[[/note]] a sort of compromise position between [[MustHaveCaffeine the traditional caffeine options]]. Both the milk tea and ''yuenyeung'' are staples of Hong Kong ''dai pai dong'' (food stalls) and ''cha chaan teng'' (cheap GreasySpoon diner-style restaurants serving [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff a unique Canto-Western fusion cuisine]]).

As a relative latecomer to the transcontinental trade, the East India Company had to make do with the proverbial scraps left over from the Portuguese, and then the Dutch (the world's great merchant-shipping power in the 17th century). However, Dutch supremacy could not last forever, and it was in the field of textiles and tea in particular that their early advantage counted against them. The Dutch had moved, ruthlessly, to monopolise the supply and transportation of spices, which were quite easily the most valuable goods to be found in the East. However, the demand for spices proved limited; people can only eat so much of them, and their value eventually went down as the European market became saturated. On the other hand the British had almost completely borrowed the Dutch financial system, added small but significant improvements (particularly the invention of modern shipping insurance), more or less gotten over their [[UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar political troubles]], and [[Series/{{Connections}} invited a Dutchman over to... kind of... be King]] in 1688. With this, Britain managed to get enough money to exploit an unnoticed niche in the market: they would realise and capitalise upon the price elasticity of demand[[note]]The basic economic measure of how much demand for a product changes with its price. For relatively "inelastic" goods, even if the price changes a lot, the demand for it won't change that much -- think medication, for instance, which you're always going to need. For "elastic" goods, if the price falls a little, many more people will demand it, and if it rises a little, many more people will give up and just not demand it anymore. What this means is that for an inelastic good, raising prices typically increases profits because the amount lost from the people no longer demanding the good is easily made up for by the increase in price, while for elastic goods, profits usually go up when prices go down, because the amount lost from the fact that buyers are paying the seller less is more than made up for by the number of people who can buy it at the new low price but couldn't at the old higher one. In general, necessities, like medicine and basic foodstuffs, are more inelastic, while luxuries like, well, tea, are highly elastic.[[/note]] for cotton and silk clothing (leading directly to the catastrophic collapse of the British wool-textile industry). And for this other thing they were importing from the East--tea.

(A factor sometimes quoted as being responsible for the adoption of tea in the UK was a series of crop failures in ''coffee'' plantations owned by the HBEIC in the 1740s, leading them to switch to growing tea instead. While it is true that coffee was popular in Britain in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (Lloyd's of London started at--indeed, ''as''--a coffeeshop in 1686), tea was at least as popular already, and there are no records of this occurring. Even if it had, it is unlikely to have been part of it as at the time most British coffee came from Dutch and Portuguese colonies,[[note]]Largely in Indonesia and Brazil; note that during this period, the world's biggest coffee producer was actually [[UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} French Saint-Domingue]], which the British of course would ''not'' buy from.[[/note]] while Chinese tea dominated the British market into the 19th century.)

* Flavours are numerous, but Earl Grey is one of the most common. It's flavoured with oil of bergamot, a bitter citrus fruit, and in some varieties it might also have orange or lemon peel, or flowers like lavender, verbena, or rose petals. The blend was originally concocted as a scam--the flavourings were added to cheap teas to pass them off as the more expensive Fo Shou or Keemun, teas which naturally tasted of bergamot; but nevertheless, the Britons developed a taste for it. It's named after UsefulNotes/TheEarlGrey, [[UsefulNotes/TheMenOfDowningStreet Prime Minister 1830-1834]] who (may or may not have) received a shipment of it as a gift.

* Green tea is largely seen as a "hipster" drink, with matcha in particular being the "authentic" high-quality Asian tea. Not being all ''that'' concerned with authenticity, some coffee shops also offer green tea lattes. shops. Green tea is also becoming popular as a health food.
** Oddly, green tea ''was'' common in the United States before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII--Southern sweet tea was usually made with green tea before the war. However, once the US entered the war, the major sources of green tea (China, Japan, and Southeast Asia) were either enemy territory or at least across enemy lines--the Japanese and Americans weren't about to do tea trading when they were fighting for control of the Pacific. Consequently, Americans switched to black tea bought from British Empire sources (mostly in India and Ceylon) and haven't looked back since.

** Morocco even has a tea ceremony, albeit not as elaborate as Japan's. When tea is being served to an honored guest, the host makes a big show of bringing in a tray with premeasured amounts of tea, mint (or other herb), and sugar in their own special plates alongside the kettle filled with the water, ceremoniously putting the kettle over the fire and adding the tea and herbs to the pot, then gradually adding the sugar, tasting the tea halfway through boiling, and pouring it at least a meter high (to obtain the optimal mixture and aeration). Because Moroccan tea is very sweet (a joking saying in Morocco is "Moroccans don't drink tea, they drink honey"), they have special sugar "cubes"--really bricks about 10 cm long by 1.5 cm wide and 1 cm deep--to provide the massive sweetness the ceremonial pot of tea requires. Moroccans will also insist on the highest-quality water so as not to detract from the flavor. In southern parts of the country (which are mostly desert), the tea preparation process can take as long as an hour and a half -- for just tea!
* '''Israel''', being the Middle East's regional oddball owing to the Mizrahi Jews - Jews from the Middle East and North Africa - being pretty much there and nowhere else, is a blend of the Western and Eastern camps tea-wise. However, since the Mizrahim are only half of Israel's overall population, with the other half being coming from Europe and being predominantly (yep, you guessed it) [[AllJewsAreAshkenazi Ashkenazi]], their tea culture is also much more thoroughly europeanized, and particularly patterned after the Russian tradition -- in fact, Wissotzky, Israel's leading tea brand, was founded in 1849 by Russian Jews, and was even the official supplier of tea in the Czar's court.

* In Myanmar, formerly a British colony (and then known as Burma), tea is typically drunk hot, strong, and sweet, with milk or cream. It's similar enough to British "builder's tea" that some speculate that the British may even have derived it from the Burmese style. Burmese tea is typically lingered over with friends; teashops are social hubs, serving food or at least simple snacks, and it's very common to spend half an hour or more in the tea shops -- sometimes most of the day. Myanmar is also one of the few places where people ''eat'' tea as well as drink it--tea leaves are fermented to make a product called ''lahpet'', which is typically consumed in salads.

* Portugal is the country that brought tea to England (Catarina de Bragança loved tea, which Portugal imported from Japan and India, so she asked her husband to import some from Portugal; she shared it with the court, and the rest is history); but it doesn't have any particular interest in tea today (except when one gets a cold; then everyone drinks it. And sometimes just because one likes it). It's probably because of the climate; Portugal is as dry and hot as England is cold and wet, and Iberians tend to prefer cold drinks instead of hot ones in the heat (although we also drink lots of coffee - our brews are second-best to Italy's). Portugal is also famous for its wines, which are as popular locally as they are abroad. Canned, cold iced tea is popular among young people in modern Portugal -- being neither alcoholic nor carbonated -- but there's no particular historic tradition. The Azores Islands have their own tea plantations and factories (Gorreana and Porto Formoso, although the latter stopped producing tea in TheEighties and is just a museum today), making them the only part of Europe that produces its own tea.

There's a reason the poster children for the SpotOfTea trope are the British. The British demand for tea drove, among other things, the monopoly of the uber-powerful Dutch-style British East India Company, and the 1840-42 and 1856-60 Opium Wars. The media portrayal of the Brits as tea crazy [[FreakierThanFiction pales next to many of the real life accounts.]] No shortage of British writers, including Creator/GeorgeOrwell (in his essay "[[http://www.george-orwell.org/A_Nice_Cup_of_Tea/0.html A Nice Cup of Tea]]"), Creator/DouglasAdams (in [[http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A61345 a post from 1999]]), Creator/NeilGaiman, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103 a panel of British scientists]][[note]]Despite rumours, this is not the government insisting on how people make their tea. The rules were made to make taste comparisons fair.[[/note]] have written essays on the subject of proper tea preparation.

* Polite Britons will typically offer tradesmen (''e.g.'' plumbers, carpenters), firemen, and policemen a SpotOfTea if they're staying as guests for more than an hour. As more and more tradesmen in Britain are immigrants, this is starting to cause some confusion, but as you'll see below, this sort of offering is not unheard of in other parts of the world.

** During UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the British used water-cooled machine guns. They quickly learned that they could use the hot water in their guns' cooling jackets [[MundaneUtility to make tea]], sometimes firing off hundreds of rounds at a time to do so. British tanks from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII onwards also had on-board water boiling vessels, which were designed mostly to disinfect water or cook "boil-in-the-bag" rations, but which were mostly used for a SpotOfTea. This has continued to the present day, nearly every military vehicle has one fitted, up to and including the Challenger 2 main battle tank.

** Morocco even has a tea ceremony, albeit not as elaborate as Japan's. When tea is being served to an honored guest, the host makes a big show of bringing in a tray with premeasured amounts of tea, mint (or other herb), and sugar in their own special plates alongside the kettle filled with the water, ceremoniously adding the tea and herbs to the pot over the fire, then gradually adding the sugar, tasting the tea halfway through boiling, and pouring it at least a meter high (to obtain the optimal mixture and aeration). Because Moroccan tea is very sweet (a joking saying in Morocco is "Moroccans don't drink tea, they drink honey"), they have special sugar "cubes"--really bricks about 10 cm long by 1.5 cm wide and 1 cm deep--to provide the massive sweetness the ceremonial pot of tea requires. Moroccans will also insist on the highest-quality water so as not to detract from the flavor. In southern parts of the country (which are mostly desert), the tea preparation process can take as long as an hour and a half -- for just tea!

** Morocco even has a tea ceremony, albeit not as elaborate as Japan's. When tea is being served to an honored guest, the host makes a big show of bringing in all the trays, tasting the tea halfway through boiling, and pouring it at least a meter high (to obtain the optimal mixture and aeration). Because Moroccan tea is very sweet (a joking saying in Morocco is "Moroccans don't drink tea, they drink honey"), they have special sugar "cubes"--really bricks about 10 cm long by 1.5 cm wide and 1 cm deep--to provide the massive sweetness the ceremonial pot of tea requires. Moroccans will also insist on the highest-quality water so as not to detract from the flavor. In southern parts of the country (which are mostly desert), the tea preparation process can take as long as an hour and a half -- for just tea!

Australia is similar to the UK, but they're much closer to Asia and tend to be quicker to adopt modern Asian tea crazes, like Taiwanese bubble tea. The role of tea is also lessened by the prominence of coffee in Australia, which has a strong coffee culture from both immigration (lots of coffee-gulping Italians and Greeks came to Australia in the 20th century, and the Italians in particular brought their whole espresso-based culture with them) and climate (Australia is a great place to grow coffee, but not so much tea).

** The traditional method of sweetening tea was with raspberry or blackcurrant jam, similar to traditional sbiten'. Lemon tea is often made with lemon jam or candied lemons; this combined with a ''lot'' of juice creates a much stronger flavor than Western lemon tea. Sometimes, tea is sweetened by drinking it while holding candy or sugar in one's mouth (a practice borrowed from Persia). These days, though, sugar or honey is the most common sweetener.

For simplicity's sake, this page will concern itself only with ''real'' tea - liquid brewed from the plant ''Camellia sinensis''. Any other brewed drinks that go under the name of "tea", such as herbal tea, are more properly called "infusions" or "tisanes". This includes the likes of popular "red tea" (made from the South African herb called Rooibos and first used as a tea substitute by Dutch colonists there, now famous as the redbush tea favoured by [[Literature/TheNo1LadiesDetectiveAgency Precious Ramotswe]]), yerba mate, honeybush, bissap, chamomile and so on.

** Tea here is black; green tea arrived only recently and is seen as either a novelty or an aberration. It's prepared by pouring boiling water on tea leaves or powdered tea, sometimes adding mint or other herbs, and adding sugar to taste after brewing. Middle Eastern tea tends to be on the sweet side, sometimes as sweet as in the American South. Milk is not unknown but still uncommon.

* '''Instant tea''', resembling instant coffee, [[DamnedByFaintPraise exists]]. Tea does ''not'' lend itself to the process of dehydration and reconstitution, and the results range from [[BadToTheLastDrop utterly undrinkable]] to merely poor. The main advantage is in its ease of distribution; even in Japan, where tea is SeriousBusiness, you can easily come across instant green tea.

* Indonesians drink sweet, iced jasmine tea, especially on hot days. Traditional hot tea is also quite popular in Indonesia, especially in the countryside. And there's a recent commercial product called Tebs, Teh [=BerSoda=] -- sweet jasmine tea with soda water. Whatever tea lovers elsewhere may think of that idea, Indonesia loves it.

!!China

All things tea can be traced back to China. The tea leaf, the teapot, the teahouse and tea garden, even the tea ceremony -- not one like in Japan (although the Japanese one derives from a Tang Dynasty Chinese tea ceremony that is no longer practised in China), but its own tradition called ''gongfu'', where oolong or black tea is brewed several times over the course of several minutes, with short brew times and small cups to experience every nuance of flavor the tea has to offer. Like in Britain, the proliferation of tea in Tang Dynasty China also contributed to a population boom because it got people in the habit of boiling water; not surprisingly, the Tang era also saw the proliferation of many great artists and philosophers.

'''How They Drink It:'''
* The choice of white, green, oolong or black tea as a favorite varies regionally.
** Almost invariably, though, it's drunk straight and hot. Chinese tea is weaker than the Indian black tea common in Britain, and most Chinese are lactose intolerant. But they also do this to strong and astringent teas from central China, albeit served in small shotglasses.
** Adding milk to tea, though, probably originated from the Mongol Empire of the Yuan, whose Central Asian masters were among the few lactose-tolerant peoples in Asia. It's likely from here that the custom moved west to Europe. Tibet also has its (in)famous yak butter tea, which is as much a food as it is a drink.
** ''Pu erh'' tea comes from the one-time Muslim provinces in the southwest, Sichuan and Yunnan. It's pressed into bricks and aged in caves, like cheese. This gives it a unique mushroomy or umami flavor, and it's rather an acquired taste.
** "Milk tea" is popular in Hong Kong, a former British colony. It's hot tea with evaporated milk, usually of the "Black & White" brand. Sugar is often added, and it's also frequently served iced. It's also common in Hong Kong to [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot mix this milk tea with coffee]] to make a drink commonly called ''yuenyeung'',[[note]]Literally meaning "Mandarin ducks" in Cantonese--in Chinese culture, the birds are a symbol of harmonious love despite differences because of the wildly differing appearances of the male and female ducks; this is analogised to the harmony between the coffee and the tea in the drink. Don't overthink it.[[/note]] a sort of compromise position between [[MustHaveCaffeine the traditional caffeine options]]. Both the milk tea and ''yuenyeung'' are staples of Hong Kong ''dai pai dong'' (food stalls) and ''cha chaan teng'' (cheap GreasySpoon diner-style restaurants serving [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff a unique Canto-Western fusion cuisine]]).
* As in many other places, it's honorable and a [[SacredHospitality sign of hospitality]] to pour tea for others. According to legend, this was so ingrained that the Qianlong Emperor of Qing, while traveling [[KingIncognito incognito]] around the country, would pour tea for his servants to maintain his disguise. This was such an immense honor that the servants would ordinarily be expected to kowtow in this situation; they couldn't do that without giving the emperor away, so they tapped the table with three fingers bent in imitation of a kowtow pose. To this day, this is a traditional gesture of thanks for being served tea.
* The ''dim sum''-like tradition of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum_cha yum cha]] literally means "drink tea". Like afternoon tea in Britain, it's got little snacks with it (in the form of buns and fried tidbits), but these were largely a later addition.
* Ancient Buddhist monks were often associated with tea-drinking. Though we might imagine that they did so to enhance their spirituality, in fact the reason was more mundane: to stay awake while meditating for long periods at a time. This is why Bhodidharma's eyelids figure into the tea origin myth.
* Chinese teas are among the most expensive in the world and high quality teas are reserved for special guests or given as gifts.

Whatever the true origin, tea came from China and has risen to the status of the second most popular drink in the world. The first is water. Most historians nowadays believe that tea was grown as an medicinal herb by commoners in Southwest China. It eventually became a beverage, rather than medicine, due to its popularity with multiple Chinese emperors who encouraged tea drinking across China.

''Camellia sinensis'' - the tea plant. According to legend, discovered in China by the first Emperor who was boiling water in his garden and had some of the leaves fall into it. Or, according to another legend, the first tea plant sprang from the eyelids of Bodhidharma, the monk who brought Buddhism from India to China, who [[EyeScream cut them off]] to prevent himself from falling asleep during a long meditation.

!!But first some definitions...