Initially we need to know what tea truly is and how it is produced. The modern term "tea" derives from early Chinese dialect words - such aT'chai, Cha, T'uan ,Tay - used both to describe the beverage and the leaf. Chai is the word used in the Rus to designate and denote tea.
The Camellia sinensis is actually the plant from which, tea is derived. It is an evergreen plant of the Camellia family. It has smooth, shiny, pointed, leaves that look similar to the privet hedge leaf found in British gardens.
Tea history actually began in ancient China some 5,000 plus years ago. According to legend Shen Nung, an early emperor, was a great & skilled ruler, a creative scientist as well as patron of the arts. It was his far-sighted edicts that required, among other things, that all drinking water had to be boiled as a hygienic precaution. On a summer day while visiting a distant section of his realm, he and his court stopped to rest. By his ruling, servants began boiling water for the court to drink. Dried leaves from a near by bush fell into the boiling water, and a brownish colored liquid was infused into the water. Being a scientist, the Emperor was interested in the new liquid, drank some and found it very refreshing. Thus, according to this legend, tea was created. Tea consumption spread throughout the Chinese culture reaching into every aspect of the society.
Supposedly tea was brought to Europe by the Portuguese Father Jasper de Cruz, SJ, in 1560. Portugal, with her superior navy, had been successful in gaining the first right of trade with China. They were many centuries behind however. Wherever the Mongols went they brought their tea with them. They too were behind the times in the history of tea. Caravan traders who traversed the Silk Road from China to ancient Rome, Egypt, India and points all along the Silk Road caravan routes brought tea with them both as a beverage as well as a medicinal. Tea was originally carried about in the form of dried leaves. Sometime around 2000 BC it was wet, pressed into a wooden form & dried in large brick tea-kilns. Common grades of China and Japan tea mixed with stalk and dust and molded into bricks under high pressure. Originally, these bricks were "bricks' were carried and even used in lieu of currency as a trade medium especially by caravan traders. The brick shape was altered sometime around 900 AD into what is still sold today in many parts of the world. It is a rectangular approx. 20 cm x 40 cm x 3 cm. The tea is simply broken off or cut off the plaque in small pieces and boiled in water.
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