As the oldest drink in China, tea has become an integral part of Chinese people's life. It is geographically unrestricted, and it has no ethnic differences, and has been handed around for thousands of years.
1. Ancient medicinal herbs
The first time of discovering tea and using tea in China can be traced back to the primitive society, when people directly ate the fresh leaves of tea trees and drew tea juice from them. According to the Huainan period."Shennong tasted the taste of a hundred grass, the joys and sorrows of the water spring, let the people know to avoid."From this legend can know that China began to eat tea about five thousand years ago.
At that time, people used chewing tea as a habit, and after a long time with tea history, chewing tea became cooked. People wash the fresh tea leaves, boil them with water, and take them together with the soup. But the boiled tea tastes bitter, and people mainly used it as medicine or medicine. If someone is sick, people will pick fresh buds and leaves from the tea tree, take the tea juice, or cooperate with other Chinese medicine for patients to take together. Although the boiled tea is very bitter, it does have an anti-inflammatory and detoxification effect. This is the beginning of tea as medicinal use.
2. Eat on tea
Slowly, the role of tea in people's life began to change. Using tea as food is not a new idea invented in modern times."Shi Shu" said, " Pepper trees, dogwood, Shu people make tea, Wu people make tea, all boiled together for food."As early as before the Han Dynasty, people used tea as a dish, and after the tea was cooked, and eaten together with the food. At that time, the purpose of tea was not only as food detoxification, but also to increase nutrition. During The Three Kingdoms period, the simple processing of tea had appeared in the Wei Dynasty. The leaves picked were first made into cakes, dried or dried, which was the germination of tea making technology.
In the Tang and Song dynasties, tea banquets were also popular among imperial palaces, monasteries and scholars. But ordinary people have no chance to attend the tea banquet, it is mainly for the powerful people. The general process of tea banquet is: first by the host personally adjust tea or command, supervision, in order to show respect to the guests, then offer tea, tea, smell tea, view tea color, tea taste. Next, the guests need to comment on the tea tasting, praise the host's morality, enjoy the scenery and write poems, etc. The atmosphere of the whole tea banquet is solemn and elegant, the etiquette is strict, the tea used must be used to use tribute tea or advanced tea, the tea set must be precious tea set, the selected water must also be taken from the famous spring, clear spring, its luxury degree is really surprising.
3. The appearance of cake tea, string tea and tea cream
Pie tea, also known as tuan tea, is to process tea leaves into cakes. It began in the Sui and Tang Dynasties and flourished in the Song Dynasty. In the Sui and Tang dynasties, in order to improve the bitter taste of tea, people began to mix mint, salt and red dates in the cake tea. Ouyang Xiu wrote in his "Return to the Field": " The product of tea, more expensive than the dragon and phoenix called the group tea, where eight cakes weigh a jin."The preliminary processing of cake tea still has a very strong grass flavor, after repeated practice, people invented the steamed green tea, that is, through the flood polyester fresh leaves, steamed green pressing, juice cake, so that the bitterness of tea greatly reduced.
"Mengxi Bi Talk · Magazine 2" said: " The ancient people on tea, only said Yang envy Gu zhu pillar misty top, did not say Jianxi. However, the Tang people heavy string tea sticky black, is almost built cake."People in the Tang Dynasty wrapped the cake tea with black tea leaves, made a hole in the middle, and strung it up with ropes to call it string tea.
Tea cream is rarely mentioned nowadays and was only used in the past at the court. When drinking tea, the tea cream is crushed, then carefully ground, ground, screened, and finally placed in a cup, and then boiling water. From this point of view, the whole production process and drinking are very complicated.
4. The emergence of loose tea
The earliest brick tea and group tea are called block tea, and the tea is not brewed to the tea as now, but the way of "boiling" the tea. It was not until the middle and late Song Dynasty that the production of tea changed from tuan tea and gradually to loose tea. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, issued an imperial edict to waste tuan tea, xing leaf tea, and loose tea gradually became the main tea. Since then, people no longer make tea into cake tea, but directly brew the tea in the pot or cup, human tea and tea mode has undergone a significant change. The method of drinking tea has also evolved from "ordering" tea to "brewing" tea. The popular saying of "making tea" only appeared in the Ming Dynasty and became popular in the Qing Dynasty.
5. Six major tea lines are produced
When the tea culture developed to the Qing Dynasty, although the luxurious group tea and cake tea had been replaced by loose tea, China's tea culture completed the transformation from the peak to the top in the Qing Dynasty. The most prominent feature of tea drinks in the Qing Dynasty was the emergence of six tea lines, namely, green tea, black tea, yellow tea, dark tea, white tea, scented tea.
6. The development of modern tea
Today, tea culture has been integrated into the life of each family. In addition to the more and more rich varieties of tea, drinking methods also tend to be diversified. In addition to the seven tea systems, people also invented a variety of tea drinks, such as herbal tea, fruit tea and health tea. The forms of these tea drinks have also begun to diversify: liquid tea, instant tea, tea bags.... These colorful tea drinks fully meet people's daily needs, and their unique charm also makes all kinds of people more and more enthusiastic.
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