Tea Timeline
2,737 BCE Chinese tradition places the discovery of tea by the Emperor Shen Nung. At this time the only tea produced is "green" tea.
3rd Century BCE first drying processes developed. Before this time fresh leaves are brewed. Now leaves are dried and powdered.
1027BCE King Wen, founder of the Zhou Dynasty, receives tea as tribute from leaders in the Szechwan district.
551 - 479 BCE Confucius documented as a tea drinker.
221 - 206 BCE Liu Kun, a military leader in the Qin Dynasty writes to his nephew requesting "real tea" to lift his spirits.
74 - 49 BCE Slave contract indicating duties including the buying and making of tea.
59 BCE Wang Boa gives instructions in his book on how to buy tea and brew it.
206 BCE - CE 220 (Han Dynasty.) Emperor specifies proper pronunciation of the word tea - Cha, distinguishing it from other plants that are descried by the same character.
350 First entry of the word "tea" (cha) in the revised Erya Encyclopedia (600 year old reference work).
420 - 588 Wong Mong a government officer during Southern and Northern Dynasty is described as a man unable to live without tea. His tendency to inundate his guests with tea was referred to as "flooding."
542 476 Tea bartered with the Turkic peoples.
542 The Myth of Ta Mo or Bodhidharma. Buddhist master from India who brought Buddhism to China and founded the Zen School, Said to discover the virtues of tea (cha) after cutting off his eyelids to stay awake during meditation.
618-907 Tang Dynasty. By this time tea is a universal drink. Brick tea is made by steaming the fresh leaves, which are then powdered, and formed into cakes. Cakes can be stored for long periods of time and pieces are broken off and boiled when needed. Early forms of the Tea ceremony develop. Tibet and India trading for tea.
Eight Century A unique character for the word Cha is developed.
729 Japanese Emperor Shomu serves tea to 100 monks in the palace.
780 Lu Yu (the father of tea) publishes the Cha Ching (or Tea Classic), summing up everything that is known about tea at that point. Tea drinking is developed into an art with prescribed rituals. China is the largest empire on the earth, trading tea with most of its neighbors. Kukai, patriarch of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, brought tea in the brick form from China to the Japanese court in the early ninth century.
805 Buddhist priest Saicho, spends 3 years visiting Chinese Buddhist temples on orders from the Japanese emperor, and he returns to Japan with tea seeds.
960 - 1280 Sung (Song) Dynasty. Cultivation techniques are improved and tea becomes affordable even to the poorest households. In the early part of the Dynasty brick tea is still powdered and whipped with a bamboo whisk. During this period tea is flavored with onions, pickle juice, ginger and orange peels. Some brick teas, especially those sent for imperial tribute, are perfumed with essences of camphor, musk, or other spices, although the people in the tea-producing regions usually drank un-perfumed tea. Tea related ceramics achieve legendary beauty. The first tearooms are built.
1101-1126 emperor Hui-tsung who spent time and resources searching for new types of tea generally preferred un-perfumed "white tea" a form of green tea made with leaves that have white hairs and produce an almost clear tea. Because of his influence, perfumed teas are eventually abandoned. Meanwhile, the appreciation of leaf tea spreads among the literati. Leaves are ground to a powder and whisked in bowls in the same way that brick teas are.
1012 Cai Xiang is born. Becomes Fijian Province's tea commissioner and widely accepted as the most discerning tea palette of his day. "Tea tastings" at this time are popular entertainment among the government officials.
1191 Zen Buddhism is re-introduced to Japan by the priest Aeisai, after returning from a visit to China. Aeisai plants tea seeds, and in 1214 makes several medicinal claims for tea.
1200 - 1253 Dogen, disciple of Aeisai (Eisais) is recognized as the founder of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism. Dogen is an enthusiastic tea drinker.
1227 Dogen returns from China with a wide assortment of tea utensils. In his instructions on daily life at the Eiheiji temple, he gives instructions for tea ceremonies.
1280 - 1368 Mongol conquest of China (1279) - Yuan Dynasty. Tea drinking discouraged.
1368 - 1644 Ming Dynasty - Chinese cultural revival.
1391 Chu Yuan-chang decrees that brick tea should no longer be produced, and that all tribute tea should be leaf tea. (The production of brick tea for the imperial court had been a highly complex and very expensive process, an extravagant source of corruption and waste.) Once cake tea was no longer available, the ritual of preparing whisked tea from powdered tea is abandoned. Brewed tea becomes the most popular way to prepare tea. Early forms of teapots are used.
1394-1481 Ikkyu, a prince who became a priest, was successful in guiding the nobles away from their corruption of the tea ceremony.
1500 Teapots in China take on the familiar shape used today. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a newly prosperous and influential merchant class develops in Japan and tea becomes available to a wider circle of people.
1422-1502 Murata Shuko a tea master in Japan, pupil of Ikkyu, saw that tea could be more that an opportunity for a party, could be more than a light medicine, and could have meaning outside of the temple ceremony. He realized that the preparation and drinking of tea could be an expression of the Zen belief that every act of daily life is a potential act that can lead to enlightenment. Shuko breaks all convention to perform the tea ritual for an aristocratic audience in a humble four-and-a-half-mat room.
1448 Japan's Shogun Yoshimasa encourages painting, drama and tea.
1522-1591 Sen no Rikyu (Rikkyu) the son of a rich merchant in Sakai, near Osaka, grows up in the most prosperous trading port in Japan in the sixteenth century. His background brings him into contact with the tea ceremonies of the rich, but he becomes more interested in the way priests approached the tea ritual as an embodiment of Zen principles for appreciating the sacred in the everyday. Taking a cue from Suko's example, Rikyu strips everything non-essential from the tearoom and the style of preparation, and developed a tea ritual in which there is no wasted movement and no object that is superfluous.
1559 A Venetian diplomat and traveler Giambattista Ramusio writes a book called the Voyages and Travels in which he describes "Chai Catai'(Tea of China).
1606 or 1610 Dutch East India Company imports the first shipments of Chinese tea.
1618 first tea served to the Czar of Russia by Chinese embassy.
1644 Manchus invade China and take power as the Quing dynasty. Tea makers discover the secrets of controlled "fermentation" or oxidation of the leaves before and during the drying process. Oolong and Black (red) teas are developed. As a result the coloration of tea cups changes to lighter hues.
1657 East India Company advertises tea's health benefits and begins sales in London. Tea is recommended as a treatment for apoplexy, catarrh, colic, consumption, drowsiness, epilepsy, gallstones, lethargy, migraine, paralysis, and vertigo.
1658 Thomas Garway advertises tea in his coffeehouse in London.
1675 tea becomes available in Holland in regular food stores.
1717 Thomas Twining opens first "tea-only" house and invites women to enjoy the previously "men-only" drink.
1773 United States Boston colonists, protesting the taxation of tea by Great Britain, board a ship from the Dutch East India Company and dump its cargo of tea into the bay.
1824 John Cadbury, a young English Quaker fresh from his apprenticeship at teahouses in Leeds, opens a grocery store at 93 Bull Street in Birmingham. Tea and coffee are his main commodities along with a newly imported product, cocoa. In 1831 he shifts the focus of his business to drinking chocolate and in 1849 manufactures his first chocolate bars.
1839

Black Assam tea arrives in London from India in large quantities. From this point on Black tea sales increase and Green tea sales decrease.
1850 The first U.S. clipper ship to visit London arrives after a 97-day voyage from Hong Kong. Named the "Oriental" she carries 1,600-tons of tea and her $48,000 cargo fee nearly covers the cost of her construction.
1876 Glasgow grocer Thomas Lipton opens his first shop at the age of 26. His success is due in large part to the marketing techniques he learned from his time spent working in New York department stores. 1908 Thomas Sullivan sends samples of tea to customers in silk bags. Infusions are made with the tea still in the bags and soon Sullivan is selling out of "bagged tea."
   

 

© Richard R. Powell - November 2003