Chinese tea culture

Tea comes from the leaves of the tea plant, native to south-west China; legend credits its discovery to the mythical ruler Shennong, but written records of tea cultivation in China go back well over 1,500 years. Under the Tang dynasty the scholar Lu Yu wrote The Classic of Tea, the first book devoted to tea, and drinking it became part of daily life across the country. Chinese tea is grouped into six main types — green, white, yellow, oolong, black (called “red tea”, hongcha, in Chinese) and dark tea such as pu’er — and each region is proud of its own. Along the old Tea Horse Road, caravans carried tea from Yunnan and Sichuan to Tibet, where it was traded for horses. Today you can sip green tea from a glass in a Chengdu teahouse, watch an unhurried gongfu tea session with tiny cups, or pick leaves on a hillside farm in spring.