origins of tea

In the misty distant past, the second of China’s emperor’s ruled Asia. He was a sage named Shen Nong who understood all manner of plants and their uses. The Chinese say it was Shen Nong who first taught them agriculture and herbal medicine and – of equal importance in their eyes – how to make tea. The first book on the subject, the Ch’a Ching, the “classic” or “scripture” of tea, written in the 760s, cited the emperor as an authority.