First European to bring tea out of China

Though traders must have long carried tales of tea and even tea samples from China and Japan to Europe, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, Jasper de Cruz was the first person to document his experiences of making and drinking the stuff. That was in 1560. But it was the Dutch who introduced the beverage commercially to Europe. The Dutch East India Company at the time was busy trying to dominate the spice trade of what was to later become the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia. Unlike the Portuguese they had never successfully established direct trade relations with China, instead relying on transshipment out of Java. There the Dutch would have regularly come into contact ships from Fujian or Guangdong carrying tea and it was from Java around 1610 that the first tea was shipped to Holland. The tea initially imported into Europe was green tea. It was expensive and marketed largely as a health drink, but by the mid Eighteenth Century tea was cheap and plentiful enough for the populations of Russia and England to be addicted to it. Much later the Dutch grew tea in Indonesia and that country remains a significant producer today.

By Explore Cultural China

A potted history of tea

The Chinese have been drinking tea for a long time. Legend tells us that tea the drink, was discovered accidentally around 2700 BC by the mythical Emperor known as the Divine Cultivator, Shen Nong. Tea has been cultivated in China for at least eighteen hundred years.
Tea drinking began in Japan during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–807).

Tea arrived in Europe around 1610, the same time that coffee found its way from Africa. During the 17th Century, coffee found more favour with the English than tea, but lacking any coffee growing colonies themselves, and not wanting to enrich their European rivals who did, the British Government encouraged the sale of tea.
 
Britain and Russia became the leading European aficionados of tea, and remain so today.
In the early days of importation, tea in Europe was a luxury, sold largely on the basis of its supposed medicinal properties. The rich had it, everyone else wanted it, and within a century, they got it.
The British tea trade was lucrative enough to inadvertently spur the development of shipping technology: the clipper ship that arrived early in a British port with a fresh, and dry cargo, had a market advantage over its slower, leakier rivals.
Originally, green tea was imported to Europe, but it was easy to adulterate with cheaper, look-alike plants. The market eventually switched to black tea.
Americans were keen tea drinkers early on but the events leading up to and including the Boston Tea Party in 1773 changed all that. Today they remain staunch coffee drinkers.
The Opium Wars grew out of the British public's love affair with tea. British coffers were draining away to China to pay for imported tea leaf, but the British had nothing compelling to offer to the Chinese in return. The Brits, wanting to even up the trade imbalance, sold the Chinese opium from British India. With some two million people addicted to "foreign mud", Chinese outrage resulted in attempts to restrict the import of opium, and the Opium Wars resulted.
The China tea trade reached its zenith in 1886. The Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, combined with a general decline in Ching Dynasty fortunes, resulted in a drastic decline of exports. By the 1940s India and Japan were the leading tea merchants to the world.
Although Chinese have had cups with handles since early times, handleless cups, or bowls, with or without lids have usually been preferred.
The tea saucer is not a British, but a Tang Dynasty-Chinese invention. Handleless cups full of tea are too hot to pass around. The saucer acts as a 'tray'; its circular indent designed to prevent the cup from slipping around. 

By Explore Cultural China

Lu Shan Cha

Lushan Cloud-fog Tea is a sort of top-quality green tea produced in Lushan Mountain, Jiangxi Province. It is named after the production place. Lushan Mountain is featured by high altitude, great seasonal temperature difference, strong irradiation of ultraviolet, could and mist suffusion in half a year, and murmuring spring. This environment offers advantageous growing conditions for tea trees and facilitates the compounding of aromatic substances in them, thus contributing to the top quality of Lushan Cloud-fog Tea.
Made of tender shoots, Lushan Cloud-fog Tea is characterized by elegant and prominent appearance, unveiled silver pekoe, jade green color and luster, lingering fragrance, fresh and sweet savor, as well as long-lasting aftertaste. The liquor is abundant in tea polyphenol, leaf extract and long-lasting intense fragrance, with the content of tea alkaloid and vitamin C higher than that of common types of tea.
It is said that monks living on the Lushan Mountain began to plant tea trees on the mountain early in the Eastern Han Dynasty 1800 years ago. The period around Qing Ming Festival is the high time for picking tea leaves, the raw material of Lushan Cloud-fog Tea. The most precious Lushan Cloud-fog Tea is “Mingqian Tea” which is made of tea leaves picked prior to the Qing Ming Festival when spring just comes back and the shoots are extremely tender. The picked shoots must be processed on the same day with multiple working procedures. One kilogram finished tea requires over 0.1 million tender shoots.

By Explore Cultural China

A Chinese tea party

The Chinese take their tea seriously. Everyone, from taxi drivers to company presidents, drinks tea every day, all day long. Tea is consumed in liters: cups upon cups of the lovely, steaming, fragrant stuff. But any Chinese tea expert knows that much of the action and excitement takes place long before the first heavenly sip. While most everyday tea is just a matter of water sloshed over tea leaves, a true tea aficionado knows there are meticulous details of brewing time, water temperature, quality of water, types of tea pots and cups that make a big difference in the result. And that‘s after all the care has been taken to grow and ferment the delicate leaves, to blend and so on.

Tea is to the Chinese as wine is to the French, as beer is to Germans, as cigars are to Cubans.
The current revival in tea culture and teahouses can be interpreted as an increasing interest in traditional Chinese culture. While tea to Beijingers was never quite the obsession that it was for their southern cousins, teahouses were still quite popular in the city before the revolution.　　
Any one of the teas that you might buy at a tea shop are, in fact, blends of about seven or eight leaves. Leaves grown in different parts of the country have distinctive personalities. Leaves from Fujian Province, for example, are known to be more fragrant, Anhui leaves are favored for their pure flavor, Guangxi tea leaves behind a certain bitterness, and Zhejiang tea is known for its tastiness. Prices of tea leaves can range from 50 to 500 yuan per jin. A tea master must take into consideration taste, appearance and price when blending teas. Needless to say, putting together a fine tea is not an easy task, but one that requires years of experience.
Tea is not only an inescapable part of daily Chinese life, but also an important part of Chinese culture. The origins of tea drinking in China have been studied by many a scholar, and the theories expounded on it are numerous. Whatever the case, it would be a safe bet that tea has been consumed in China for roughly 5,000 years. With such a long tradition, it‘s not at all surprising that the folklore and customs that surround tea, its preparation and its consumption are rich and elaborate.
Most obvious, tea is an excellent thirst quencher. But any Chinese person knows it also stimulates the appetite and helps digestion. Tea cleans out your insides and has about a dozen medicinal attributes. Many would say that there‘s nothing like a cup of tea to settle the stomach after a night of excess. And of course, there is also the caffeine that‘s most present in Oolong tea. There are also more outrageous claims ranging from "facilitate the flow of urine" to "prevent cell mutation and act as an anti-carcinogen." But most people just like tea because it‘s refreshing.
Various teas have their special attributes. Green tea, the preferred daily drink of Anhui and Nanjing residents, can qu huo , or calm the inner fire in the body. Beijingers prefer to drink hua cha, jasmine tea, which is said to aid digestion. Oolong tea, a favorite in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, is an even stronger aid to digestion. And black teas, the favorite of most foreigners, is sometimes said to be cooling.
For all its cultivated elaborateness, tea ceremonies represent the apex. Just ask a taxi driver to try to pour all those little clay containers in his cab. Tea is meant to be enjoyed in numerous shapes and forms.
 

By Explore Cultural China

World's 'most expensive' tea grown in Chinese panda poo

By Allison Jackson 

 http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-most-expensive-tea-grown-chinese-panda-poo-074944929.html

 Chinese entrepreneur has purchased 11 tonnes of excrement from a panda breeding centre to fertilise a tea crop in the mountains of Sichuan province in southwestern China, home to the black and white bears

Chinese entrepreneur An Yanshi is convinced he has found the key ingredient to produce the world's most expensive tea -- panda poo.
The former calligraphy teacher has purchased 11 tonnes of excrement from a panda breeding centre to fertilize a tea crop in the mountains of Sichuan province in southwestern China, home to the black and white bears.
An says he will harvest the first batch of tea leaves this spring and it will be the "world's most expensive tea" at almost 220,000 yuan ($35,000) for 500 grams (18 ounces).
Chinese tea drinkers regard the first batch of tea to be harvested in the early spring as the best and successive batches, regarded as inferior, will sell for around 20,000 yuan.

An Yanshi, dressed in a panda outfit, shows off panda faeces stored in a glass jar at his studio in China's Chengdu. An says he will harvest the first batch of tea leaves this spring and it will be the "world's most expensive tea" at almost 220,000 yuan for 500 grams

The 41-year-old, who is so passionate about his new project he dressed in a panda suit for his interview with AFP, has been ridiculed by some in China for his extravagant claims of the potential health benefits of the tea.
But he insists he is deadly serious, saying he quit his job at Sichuan University to throw himself "heart and soul" into his company, Panda Tea, whose logo features a smiling panda wearing a bow tie and holding a steaming glass of green tea.
While An hopes to make money from the tea, which he has planted on just over a hectare (2.5 acres) of land, his main mission is to convince the world to protect the environment and replace chemical fertilisers with animal faeces -- before it is too late.
"Panda dung is rich in nutrition... and should be much better than chemical fertilizers," An told AFP, as he sat at a traditional Chinese tea table drinking tea grown with cow manure.
"People should make a harmonious relationship with heaven, earth and the environment," An said.
"Everybody has an obligation to protect the environment," he added, as he showed AFP dozens of traditional Chinese scroll paintings that he has created of cheerful-looking pandas, bamboo and calligraphy.
The tea aficionado got the idea to use panda faeces as fertilizer after attending a seminar last year where he discovered that the bears absorbed less than 30 percent of the bamboo they consumed, excreting the remaining 70 percent.
An showed AFP a glass jar of fresh-looking panda faeces, which he uses to fertilize two tea plants in his office, noting the "quality" and "green" colour of the dung.
He is so convinced that Panda Tea will be a hit that he has patented the idea to prevent a competitor stealing it -- a common occurrence in a country where laws protecting intellectual property rights are often flouted.
His claim that the green tea will help people lose weight and protect them from radiation has been ridiculed by some Chinese web users, who have expressed doubts about the purported health benefits of the tea and the high asking price for the first harvest.
"If it is such a good fertiliser for tea plants, I want to ask this teacher: why don't you just eat panda dung? Then you can get the rest of the 70 percent nutrition," a web user called Baihuashu said.
Another web user called 24-0 said: "Over 200,000 yuan per jin (500 grams) for panda tea fertilized by panda droppings -- is that for drinking tea or drinking pandas' blood?"
Despite the online detractors of his yet-to-be-tested tea, An said he remained undeterred and was already thinking about expanding his business.
"After the first batch is harvested, if the quality is really good, we will expand the economies of scale," said An, waving his panda paws for emphasis.

China Tea Culture for the foreigner

Chinese people are always been known for their receiving customs of “Making tea when guests visit”, which a reflection of Chinese civilization and etiquette. As a foreigner in China, if you want to “do in Roman as the Romans do” and make friends with Chinese people, it is better for you to know something about Chinese tea culture.

The Essence of Tea
Chinese people always say that “People are innocent and kind-hearted when born”, so the character of the Chinese is like tea, reasonable and clear-headed, wish for common progress with others in harmony and friendliness. The common points of cultural spirit of every Chinese school are: Harmony and Peace.
 
Compared with the boundless universe and the whole world, the living space of human life is relatively small. Therefore, conflicts and contradictions between human beings and nature, human and human, are unavoidable. In westerner’s viewpoint, the only means to solve problems is a direct way, in which fire and water are incompatible. However, in China, people uphold order, and help each other in friendship and understanding. They would like to communicate and exchange ideas in tea time, which will enhance friendship and understanding. Drinking tea will help people reflect themselves and inspect themselves and others clearly.

Tea---Seeds of Friendship
Tea has been the connecting belt of friendship between China and Japan since ancient times. In the exchange between people of the two countries, stories about tea can be heard everywhere. Since Song Dynasty, there are Arab businessmen living in Quanzhou city, Fujian Province and transporting tea to other places; In Ming Dynasty, Captain Zheng He travel to southwest Asia and southern Africa countries by ship and carried tea along with the team.

Tea Art
In Chinese history, no matter you are making tea by boiling it or by other means, you should be mind of the “spare separation of tea essence”. Good tea is created and enjoyed by all people. From the angle of nature, drinking tea should be in a harmonious environment, the skills and procedure and other tea art should be coordinated with the nature, suitable for tea drinker.

In the teahouse, a multicolor world, where all kinds of people will come here to drink and tell their stories, writers will be enchanted by, strange or common, happy or sorrowful, and produce various versions of stories in many kinds of literature forms, novel, or opera, or essays. The stories are also performed at the three-meter high stage or in inch-wide paintings. The words, the play, the painting, are all a reflection of the existence of teahouse at a time.

All in all, tea culture is a kind of elegant culture, with social celebrities and famous stars participated in. Tea culture is also public culture with the common people participate in and it will influence the whole society.

 By Explore Cultural China
 

Tea more important than rice in China

People throughout China drink tea daily. Tea is to the Chinese as wine is to the French, as beer is to the Germans, as cigars are to the Cubans.

History

It is true that the word for tea, cha, never appeared in ancient Chinese texts; the character cha was created by Lu Yu in the 8th century during the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.). Based on written records and more recently excavated archaeological evidence, we know that tea as a beverage had become rather popular in Central China along the Yangzi River and its tributaries during the Western Han period (206 B.C.-24 A.D.) at the latest.
Chinese drink tea at meals and serve it to friends when they come for a visit. "On such occasions, it is served continually as long as they remain together engaged in conversation," wrote Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), an Italian Christian missionary who stayed in China for 28 years, in "China in the Sixteen Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583－1610." "This beverage is sipped rather than drunk and it is always taken hot," Ricci wrote. He also remarked that the bitter taste of tea was not unpleasant and was good for one's health.

Category

Because of the geographic location and climate, different places grow various kinds of tea. In general, there are five kinds of tea classified according to different techniques involved in the brewing process.

Green tea
Green tea keeps the original color of the tealeaves without fermentation during processing. Top brands include Longjing in Zhejiang Province, Maofeng of Huangshan Mountain in Anhui Province, and Biluochun in Jiangsu Province.
Black tea
Black tea, known as "Red Tea" (hong cha) in China, is fermented before baking. The best brands are Qihong in Anhui, Dianhong in Yunnan, Suhong in Jiangsu, Chuanhong in Sichuan and Huhong in Hunan.
Wulong tea
This represents a variety half way between the green and the black teas, and it is made after partial fermentation. Wulong tea abounds in Fujian, Guangdong, and Taiwan along China's southeast coast.
Compressed tea
It is compressed and hardened into a certain shape. It is easy to transport and store and is mainly supplied to the ethnic minorities living in the border areas of the country. Most of the compressed tea is in the form of bricks, thus the name "brick tea." Sometimes it is cake or bowl-shaped. It is mainly produced in Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.
Scented tea
It is made by mixing fragrant flowers in the tealeaves in the course of processing. The flowers commonly used for this purpose are jasmine and magnolia among others. Jasmine tea is a well-known favorite among the northerners in China.

By Explore Cultural China

A Blessed and Happy New Year to one and all - 2012

Wishing everyone a happy, blessed and joyous 2012.

May your year be filled with warm pots of tea and your cups be raised to greet each new day with cheer.

Happy New Year!

Tips for brewing tea

1. Know the various qualities of different tea
Before making a pot of tea, one should first know the characteristics of the tea. Thus, one can choose the most appropriate brewing technique suitable to a specific tea to bring out its best quality. Tea quality is affected by various factors, such as weather, the land and the grower.
2. Control the amount
How much tea should be put into the pot depends on the specialty of each kind of tea as well as the brewer's habits. Generally speaking, the standard amount (the amount used by the professional tea brewer when brewing a pot of tea) is 3 grams of tea brewed with 150 cubic centimeters of water for 5 minutes.
The ratio of water to tealeaf depends on the quality of tea and the drinking method. Generally speaking, famous tea or top-grade tea requires a ratio of 50:1, and ordinary black, green, white and scented tea 75:1. The ratio of water to Oolong is 25:1.
3. Choose appropriate tea sets and water
When brewing tea, one should pay attention not only to the tealeaf's shape, color, scent and taste but also to the teapot's quality and artistic design to set off the elegant tealeaf. Generally, a big teapot is chosen when one wants to satisfy thirst while a small pot is used when one desires to taste and appreciate the tea.
Tea of top quality should be brewed with top-grade water to bring out its best. Longjing Tea (Dragon Well Tea) and Hupao Spring (Tiger Spring) are known as the two superb products of Hangzhou City. Even though the tea-brewing water deserves careful study, one should bear in mind the actual condition when making tea. Water, which reaches drinking standards and will bring out the best of tea, can be chosen to make tea. If conditions allow, one can use natural spring water or lake water or river water, which is a better choice for sure.
4. Control the water temperature
Generally, people use boiled water to brew old tealeaves, while cooling down the boiled water a little bit to brew tender tealeaves. For example, top-grade green tea and some famous kinds of tea, which should be picked when they are tender, cannot be brewed with boiling water. So one should wait until the water temperature cools down to about 80 degrees Celsius. In this way, the tea will have clear water, a pure scent, fresh taste and brightly-colored leaves.
5. Control the brewing time
Generally, brewing time should be short for those tender and strongly-scented tealeaves of a large amount, while a long brewing time is required for coarse and strong-tasting tealeaves of a small amount. For those who like drinking strong tea, its better to brew the tea for a longer time; for those who prefer a weaker taste, its better to shorten the time.

by Explore Cultural China

Green tea prevents reinfection in Hepatitis C liver transplants

A flavonoid found in green tea—inhibits the hepatitis C virus (HCV) from entering liver cells, according to German researchers. The flavonoid, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), may offer an antiviral strategy to prevent HCV reinfection following liver transplantation.

HCV infection can lead to chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or primary liver cancer. HCV is one of the most common causes of chronic liver disease and a primary indication for liver transplantation, affecting up to 170 million individuals worldwide according to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO). Prior studies report that nearly 2% of the world population is infected with chronic HCV and up to 20% of the population in some countries.

While standard treatment with interferon with ribavirin and newer protease inhibitors may clear infection in some individuals, a substantial number of patients still may not respond to these therapies. For individuals receiving liver transplants due to complications from HCV, reinfection of the healthy donor liver remains a significant concern. Antiviral strategies that target HCV in its early stages are urgently needed to prevent graft 

reinfection and improve long-term outcomes for patients.

To address this critical issue, Dr. Sandra Ciesek and Dr. Eike Steinmann from the Hannover Medical School in Germany investigated the effect of the EGCG molecule, which is a major component of green tea, in preventing HCV from attaching to liver cells. "Green tea catechins such as EGCG and its derivatives epigallocatechin (EGC), epicatechingallate (ECG), and epicatechin (EC) have been shown to exhibit antiviral and anti-oncogenic properties," explains Dr. Ciesek. "Our study further explores the potential effect these flavonoids have in preventing HCV reinfection following liver transplantation."

Results showed that unlike its derivatives, EGCG inhibits entry of HCV into liver cells. The authors suggest that EGCG may impede HCV cell entry by acting on the host cell as the green tea catechin was not found to alter the density of virus particles. Pretreatment of cells with EGCG before HCV inoculation did not reduce the infection; however application during inoculation inhibited the rapid spread of the HCV. Lastly, researchers showed that EGCG inhibits viral attachment—the initial step in the HCV infection process. "The green tea antioxidant EGCG inhibits HCV cell entry by blocking viral attachment and may offer a new approach to prevent HCV infection, particularly reinfection following liver transplantation." concludes Dr. Ciesek.

by VR Sreeraman on  December 02, 2011
Source-Eurekalert

Read more: Green Tea Prevents Hepatitis C Reinfection In Liver Transplant Patients | MedIndia http://www.medindia.net/news/Green-Tea-Prevents-Hepatitis-C-Reinfection-In-Liver-Transplant-Patients-94216-1.htm#ixzz1gaKzISo5

The Science of brewing tea

The Chinese attach great importance to water for a good brew. Since ancient times, "The tea of Longjing (Dragon Well) and the water of Hupao (Tiger Running S pring)," and "The water from the midstream of the Yangtze River and the tea from the top of Mount Mengshan" have been regarded as the best pairs for making tea. It is generally believed that "water is the mother of tea," and that it takes the incorporation of the right leaves and the right water to fully bring out the potential flavor of tea.
The second rule is that tea wares are also of great importance to the quality of tea. Different teas should go with different types of tea wares. People generally tend to steep gteen tea in glasses, oolong tea in kungfu tea in kungfu tea vessels, and red tea in purple clay pots. The utensil called gaiwan, literally "lidded bowl," is what the northern Chinese prefer when it comes to steeping scented tea.
One must first be equipped with an understanding of the characteristics of all types of tea. The inherent character of tea will be able to be fully released if scientific methods are applied. In general, the three most impotant things one should bear in mind are the proportion of leaves to water, the water temperature and the period of steeping.

By Explore Cultural China