History of Tea

Tea was first discovered by the Chinese Emperor Shennong in 2737 BC. It is said that the emperor liked his drinking water boiled before he drank it, so it would be clean.  

One day, on a trip to a distant region, he and his army stopped to rest. A servant began boiling water for him to drink, and a dead leaf from the wild tea bush fell into the water. It turned a brownish color, but it was unnoticed and presented to the emperor anyway. 

The emperor drank it and found it very refreshing, and cha (tea) was born. 

The Origin of the word "Cha" (Tea) 

During the Han Dynasty, the word 'tu' took on a new pronunciation, 'cha', in addition to its old pronunciation 'tu'.

The phoneme 'tu' (荼) later developed into 'te' in the Fujian dialect, and later 'tea', 'te'.

The first use of the word Cha instead of 'tu' for tea was in Lu Yu's Cha Jing, The Classic of Tea (Cha Jing 茶經) of 760 AD.

The Han Dynasty used tea as medicine. The use of tea as a beverage drunk for pleasure on social occasions dates from the Tang Dynasty or earlier.

Tea leaves were processed into compressed cakes form (brick-tea) , which was ground in a stone mortar. Hot water was added to the powdered teacake, or the powdered teacake was boiled in earthenware kettles then consumed as a hot beverage.

A form of compressed tea referred to as white tea was being produced as far back as the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). This special white tea of Tang was picked in early spring, when the tea bushes had abundant growths which resembled silver needles. These "first flushes" were used as the raw material to make the compressed tea.

from the wikipedia