5000 years ago when Sheng Nung randomly grabbed a tree leaf to cure his wound, he instantly realized that the leaf worked magic. The leaf was passed on and the drink became known as “cha.” When Lu Yu wrote the definite bible of cha, Cha Jin, in 780 AD, cha had trickled from upper class down to common folks, and soon traveled to Korea and Japan. Cha became a characteristic of the oriental culture.

Although there are different teas such as green tea, oolong tea, and black tea, only green tea has been hailed as healthy drink. It can prevent heart disease and cancer, relieve arthritis and improve general health. For example, a group of Japanese researchers examined the effect of green tea on mortality among 40,000 Ohsaki people. They measured tea consumption at baseline and followed them for about 11 years. They found that drinking more than 5 cups of green tea was associated with lower total mortality, and in particular, it was associated with lower cerebral infarction death (hemorrhage stroke).

Nobody knows why green tea is so great. It is generally believed that antioxidants and some exotic chemicals may be the cause. It’s God’s gift, some say.

The interesting thing is that oolong tea and black tea are not as healthy as green tea. This may be due to the different process in curing the tea leaves. Tea leaves are dried and wrinkled to make green tea, while oolong tea and black tea requires further baked leaves. The antioxidants may be lost during the baking process.

Green tea in China is well appreciated among intellectuals and the upper class. However, tea preference differs significantly across regions. People along the east coast around Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, prefer green tea, while people in the south coast around Fujian and Guangdong like dark oolong tea. For northern people, it seems to me they drink dark tea too, but the tea taste is not as strong as that of the southern tea.

In Japan and Korea, most people drink green tea. It is in Japan that tea drinking becomes a greatly elaborated ceremony (there are some kind of ceremony in China too). In Japan, one of the key skills a geisha must know is tea ceremony. Needless to say, watching a beautiful woman handling tiny tea pots and performing silly rituals is quite pleasing.

Although leaves in most types of tea look like wrinkled or self wrapped strips, when they are in hot water, tea leaves can have different shapes. For example, Longjing tea leaves will open up gracefully in the water and hang in the middle of the water, but not float on the top. One type of tea has leaves standing in the middle of the water like needles. In general, the more beautiful the leaves look in water, the better the tea is, so is claimed.

The most exotic tea I tried was the Mongolian tea brick. One of my college classmates brought a bulk of tea brick to school. In making the tea, he literally knocked one piece off the brick, threw it into the hot water, and then he added some sour milk he brought from home too (he said tea and milk can be boiled togther too.). The tea looked quite gross, and the taste was so strong that I almost vomited. But Mongols conquered half of the world by drinking this kind of tea.

A little bit googling told me that tea reached Europe around 1600s. The upper class in England, influenced by the tea-drinking king, started the fashion of drinking black tea. One of the main tasks for British explorers was to trade as many tea leaves as possible from India and China.

It is also of note that Coffee was introduced to Europe from Arab around similar time. Coffee first became popular in the European continent. When Brazil started cultivating coco trees from the seedlings stolen from France, coffee drinking became popular in the whole world.

Coffee contains more cocaine than regular green tea does. Cocaine is addictive. Many people can’t start a day without a cup of coffee. But I know some people start their days with a cup of tea too.

Coffee and tea, together with coco-cola and alcohol, have been off my food list for a long time. I only drink plain water, two bottles a day. I notice that sometimes I need to drink half a bottle of water to wake me up. Maybe I am addicted to water. What a life!