A Short History of Tea: From Ancient China to Your Cup
Tea started as medicine. For most of its first thousand years, people in China boiled tea leaves with things like ginger, salt, and orange peel and drank the result as a tonic. It took centuries for tea to become something people drank for pleasure, and centuries more for it to reach the rest of the world. This article follows that path, and looks at what different cultures did with tea once they had it.
How I got into tea
I'm Joanne, and I started A Moment of Tea after a cup of green tea in a Beijing teahouse in 2014 changed how I thought about tea entirely. The sweetness lingered for two days. That afternoon led me to years of study under tea masters at Lian Yu Tea School, and eventually to opening a tea bar in Hobart where I could share what I'd learned.
Part of what kept me studying was the history. Every tea I learned to brew came with a story about where it came from and why it's made the way it is. Here's the short version of that story.
A short history of tea
Legend and medicine
The Chinese origin story credits Shennong, a mythical emperor and herbalist said to have discovered tea around 2737 BC when leaves drifted into his pot of boiling water. It's a legend, but it points at something real: the tea plant is native to the mountains of southwest China, around what is now Yunnan province, and the earliest written records treat tea as a medicine and a food, not a drink. People chewed the leaves, pickled them, and boiled them into soups.
Lu Yu writes the first tea book (Tang dynasty, 618–907)
By the Tang dynasty, tea had become an everyday drink across China. Around 760, a writer named Lu Yu finished the Cha Jing, or Classic of Tea — the first book devoted entirely to tea. He wrote about growing it, processing it, and judging water (mountain spring water first, river water second, well water last). Tea in his day came compressed into cakes that were ground up and boiled. Almost nothing of that method survives in modern China, but the book made tea a subject worth taking seriously, and it has never stopped being one.
Whisked tea (Song dynasty, 960–1279)
Under the Song, preparation changed completely. Tea was ground to a fine powder and whisked with hot water into a froth, a method called diancha (点茶). There were whisking competitions. Poets wrote about the foam. If this sounds familiar, it's because Japanese monks carried the method home in the twelfth century. China eventually moved on to other ways of making tea, but Japan kept whisked tea and refined it over centuries into matcha and the Japanese tea ceremony.
Loose leaf takes over (Ming dynasty, 1368–1644)
In 1391, the first Ming emperor — who had grown up poor and thought compressed tribute tea cakes were a wasteful burden on farmers — banned them from court. Loose leaf tea became the standard, and steeping whole leaves in hot water became the normal way to drink it. Nearly everything about how we brew today, from teapots to gaiwans, developed after this change. The six categories of Chinese tea also took shape in the centuries that followed, as tea makers worked out oxidation, roasting, and fermentation.
Tea leaves China
Dutch traders shipped the first commercial tea to Europe in the early 1600s. It reached England by the 1650s, sold in coffee houses as an exotic novelty, and became fashionable after Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess who married King Charles II in 1662, brought her tea habit to the English court. In the 1840s, Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, began ordering tea and snacks in the late afternoon to get through the gap between lunch and a fashionably late dinner. Her guests copied her, and afternoon tea became a fixture of British life.
The six types, in one minute
All tea comes from one plant, Camellia sinensis. What separates a green tea from a black tea or a pu-erh is processing — mainly how much the leaves oxidise after picking. Chinese tradition sorts the results into six categories: green, white, yellow, oolong, black, and dark tea. Each one deserves more space than I can give it here. Our guide to the six types of Chinese tea goes through them in detail, and if you're completely new to the subject, our beginner's guide to Chinese tea is the place to start.
How tea is celebrated across cultures
In China, the loose leaf era produced Gongfu brewing: a small pot, short steeps, and full attention on the tea. It's less a ceremony than a craft — the name means skill gained through practice — and it's how we brew at our Tea Bar.
Japan took the Song dynasty's whisked tea and built Chanoyu around it, a ceremony shaped by Zen Buddhism in which the host's every movement is considered. The powdered tea at its centre is matcha, still made much the way it was eight hundred years ago.
Britain folded tea into its social life instead: afternoon tea with milk, sugar, and something to eat. It's the tradition most Australians grew up closest to, which is partly why Chinese loose leaf tea can feel like a discovery. Same plant, very different habits around it.
What connects all of these is the simple idea of slowing down. A gaiwan, a cast-iron teapot, a favourite mug — the vessel doesn't matter much. The act of making tea gives you a few quiet minutes in an otherwise busy day.
A note from Joanne
People sometimes ask whether they need to know any of this to enjoy tea. You don't. But I find it changes how a cup tastes. When you whisk matcha, you're doing something a Song dynasty poet would recognise. When you steep loose leaves in a teapot, you're following a Ming dynasty habit that's more than six hundred years old.
If you're ready to move from reading to drinking, our guide to picking your first Chinese tea starts from whatever you drink now. And if you're in Hobart, come by our Tea Bar at Salamanca Art Centre — I'm happy to brew a few options and talk history for as long as you'll let me.
Common questions about tea history
Where does tea originally come from?
The tea plant is native to southwest China, in the mountains around today's Yunnan province. Tea was used there as a medicine and a food long before it became a drink. The earliest clear written references to tea drinking in China date to the Han dynasty, roughly two thousand years ago.
Who wrote the first book about tea?
Lu Yu, a Tang dynasty writer, finished the Cha Jing (Classic of Tea) around 760 AD. It covers growing, processing, brewing, and water selection, and it established tea as a subject of serious study in China.
Why does Japan whisk powdered tea while China steeps whole leaves?
Both methods are Chinese, just from different eras. Japanese monks brought Song dynasty whisked tea home in the twelfth century, and Japan refined it into the matcha ceremony. China switched to loose leaf steeping in the Ming dynasty, and the older whisked method faded there. The two countries preserved different chapters of the same history.
When did tea reach the West?
Dutch ships carried the first commercial tea to Europe in the early 1600s. It spread to England by the mid-1600s and became fashionable at court after 1662. Afternoon tea as a meal came later, in the 1840s.
Last updated: July 2026
If you're in Hobart, drop by our Salamanca Tea Bar — we'll brew whatever interests you, no pressure to buy. You'll also find us at Salamanca Market every Saturday morning.