Top 10 Most Popular Chinese Teas

Sipping a glass of tea as I type this blog post today. Personally I have switched over to tea from coffee over a year ago and I am not looking back. I was just drinking too much coffee per day and it was giving me headaches – since living in China people have been trying to convert me since the beginning (doctors included). With the wide range of tea styles, I have been experimenting with different Chinese teas (both purposely and because I have no other choice of teas in a given situation) in a rather informal process and thought it would be a suitable topic to discuss here on the Written Chinese blog.

 

Overview of Chinese Tea

Tea is probably the most common liquid consumed in the world after water! There are so many styles and to avoid this from becoming a book, we will go through just those most commonly found in China.
It is known to be very healthy, and has been ingrained in the Chinese culture as tea originated from China. The habit and lifestyle of drinking tea in China began in the era of Shennong, back 4,700 years ago. The scientific name of the tea plant is Camellia sinensis (L.) O.Kuntze. The latin word “Sinensis” here means China – so even in the official scientific name it has China in it.
One of the most famous and the earliest Chinese pharmaceutical and medicine books, 神农本草经 (shén nóng běn cǎo jīng) , records “神农尝百草，日遇七十二毒，得荼而解之.” This describes the Emperor Shennong, who is famously known for his teachings on agriculture and herbal drugs, tasting hundreds of varieties of herbs, and was poisoned (but luckily didn’t die) by 72 of them. He drank tea to help detoxify his body. The character, 荼 (chá) was created to represent Chinese tea.
Here is the evolution of the character tea, an image of 荼 becoming 茶:
The character 荼 (tú) was the main name (character) representing tea before the Tang dynasty. But besides tea, this character has many other meanings and pronunciations, including thistle and flowering grass. As drinking tea became more and more popular and widespread, the usage of the character of tea became more and more frequent. People removed one of the 一 strokes in the character 荼 to form a new character 茶, (chá) and began to use 茶 instead of 荼.

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