Early Recordings of Tea's Origin

Although tea appears to have had a history of several hundred years before Lu Yu who was an ancient Chinese tea enthusiast and writer on tea, there is not space here to explore it fully. It will suffice to say that the early history of tea contains many obscure points that cannot be resolved at this stage. It was however, Lu Yu with his writing of the Chajing in the Tang dynasty that focused his world’s attention on the benefits of the drinking of tea.

During the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., the Tang dynasty was at its most vigorous and China had reached a summit of cosmopolitanism and cultural florescence in its history. It is known that by this time, even before Lu Yu’s day, the practice of drinking tea had spread throughout north China, for there survives a passage abouy this titled “Drinking Tea” in the sixth volume of the Fengshi Wenjianji, which was compiled by a writer named Feng Yan who lived during the eighth century.