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"Chinese Tea is a beverage, Chinese tea is a pass time, Chinese tea is a culture" Waste no time, Lets do Chinese Tea" - www.chinese-tea.net.
Weather its CHA in mandarin, CHAI in Arabic, or TEE in German, Tea is still the worlds most popular beverage.
The english word TEA came about when the English traded tea with the Chinese, the Chinese called it TAY and was pronounced TEA by the English.
Chinese Legend has it, Tea was discovered by the Chinese Emperor Shennong in 2737 BC when a leaf from the Camellia Sinensis tree fell into the emperors boiling water.
Chinese tea was probably first found in the South-West part of China where the tropical climate which was humid was great for the tea trees. Apparently if you go there now, you can still find huge 2700 yr old wild tea trees and 800 yr old planted tea trees there.
Theres 4 categories of tea- Green, White, oolong and black. The difference? White and green tea is cooked after picking, to avoid fermentation (by natural enzymes in leaves), Oolong is semi fermented and black teas are fully fermented.
The more fermented the tea leaves are, the stronger the flavor is.