During a long day spent roaming the forest in search of edible grains and herbs, the
weary divine farmer Shennong 1................................................72 times. But before the
poisons could end his life, a leaf drifted into his mouth. He chewed on it and it revived
him, and that is how we discovered tea. Or so an 2......................................goes at least.
Tea doesn't actually cure poisonings, but the story of Shennong, the
3.............................................of agriculture, highlights tea's importance to ancient China.
Archaeological evidence suggests tea was first cultivated there as early as 6,000 years
ago, or 4..............................before the pharaohs built the Great Pyramids of Giza. That
original Chinese tea plant is the same type that's grown around the world today, yet it was
originally consumed very differently. It was eaten as a vegetable or cooked with grain
porridge. Tea only shifted from food to drink 1,500 years ago when people realized that a
combination 5...................................could create a complex and varied taste out of the
leafy green. After hundreds of years of variations to the preparation method, the standard
became to heat tea, pack it into 6.................................., grind it into powder, mix with hot
water, and create a beverage called muo cha, or matcha. Matcha became so popular that a
distinct Chinese tea culture emerged. Tea was the subject of books and poetry, the
favorite 7..................................., and a medium for artists. They would draw extravagant
pictures in the foam of the tea, very much like the espresso art you might see in coffee
shops today. In the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty, a Japanese monk brought the
first tea plant to Japan. The Japanese eventually developed their own
8.....................................around tea, leading to the creation of the Japanese tea ceremony.
And in the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese emperor shifted the
standard from tea pressed into cakes to loose leaf tea. At that point, China still held a
9........................................on the world's tea trees, making tea one of three essential
Chinese export goods, along with 10......................................... This gave China a great
deal of power and economic influence as tea drinking spread around the world. That
spread began in earnest around the early 1600s when Dutch traders brought tea to Europe
in large quantities. Many credit Queen Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese noble
woman, for making tea popular with the English aristocracy when she married King
Charles II in 1661. At the time, Great Britain was in the 11....................................its
colonial influence and becoming the new dominant world power. And as Great Britain
grew, interest in tea spread around the world. By 1700, tea in Europe sold for ten times
the price of coffee and the plant was still only grown in China. The tea trade was so
lucrative that the world's fastest sailboat, the clipper ship, was born out of
12.................................between Western trading companies. All were racing to bring their
tea back to Europe first to maximize their profits. At first, Britain paid for all this Chinese
tea with silver. When that proved too expensive, they suggested trading tea for another
substance, opium. This triggered a public health problem within China as people became
addicted to the drug. Then in 1839, a Chinese official ordered his men to destroy massive
British 12..........................................as a statement against Britain's influence over China.
This act triggered the First Opium War between the two nations. Fighting raged up and
down the Chinese coast until 1842 when the defeated Qing Dynasty ceded the port of
Hong Kong to the British and 13.....................................unfavorable terms. The war
weakened China's global standing for over a century. The British East India company
also wanted to be able to grow tea themselves and further control the market. So they
commissioned botanist Robert Fortune to steal tea from China in a
14........................................He disguised himself and took a perilous journey through
China's mountainous tea regions, eventually smuggling tea trees and experienced tea
workers into Darjeeling, India. From there, the plant spread further still, helping drive
tea's rapid growth as an everyday commodity. Today, tea is the second most consumed
beverage in the world after water, and from sugary Turkish Rize tea, to salty Tibetan
butter tea, there are almost as many ways of e 15.......................................as there are
cultures on the globe.
