A popular proverb in China says: "Better to go without salt for three days than without tea for a single day."
        Sipping tea is part of the daily life of most Chinese and China is the home of tea.
        Chinese knowledge of tea-shrubs goes back nearly 6,000 years and tea cultivation dates back 2,000 years.
        The earliest tea legend is the story of Shennong, the god of agriculture in Chinese mythology who is said to have taught people about planting grains and who also explored herbal medicines.
        Once Shennong became poisoned after eating some unknown herbs. By chance, he ate some leaves off a nearby tea bush and was quickly cured.
        More than 1,000 years ago, tea from China, along with silk and porcelain, began to be known in the West and ever since it has been an important Chinese export.
        Today, more than 40 countries around the world cultivate tea and all their tea bushes can trace their origin, directly or indirectly, to China.
Types of tea
        In general, there are five kinds of tea classified according to the different technique involved in the tea-making: green tea, oolong tea, scented tea, black tea and compressed tea.
        Green tea keeps the original colour of the tea leaves without fermentation during processing. This category consists mainly of Longjing tea of Zhejiang Province, Maofeng of Huangshan Mountain in Anhui Province and Biluochun produced in Jiangsu.
        Black tea, known as "red tea" (hong cha) in China, is fully fermented before baking. The best brands of black tea are Qihong of Anhui in East China and Dianhong of Yunnan, South China.
        Oolong tea, semi-fermented, represents a variety half way between green and black teas. It is a specialty from the provinces on China's southeast coast: Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan.
        And the compressed tea is the kind of tea which is compressed and hardened into a certain shape, convenient for transport and storage which is mainly supplied to the ethnic minorities in the south and west.
        Scented tea has the best fragrance, as being made by mixing fragrant flowers in the tea leaves in the course of processing. Jasmine and magnolia are the flowers commonly used.
        A new tea-plant must grow for five years before its leaves can be picked and, at 30 years of age, it will be too old to be productive. The season of tea-picking depends on local climate and varies from area to area. But usually, the early the tea leaves picked up, the better price it has.
        On the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, where the famous green tea Longjing (Dragon Well) comes from, picking starts from the end of March and lasts through October, altogether 20-30 times from the same plants at intervals of seven to 10 days. Skilled woman picker can only gather 600 grams (a little over a pound) of green tea leaves in a day.
        Top-grade Dragon Well tea, however, still has to be stir-parched by hand, doing only 250 grams every half hour. It takes four pounds of fresh leaves to produce one pound of parched tea.
        The best Dragon Well tea is gathered several days before Qingming (Pure Brightness, 5th solar month) when new twigs have just begun to grow and carry "one leaf and a bud". To make one kilogram of finished tea, 60,000 tender leaves have to be plucked.
        The price of such top tea can be several thousand times that of ordinary batches produced in later months. In the old days, Dragon Well tea of this grade was meant solely for the imperial household - it was known as "tribute tea".
        Most Chinese would like to drink a cup of tea after eating as they believe the tea can resolve the fat and meat and improve the digestion.
        Tea is also rich in various vitamins and is said to prevent cancers, and it is added to various dishes and to cookies for its fresh taste.
        Chinese in ancient times devised special ways to drink tea and created what can be called tea art since it contains many aspects: the making of the tea, the ways of brewing tea, the drinking utensils to go with the various tea pots and the tea-drinking environment.
        The art of making tea is called "Cha dao" and it remains one of the most important parts of Chinese culture that Japan learned from China.
        Water is an important factor in good tea-making and there used to be three famous springs producing good water for tea.
        Although people use various tea settings of cups and tea pots, the Zisha (purple clay) tea pot produced only in Jiangsu Province is regarded the best of all. The tea pot made of natural materials together with the skills of tea pot artists can maintain the fragrance and original taste of the tea for a long time.
        Chinese also have particular taste to choose the right environment for sipping tea: quiet, fresh, comfortable and clean.
        So, tea houses are either located beside natural scenery: lakes, rivers and hills, or in the garden besides artificial hills or lakes with musicians playing ancient instruments.
        In China, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, the major philosophy styles, have developed tea cultures of their own: Taoist tea art requires the people to be quiet and free in spirit and surpass the material world; Confucianist tea art encourages people to communicate well, get together harmoniously and actively experience social life; and Buddhism requires the tea drinker to be pursue the quest for truth and self-knowledge.
        Folk tea art in China today is mostly influenced by the tea art of Confucianism. Drinking tea is a good way to communicate, to improve friendships.
        Tea, as a refreshing drink, helps drinkers to examine themselves and achieve introspection so they can better understand others and achieve harmony with nature and society in general.