Tea traditions 茶文化

Tea left China by land and by sea, and almost everywhere it went people found their own way with it: whisking it, diluting it with boiling water, simmering it with milk, or eating it.

Over more than a thousand years, China boiled its tea with salt, whisked it to a froth and steeped the whole leaf. Each era left behind its own teaware, from the Tang brazier to the Yixing teapot, and its own methods, down to Chaozhou gongfu. Japan preserved the whisked tea of the Song and built the chanoyu ceremony around it. Korea's darye, a rite centered on loose-leaf green tea, took shape between the 1960s and the 1980s.

The Dutch brought the first cargo of tea to Europe in 1610, Britain first tasted it in the London coffeehouses of the 1650s, and Russia got it from Mongolia between 1616 and 1638. Across the Middle East and Central Asia, people dilute strong black tea with boiling water right in the glass, the Maghreb takes green tea with mint, chaikhanas serve tea in bowls, and on the steppe brick tea simmers in a cauldron with milk and salt. In South and Southeast Asia people boil tea with milk and spices. Tibetans churn it with butter, the Vietnamese drink it over ice, and in Myanmar the leaf is fermented and eaten.