Chinese is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. Approximately 1.35 billion people, or around 16% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.
Tea, or cha, is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern Myanmar. Tea is also made, but rarely, from the leaves of Camellia taliensis. After plain water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. There are many different types of tea; some have a cooling, slightly bitter, and astringent flavour, while others have profiles that include sweet, nutty, floral, or grassy notes. Tea has a stimulating effect in humans, primarily due to its caffeine content.
Green tea is a type of tea that is made from Camellia sinensis leaves and buds that have not undergone the same withering and oxidation process which is used to make oolong teas and black teas. Green tea originated in China, and since then its production and manufacture has spread to other countries in East Asia.
Yum cha is the Cantonese tradition of brunch involving Chinese tea and dim sum. The practice is popular in Cantonese-speaking regions, including Guangdong province, Guangxi province, Hong Kong, and Macau. It is also carried out in other regions worldwide where there are overseas Cantonese communities. Yum cha generally involves small portions of steamed, pan-fried, or deep-fried dim sum dishes served in bamboo steamers, which are designed to be eaten communally and washed down with hot tea. People often go to yum cha in large groups for family gatherings and celebrations.
Pu'er or pu-erh is a variety of fermented tea traditionally produced in Yunnan Province, China. In the context of traditional Chinese tea production terminology, fermentation refers to microbial fermentation, and is typically applied after the tea leaves have been sufficiently dried and rolled. As the tea undergoes controlled microbial fermentation, it also continues to oxidize, which is also controlled, until the desired flavors are reached. This process produces tea known as hēichá (黑茶), literally "black tea", though the term is commonly translated to English as "dark tea" to distinguish it from the English-language black tea.
Tea as a drink was first consumed in China and the earliest extant mention of tea in literature is the Classic of Poetry, although the ideogram used (荼) in these texts can also designate a variety of plants, such as sowthistle and thrush.
The history of tea in China is long and complex, for the Chinese have enjoyed tea for millennia. Scholars hailed the brew as a cure for a variety of ailments; the nobility considered the consumption of good tea as a mark of their status, and the common people simply enjoyed its flavour. In 2016, the discovery of the earliest known physical evidence of tea from the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han in Xi'an was announced, indicating that tea from the genus Camellia was drunk by Han dynasty emperors as early as the 2nd century BCE. Tea then became a popular drink in the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties.
The history of tea spreads across multiple cultures over the span of thousands of years. With the tea plant Camellia sinensis native to East Asia and probably originating in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern Myanmar. One of the earliest accounts of tea drinking is dated back to China's Shang dynasty, in which tea was consumed as a medicinal drink. An early credible record of tea drinking dates to the 3rd century AD, in a medical text written by Chinese physician Hua Tuo. It first became known to the western world through Portuguese priests and merchants in China during the early 16th century. Drinking tea became popular in Britain during the 17th century. The British introduced commercial tea production to British India, in order to compete with the Chinese monopoly on tea by stealing green tea leaves from China, transporting them by train/road, resulting in them being fermented and thought fermented tea is the tea drunk in China. Hence the tea drank in the West is mostly fermented and not green fresh tea.
A Wanderwort is a word that has spread as a loanword among numerous languages and cultures, especially those that are far away from one another. As such, Wanderwörter are a curiosity in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics within a wider study of language contact. At a sufficient time depth, it can be very difficult to establish in which language or language family a Wanderwort originated and into which it was borrowed.
Dianhong tea is a type of relatively high-end, gourmet Chinese red tea sometimes used in various tea blends and grown in Yunnan Province, China. The main difference between Dianhong and other Chinese red teas is the amount of fine leaf buds, or "golden tips," present in the dried tea. Dianhong tea produces a brew that is brassy golden orange in colour with a sweet, gentle aroma and no astringency. Cheaper varieties of Dianhong produce a darker brownish brew that can be very bitter.
Wuyi tea, also known by the trade name Bohea in English, is a category of black and oolong teas grown in the Wuyi Mountains of northern Fujian, China. The Wuyi region produces a number of well-known teas, including Lapsang souchong and Da Hong Pao. It has historically been one of the major centers of tea production in Fujian province and globally. Both black tea and oolong tea were likely invented in the Wuyi region, which continues to produce both styles today.
The history of tea in Japan began as early as the 8th century, when the first known references were made in Japanese records. Tea became a drink of the religious classes in Japan when Japanese priests and envoys sent to China to learn about its culture brought tea to Japan. The Buddhist monks Kūkai and Saichō may have been the first to bring tea seeds to Japan. The first form of tea brought from China was probably brick tea. Tea became a drink of the royal classes when Emperor Saga encouraged the growth of tea plants. Seeds were imported from China, and cultivation in Japan began.
Korean tea is a beverage consisting of boiled water infused with leaves, roots, flowers, fruits, grains, edible mushrooms, or seaweed. It may or may not contain tea leaves.
Tea processing is the method in which the leaves from the tea plant Camellia sinensis are transformed into the dried leaves for brewing tea.
Hokkien is a variety of the Southern Min Chinese languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang, from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.
Doodh pati chai is a tea beverage, originating from the Indian subcontinent, consumed in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Nepal in which milk, together with sugar, is boiled with tea. Doodh pati is different from saada chai, in that it only uses milk and tea. This tea is quite common in South Asia. It is marginally costlier than the regular, water-based saada chai.
Mengding Ganlu or Ganlu tea is a tea from Meng Mountain, Sichuan Province in the southwest part of China. Meng Shan is reputed to be the place where tea was first cultivated. Mengding Ganlu means "Sweet Dew of Mengding" where Mengding refers to "the top of Meng Shan".
Hokkien, a Southern Min variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the Republic of China Ministry of Education including its Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan, but there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.
Congou is a description of a black Chinese tea variety used by 19th-century tea importers in America and Europe. It was the base of the 19th-century English Breakfast tea blend.
