A Chinese saying identifies the seven basic daily necessities as fuel, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. Tea is among the world’s oldest and most revered beverages. It is today’s most popular beverage in the world, next to water. Tea drinking has long been an important aspect of Chinese culture.
Over three hundred years ago, the first wild tea trees were discovered in Taiwan. However these trees which were found in the wild were not grown on an estate or grown specifically for consumption as most teas are nowadays.
Tea as we know it today originated in China. The ancient Chinese discovered the tea plant and its uses, which began as medicinal uses then evolved into recreational use where they began making tea solely for the pleasure of drinking and storing it for consumption.
Gongfu tea (sometimes called Kung fu Tea) is a name given to a traditional Chinese way of making tea, not a type of tea. It is invariably the way used to make the tea if someone talks about a “traditional Chinese tea ceremony” and places as much importance on the quality and type of utensils used and the actual “ceremony” itself, as it does on the quality of the tea itself.
White tea is famous for the fine white “pekoe” hairs that cover its leaves, it's green-gray colored leaf buds and pale yellow-green colored tea with a subtle, sweet flavor. Considered the pinnacle of teas in China, it is mainly produced in the Fuding, Zhenghe, Songxi and Jianyang areas of Fujian province.
Oolong tea, named after its creator, is a Chinese tea with unique and distinctive characteristics, produced mainly in Fujian and Guangdong, as well as Taiwan. The most famous Chinese teas include Tieguanyin, Dahongpao, Phoenix Narcissus, White Crest, Phoenix Bush and Iron Lohan, while the most well know of Taiwanese Oolong's include Dongding, Wenshan Pouchong and Oriental Beauty.
Green tea is an un-oxidized tea that is named – obviously! – For its green colored leaves and green tinged color when brewed. Being by far and away China's most commonly drunk tea, it is the most commonly grown type of tea and also has the biggest representation in the list of China's most favored top ten teas.
China is the birthplace of black tea, which in China is called, perhaps more appropriately, hong cha – red tea – after its the red colored tea it usually produces. It's history in China can be traced back to the late Ming Dynasty, around the year 1590, when the first black tea – Lapsang Souchong – was produced in the area around Wuyi Mountain in Fujian province.
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