Its origins are shrouded in the mists of folklore and enigmatic ritual. No one really knows who picked the first leaves, or brewed the first pot. The earliest date attributed to tea is 2737 BC.

According to one early legend, Shen Nung, a Chinese philosopher and emperor, and the first teacher of medicine and agriculture, discovered tea quite by accident while boiling water for his evening meal. He used branches from the tea plant to build the fire and a few of the leaves blew into his pot. Delighted by the fragrance and flavour, and being a man of wit and wisdom, he recognised the worth of this wondrous new brew and spread the knowledge of tea throughout the land.

A more popular myth credits Bodhidarma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in India, with its discovery. During his sojourn to China, the holyman visited a sanctuary to contemplate life before a blank wall for nine years. Exhaustion eventually got the better of him and he fell asleep. When he awoke, he was so devastated by his lack of mind over matter that he cut off his offending eyelids and threw them to the ground, where a wondrous bush sprang forth. He discovered that nibbling on the leaves was stimulating and allowed him to fulfill his goal to forego sleep for the duration of his trip.

Although indigenous to India, the tea plant somehow mysteriously made its way to China around the third century AD, after the Han empire stretched its borders to the subtropical regions of the Yangtze Valley. There is no written account of tea in China until the eight century, when it was taxed.

Another tale tells us that around the same time, an itinerant poet by the name of Lu Yu travelled the countryside with water tanks and cooking pots, demonstrating the various methods of brewing cha. Once this marvellous bush rooted itself in Chinese soil, it became proliferous and all varieties of tea grew across the country, its flavours even more subtle and complex than the wines of France. While all teas may originate from the same plant, the quality depends on altitude, time of harvest, whether the leaves are broken in handling and the part of the bush from which they are plucked. The higher up they grow, the finer the quality.

Green tea is dried directly; whereas, black tea is chemically altered by oxidation during the curing process before being dried. Most teas imported from China today are green and labelled with such enticing and romantic names as Dragon's Whiskers, a delicate green tea from Shantung, Eyebrows of Longevity from Kwantung, and Forest Fragrance of the Hangchow region.

There is an enchanting tradition that the harvesting of the two extra-fine dessert teas of the highlands of Fukin known as Tit Koon Yum and Tit Lo Hum is so delicate a matter that only the purest fingers of chaste young vestle virgins conscecrated specifically for the task were allowed to touch the sacred leaves. With the advent of women's rights and a scarcity of virgins, it is rumoured that they were eventually replaced by trained golden monkeys who could scale the highest peaks and pick basketfuls of the tiniest leaves.

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