traditional chinese herbs and teas - traditionalchinese.net

The varieties of Chinese tea are extensive with many different types grown during each Chinese dynasties in China.

When picking tea, there is no need to pick too fine leaves, too fine tea leaves are nascent and lack flavour. Leaves which are too green are usually avoided, as they are too old and have lost tenderness and flavour. It is best to pick the leaves which are greenish, roundish and thick. Do not dry them in the sun, rather bake them in a charcoal fire, cool down with a fan then store in container lined with ruo leaves and keep in a high place, because tea relishes warmth and dryness and abhors cold and dampness.

In 760 AD, Lu Yu already noted: Tea is a grand tree from the South, tall from one, two, and up to several dozen Chi. Some with circumference up two meters.
A. Wilson in his exploration of the south east area of China discovered tea bushes up to ten feet tall in mountains in Sichuan
In 1939, botanists discovered a 7.5 meter wild tea tree in Wuchuang county of Guizhou province.
In 1940, on the Old Eagle mountain of Wuchuang county, a 6.6 meter tall wild tea tree was discovered.
In 1957, a 12 meter wild tea tree was discovered in Cheshui county of Guizhou.
In 1961, a one thousand seven hundred years old, thirty two meters tall and more than one meter diameter wild tea tree was found in the rain forest of Yunnan, this is the king of tea trees.
In 1976, a 13 meter wild tea tree was found on Daozhen county, on a mountain at 1400 meter elevation.
More wild tea trees were found in the mountains of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, many of them more than ten meters tall.

Tea was called "tu" in the Chinese ancient classic Shi Jing (The book of Songs).
Tea was also called 'jia' in the ancient Chinese classic Er Ya compiled during the early Han Dynasty : " Jia is bitter tu". The word tu was further annotated by a Jin scholar, Guo Pu (276-324 AD): " Tu is a small plant, its leave can be brew into beverage".
Tea was also called "She' in a West Han monograph on dialect: Fang Yian.
During the Han Dynasty, the word tu took on a new pronunciation, 'cha', in addition to its old pronunciation 'tu'.

The phoneme 'tu' later developed into 'te' in the Fujian dialect, and later 'tea', 'te'

The phoneme 'she' later became 'soh' in Jiangsu province, Suleiman's 'Sakh' also came from 'she'.

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, drinking tea became a widespread custom, then spread west to Tibet.

The first use of the word Cha instead of 'tu' for tea was in Lu Yu's Cha Jing, The Classic of Tea of 760 AD.

Periods in the history of tea

From prehistoric time to Spring and Autumn Period (221 BC) Tu was used as sacrifice for ceremony
According to Chinese historical record, ca 1000 BC, there were already tea farm in Sichuan and Yunnan
From end of Spring and Autumn Period to early Western Han dynasty, Tu was used as vegetable food on table
From the historical annal "Yianzhi Chunchiu": the prime minister of Chi (547 BC-490 BC) had egg and tea food on his table.
Xia Zhong's Treatise on Food : "Since Jin dynasty, the people of Wu (now Suzhou city) cooked tea leaves as food, and called it tea broth".
From the beginning of Western Han to middle Western Han, Tu was used as medicine
From the late Western Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdom Period, tea was imperial beverage
From the Western Jin dynasty to Sui dynasty, the use of tea as beverage spread in the Chinese population
From the Tang period onward, tea became one of the seven essentials of daily life
During the Southern Song Dynasty a Japanese monk 明菴栄西 Eisai (Yosai): came to Tiantai mountain of Zhejiang to study Chan (Zen) Buddhism (1168 AD); when he returned home in 1193 AD , he brought tea from China to Japan, planted it and wrote the first Japanese book on Tea:喫茶養生記, Treatise on Drinking Tea for Health. This was the beginning of tea cultivation and tea culture in Japan
In the Song Dynasty, tea was a major export good, through the Silk Road on land and Silk Road on the sea, tea spread to Arab countries and Africa.
In the mid ninth century, traveller Suleiman mentioned that people in China drink "Sakh", sold in cities of Empire.
Marco Polo mentioned tea in his Travel
In 1559, Giovanni Battista Ramusio mentioned "chai" in "Delle Navigatione et Viaggi," Vol 2.
1579, Two Russian traveller introduced Cha to Russia

Variety of Tea

Herbology is traditionally one of the more important modalities utilized in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Each herbal medicine prescription is a cocktail of many herbs tailored to the individual patient. One batch of herbs is typically decocted twice over the course of one hour. The practitioner usually designs a remedy using one or two main ingredients that target the illness. Then the practitioner adds many other ingredients to adjust the formula to the patient's yin/yang conditions. Sometimes, ingredients are needed to cancel out toxicity or side-effects of the main ingredients. Some herbs require the use of other ingredients as catalyst or else the brew is ineffective. The latter steps require great experience and knowledge, and make the difference between a good Chinese herbal doctor and an amateur. Unlike western medications, the balance and interaction of all the ingredients are considered more important than the effect of individual ingredients. A key to success in TCM is the treatment of each patient as an individual.

Chinese herbology often incorporates ingredients from all parts of plants, the leaf, stem, flower, root, and also ingredients from animals and minerals. The use of parts of endangered species (such as seahorses, rhinoceros horns, and tiger bones) has created controversy and resulted in a black market of poachers who hunt restricted animals. Many herbal manufacturers have discontinued the use of any parts from endangered animals.

Categorizing Chinese herbs

Chinese physicians used several different methods to classify traditional Chinese herbs:

The earlier (Han through Tang eras) Ben Cao (Materia Medicae) began with a three-level categorization:

Low level -- drastic acting, toxic substances Middle level -- medicinal physiological effects High level -- health and spirit enhancement

During the neo-Confucian Song-Jin-Yuan era (10th to 12th Centuries), the theoratical framework from acupuncture theory (which was rooted in Confucian Han theory) was formally applied to herbal categorization (which was earlier more the domain of Daoist natural science). In particular, alignment with the Five Phases (Tastes) and the 12 channels (Meridians theory) came to be used after this period.

This pertains to the degree of yin and yang, ranging from cold (extreme yin), cool, neutral to warm and hot (extreme yang). The patient's internal balance of yin and yang is taken into account when the herbs are selected. For example, medicinal herbs of "hot", yang nature are used when the person is suffering from internal cold that requires to be purged, or when the patient has a general cold constituency. Sometimes an ingredient is added to offset the extreme effect of one herb.

The five tastes are pungent, sweet, sour, bitter and salty, each of which their functions and characteristics. For example, pungent herbs are used to generate sweat and to direct and vitalize qi and the blood. Sweet-tasting herbs often tonify or harmonizes bodily systems. Some sweet-tasting herbs also exhibit a bland taste, which helps drain dampness through diuresis. Sour taste most often is astringent or consolidates, while bitter taste dispels heat, purges the bowels and get rids of dampness by drying them out. Salty taste softens hard masses as well as purges and opens the bowels.

The Meridians

The Meridians refer to which organs the herb acts upon. For example, menthol is pungent, cool and is linked with the lungs and the liver. Since the lungs is the organ which protects the body from invasion from cold and influenza, menthol can help purge coldness in the lungs and invading heat toxins caused by hot "wind".

Periods in the history of tea

Variety of Tea

Categorizing Chinese herbs

The Meridians

50 fundamental herbs