Tea Time

Early in the ninth century, an Arab Silk Road merchant named Soleyman reported that the Chinese infused a vastly expensive “sort of dried herb” in boiling water to make a drink that was an antidote to all ills. “It is a little more perfumed than clover,” Soleyman reported, “but has a bitter taste.” His was the first Western mention of tea, which over the next centuries would replace silk as the linchpin of East-West trade.

The Chinese had been cultivating tea since at least CE 350. They turned the judging, preparation and drinking of the drink into stylized rituals that, transplanted, would become the basis of the philosophical Japanese tea ceremony.