Like Art, chinese tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be roughly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea. We moderns belong to the last school. These several methods of appreciating the beverage are indicative of the spirit of the age ley. It was about this time that modern ideograph Cha was
coined, evidently a corruption of the classic Tou.

The poets of the southern dynasties have left some fragments of their fervent adoration of the “froth of the liquid jade.” Then emperors used to bestow some rare preparation of the leaves on their highministers as a reward for eminent services. Yet the method of drinking tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme. The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions! The custom obtains at the present day among the Thibetans and variousMongolian tribes,whomake a curious syrup of these ingredients. The use of lemon slices by the Russians, who learned to take tea from the Chinese caravansaries, points to the survival of the ancient method.

To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal. The long woes of his country have robbed him of the zest for the meaning of life. He has become modern, It has replaced the powdered tea in ordinary consumption, though the latter still continues to hold its place as the tea
of teas.

All tea comes from one plant. There is not a white tea plant, a green tea plant, an oolong tea plant, or a black tea plant. There is only one tea plant. Now you know more about tea than 95 percent of the rest of America does. So when you read about a medical study where green tea is proven to aid in weight loss, or if you read that white tea is good for reducing cholesterol, you now know that all tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant, so it does not matter which type you drink.