CHAPTER I|X 

 TEA AND " TEA-YIELDING " PLANTS 



The Tea Industry for the Thibetan Markets 



THE most widely known product of China is, of course, 

 Tea, "Ch'a," which to-day is very extensively cultivated 

 in India, Ceylon, and Java, and also experimentally in 

 several other countries. In China the value of this plant has 

 been appreciated from very early times. It is known to have 

 been cultivated in Szechuan during the early Han Dynasty 

 (202 B.c.-A.D. 25). However, it was not in general use among 

 all classes before the sixth and seventh centuries a.d. Very 

 early in the seventeenth century tea first became known in 

 Europe, having been brought from China by Dutch traders. 



The Tea plant [Thea sinensis) is considered to be a native 

 of Assam, whence it was long ago introduced and cultivated in 

 China. Augustine Henry, in 1896, received through a Chinese 

 collector whom he had trained specimens of undoubted Wild 

 Tea. Henry writes : ^ " Hitherto the Tea plant has been found 

 wild only in Assam, the cases of its spontaneity recorded from 

 China being very doubtful. In all my trips in Szechuan and 

 Hupeh I never met with it. The present specimens are above 

 suspicion, coming from virginal forest (in the extreme south- 

 south-east corner of Yunnan) and at an immense distance from 

 any tea-cultivation, the nearest being P'uerh, 200 miles west. 

 Bretschneider, in his Botanicon Sinicum, Part II, p. 130, has 

 some remarks on the antiquity of tea in China. It is probable 

 that it was found wild in these southern provinces which did 

 not form a part of the ancient Chinese Empire, and I dare say 

 it will be found wild in these mountains from Mengtse to 

 Szemao. It is not probable at all that tea came from so far away 



^ Kew Bulletin, 1897, p. 100. 



