Legends about tea

However, according to the most famous and most plausible legend, it is believed that in 2737 BC, when Emperor Chen Nong was boiling water under a Chinese camellia tree, several leaves fell into a vat of boiling water, after tasting, the emperor found that the result was pleasant drink. In Japan, tea is generally regarded as “cinnabar of spirituality and medicine of wisdom,” healing illnesses and prolonging life.

Chinese legends

The Legend of 1. According to this legend, a Chinese saint accidentally fell asleep while praying. Angry with himself, he swore that he would never close his eyes again until the end of his days. The elder mercilessly cut off his eyelids and threw them to the ground, from which the first tea bush on earth sprouted. This story is about five thousand years old, but still in China, the historical homeland of tea, the hieroglyph for eyelids and tea is the same.

The Legend of 2. The origin of tea says that it was discovered by an observant Chinese shepherd, who noticed that sheep chewing leaves from a tea bush became unusually frisky. Having tasted an infusion of the same leaves and experiencing an unprecedented surge of vivacity, the inquisitive shepherd was convinced that his guess was correct.

The Legend of 3. A long time ago, high in the mountains, a small village with an Ayurveda tour name Dragon's Well was lost. And there were only a dozen houses in it, and even those were scattered on the slopes of the surrounding mountains. In the distant mountains, peasants planted bamboo, and in the nearby mountains, cereals. They worked from dawn to dusk, but were never full. At the very edge of the village there was a dilapidated thatched hut in which an old woman lived. She had neither children nor a husband, and she lived out her life alone. She could no longer climb the mountains and cultivate the land. I barely had enough strength to care for a dozen tea bushes in the yard. The bushes grew old along with their owner, and she collected from them once a year no more than a few jins of coarse dark green leaves.

In her life, this woman had to endure a lot of grief, but she retained her kindness, despite all the hardships, and now tried, as best she could, to brighten up the lives of those around her. Every day she took a few leaves, brewed tea and placed it at the door of her hut so that fellow villagers coming down from the mountains after work could quench their thirst.

Once on New Year's Eve, when thick snow was falling in the mountains, the village was preparing for the holiday. All the old woman's supplies had dried up, except for a few tea leaves, but she still decided not to change the established custom. Rising early, the old woman put these leaves into a cauldron, poured boiling water over them and set them to steep near the hearth. Suddenly a noise was heard outside, the door swung open, and an old man covered with snow appeared on the threshold.

The old woman hurriedly approached him:

Dear One, there is snow in the mountains, wait a little in my house!

The stranger shook off the snow, walked into the room, and his curious gaze settled on the fireplace:

• Mistress, what do you have in your cauldron?
• “I insist on tea,” the old woman answered him. The guest was very surprised:
• There is already a little time left until the New Year. Tomorrow is everyone's big holiday and all families are killing lamb, bull or wild boar to appease their ancestors, but you're just making tea?
• “I’m too poor,” the woman sighed bitterly, “I have nothing to sacrifice to my ancestors, but every day I prepare tea and treat it to my fellow villagers.

Unexpectedly for her, the stranger laughed:

• Why are you complaining about poverty when you have a treasure hidden in your yard? Hearing this, the old woman went out into the yard to look for a place where the treasure might be hidden. But everything was as usual there: near the shed, covered with spruce branches, there were two benches, and in the corner there was a cracked stone mortar, in which garbage had been rotting since last year. Nothing new appeared in the yard. The stranger followed the hostess and pointed to the mortar:
• Here is your wealth! - Can a mortar really be wealth? - the old woman was amazed. “Apparently the stranger is mocking me,” she thought and added:
• If you like her, you can have her! “How can I take this jewel from you for nothing,” he exclaimed, “sell me this mortar.” If I agree, then I’ll go get people to help me carry her away. The stranger, satisfied with the deal, left. The old woman looked at the mortar for a long time, but could not understand why the guest liked it, and decided that it was not right to sell such a dirty thing. She pulled out the trash from the mortar and buried it under the tea bushes. Then the old woman poured water into the mortar, washed it, and threw out the dirty ox under the same bushes. She had already finished the work and was admiring the clean mortar when the stranger returned with the village boys.

At the sight of the washed mortar, he screamed heart-rendingly:

What have you done? Where did the wealth go?

The old woman never expected that her labors would cause such strong anger, and she was completely taken aback:
• Yes, I just washed it!
• Where did you go with everything that was in the mortar? - The stranger even stamped his foot out of impatience.
• Yes, I buried it under the tea bushes.
• What a pity! - the stranger exclaimed in a trembling voice.
• After all, this garbage was real wealth, now it has passed into the tea bushes.

He waved his hand and told the guys to go home. The New Year holiday is over, and soon spring has come. And then, unexpectedly, all the tea bushes in the yard were covered with many emerald leaves. But when the old woman began to collect them, people were even more surprised: the tea leaves were unusually tender, juicy and fragrant. Fellow villagers began asking the old woman for shoots of these wonderful bushes, and from then on, instead of bamboo, they planted tea plantations in the mountains. Years later, tea with an extraordinary taste and aroma, which was prepared from leaves collected in these places, began to be called “Dragon Well” tea, and to this day it is considered one of the best varieties of tea in China.

Tea is like a wonderful medicine

According to legend, in China, the birthplace of tea, it was used as a medicine four thousand years ago, when tea was still a wild plant. Subsequently, people began to “prepare decoction drinks,” and tea little by little began to turn from a medicine into a healing drink. The art of cultivating the tea bush, or, as they say in China, the tea tree, gradually improved, and knowledge about the beneficial effects of tea on the body accumulated. Gu Yuan-qing, Ayurveda tour. Goa, the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 centuries AD), in the “Register of Teas” compiled by him, describes in detail: “can quench thirst, digests food

eliminates inflammation, reduces sleep and opens the way for urine, clears vision and is beneficial for thinking, eliminates nervousness and banishes boredom.” . in ancient times it was treated as a miracle cure. The “Book of the Sui Dynasty (VI-VII centuries AD)” contains a story about the Sui Emperor Wendi, whose suffering could not be alleviated by any medicine. In the end, the emperor resorts to tea and is completely cured. Chen Cangqi, a doctor of the Tang Dynasty (VII-IX centuries AD) praises tea as a “cure for the darkness of diseases.” He writes: tea “...quenches thirst and drives away illnesses. How valuable is tea!... Each medicine is for its own disease, and tea is a cure for the darkness of diseases.”