It is not known whether the Emperor really existed, or if he was simply a myth – but it is generally accepted that tea was popular in China long before it was exported to the Western world.

However, the first written reference to tea does not appear until the third century BC, when a well-known Chinese surgeon said it improved concentration and alertness (though there is still some confusion over whether the surgeon was recommending tea or sow thistles!).

The Chinese word tu, which appears in these records, is the name for both tea and sow thistles. The distinction between the two was only made between 206 BC and AD 220, when an Emperor of the Han Dynasty ruled that tea should be pronounced 'cha' – a word still used in the UK until quite recently as slang for a cup of tea.

Until the third century AD, tea was only used as a medicine made from leaves gathered from wild trees, but as demand grew, farmers began to cultivate it. Tea’s popularity grew during the fourth and fifth centuries as plantations were set up in the Yangtze River valley. Tea began to appear everywhere – taverns, wine stores, noodle houses; in fact, it was held in such high regard it was even presented as a gift to emperors.

The Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906) is often referred to as the 'Golden Age' of tea, when drinking it became a ceremony, and the picking and processing of the leaves were controlled by strict rules to ensure a prefect result.

Before the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644) the only tea produced in China was green tea. Then, two new types were developed to suit the growing market – black and flower-scented.

A Japanese Monk, Dengyo Daishi, is thought to have taken the first seeds from China to Japan for cultivation, after studying there from AD 803 to 80Five years later, when he served the tea to the Emperor Saga, he liked it so much that he ordered cultivation to be established.

As in China, over the centuries, the drinking of tea in Japan became a highly important ritual ceremony, and an integral part of Japanese culture.

The English name 'tea' was not derived from the Mandarin Chinese word 'cha' but from the Chinese Amoy dialect name 'te' (pronounced 'tay'). This was a result of the early contact between Dutch and Chinese traders in the port of Amoy in China’s Fujian Province. In Dutch the word became 'thee', and since the Dutch were mainly responsible for bringing tea to Europe, the name remained similar throughout each language: 'thee' in German, 'te' in Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Hungarian and Malay, 'tea' in English, 'thé' in French, 'tee' in Finnish, 'teja' in Latvian, 'ta' in Korean, 'tey' in Tamil, 'thay' in Sinhalese and 'thea' to scientists.

The original Mandarin Chinese word 'cha', became the Cantonese word 'ch’a' and passed as 'cha' to Portuguese, Persian, Japanese and Hindi, 'shai' in Arabic, 'ja' in Tibetan, 'chay' in Turkish and 'chai' in Russian