Tea, coffee and cocoa are the three prevailing beverages of the world. Ancient Chinese were the first to cultivate and process tea and prepare the beverage, and the product has been a major export from China.

The tea plant is a native of southwest China. A Chinese classic writes, "Tea plants are native of the south. Some of them are one to two feet high or several dozen feet high, and in the Bashan Mountains and the Yangtze valley some tea trees are so big that it takes two persons to stretch their arms to circumvent the trunk." According to legends, it was Shennong, the legendary god of farming, who discovered the tea plant. Shennong was tasting all kinds of herbs when he took in some toxic plant and fell into a coma. When he regained some consciousness, he took some leaves from a plant and chewed them. To his surprise, he fully recovered and felt very excited. He then plucked the leaves to treat people who fell ill, thus beginning the use of tea. Lu Yu (738-c.804), a tea expert of the Tang Dynasty, writes in his Classic of Tea, "It was Shennong who began using tea as a beverage."