Transcript
Podcast Host (0:00)
This is an iHeart podcast.
Capital One Bank Guy (0:05)
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Oh really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com bank Capital One NA member FDIC.
Erin Menke (0:38)
Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.
Aaron Mahnke (0:47)
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Erin Menke (1:10)
Some aspects of culture are so ingrained that we cannot imagine a time without them. It's easy to picture what it was like to not have cars or cell phones or email, but conceive what human life was like before the invention of water filters requires a more subtle stretch of the imagination. The same can be true of other drinks and foods. The origins of alcohol, bread, and more. We've known these things for so long. The original incidents that led to their invention are the stuff of myth. And this is true for tea. It comes in such a wide variety of flavors. Green, black, herbal, mint. It has iterations that span an equally wide variety of cultures. English breakfast tea, Darjeeling, chai. They say more about the people who prepared them than they do about their own history. Which makes you wonder, where did tea come from in the first place? We know it originated in East Asia and slowly spread to the rest of the world. But once you go far enough back in history, you find yourself in a realm where myth and history intersection. In the early 2000s BCE, Yan Emperor Shen Nong was traveling with a column of servants, a mythic figure in Chinese folklore. It's said in some stories that he was born after his mother inhaled the breath of a dragon. By the time he had grown into adulthood, he was a polymath, an herbalist, and a scientist with an extremely curious mind. In fact, it's said that he journeyed all the way across China to record every herb that grew in the wild and what medicinal effects they might have. As the story goes, during his travels, he stopped in order to catch his breath. His servants dutifully began to boil some water. Now, Shen Nong had learned a while back that boiling water makes it safe to drink. While the emperor sat patiently waiting for that enjoying the summer air. Dried leaves from a nearby plant fell into the boiling water and the smell caught Shen Nung's attention immediately. He experimentally sipped the leaf infused water and was delighted by the taste as well. He called his servants to gather around him and he declared that the drink made from these leaves was health, healthy and refreshing and must be remembered. This plant, according to the legend, was the Camellia bush. Future botanists would name this the Camellia sinensis, or tea tree for short. The drink made from this plant, tea would become a global sensation. Although it started as a purely medicinal beverage, historical records of tea start to appear some 3,000 years later, in 300 CE, where it was still primarily used for medicine. It was during the Tang dynasty from the 600s to the 900. Tea became a ubiquitous beverage to enjoy socially rather than just for the health benefits. This period would become known as the classic age of tea. And curiously, it's around this time that we find another legend about the origin of tea, this time from a Buddhist perspective. The man who would bring Buddhism to China was an Indian monk called Bodhidharma. The real man who bore that title likely lived in the four hundreds. And the legend is without a date. It is, like so many fables, timeless. It begins with Bodhidharma meditating while staring at a cave wall. He would stare at this cave wall for nine whole years in an effort to clear his mind and focus on achieving enlightenment. However, as soon as he'd begun, he became frustrated. His eyes kept drifting close and he kept dozing off. In order to keep himself awake, the monk tore off his eyelids and threw them to the ground. Where they had fallen, a strange plant began to grow. A tea plant. Now, these two origin stories of tea, where the plant came from, and who discovered the drink incompatible if you think about them as history, because it certainly wouldn't be possible for the first tea plant to grow 3,000 years after the drink was discovered. But if you think about them as culture, the stories seem not just possible, but inevitable. Tea is such a humble drink that it only makes sense to attach its discovery to great figures of myth and legend. Characters that represent curiosity, discovery and thoughtfulness. All the qualities one would hope to cultivate while having a peaceful cup of tea on a quiet afternoon. If a cultural practice becomes common enough, it inevitably becomes a legend. All it needs is the right amount of time to steep.