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Tea has been so important in China that even the story of silk includes a probably anachronistic

cup of it. Legend says silk was discovered when a cocoon fell from a mulberry bush into a cup of imperial tea. This is similar to the legend of the discovery of tea where an emperor (Shen Nung (2737 B.C.)) drank a cup of water into which leaves from an overhanging Camellia bush had fallen. Tea, no matter what country it comes from, is from the Camellia sinensis plant. It seems to have been a new beverage in the third century A.D., a time when it was still regarded with suspicion, much as the tomato was when it was first brought to Europe. Today we refer to beverages as tea even though there is no real tea in them. (Purists call them tisanes.) In the early period, there was confusion, too, and the Chinese for tea was sometimes used to refer to other plants, according to Bodde.

The principle behind gunpowder was discovered by the Chinese in perhaps the first century A.D., during the Han Dynasty. It wasn't used in guns at the time, but created explosions at festivals.

Silk was first made by the Chinese about 4,000 years ago. Silk thread is made from the cocoon of the silkworm moth (Bombyx mori), a small moth whose caterpillar eats the leaves of the mulberry tree. According to Chinese legend, the first silk thread was made when the Chinese Empress Si-Ling-Chi was sitting under a mulberry tree and a cocoon fell into her tea; she noticed the strong, silky threads of the cocoon uncoiling. She then developed the use of silk. For more information on the development of silk, click here.

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