Ancient Chinese Inventions - Top Discoveries and Inventions of the Ancient Chinese - 1 views
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Tea has been so important in China that even the story of silk includes a probably anachronistic
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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.
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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.
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