Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the passage below.
The story of tea
A After water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world, enjoyed by billions of people every day in an astonishing variety of forms. It is drunk hot and iced, plain and sweetened, with milk and without, yet almost all of it comes from the leaves of a single evergreen plant, Camellia sinensis. The story of how this modest shrub came to conquer the world is bound up with medicine, religion, trade and empire, and it stretches back thousands of years.
B Tea almost certainly originated in the forests of south-western China, where the plant grew wild. According to a well-known legend, an early emperor discovered the drink by accident when leaves blew into a pot of water he was boiling. Whatever the truth of the tale, the Chinese were drinking tea long before anyone wrote about it, at first as a medicine and only later as an everyday pleasure. By the eighth century it had become so popular that a writer named Lu Yu composed an entire book devoted to its cultivation and preparation, and tea had begun its transformation from a rare tonic into a national habit.
C From China, tea travelled to Japan, carried by Buddhist monks who had studied on the mainland. There it became far more than a drink. Over several centuries the Japanese developed an elaborate tea ceremony, a slow and highly formal ritual in which every movement is prescribed and the aim is a moment of calm and harmony rather than mere refreshment. To this day the ceremony is regarded as an art form, and mastering it can take many years of study.
D Tea reached Europe surprisingly late. It was not until the seventeenth century that Portuguese and Dutch traders began to ship small quantities back from the East, where it was sold as an exotic and expensive novelty. At first only the wealthy could afford it, and it was often kept in locked wooden boxes to guard against theft by servants. Doctors argued fiercely over whether the new drink was good for the health or harmful, but its popularity grew regardless.
E Nowhere did tea take deeper root than in Britain. It was first served in the coffee houses of London, but it soon moved into the home and became woven into the rhythm of the day. Because tea was heavily taxed, it was for a long time smuggled into the country on a huge scale, and cheaper leaves were sometimes bulked out with the dried leaves of other plants. In the nineteenth century the custom of ‘afternoon tea’ — a light meal of tea, sandwiches and cakes taken in the late afternoon — turned the drink into a social occasion, and tea drinking became a marker of national identity.
F As demand soared, Britain grew impatient with having to buy all its tea from China, and set about producing its own. Vast plantations were established in the hills of Assam in north-eastern India, where a native variety of the plant was found, and later in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). Worked by armies of poorly paid labourers, these estates transformed whole landscapes and economies, and they made tea cheap enough for ordinary families everywhere to drink it daily. The consequences of this colonial trade, for good and ill, are still felt in the tea-growing regions today.
G Although green, black and oolong teas taste very different, they are all made from the same leaves; what separates them is how the freshly picked leaves are treated. After picking, the leaves are usually left to wither and are then rolled to release their juices. The crucial step is oxidation, in which the leaves are exposed to the air and slowly turn brown, much as a cut apple does. Green tea is heated quickly to prevent oxidation altogether; black tea is allowed to oxidise fully; and oolong falls somewhere between the two. A final drying fixes the flavour and allows the tea to be stored.
H Today tea is a global industry worth many billions of dollars, grown in dozens of countries and drunk almost everywhere. Scientists continue to investigate the compounds it contains, some of which may bring modest benefits to health, while cultures around the world have each made the drink their own. From a Japanese tea room to a roadside stall in India, the same simple leaf continues to bring people together, just as it has for centuries.