What the Character 茶 Tells us About Tea

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what about a word that is a picture?

One of the cool things about Chinese characters is it is a picture composed of different elements that tell a story about the idea or concept it represents.  The Chinese character for tea 茶(cha) which has represented tea since the 8th century is particularly illustrative.

What is so Rad about Radicals

Chinese characters can be broken down into different elements called radicals.  The thing about learning Chinese is there is no alphabet—so you can’t sound out words the way you can with many other languages.

So while Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet you can assemble together to create words by sound, you do have building block elements called radicals. What each radical represents can give you a clue to what the character means.

The radicals that comprise the character for tea tell the elegantly simple story of how tea is a natural plant that we can enjoy as tea thanks to the people who help us harvest it.

Leaves, People, and Trees: The Essence of Tea Represented.

The Chinese character for tea is broken down into three radicals: the top part 艹(leaves) the middle part 人(person) and the bottom part 木(tree).  Each of these radicals reminds us of the essential factors for harvesting and creating tea: trees, people, and leaves.

So put that together in the order it is combined in the character: a person in a tree picking leaves—which is exactly how tea is harvested in China.  People handpick tealeaves off the tea tree plant and use those leaves to create the enchanting beverage tea.

How Tea is Actually Picked in China Today

Tea is still handpicked in China today.  Now the majority of tea trees are trimmed to bushes about waist high to facilitate tea picking.

There are still some areas of China where the tea plant is allowed to grow into a tree and tea is harvested by climbing the trees.

When you visit these areas you will sometimes see tea pickers carrying ladders to help ascend trees as we did when we visited Phoenix Mountain.

As you can see in the photo above, of a woman picking tea leaves in Yunnan, she has climbed onto the tree to pick the leaves—just like the Chinese character for tea suggests.

There is something so mesmerizing to consider how elemental tea is: leaves, people, and trees that the same character has represented tea for the last 1300 years.

While tea production and consumption styles have evolved and changed throughout the centuries, the basic elements remain the same: you can’t have tea without leaves, people, and trees.