The origins of tea as a beverage can be traced back more than 5,000 years. Chinese mythology first addresses the drink in 3000 BC, when the emperor Nin Song was said to have discovered it. Nin Song was something of a visionary. Among other innovations, he believed that water should be boiled before drinking as a health precaution. As the story goes, he was traveling with some members of the court when they stopped to rest. Some leaves from a bush fell into the water being boiled for the weary travelers, and thus was tea born.

In AD 800, a man named Lu Yu wrote the first known book on tea cultivation and preparation. The work, called the Ch’a Ching, melded Zen Buddhist teachings with the art and craft of tea, forever linking the drink to spirituality. In AD 1191, the cultivation and brewing of the leaves spread to Japan when a monk named Yeisei returned from pilgrimage, bringing seeds back with him. Yeisei had observed tea being used in and enhancing meditation and spiritual awareness in China. He shared this discovery with his peers and the tradition quickly caught on—all the way to the highest levels of society, including the imperial court. Tea was so well-received in Japan that it was elevated to an art form, culminating in the creation of the well-known Japanese Tea Ceremony. The ceremony evolved and grew both more intricate and more exclusive, with students of the art receiving years of practice and training before they were allowed to perform it.

The once-lowly leaf had been raised to the pinnacle of spiritual and social grace. In the words of Lafcadio Hearn, an historian and writer of Irish origin who emigrated to Japan in the late 19th Century, “The Tea ceremony requires years of training and practice to graduate in art ... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible.”

1. The main purpose of this passage is to

A. Trace the historical progression of tea from its origins to the present day
B. Give brief highlights from the history of the cultivation of tea
C. Provide an anecdotal account how tea became a drink
D. Highlight some important elements of the history of preparing and drinking tea
E. Argue against the notion of tea drinking as a valid social art

OA D

2. The last sentence of the first paragraph serves to illustrate which of the following about tea?

A. The mistake that led to tea drinking’s ultimate elevation as a social grace
B. The accidental and fortunate nature of how tea was discovered
C. The spreading seeds of the habit of drinking tea
D. The link between tea and Zen Buddhist practice of pilgrimage
E. The unusually rapid way that tea was developed into a beverage

OA B

3. Which of the following inferences may be drawn from the discussion of Lu Yu’s work?

A. Before 800 AD, it was largely unknown how to cultivate tea
B. Some people even today drink tea for reasons other than its physical benefits
C. Drinking tea was primarily a Zen Buddhist practice until the late 700s
D. The Ch’a Ching is one of the earliest works of Chinese origin that is concerned with agriculture
E. Lu Yu was interested in popularizing tea in countries other than China

OA B

4. Based on the passage, Lafcadio Hearn would have agreed with which of the following statements about Japanese Tea Ceremony?

A. It is needlessly complex and intricate
B. It is important that students of the art spend many years mastering it
C. It is the pinnacle of Japanese taste and culture
D. It is both a simple act and one that is rich with cultural significance
E. It is an inextricable part of Japanese history and spirituality

OA D