Tea Ceremony

The ritual preparation and serving of tea as a formal social and, in several traditions, spiritual practice, rather than as a simple beverage. In Japan, chanoyu descends from tea brought by Buddhist monks from China in the Heian period and popularized in powdered form by the Zen priest Eisai in the 12th century, refined over centuries into the disciplined, humility-centered practice given its lasting form by the tea master Sen no Rikyu in the 16th century. China's own tea processing traditions and associated social practices were added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022, and the underlying leaf itself is fermentation's neighbor, prepared without it for green tea and through it for black and other fermented teas alike.