The British have been drinking tea for over 350 years. But in fact, the history of tea goes much     1    (far) back.

The story of tea begins in China. According to the legend, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting     2    a tree while his servant boiled drinking water, when some leaves from the tree blew into the water. Shen Nung,     3     expert in herbal medicine, decided to try the water his servant created. As a result, it tasted so good that later the drink was     4     we now call tea.

It is     5    (possible) to know whether there is any truth in this story.     6    , tea drinking certainly was established in China many centuries before it had even been heard of in the west. Containers of tea     7    (find) in tombs dating from the Han dynasty (206BC-220AD) before tea was firmly established as the national drink of China in the Tang dynasty (618-906AD). It became     8     a favorite thing that during the late eighth century, a writer     9    (call) Lu Yu wrote the first book entirely about tea, the Ch’a Ching, or Tea Classic. It was shortly after this that tea was first introduced to Japan, by Japanese Buddhist monks who had travelled to China to study before. Tea drinking has become a vital part of Japanese culture,     10    may be rooted in the sprit described in the Ch’a Ching.