Green tea’s enduring popularity is reflected in the “teacup without handle” emoji (left). The “hot beverage” emoji (right) takes its cue from another tea tradition: black tea.
Illustration by Meilan Solly / Background map via Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas at Austin
When searching for a tea emoji on most text messaging apps, a range of options appear. One shows what looks like green liquid in a white bowl. Another features a saucer and a cup filled with a darker liquid that doubles as coffee.
These emoji’s designs allude to the long history of tea, tracing how this centerpiece of a cherished Asian tradition grew into a global beverage. For most of recorded history, the word “tea” referred to green tea from China and later Japan—illustrated by the emoji officially called “teacup without handle.”
“The whole world was drinking Chinese green teas quite late,” says Erika Rappaport, author of A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World. Black tea, on the other hand, “is almost a 20th-century phenomenon,” she adds. It’s represented by the second, more generically named “hot beverage” emoji.
A cup of black tea brewed with leaves grown in China
Drew Jemmett via Unsplash
The origins of tea
The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, is indigenous to a region spanning present-day China, India, Myanmar and Cambodia. All types of tea are derived from the same plant. But different methods of processing the plant’s leaves produce different types of teas, with the level of oxidation affecting the color and flavor of the resulting beverage.
To make green tea, manufacturers dehydrate, heat and shape the leaves, preventing oxidation and preserving the plant’s original color. At the other end of the spectrum, black tea…
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