Emperor Jing of Han
The practice of drinking tea has a long history in China, having originated there. The history of tea in China is long and complex, for the Chinese have enjoyed tea for millennia. Scholars hailed the brew as a cure for a variety of ailments; the nobility considered the consumption of good tea as a mark of their status, and the common people simply enjoyed its flavour. In 2016, the discovery of the earliest known physical evidence of tea from the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han in Xi'an was announced, indicating that tea from the genus "Camellia" was drunk by Han dynasty emperors as early as 2nd century BC. Tea then became a popular drink in the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) Dynasties.