⏱ Reading time: 10 mins - Last updated: April 3, 2026
Matcha, a tea of Japanese origin? This is one of the most widespread misconceptions. In reality, matcha originated in China, more than 1,500 years ago. Japan welcomed it, preserved it, and perfected it for six centuries, only to bring it back to China!
The earliest traces: Wei and Jin Dynasties (3rd–4th century)
The oldest texts describing the process of picking tea leaves, pressing them into cakes, grinding them into powder, and then preparing them as a beverage come from the Sichuan region in southwestern China.
The poet Zhang Zai of the Western Jin dynasty already mentioned tea cultivation in Chengdu, and Zhang Yi, during the Three Kingdoms period, described in his work Guǎng Yǎ (广雅) the practice of collecting tea leaves, compressing them into cakes, and then boiling them with onions and ginger. (1)
This is not yet "matcha" in the modern sense. But the fundamental principle — grinding tea leaves and consuming them entirely in water — is already present.
Standardization: Tang Dynasty (618–907)
It was under the Tang dynasty that powdered tea became a structured practice. Lu Yu (陆羽) published the Chájīng (茶经), the Classic of Tea, between 760 and 762. It is the first comprehensive treatise on tea in the world, and it explicitly classifies powdered tea among the major categories of tea. (2)
Production techniques became more precise: steamed green tea (蒸青, zhēngqīng), grinding with a mortar (碾茶, niǎnchá), sifting (罗茶, luóchá), and decoction (煎茶, jiānchá). The center of tea culture was around Chang'an (now Xi'an), the imperial capital.
An important detail: under the Tang dynasty, grinding was still manual. The powder obtained was significantly coarser than that of modern matcha.
It was also under the Tang dynasty that tea culture began to spread to Japan. In 805, Buddhist monks Saichō (最澄) and Kūkai (空海) brought tea seeds from China to Japan, laying the first foundations of Japanese tea cultivation. (3)
The Golden Age: Song Dynasty (960–1279)
It was the Song dynasty that transformed powdered tea into a full-fledged art form. Two practices defined this era.
The diǎnchá (点茶) — the art of whisked tea. Tea powder is placed in a bowl, hot water is added, and it is whisked with a bamboo implement to create a thick, white foam. This is the direct ancestor of modern matcha preparation. The technique is precisely described in the Dàguān Chálùn (大观茶论), a treatise on tea written by Emperor Huizong himself in 1107. This work remains, along with Lu Yu's Chájīng, one of the two most important texts in the history of tea. (4)
The dòuchá (斗茶) — tea competitions. Artisans and scholars competed to produce the whitest, densest, and most persistent foam. It was a contest of technical mastery that drove innovation. The quality of Chinese powdered tea reached its historical peak here.
Production was concentrated in the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian. And it was from a specific location that it would be transmitted to Japan.
The Jingshan Temple: The Bridge Between China and Japan
The Buddhist Jingshan Temple (径山寺), located in Yuhang District, Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province), played a central role in this transmission. Founded under the Tang dynasty, this temple has been a high place of Zen and tea culture for over 1,200 years. (5)
It was there that the Jingshan tea ceremony — a complete ten-step ritual integrating whisked tea, Zen meditation, and the welcoming of guests — developed and reached its perfected form under the Song dynasty.
Over the centuries, several Japanese Zen monks came to study at Jingshan, each bringing a piece of the puzzle back to Japan.
Eisai (栄西, 1141–1215) brought back tea seeds and powdered tea preparation methods around 1191. He would publish the Kissa Yōjōki (喫茶養生記), the first Japanese work dedicated to tea, in which he described the benefits of tea and the preparation methods he had observed in China. He laid the foundations of tea culture in Japan. (6)
Enni Ben'en (円爾弁円, 1202–1280) resided directly at Jingshan Temple during the Song dynasty. He brought back not only tea — he brought back the complete ritual: the codified steps of the ceremony, the integration of tea preparation and Zen meditation, the codes for welcoming guests. (5)
Nanpo Shōmyō (南浦紹明, 1235–1308), also trained at Jingshan, consolidated this transmission and helped root the tea ceremony in Japanese monastic culture. Historians still debate today the exact contribution of each of these last two monks, but what is established is that Jingshan Temple is considered the place from which the practice of whisked tea was transmitted to Japan — laying the foundations for what would become Chadō (茶道), the Japanese Way of Tea. (5)(7)
In 2022, the Jingshan tea ceremony was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, alongside 43 other Chinese tea-related traditions. Even today, Jingshan village cultivates tea and produces matcha. (8)
The dormancy in China: Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)
In 1391, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), founder of the Ming dynasty, abolished the compressed tea system and promoted loose-leaf infused tea (散茶, sǎnchá). (9)
However, the powdered tea of the Song dynasty was made from these compressed cakes: a piece of cake was broken off, ground into powder, and then whisked in water. By suppressing the manufacture of cakes, Zhu Yuanzhang simultaneously suppressed the raw material for powdered tea.
Zhu Yuanzhang came from the common people. The son of peasants, a former mendicant monk, he considered the production of ceremonial tea cakes too laborious and costly — a burden imposed on producers for the benefit of court elites. By imposing loose-leaf tea, which was simpler to produce, he relieved the peasants and made tea accessible to the greatest number. (9)(10)
Result: within a few generations, the knowledge of powdered tea fell into oblivion in China. It survived only in Japan, where it would continue to evolve for six centuries.
Six centuries in Japan: preservation and innovation
While China drank loose-leaf tea, Japan evolved matcha. The most decisive innovation arrived in the 16th century: the technique of shading (覆い下栽培, ōishita saibai). (3)
By depriving tea plants of direct light for 20 to 30 days before harvesting, Japanese farmers — mainly in the Uji region of Kyoto — cause an overproduction of chlorophyll and L-theanine in the leaves. This technique gives matcha its intense green color, its sweetness, and its characteristic umami profile.
But creating chlorophyll is not enough — it must also be preserved. This is where a major technical divergence between the two countries comes in. Under the Tang dynasty, China had developed steaming (蒸青, zhēngqīng): freshly picked leaves are steamed to deactivate the enzymes that cause oxidation. This is what helps fix the green color and aromatic compounds. Japan retained this method, while China gradually abandoned it in favor of wok roasting (炒青, chǎoqīng), which gives Chinese green teas their more roasted and golden profile. By keeping steaming, Japan preserved the secret of intensely green matcha. (3)
Japan also developed the production of tencha (碾茶) — steamed, destemmed, and flat-dried leaves before being ground with a stone mill (石臼, ishiusu). This slow grinding produces a powder of incomparable fineness for the time — much finer than what existed under the Tang or Song dynasties, where grinding was done with a mortar.
At the same time, the tea master Sen no Rikyū (千利休, 1522–1591) perfected the tea ceremony and elevated it to an art. He developed the wabi-cha style — an aesthetic of rustic simplicity that rejected extravagance in favor of authenticity. Tea master to the two most powerful lords of the time (Oda Nobunaga then Toyotomi Hideyoshi), he codified rules and principles that still define today the three major Japanese tea ceremony schools (Omotesenke, Urasenke, Mushakōjisenke), all founded by his descendants. (11)
For six centuries, Japan was the only country in the world to produce matcha. But at the beginning of the 21st century, everything changed.
The return to China (21st century)
The return of matcha to China is not gradual. It is recent and rapid.
Around 2014-2015, the first Japanese processing techniques began to be introduced in Guizhou province, in southwestern China. But it was in 2017 that everything accelerated: the Guizhou Tea Group invested 600 million RMB (approximately 7.5 million euros) in an industrial park dedicated to matcha in Jiangkou County (Tongren City), at the foot of Mount Fanjing, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Senior Japanese matcha experts were recruited to supervise the entire technical process. (12)(13)
In 2018, the world's largest matcha factory on a single site was operational, with an annual capacity of over 4,000 tons. (12)
And it's not just a transfer of machinery. Chinese producers also import Japanese cultivars — such as Yabukita, the dominant variety in Japan — which they plant alongside modern Chinese cultivars selected for their high chlorophyll content, umami, and low bitterness. Japanese shading techniques, the tencha production process, and stone mill grinding methods are integrated into Chinese production lines. It is a complete transfer: know-how, equipment, and plant material. (12)(13)
Today, the three major matcha producing regions in China are:
- Tongren (Guizhou) — large-scale alpine production, ideal climate of high altitude and low latitude
- Xiaogan (Hubei) — another major hub of Chinese production
- Hangzhou (Zhejiang) — around Mount Jingshan, where it all began more than a thousand years ago
Other provinces participate in this growing production: Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, and Yunnan, among others. (14)
In 2024, Tongren alone produced over 1,200 tons of matcha, of which 210 tons were exported to more than 50 countries. (15)
In 2025, Chinese matcha was exported to Japan for the first time on a large scale. Because Japan, facing the aging of its plantations, labor shortages, and explosive global demand, can no longer ensure supply alone: some of the largest Japanese producers have even had to ration their sales. To supplement their offerings, Japanese buyers are now turning to China — a matcha that has passed several cycles of tests according to Japanese standards, including pesticide residues, heavy metals, and microbiology. (14)(16)(17)
China is now the world's largest producer of matcha, with production exceeding that of Japan. (18)
What this history teaches us
The history of matcha is not a straight line from China to Japan. It is a circle.
China invented powdered tea. Japan preserved and perfected it for six centuries, adding crucial innovations — shading, tencha production, stone mill grinding, and cultivars specifically developed for matcha. In the 21st century, China reintegrated these techniques and cultivars, combined them with its own terroirs and industrial capacity, and once again became the world's leading producer.
Without Japan, matcha would no longer exist. But without China, it would never have existed. Today, the best Chinese producers master the same techniques as Japan — shading, steaming, tencha, fine grinding — and keep this tradition alive with respect and rigor in China.
Sources
(1) Zhang Yi (张揖), Guǎng Yǎ (广雅), Three Kingdoms period (3rd century). Cited in: Wikipedia, Chinese tea culture
(2) 陆羽 (Lu Yu), 茶经 (Chájīng / The Classic of Tea), c. 760-762. Wikipedia entry
(3) Wikipedia, History of tea in Japan
(4) 宋徽宗 (Emperor Huizong), 大观茶论 (Dàguān Chálùn / Grand Treatise on Tea from the Daguan Era), 1107. Wikipedia entry. English translation: Ronald Egan (UC Santa Barbara), "Huizong's Tea Manual". Academic article (ResearchGate)
(5) CGTN (2023), "Jingshan tea ceremony shows diversity of Chinese culture". Link
(6) 栄西 (Eisai), 喫茶養生記 (Kissa Yōjōki / Treatise on the Benefits of Tea), presented in 1214. Cited in: Wikipedia, Matcha
(7) China Daily, "Brewing up an event steeped in culture". Link
(8) UNESCO, 2022 — Inscription of traditional Chinese tea processing techniques on the list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity (including the Jingshan tea ceremony among 44 sub-projects)
(9) Wikipedia, Chinese tea culture — Ming dynasty
(10) Global Tea Hut (2017), "Emperor Ming Taizu & The Abolition of Caked Tea". Link
(11) Wikipedia, Sen no Rikyū
(12) Xinhua (2025), "SW China mountainous county brews global matcha success". Link
(13) Our China Story, "Japan matcha is made in China's Guizhou?". Link
(14) Sina Finance (2025), "中日抹茶之争，贵州先赢一城" (The China-Japan matcha battle: Guizhou scores the first point). Link
(15) 铜仁市政府 (Tongren Municipal Government), "铜仁市被授予一带一路抹茶高质量出口地区". Link
(16) People's Daily (2025), "2025出海续航！贵州抹茶再次大规模出口日本". Link
(17) Xinhua / People's Daily (2025), "一杯抹茶的跨山越海之旅" (The journey of a cup of matcha across mountains and oceans). Link
(18) CCTV (央视网) / 中国国际果蔬报道 (2025), "中国稳居全球最大抹茶生产国" (China remains firmly the world's largest matcha producer). Link
Additional academic works:
- Patricia Ebrey, Emperor Huizong, Harvard University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-674-72525-6. Harvard UP · Amazon
- 蔡襄 (Cai Xiang), 茶录 (Chálù / Treatise on Tea), 1049-1053
- 中國歷代茶書匯編 (Compilation of Chinese Tea Works Through the Ages), 2 volumes, ISBN 978-962-07-3153-2