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tea was made by letting tea leaves steep in boiling water. it was mostly drank as medicine.
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chines alchemists accidentally discovered gunpowder when trying to find substance that would make humans immortals.
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The Chinese first made steel, a very useful metal. Steel is made from iron, but it is less brittle than iron and easier to bend into different shapes.
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The Chinese were the only people in the world who knew the secret of making paper. From China, knowledge of papermaking traveled to Japan and across Central Asia. Europeans probably first learned about this art after 1100.
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The invention of paper made another key development possible which is printing. In about the 7th century, the Chinese invented a technique called woodblock printing. The printer first drew characters another word for symbols on paper. They then glued the paper to a wooden block. When the glue was dry the printer carved out the wood around the characters leaving the characters raised on the wood.
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The clock was more accurate than earlier timekeeping devices, such as sundials and hourglasses. The Chinese devised a wheel that made one complete turn every 24 hours. Dripping water made the wheel turn. Every quarter hour drums would beat and every hour a bell would chime. The sounds let people know what time it was.
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Paper money and cards were made out of woodblock. It was invented in the late 8th and early 9th century.
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Porcelain beautiful pottery that is study but looks delicate. Porcelain dinnerware is still called China.
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Rockets were powered by a black powder made of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. Before everything the rockets were used only in fireworks. Then the Chinese started to use them as weapons. They even developed a two-stage rocket for their armies.
