Tea is popular around the world. Tea originated(起源) in China, so it should be no 1 that the use of teapots(茶壶) is from China as well. However, it is 2 that the invention of teapots came at least 500 years after tea was first made to drink.
During the early days of tea drinking, tea leaves were placed 3 into a cup of hot water. It wasn't until the Ming Dynasty that the first 4 were created.
The first teapots came from Yixing, China. Since the Song Dynasty a kind of purple clay called Zisha had been mined(开采) around Lake Taihu, and it was 5 to make teapots. The clay can 6 the taste of tea. If a teapot is used long enough, it'll store enough of the tea's taste. Then it is 7 to brew(泡) tea with the teapot and boil water alone.
Yixing teapots were the prototype(雏形) of teapots. They were made 8 hand and in some traditional ways. Yixing teapots are still used today in China, and their construction has 9 little over the centuries. Chinese teapots have stayed nearly 10 same over the centuries. From their first introduction to the West in the late 1600s, however, western teapots have changed a lot at the European market.
