This gilded silver ladle from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) was among a batch of royal tea ware items unearthed in 1987 at Famen Temple – a famous Buddhist temple with a history of over 1,800 years – in northwest China's Shaanxi. It was used for well stirring tea powder with water.

Chinese people have kept the habit of drinking tea since ancient times, and it proliferated during the Tang Dynasty. Lu Yu, a tea scholar at that time, even wrote the first known monograph on tea, "The Classic of Tea."