This gilded silver turtle-shaped container from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) was among a batch of royal tea ware items unearthed in 1987 at the ancient Buddhist temple "Famen Temple" in northwest China's Shaanxi. It was used for storing tea powder.

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."