A story to share

I heard this from a Korean friend and I don't know how true it is but it certainly is a beautiful story.

Apparently this story is told to every kid at school. Here it goes:

Long, long time ago, about 1500 years back, there exist a bright Queen who's the ruler of what now we call Korea. The story began with her looking at a painting and some plant seeds given as gifts from one of the many Kings from the neighbouring country - China. This King sent over a painting of a certain species of flower that indicate what the seeds would grow to look like. Our Queen looked at the painting and said that, this seed will bear flower that have no smell as she found that there's no bees or butterflies illustrated in the painting. She was right.

She also received a young plant from this King. She passed it to a temple for the monks to look after. As years go by, this plant did not grow into the height what we would normally categorise as tree and it's shorter than man. It's a small trea and that the leaves are the sizes of your nails, even smaller! One day, she visited the temple (must be like 10-20 years later) and saw the tree in the temple (still looking small). And she found that the monks in the temple, though over 60 years of age, looking fantastically young and have in possess the most good looking skin on their face.

Curiosity strikes and it was because, any gifts from the royal family had to be regarded as important properties, the monks were collecting fallen leaves from the small tree and had put them into the rice cooker to be cooked together with rice and served to all monks as a mean of appreciating the royal gift. And, woala!, those leaves are full of antioxidant (I guess) and Vit E that it preserved their youth! So, here you go, that's the story of the 1500 years old tea tree in Korea, which is still amazingly alive.

She then understood the meaning of this tea tree as a gift from the King, i.e. he wanted to marry her. She wrote a letter to the Chinese King and told him that she will keep him in her heart. I don't know why they didn't get married. But, after he died, she missed his so much, she constructed a temple to remember him by. Which, yes, is still in Korea.

What a beautiful story...