A school specializing in tea culture, the first of its kind in China, was established on Tuesday at the Zhejiang Institute of Forestry in east China's Zhejiang Province.

The tea culture school will begin to recruit students this autumn from across China and give courses on the sociology, aesthetics and folklore of tea culture.

"The move means that tea culture has set foot in China's higher education," said Song Shaoxiang, vice chairman of the International Tea Culture Society in China.

A dozen of vocational schools and a few universities have been teaching the subject of tea planting and processing, but it is the first time that a school has been set up to train undergraduates on tea culture.

"Tea culture has a long history in China and is an inseparable part of China's traditional culture," Song said.

China is the home of tea and the Chinese have developed their own tea culture over thousands of years.

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2006)