Drinking tea was very popular in Song Dynasty. Emperor often rewarded ministers with tea, and even donated tea to foreign diplomats to show friendship. Folk tea culture is full of vitality, for example: to offer tea to neighbors to celebrate housemoving; to offer tea to guests; to send tea when young people got engaged; to set tea when young people got married; and to mix tea before the new couple slept. Tea fragrance permeated every comer of social life.

Emperor Zhaoji of Northern Song Dynasty, despite of incompetence, made a superb study on character writing and painting. He was famous for his work on tea and as a master on tea. In the Grand Northern Song Dynasty he wrote Tea, a book later known as Treatise on Tea. The book, of great value, not only stated the areas producing tea, tea picking season, the production of tea and tea quality accreditation，, but also describe the art of tea at that time.

Treatise on Tea has a lot of very valuable opinion, such as: tea collects the best of the nature, and it can remove the waste of the body, make one sober; however the common people can not understand it. Huizong even comprehend some governing principle from drinking tea, but unfortunately, because of his ineffective enforcement, his reign came to an end, which was laughed by the later generations.