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Ahhhh
Heres...The History….Of Tea
In China it's sipped from tiny porcelain cups. Tibetans mix it with salt and yak butter.
The Japanese whisk it during ceremonies. Russians add lemon. Morrocans use mint. And Americans
add a dash of ehh High Fructose Corn Syrup. The Irish and Turks drink it by the bucket
load while the call of the Chai Wallah is known across India where they serve it with
milk, sugar, and spices.
It was tribute to Chinese Emperors, sustained meditating Buddhists monks, and turned Britain
into the deadliest drug lord in history. So what is the history of tea, how has it changed
our world, and what does it have to do with Jesus’ Chinese brother? Well Let's Find
Out.
Tea hasn't always been a delicious infusion of leaves and hot water. No. The first humans
who lived in tea's native regions, around Assam in India and the Sichuan and Yunnan
provinces of China chewed tea leaves for thousands of years before brewing it.
When did we start drinking tea? Well we don't exactly know. The most popular legend places
its origin around 2500BCE. This handsome chap, the mythical Chinese emperor Shen Nung was
boiling some water to make it safe to drink. When some tea leaves fell into it. Surprised
by this new tasty and energising drink Shen taught his Chinese subjects how to grow and
drink tea.
Drinking tea probably originated in Sichuan or Yunnan. It spread from Southern China towards
the north with the help of Buddhist monks. Tea had become their favourite drink as it
could keep them awake during long meditations.
The spread of tea follows along the spread of Buddhism through China and other places
in Asia.
Tea in Ancient China was quite different to modern tea. The Guangya, a Chinese dictionary
from the 200's AD describes how tea was made.
They compressed dried tea leaves into bricks. To make tea you snipped a bit off the brick,
mixed with hot water and then added things like onion, ginger, salt and orange.
Tea wasn't an enjoyable beverage at this time. It was a bitter medicinal drink used to treat
stomach aches, bad eyesight, skin diseases, and sleepiness.
During the Tang Dynasty (618–907) Chinese civilsation reached never before seen heights.
As art, culture, and cities flourished so did tea technology. Tea growing and processing
methods improved the taste of tea. It transformed from a medicine into an enjoyable treat.
Teahouses and tea gardens soon sprang up in cities and towns across the empire. Tea became
part of everyday life from the Emperor all the way down to the peasants. Green tea was
the tea of choice at this time. The Chinese didn't start making black tea until the seventeenth
century.
The Tang Chinese Emperors began demanding that tribute be paid in tea. Peasants now
had to grow tea along with their already heavy rice farming workload. Overworked farmers
sometimes had to ignore their rice crops. And famine haunted the poor of China while
the Emperor sipped away on the finest tribute teas.
The Emperor now rich with tea got rich trading it across Asia. The ancient ‘Tea-Horse Road’
linked China’s south-west provinces with Tibet. Vegetables don't grow well in the harsh
Tibetan climate. But now they could mix Yak milk, yak butter and salt with tea to add
a little plant fibre to their animal-based diet. In return they gave the Chinese powerful
war horses.
Buddhist monks and traders moving along the Silk Road brought tea with them into Central
Asia and the Middle East.
Tea drinking spread to Burma in the south to Siberia in the north, from Japan and Korea
in the East over to Turkish, Mongolian, and Russian merchants in the West.
Tea arrived in Japan and Korea from China in the late sixth century. Introduced by Buddhist
monks who had travelled to China to study.
During the Kamakura Era the custom of drinking tea reached the samurai. These intimidating
warriors soon fell in love with tea. They began hosting tea parties and spread teahouses
and tea culture across Japan.
Tea won a complete victory in Japan when the Shogun of Japan, Sanetomo was suffering from
a hangover so terrible he and everyone around him thought he was literally about to die.
Until a Zen Buddhist Priest, Eisai, brought the Shogun a bowl of tea along with his book
on the benefits of tea. It cured his hangover and Sanetomo became a tea addict and he helped
spread tea across Japanese society.
Zen Buddhist monks would create an entire spiritual ceremony around tea, which evolved
into the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Which continues to this day.
By the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) in China tea bricks fell out of fashion. Now
steeping loose tea leaves in boiling water was all the rage. And they developed black
tea by fermenting tea leaves. During this time, tea began to be traded with the Europeans.
Oddly enough there are really only two ways to say “tea” in the world. One is like
the English term—té in Spanish, tae in Irish, or "le thé" in French for example.
The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi, zhay in Russian, or Çay in Turkish.
Both versions come from this Chinese character 茶.
In Mandarin and Cantonese, it's pronounced chá. So if a language calls tea some variation
of cha, tea reaches them overland along the Silk Road.
But in Min Chinese, spoken in the coastal province of Fujian, the character is pronounced
te. Fujian is where early 17th century Dutch merchants traded with China. The te pronunciation
spread to Europe via the Dutch.
But the first Europeans in China were the Portuguese, who traded through Macao, where
chá is used. Which is why Portugal is the only chá user in a sea of tea.
The Dutch brought the first shipment of tea to Amsterdam in 1610 and started spreading
it around Europe. Europeans didn't quite take to tea, the price was a bit too steep for
what they saw as a bitter and medicinal drink. To them it was only useful for its ability
to Vanquisheth heavy Dreames, Easeth the brain of heavy Damps, and Openeth Obstructions in
the bowel.
The first tea arrived in England in about 1645. But the English didn't seem keen either,
they were coffee drinkers.
That was until the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza and Charles II of England married
in 1662. Catherine loved tea! The first thing she asked for when she landed in England was
a cup of tea. Spotting a potential opportunity in 1664 the British East India Company gifted
Charles and his wife 1kg of Chinese tea. Soon all fashionable society wanted to be seen
drinking tea like the royals.
The ironically named Honourable East India Company was founded in 1600 through a Royal
Charter from Queen Elizabeth I . It received a monopoly over all English trade in the Far
East.
The East India Company grew enormously wealthy and was an Empire in its own right. It could
conquer territory, mint money, command armies, make war and peace, and collect taxes. In
the early 19th century it had twice as many soldiers under its command than the British
Army.
In 1689 the East India Company started to import tea directly from China. Through the
1700s the amount of tea being important rose significantly year after year.
Millions in Britain were now hooked on tea and the tea trade with China was making the
East India Company filthy rich. But the East India Company found themselves in hot water.
China held all the power. Europeans were only allowed to trade at a single Chinese port,
Canton, and China being the wealthiest place on Earth at the time had no interest in British
goods. China only wanted cold hard silver. Which the British were running out of.
So the Honourable Company devised a very cunning plan. Drugs!
For centuries people across Eurasia used opium, the plant used to make morphine and heroin,
for it's pain-killing and sedative effects. If the British could hook the Chinese on opium
then they could trade that instead of silver for tea.
But they needed access to land and labour where they could grow opium. So the East India
Company began to colonise India. In 1757 The Honourable Company won a decisive victory
over the Indians at the Battle of Plassey. Which gave them control over Bengal.
Bengal, the richest place in India, worth about 12% of the Earth’s GDP in 1700, was
the proto-industrial textile and ship building capital of the world. Within 15 years of the
East India Company seizing control 10 million Bengalis were starved to death and Bengal
was deindustrialised and contorted into a massive opium field.
The British drowned China with Indian grown opium. Opium was already illegal in China
but by the middle of the nineteenth century one in every three Chinese adults were opium
addicts.
By 1840 the opium trade brought Britain revenues of $3.8 billion modern dollars and rose to
about $22 billion by 1879.
The infusion of cash into Britain from the tea and opium trade let them build up a powerful
modern navy. While an opioid crisis devastated China.
By 1839 the Chinese Emperor was fed up. He sent an official to Canton to deal with this
crisis diplomatically. That official sized 1.2 million kg of opium and dumped it into
the sea.
Soon British gunboats opened fire on the Chinese.
This started the First Opium War of 1839–42. British warships devastated Chinese cities
and armies. Opium addicted Chinese soldiers couldn't put up much of a fight. The Emperor
was forced into a humiliating peace treaty. China would pay for the cost of the war and
the destroyed opium, Hong Kong was handed over to the British, and the Canton system
ended. The Europeans could now trade with China through Canton and 4 other ports.
In a now bankrupt, war-torn, and drug addicted China things began to boil over. In 1850 a
rebellion against the Qing Dynasty was led by Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed brother
of Jesus Christ, led to the deaths of about 30 million people. During this rebellion the
British and French launched a second Opium War in 1856. The Emperor was again forced
to negotiate. Even more Chinese ports were opened to foreigners and opium was legalised.
By 1800 enough tea was being imported into Britain to provide 1kg of tea per person per
year. That's about 600 cups. Tea had now become a staple of British life for all classes.
British and Tea were inseparable.
By 1813 taxes on tea accounted for 10% of the British government’s entire revenue.
The British Empire was riding a wave of tea. But they were keenly aware that it was the
Chinese that grew it, processed it, and sold it to them for a hefty profit.
Why should China make a fortune out of its own product when the East India Company could
take that fortune instead.
From around 1778 the British had been aware that tea plants grew wild in Assam in India.
Stripped of its trade monopoly with China in 1834 the East Indian Company finally started
paying attention to native Assam tea.
The company discovered you could make a decent tea from Assam leaves. But they couldn’t
make Assam tea taste as good as Chinese tea.
Back to the drawing board they went. Assam was a low lying tropical region but the Himalayan
region had similar growing conditions as China’s best tea regions. Assam tea didn't grow well
there but if they could get their hands on Chinese tea plants everything would fall into
place.
The Chinese government banned Chinese citizens from sharing any information on growing or
processing tea or trading tea plants.
So if the East India Company wanted tea for India, they'd have to steal it.
The thief would be Scottish botanist Robert Fortune. Which is honestly an excellent name
for someone about to steal an entire industry.
He was sent to China in 1848 by the East India Company to steal the finest tea plants and
to learn how the Chinese manufactured tea.
Fortune dressed up as a Chinese person, because foreigners weren't allowed outside of the
trading ports. Using this ehhh disguise Fortune would visit tea farms and factories and learned
that all teas come from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. Before this the British thought
different teas came from different plants.
But Fortune was taught that any differences between green tea and black was the result
of processing alone. Black tea was fermented while green tea wasn't.
After years in China Fortune learned the entire tea making process, obtained all the necessary
equipment, sent back thousands of tea plants from China's best tea regions, and managed
to bring back 6 Chinese tea masters to India with him.
Within years India's tea industry was out producing China's and doing it for a lower
price.
British colonialism and its tea plantations expanded into Burma, Ceylon, East Africa,
and other places where tea could be grown.
During the last half of the nineteenth century, tea estates covered India, especially Assam.
As the tea plantations grew so did the need for labourers. The search for cheap labor
centered on Bengal, where Indian slaves were taken from their homes to tea plantations
in Assam.
The conditions on these plantations were horrific. Owners refused to provide enough food. Disease
was rampant, clean water wasn't provided, and child labour was common.
Today Assam is one of the most underdeveloped and poor states in India, and is home to several
separatist movements.
Nowadays over 13 million people are employed in tea production. Workers still often work
long difficult hours for low wages on tea plantations, where they often have to live.
Poor working conditions and disease is still prevalent.
But luckily we live in a world where the East India Company or Empires no longer have a
monopoly on the tea trade.
A fairer wealth distribution across the tea supply chain and better practices are possible.
Organisations like Fair Trade Organization and the Ethical Tea Partnership help small
tea farmers receive fair prices for their products and monitor living and working conditions
among other issues.
Today Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world after water. Global consumption
of tea is forecasted to reach 297 billion liters by 2021.
By choosing to buy sustainable and human friendly teas the lives of tea producers can be improved
significantly. And over the last twenty years, conditions on at least some of the tea plantations
have improved due to these efforts.
When Robert Fortune snuck those plants out of China he couldn't have imagined how large
the tea industry would become. His adventure in China was fascinating and I wished I could
have discussed it in more depth, there are pirates, bad disguises, and many many mistakes
but I feel better knowing that you can go see his entire adventure by watching Tea War:
The Adventures Of Robert Fortune over on CuriosityStream. CuriosityStream is a streaming service that
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So that's the history of tea
It isn't even close to covering everything. One video simply can't
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