Tea is the national drink. After more than 1000 years of tea consumption in China, with the advent of the Age of Discovery, European merchant ships arrived in China, and Chinese tea entered the Western world. Initially regarded as a ‘poison’, tea later became a popular health beverage in the West. What is tea? It is said that ‘tea was used to test for poison’ and ‘the drinking of tea originated from the divine farmer Shennong’.
China has a long history of tea drinking. Records of tea as a commodity appeared during the Western Han Dynasty. In the text ‘Tongyue’, tea is mentioned twice: ‘slicing fish and cyanurine soft-shelled turtle, cooking tea with all the utensils’ and ‘buying tea in Wuyang, carried by Yang’s family’. The author of ‘Tongyue’, Wang Bao, was a famous literary figure of the Western Han Dynasty. Although ‘Tongyue’ was a leisurely work, it inadvertently left a significant mark on the history of Chinese tea. ‘Cooking tea with all the utensils’ means brewing tea and preparing clean tea sets, while ‘buying tea in Wuyang’ refers to purchasing tea in Wuyang (today’s Shuangjiang Town, Pengshan County). From the perspective of tea history research, the fact that tea could be traded as a commodity indicates that tea drinking was already very popular during the Western Han Dynasty. When did Chinese tea reach the West? More than 100 years ago (1868-1872), a German named Richthofen conducted seven surveys in China, covering 13 of the then 18 provinces. In his book ‘China – The Results of Personal Travel and Research’, he referred to the ancient channels for transporting silk from the East to the West as the ‘Silk Road’. The ‘Silk Road’ has become a synonym for cultural exchange between the ancient East and West. However, it is puzzling that there are no records of Chinese tea in the West. The earliest appearance of ‘tea’ in Europe was in 1559, when the Venetian merchant Ramusio mentioned tea for the first time in his book ‘Navigation Records’, which is more than 1500 years later than Wang Bao’s ‘Tongyue’. In these more than 1500 years, there is no word ‘tea’ in Western literature, let alone tea trade and consumption. In ‘The Travels of Marco Polo’, we also cannot find a single word about tea. In 1606, the Dutch were the first to import tea to Europe. However, for more than 100 years thereafter, tea was not an important commodity imported to Europe. In 1704, the British merchant ship ‘Gent’ purchased 470 piculs of tea in Guangzhou, valued at 14,000 taels of silver, accounting for only 11% of the cargo value, while the silk carried was worth 80,000 taels, several times the value of tea. In 1716, tea began to become an important commodity in Sino-British trade, with two British merchant ships carrying back 3,000 piculs of tea from Guangzhou, valued at 35,085 pounds, accounting for 80% of the total cargo value.After the 1720s, tea consumption in Europe grew rapidly. Tea trade became the most profitable item for all European Oriental trading companies. The French merchant Robert Constant, who was active in Guangzhou at that time, said, “Tea is the main impetus that drives us to China. Other goods are just for diversifying the product range.” Robert Hart, the Inspector General of the Imperial Maritime Customs of the Qing Dynasty, wrote in his book “China: A Personal Record”: “China has the best food in the world – rice; the best beverage – tea; and the best clothing materials – cotton, silk and furs.”
In the history of tea tasting, Russia was much luckier than other European countries. In 1638, a messenger from Tsarist Russia named Strakov was ordered to go to Mongolia to meet the Khan, presenting sable furs as a greeting gift. The Khan presented 200 packs of Chinese tea in return to the Tsar. At that time, the Tsarist messenger knew nothing about tea. He brought the tea back to St. Petersburg. The Tsar ordered his servants to make tea and invite his close ministers to taste it. It had a wonderful aroma when entering the mouth. Since then, the Russians started their long history of tea drinking. In the 18th century, the UK imposed heavy taxes on luxury goods such as tea. The smuggling profit was huge, so that many sailors took risks. A peddler named Robert Trotman was thrown into prison for smuggling tea. Even today, many historians still often linger in front of his tomb and copy the inscription on the tombstone. There is a sentence left by Robert Trotman before his death: “Just a little tea. I didn’t steal much. God, my blood is shed unjustly. On one side is tea, on the other side is human blood. Think about it, an innocent brother was killed because of this!” If Robert Trotman in the UK died somewhat “unjustly”, then the story of the Swedish twin brothers who “avoided death by drinking tea” seems “funny”. In 1772, a Swedish minister reported to King Gustav III that a kind of magical leaves came from the distant East and were said to be used as a beverage, but people were worried that drinking them would be poisonous. The king had an idea. He had a pair of twin brothers who were sentenced to death brought into the palace and ordered them, “One person drinks tea every day, and the other drinks coffee every day, and then they can be spared from the death penalty. ” Sixty years later, the one who drank coffee passed away due to illness. More than 10 years later, the one who drank tea died of natural causes. Subsequently, tea began to be popular in Sweden. Where Does Tea Come From: Are Black Tea and Green Tea of Different Origins? Since the West came into contact with tea in the 16th century, for more than three centuries, tea had always been suspected of being poisonous. In 1664, after the East India Company presented tea to the British king, fashionable noblewomen imitated the royal family and tried to drink it. But they were worried that tea was poisonous, so they had to drink brandy to “detoxify” after drinking tea.Europeans began to consume tea, yet no tea plant could be found on European soil. How is tea produced? This question perplexed Europeans, as China did not allow European merchants to enter the mainland, leaving them unaware of the tea production process. The Eastern tea sparked great curiosity among Westerners. In 1560, the Portuguese man, Gaspar da Cruz, disguised himself and mingled with merchant groups, traveling between Chinese trade ports and the mainland for four years before understanding the origins of tea.
He documented his observations in ‘The Chinese Beverage of Tea,’ Europe’s first monograph on Chinese tea. Following Cruz, many Western explorers set their sights on Chinese tea. In 1848, Robert Fortune, dispatched by the British East India Company, came to China for investigation. Fortune also disguised himself, wearing Chinese attire and sporting a fake queue. Later, in his book ‘A Journey Through the Tea Countries,’ he detailed his adventurous experiences. In the garden of a small inn, he discovered a previously unknown plant. He calmly entered the inn, sat at a table, and ordered wine and dishes. After the meal, Fortune leisurely lit a Chinese pipe and asked the innkeeper, ‘These little trees are quite beautiful. I come from the coast, where I cannot see such trees; could you give me some seeds?’ The kind innkeeper fulfilled his request. Through coaxing and deception, Fortune collected a vast number of tea plant specimens and seeds from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. Ultimately, he transported 23,892 tea plants and approximately 17,000 tea seeds to India and brought back eight Chinese tea workers. Fortune’s trip to China also unraveled a mystery for Westerners: they had long believed in the existence of green tea trees and black tea trees, but Fortune informed them that the difference between green and black tea lies in the tea-making process. Initially ridiculed by the public, he invited Indian tea workers to demonstrate manual tea-making in front of the British public, only gaining recognition after personal verification. Fortune’s journey to China was undoubtedly a significant watershed in the history of world tea. Soon after, tea gardens began to emerge in Assam and Sikkim, India. By the second half of the 19th century, tea became India’s main export commodity. Between 1854 and 1929, over 75 years, British tea imports increased by 837%. Subsequently, ‘Lipton’ black tea became globally popular and still holds the position of the world’s number one tea brand. In contrast, China’s tea international trade volume plummeted. ‘Undigested Food’: Exploring the ‘Flavor’ of Tibetan Tea. Faced with the magical ‘green gold’ of tea, in the second half of the 19th century, the British business community urgently sought to open up China’s southwestern gateway, focusing on the Tibetan tea consumption market.Another British man arrived in China, with his goal being the Sichuan-Tibet Tea Horse Ancient Road, in search of a shorter and more direct tea trade route between China and India. This British man was named Samuel Turner, in 1867. Turner also disguised himself and planned to investigate the route from Chengdu to Ya’an to Kangding to Batang to India. Due to resistance from the Chinese government, he was hindered at Batang and had to return along the way.
Although the investigation was not successful, he discovered Tibetan tea. In his book ‘A British Trade Pioneer in a Queue and Robe – A Journey Up the Yangtze River’, he wrote: ‘As we entered the gorge leading to Dartsedo, we overtook a team of nearly 200 people transporting tea from Yazhou to Dartsedo. On the road, I had already discovered long lines of porters transporting tea, numbering in the hundreds. At the foot of the steep Erlang Mountain peak, on the narrow path along the Dadu River, the silhouette of the long tea transportation team looked like a landscape.’ The route Turner investigated was the ancient Sichuan-Tibet Tea Horse Ancient Road. During the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, the amount of tea entering Tibet from Ya’an reached 110,000 catties (1 catty = 100 catties). This millions of catties of tea entering Tibet all depended on manual transport to Kangding, and then transported into Tibet by horse. Tea is an indispensable item for Tibetans and is also the most important commodity in Sichuan-Tibet trade. Turner managed to learn about the production process of Tibetan tea from the innkeeper, and he provided a detailed description of the origin, picking, processes, unit price, and sales of the tea, providing accurate reference data for the imitation of Ya’an Tibetan tea by Indian tea. Turner believed that tea grown on the slopes of the Brahmaputra River Valley in Assam, India, could replace tea from mainland China and capture the Tibetan market. Once Indian tea entered Tibet, it could easily win in the competition with Ya’an tea. Although Indian tea was cheaper than Ya’an Tibetan tea, it was not popular among Tibetans because it was not accepted by Tibetans in terms of ‘taste’. After 1870, the British Indian government continuously sent people to investigate the cultivation of Sichuan tea and Tibetan tea trade in the Ya’an and Dartsedo areas. The value of Turner’s investigation was to provide the official with detailed information and related data about Ya’an border tea entering Tibet. However, there was still a lack of ‘technology’ support in production and processing. In 1905, another British man named Archibald Little appeared on the streets of Ya’an. He centered on Ya’an to investigate tea mountains (Mengding Mountain), tea roads (Tea Horse Ancient Road), tea cities (Ya’an, Dartsedo), tea people (Wu Lizhen), and tea events (Lotus Mountain Meeting). In his writings, the overview and history of Mengding Mountain tea production area, management and taxation, production and processing, transportation and sales, and the life of Wu Lizhen and the origin of the seven tea trees in the Imperial Tea Garden were all included. Little called Wu Lizhen the ‘patron saint of the Yazhou tea industry’.Hutchinson’s ‘Report on India’s Brick Tea Supply to Tibet: Sichuan Mission Report’ provides a basis for the cultivation of tea plants and the production and processing of brick tea, marking a significant contribution to the entry of Indian tea into Tibet. To this day, the Indian tea industry still values the historical documentation of this report. In 2013, an Indian publishing house reprinted and publicly distributed this book. Salvaging fragments from the annals of history to retrace the journey of Chinese tea to the world offers us a unique window to ‘understand ourselves’. This undoubtedly plays a significant role in the revival of Chinese tea and the integrated development of eco-tourism culture represented by tea culture.
