CARAVANS
TO RUSSIA
The first tea reached Russia in 1618, when a Chinese
embassy presented some to Czar Alexis. After 1689,
when the Treaty7 of Nerchinsk defined the border between
the two, caravan trade began, at China's insistence,
through the frontier town Usk Kayakhta (or Kiahta)
north of Ulan ,Bator, then on the Chinese border,
today just inside the border of the USSR. Russian
government camel trains would arrive laden with furs
and return carrying tea. Ordinary- caravans of two
to three hundred camels took almost a year for the
trek from Moscow- to the border town and back. The
entire journey from Chinese grower to Russian market
took eighteen months.
By 1700 Russia was receiving over six hundred camel
loads of tea annually, at a cost so great that only
aristocrats could afford to buy it. In J 1735 Czarina
Elizabeth set up a regular private caravan route which
J made tea more plentiful.
By the death of Catherine the Great in 1796, Russia
was consuming over six thousand camel loads of tea
per year—something over three-and-a-half million pounds.
Regardless of their social or economic J status, most
Russians ate a single large daily meal and sipped
glasses of tea the rest of the time.
Since Chinese ports were not open to Russian ships,
the caravan trade continued until 1880 when the first
link of the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed.
After Guangzhou was opened as a foreign port, Russian
j entrepreneurs set up mechanized factories there
making brick tea, j which the Russians favored. In
1882 these were moved to Hankou on ,j the middle Yangtze.
The samovar, a metal water container with a fire underneath
and a pipe up the middle which keeps the water hot
(to dilute strong tea from a pot j on top) probably
became widespread in Russia during Czarina Elizabeth's
reign. Soon every home in Russia had one as the Russians
became avid drinkers of strong tea sipped through
a lump of sugar held between the teeth.
Peter Mundy, who chronicled his arrival with the first
British ship in Macao in 1637, mentions a Chinese
samovar there. The famous tea authority, William Ukers,
says the samovar developed out of a Chinese teapot
(he pictures one of pewter) that sat atop a brass
charcoal burner.
The charcoal gas escaped through a cone which passed
upward through the pot and M. It bears some relationship
to the charcoal-heated firepot for cooking meat in
broth still used today by the Mongolians. The samovar
is a rarity in China today.
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