All about China
Tea General introduction
Known throughout
Asia as one of China's great treasures, tea is second
only to water as a world beverage. Tea has been linked
with health from the very beginning, and is prized
for its ability to banish fatigue, stimulate the mental
powers, and raise the energy level. The Taoist philosophers
and Buddhist monks, who did much to promote tea and
improve its cultivation in China, imbued tea drinking
with greater meaning than is applied to any other
beverage. Tea drinking does, in fact, reflect much
that is characteristically Chinese, from the taste
itself to the way it is served. Anyone who has tried
to describe the taste of tea will recall having a
difficult time. The flavor is much more subtle than
that of coffee or chocolate. The man of letters, Lu
Yu, who wrote a classic work on tea about which we
shall hear more later, spoke of "a haunting flavor,
strange and lasting."
The most famous Chinese description of the joys of
drinking tea is by Lu Tong, a Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907)
poet famous for his love of tea, entitled "Thanks
to Imperial Censor Meng for His Gift of Freshly Picked
Tea." The poet tells how this high official sent
him some tea, and he retired to prepare it:
The first cup caresses my dry lips and throat,
The second shatters the walls of my lonely sadness,
The third searches the dry rivulets of my soul to
find the stories of five thousand scrolls.
With the fourth the pain of past injustice vanishes
through my pores.
All the Tea in China
The fifth purifies my flesh and bone.
With the sixth I am in touch wdth the immortals.
The seventh gives such pleasure I can hardly bear.
The fresh wind blows through my wings
As I make my way to Penglai.
* The stimulating effect of tea brings into harmony
two seemingly contradictory elements—alertness and
relaxation. Lu Yu held that tea was the essence of
moderation, and that one should sip it as though it
were life itself, never taking more than three cups
at a time. An offer of a cup of tea is therefore like
an invitation to relax and enjoy the here and now
for what it is.
What can be called tea may be made from many plants.
Today there are a multitude of herbal teas on the
market and indeed herbal teas have always been a tradition
in China, more for medical than beverage use. Here
we confine the discussion to true tea, made from the
leaf of the plant Camellia sinensis.
One of the ironies of history is that this "peaceful"
drink should have been such an important factor in
two revolutions—the American Revolution in 1776 and
the modern Chinese Revolution, China's long struggle
against foreign imperialism, which began with the
Opium W^ars of 1840 and 1857 and finally ended in
the creation of a new China in 1949.
In the American Revolution the beverage led to the
Boston Tea Party on December 16,1773, when three shiploads
of tea chests were dumped into Boston harbor. The
American colonists regarded the tax on tea as a symbol
for many edicts Britain had imposed on the colonies
without consulting them.
The Opium War grew out of the drain on Britain's silver
supply as Chinese tea gained popularity7 in nineteenth
century England. To recoup the silver that was being
sent to China to purchase tea, opium was sold to China.
Chinese action against opium importation brought retaliation
from Britain and the Opium War which forced China
to legalize sales of the drug.
* Mt. Penglai, off the coast of Shandong province,
was the traditional home of the immortals.
China's tea trade reached its peak in 1886, but her
economy was already in a general decline as a result
of unsettled conditions created by the Opium War and
the Taiping Rebellion. Indian and Ceylon teas began
driving Chinese tea off the world market in the 1860s.
By the 1940s India and Japan were the main tea exporters.
Today China's production and trade are on the rebound.
In 1949 the country that gave tea to the wwld produced
only 4,000 tons of it. By 1985, output of processed
tea was nearly 440,000 tons and by 1988, 545,000 tons.
Exports went up from 137,000 tons in 1985 to 197,000m
1988 and 203,000 in 1989. Tea is China's most valuable
agricultural export, earning $400 million in 1989,
and her third largest export commodity after grain
and silk.
China's biggest markets (1985 figures) are in order:
Morocco (18,668 tons), United States, Tunisia, Poland,
Hongkong, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom. The developing
nations are becoming increasingly important tea buyers,
taking 35 percent of China's exports.
Now China's second largest customer, the United States
doubled its tea purchases from China between 1978
and 1983 as normalization of relations between the
two countries proceeded. Sales of Chinese tea to the
United States continue to rise, going up from 12,574
tons in 1985
to 20,000 in 1988. This increase has played a large
role in China's regaining her place in the world market.
In 1977 tea from China ac-counted for only three percent
of the tea imports to both the United States and the
United Kingdom. Recently China has supplied 16 per-cent
of U.S. imports and 7.7 percent (1984) of Britain's.
Tea drinking has been gaining popularity in the United
States in recent years. Tea has been described in
various publications as "the newest chic, a more
gracious way to do business than the power breakfast,
a quiet revolution ... as people switch from alcohol
to tea, from standing in noisy, crowded bars to sitting
in spacious, refined tearooms."
Most of the best hotels have tearooms, often serving
the beverage with British-style delicacies. They have
also appeared on the streets of many communities,
and we were surprised to find a complete line of teas
served in an ordinary Cupertino, California eatery
of the type that years back would not have thought
of tea. U.S. consumption exceeds 50 billion cups a
year.
As our second printing goes to press, we note with
some pride the increasing scientific interest in health
benefits of tea. The first interna-tional symposium
on tea and health, held in New York early in March
1991, concluded that "tea—especially the green
tea of the Far East— could become a popular and potent
weapon in the war against chronic diseases,"
according to a New York Times report of March 14,
1991. Health professionals at this conference reaffirmed
data in our chapter, "Tea and Your Health,"
on tea's ability to "lower blood pressure and
blood cholesterol level . . . block the action of
many carcinogens and inhibit the growth of cancerous
tumors."
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