A history of tea, the second most-consumed beverage in the world (2017)

http://kottke.org/17/05/a-history-of-tea-the-second-most-consumed-beverage-in-the-world

by Tomte • 7 years ago

93 76 7 years ago

elliotec• 7 years ago

Weird to post this youtube video embedded on kottke as if it was a post from kottke, here's the original TedEd video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaLvVc1sS20

philshem• 7 years ago

Maybe the mods can fix the link

gumby2• 7 years ago

Also add warning [video]

shanev• 7 years ago

Here's the original TED-Ed video on the TED site: https://www.ted.com/talks/shunan_teng_the_history_of_tea.

benj111• 7 years ago

My guess for most consumed beverage was a toss up between water or Coke. There is still hope, it's water.

http://www.haleysdailyblog.com/9-most-consumed-beverages-aro...

mongol• 7 years ago

Interesting. When does water turn from liquid to beverage? Is it when I pour it in a drinking glass? Because I guess when it is used to flush the toilet it is not a beverage?

hurrdurr2• 7 years ago

It turns into a beverage for your dog.

LeoPanthera• 7 years ago

My dictionary defines a beverage as a drink other than water, although I'm not convinced that this is a commonly accepted definition.

diminish• 7 years ago

It's still Water, mineral water, tea and your occasional local favorite beverage against Cola & co.

smcl• 7 years ago

Coffee too, surely

ianai• 7 years ago

I wonder if Coca Cola or Pepsi would be palpable without any sugar - maybe sans fizz as well.

syockit• 7 years ago

Sometimes I wonder how the Chinese felt about the blatant IP theft by the British ages ago. I however am grateful for the fact that tea became more accessible due to that. We wouldn't have Assam and Darjeeling otherwise.

im3w1l• 7 years ago

The west had herbal "teas" long before tea. So from my understanding the only new thing was which plant they used.

markdown• 7 years ago

only new thing was which plant they used.

Lol, but that's e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g

Panoramix• 7 years ago

That's very far from the mark. Tea was engineered by the Chinese for thousands of years. Initially it was drunk for its stimulating qualities, as some sort of medicine. If you pluck tea leaves and try to make tea yourself the result will be absolutely unpalatable. Through hundreds of years of growing it, the Chinese figured out rather non-intuitive tricks to make it taste better and better. The British tried to grow their own tea unsuccessfully for decades. In the end Robert Fortune illegally brought a group of trained Chinese tea workers as well as stolen seedlings to the East India plantations in India.

thaumasiotes8• 7 years ago

They didn't approve; tea was a state secret. But they were probably even more upset about the theft of silkworms centuries before.

NotPaidToPost3• 7 years ago

I think they felt more strongly about being forced to accept opium on penalty of being bombed.

The thing is that they remember all those things while people in the West are oblivious to them.

codeproject• 7 years ago

"The thing is that they remember all those things while people in the West are oblivious to them." You are so right. Opium wars is major part of history books. Every educated Chinese( or not so educated ones) knows this part of history. There is this "they wronged us" mindset right or wrong. A lot of conflicts come from this.

natechols• 7 years ago

It's not that we're oblivious to them, we just haven't been trained to feel personally angry about it. I learned about the Opium Wars in my 9th-grade world history class in US public school, nearly a quarter-century ago, and it was treated as a pivotal moment in Chinese history. It's very difficult to avoid being reminded about it regularly if you read news about modern Chinese politics and foreign affairs.

vixen99• 7 years ago

Possibly how the English feel about extensive IP theft following the industrial revolution.

Synaesthesia• 7 years ago

One of the interesting facts I read about was the invention of chai tea (spiced tea) for the Indian market. Which was invented by the British as a way to convince the Indians to drink tea.

Traditionally Indians had drunk spiced coffee, not tea and it took a long time to force them off of it!

thaumasiotes8• 7 years ago

the invention of chai tea (spiced tea)

For the record, "chai" is just the word for tea; spices are not implied. It does not seem to have been introduced by the British, who knew it as "cha" very early and "tea" for most of their tea-relevant history; the "chai" form comes from Persia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology

But the British did give it a promotional campaign, during which they fought against the native tendency to add spices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai#History

GordonS• 7 years ago

Indians can refer to spiced tea as "masala chai", but I almost always just heard "chai" - I guess that's the way it's so often prepared that the spices are implied?

devoply• 7 years ago

Chai or its variant Cha is an incredibly common word for tea throughout all of Asia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea

NotPaidToPost3• 7 years ago

the "chai" form comes from Persia.

Well this all comes from the Chinese pronunciation.

Persia had old links with China through the silk road. That's how tea, silk etc. got there while Islam reached China very early.

eternalban4• 7 years ago

Yes, it comes from Persian language speakers.

The name of the country that some insist on calling "Persia" is and has always been Iran. Earliest written records are from the Sasanid Empire. "Persia" (meaning Fars) is merely a province of Iran. Iran means "the nation of the Aryans"

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/iran

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eran-eransah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0ahrest%C4%81n%C4%ABh%C4%...

[updated links]

sampo• 7 years ago

"Tea" if by sea, "cha" if by land.

https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...

amolo2• 7 years ago

Very true.

Disclosure: Im from Kenya. And chai is just Swahili for the word tea.

decebalus1• 7 years ago

For the record, "chai" is just the word for tea

How interesting. 'Ceai' is the word for tea in Romanian (https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceai) and it's pronounced almost the same.

vinay427• 7 years ago

Well, it didn't work closer to the places where coffee is grown in India. ;)

Coffee is still the default choice in those parts in most cases, though it's a rather different form usually made with Robusta beans (as well as Arabica) and chicory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_filter_coffee

accurrent• 7 years ago

Depending on which part of India you are from tea preparation can vary. For instance in Bengal, Darjeeling Tea and its variants are not spiced. One thing this video does is give a two sided view of tea history talking about China and England as the two main countries of interest. Tea itself would have been known in the middle east much earlier than when the British brought it over. Although the cultivation outside China probably was a largely British push.

vram224• 7 years ago

As others have said here, the name of regular tea (without spices, etc.) in India is not "chai tea" but just "chai" (in Hindi). "Chai tea" would be like saying "tea tea" (although in two different languages (Hindi and English) in the same two-word phrase), so is redundant. I've had American friends and colleagues who made the same mistake.

From Google Translate (and listen to the sounds via the speaker button - when available):

Hindi:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Marathi:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Tamil (but I've never heard anyone call it that, may be the formal name, I've always heard it called "tea" (as in English) in Tamil:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Gujarati:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Malayalam:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

and so on ...

themagician• 7 years ago

I prefer the greentext history:

Tea is the coolest thing in human history.
Grows in China, only really exported to Japan.
1500s, some dues bring it to Europe.
Britain goes fucking nuts for it.
Start naval empire for the sole purposes of buying tea.
Britain buys all the tea in China for all it’s silver bullion, utterly bankrupting itself.
Britain gets China addicted to opium to balance debt. Ha.
China gets pissed, colossal war ensues.
Meanwhile Brits decide they want sugar in their tea, basically kick start the slave trade in earnest.
Stick sugar plantations all over Americas.
Kill half of the people in Africa just to grow that sweet, sweet sugar.
Blitz through India, be like, “Grow tea or everyone dies.”
okay.jpg
China’s fucked, broke from opium wars, monopoly on tea gone,
Africa’s fucked, millions dead, millions in chains halfway around the world.
The Americas rolling in wealth because of slavery and plantations.
Everyone and their mum now drinks tea, Brtis make mad bank.
Wake up to drink sweet brew every morning, imagine the untold amount of violence that went into that cup.

qrbLPHiKpiux• 7 years ago

This post looks like copy pasta from /pol

Lol

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

That's what "the greentext history" means.

crooked-v• 7 years ago

The /pol/ version would be more explicitly racist in one way or another.

umvi• 7 years ago

Wake up to drink sweet brew every morning, imagine the untold amount of violence that went into that cup

I feel like there was a missed opportunity to transition to Boston Tea Party and American Revolution

ashelmire• 7 years ago

Another perspective on this is as western malfeasance in economic and actual warfare in the east, which we are now starting to pay for as China ignores our IP and denies us the ability to compete in their market.

username444• 7 years ago

Until we find the next opium to balance the trade deficit?

vram224• 7 years ago

How come no one has mentioned Russia and samovars yet? Heh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samovar

From the above article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Samovar_at_a_Kerala-sty...

I have seen such vessels in roadside tea shops in India, but probably did not know at the time that they were samovars or were similar to them. I've only read about samovars in Russian novels by authors like Gorki, Chekhov and others.

A history of tea, the second most-consumed beverage in the world (2017)

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