ROMANCE OF TEA

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 293, 11 December 1929, Page 6

ROMANCE OF TEA

Not long ago an Auckland tea expert estimated 3,121,600,000 cups of tea were consumed in New Zealand last year, which would mean about eight pounds per head. Wo certainly are great tea drinkers, but cannot yet afford to throw out our chests and rest, as in U.S.A. their average annual consumption of coffee per head is thirteen pounds! How we compare with the consumption of beer in England I do not know, but I did notice that after 269 years the duty has been taken off tea there and it certainly has not been removed from beer! Whether the Government considers beer should be handicapped, or whether tea is now considered a necessity and should not be taxed I do not know. The removal of tea duty in England makes one wonder what might have been had Lord North, King George Ill's Prime Minister, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, acted in a similar, manner when dealing with the question of tea duty in British colonies in America. Everyone knows how in Boston in 1770 blood was shed as a result of colonists refusing to pay duty, and how later, after all other means had been' tried to persuade the Government to alter their intention, fifty men dressed as Mohawk Indians hurried on to the wharf and emptied the 342 chests of tea into the harbour. This was the declaration of war that afterwards followed, and 158 years later another Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer rescinded the duty in England and at a loss of revenue to the Government of £6,000,000 annually. To me that sounds more like the romance of governments than the romance of tea!

Where and when was tea first grown? Although it is generally believed to be A.D. 763 in China, I call to mind that quaint old Chinese story of the first discovery of tea. According to this story the discovery of tea was attributed to an Indian divine named Darma, who came to China to preach Buddhism. This holy man was in the habit of spending his nights in praver and devotional exercises, but one night he found himself succumbing to sleep; whereat he was so irritated that he cut off his eyelids and threw them out of the window before resuming his devotions. Next morning the good man was astonished to observe a small tree growing in the place where each eyelid had fallen, and, acting under a divine inspiration, he.began to eat the leaves of these shrubs. To his surprise and immense relief the pain of his recent sacrifice immediately disappeared, while his whole bodv began to glow with renewed strength. The shrubs were tea shrubs

In any case, there is no doubt tea was first discovered in China, and we find that in China, as in America and England, tea has taken a very important part in the history of the countrv. The history of tea in Chiua is reallv the history of China's foreign trade. In 1677 "a letter was sent from the directors of the East India Company to their factors in Java authorising them to utilise an Imperial permit they had obtained to trade with the mainland of China, and to do their best to encourage tea.

Half a century later came the day of the famous tea clippers, which used to call at Canton, Amoy and Poochow in the early part of each year, waiting to load the tea as it was marketed, and then racing home to England to get their precious cargoes on the Home markets. In' those days there was a considerable difference between the prices paid for the first arrivals and for the later shipments, and as all business was done on a consignment basis the eagerness of the owners to get their cargoes home first may well be imagined; as witness the famous race" home in 1866, of which probably everybody knows. The Taiping (a vessel of 767 tons "gross), the Aerial. Fiery Cross, Serica, Black Prince, Chinaman Ada and Taitsing all took part. The Taiping raced the Aerial up the English Channel, but the latter secured an advantage by picking up the first pilot. Getting the better tug, however, the Taiping reached Gravesend fifty-five minutes ahead of her rival and docked twenty minutes ahead, having had further to go for a berth. The Serica, which had taken the French side of the Channel, berthed on the same tide, making the closest finish to an ocean race ever recorded. All three vessels had taken ninety-nine days whilst the runners-up, the Fiery Cross and tiie Taitsing, took 101 days! For many years tea was cultivated onlv in China, but in 1870 Ceylon and India started" the cultivation of the shrub, and now these parts of the British Empire produce 612,000,0001b of the world's approximate annual production of 880,000,0001b. As an indication of the wealth of this industry to Great Britain it is estimated that the current market value of British capital in the tea industry in the East is just about three times the £60,000,000 actually invested. In view of an opinion fairly prevalent that tea is harmful another interesting and rather remarkable fact is that just recently leading English physicians have stated tea can do nothing'" but good (Sir YV. Arbuthnot Lane) and that it is a boon and a blessing with generally beneficent effects (Sir James Crichton-Browne)' while over 2000 years ago tea was used in China for medicinal purposes. —E.P.