A DEBT TO CHINA

Evening Star, Issue 20983, 23 December 1931, Page 15

A DEBT TO CHINA

FLOODS AND THE TEA SUPPLY Some anxiety is still felt in tho trade about the effects of tho Yangtso floods on the output of China tea (writes a correspondent of the London ‘Times ). Hankow /is tho distributing centre for Keemuns, tho finest black tea in the world. Although the bushes grow on .high ground, factories for firing and rolling must have been swamped. In the circumstances a tea famine is not an impossibility. A year ago Lapsang Souchongs, from inner Fukien, were held up by Communists for four months; and when they reached Foochow at last the dealers almost fought for them. Shall we see the best teas at 60s a lb, as in the 1830’s? Twenty years ago the China tea trade in England seemed to be slowly But latterly there has been a revival; more pains are taken with its production in’ China, and more and more her tea is called for here. There is a ritual of tea drinking in China, as there has been for thousands of years about every detail in the taking of nourishment, though the foreigner never learns more of it than not to touch his cup till the business of the interview is ended. The mere technique of drinking is an art. The late Lord Li Ching-fong, when Minister in London twenty-five years ago, objected that we put the saucer under tho cup, whereas the Chinese put it on the top. In China tea leaves and beverage are served together in a little bowl, into the top of which the saucer fits. Gripping the bowl with thumb and outer fingers, with the middle and first fingers, you adjust the saucer to hold back the leaves as the liquid flows out. So, no doubt, the Emperor Went! drank in A.D. 589 when a Buddhist priest prescribed tea for an Imperial headache. Before that year the Chinese seem to have eaten the leaves. There should be a statue to that priest. Teapots, however, are quite in order, and milk, though the Chinese do not use it.