THE TEA INDUSTRY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9919, 6 August 1910, Page 1

THE TEA INDUSTRY.

THE COUNTRIES WHICH SUPPLY TEA.

PLANTATIONS FROM 'WESfIS OP POUNDS OF TEA

ARE AfcTOTALLY BRQDUO3©.

(By FRANK G. CARPENTER

in th© Boston Sunday " Globe.")

Come, take a cup of tea with me this bright Sunday morning while I tell you about this shrub, which cheers but does not inebriate, grown out here in the Himalaya Mountains. There aro hundreds of tea plantations all around me and millions of pounds of tlleir product aro annually (.-hipped from here to other parts of the worlfi. HOW TO MAKE TEA.

Before I begin let us start the water to boiling. It should be fresh from the spring and should not bubble even ten minutes before used for brewing. We will put the tea m a porcelain pot and let the hot water remain upon it not more than eight minutes, and it will then bo ready for drinking. Tea should never' touch metal and it should not stand in the pot after brewing. It should never be boilc-d in the pot and it should be drunk clear, for milk makes it poison. Good tea does not need sugar, although a slice of lemon •will add to the flavour;

Tho tea we are using comes from the mountains near-by. It is black and is flavoured with flowers. Gre_en tea is not fit to drink. Some of that cured in Japan and China is made green by the addition of colouring matters, and it is also rolled and fired, in copperlined kettles. The best tea is black tea, and you will go far before you will get better than that raised here at Darjeeling. INDIA DRINKS THE WORLD. You remember the temperance landlady's remark' to her bibulous boarder: I will sleep you and eat you, but I be blest if I drink you." In that sense India bids fair to soon drink the world. Her black teas have practically monopolised* the markets of Europe and more of them are consumed than of tho teas exported from all other nations. A generation or so ago about the only teas known to commerce wer© those of Japan and China. The India teas: are now driving the Chinese teas out of the markets, and Japan has to rely almost entirely upon the United States for the sale of her surplus.

The exports of Indian teas are mostly to Europe. They go to Great Britain and thence to the colonies. .Some are sent to the Continent, and big shipments are made "to Australia and Canada..

The British are the greatest tea ' drinkers of all mankind. Their consumption amounts to 61b or 71b per head every year, while Americans each drink less than 21b, «nd the Russians less than lib. Tho Germans and French load themselves "with coffee and vane or beer, sipping tea now and then. The Chinee and Japanese drink tea throughout tyio day. The. Chinese ' will not drink wttor it is and they fiavoni; -the water with s•<&. The conßumntipiVHif, those two nations. is probably jgf .■W,' .the rest of tho world'put'but.for the lack oi fi'-atisties i wliab it is. . • j HOW. ADVERTISING PAYS:

' The exports of ■ Indian tea now amount to ov<ir $50,000,0001b per year. Of this more tilian 200,0p0.,0001b are from Hindustan and about 150.000,000 lb from the island of Ceylon, over the way. The trade has' grown up within the past thirty /rears, and it is largely based' upon gooi advertising. When I was, her© twenty years ago it was in its inf.'nicy, and tho planters were discussing k<>w they could tho American market. They concluded to advertise in the newspapers, and they raised a fund to begin their work in Europe and the United States. At the sarno* tim« they organised, a sales bureau and' they saw to it that .Cevlon and Indian teas could bp had in all the large stores, and that they were on tap at every State and national exposition. As a result the demand for these teas steadily grew, and to-day their exports ars> almost twice those of China and more than five, times those o? Jai>an. Within tho last few years the East Indian planters bare decided to enter tho green tea jnarkets, and they aro now advertising such varieties in the samo L way. Ceylon alone has already sjient in the neighbourhood of £200,000 on green tea information, with such a

result that tho Chinese and Japanese tre alarmed, fearing that they may lose this trade, of which they still have tho monopoly. The Ceylon planters have been giving bounties of from three tb seven cents a jiound upon all green tea exported, and they have increased their crop within tho past few years, so that 1 it now amounts to millions of pounds. I understand that the Chinese Govern* iinent is alarmed at the situation and that the Chinese tea planters recently sent a commission to India and Ceylon to investigate tea conditions and the tea-curing processes.

TEA RAISING IN I have travelled extensively through tho tea fields of Japan and China and I know something about them. The methods of cultivation and v curing are far different there than, they are on these big plantations of Hindustan. In the former countries the tea is raised in small patches. The ordinary tea garden of Japan is not'much bigger than a city lot and. that of China would be larger than tbe_ ordinary American garden. The tea is raised by a multitude of small farmers, each of whom works after his own rule and in his own way. When the leaves are picked there are traders who go about through the tea' districts and buy up the crops. They sell to other traders, and one crop may go through a half-dozen different hands before it is shipped to Hankow, where it gets one of tho big steamers fon Europe. Here in India tho plantations are large. Some of them have'hundreds of acres and employ thousands of men and women as labourers. They are handled after business methods. The soil is studied and carefully cultivated. At present there is more than ,£20,000,000 invested inr the buiness and in the neighbourhood of 600,000 people are employed upon the plantations. The area under cultivation is steadily increasing, and it is said that the* crop may be raised all along tho southern slopes of the Himalayas at an altitude of about 3000 feet, above the sea. The plantations here are 6000 to 7000 feet up, and there are some tea fields which arc a full half-mile above sea level.

j ' 5 see<^s are fr rs t planted in beds. After they have sprouted and reached the age ,of a year, they are set out in rows a few feet apart. They are carefully Cultivated and trimmed, m order to make them grow bushy. The soil is often top-dressed with wood loam and artificial manures are frequently used. After the plants are three , years old they are ready for plucking. The leaves are carefully pulled, a certain number being left to keep the plants growing; It takes fiyp or six years .'for a shrub mature, and -at that time it should produce a pound or more of tea every year. Some ofvthg #e_es .about hero arai .?o great +hat - ro j 'ona knows when thoy were planted. HOW A TEA PLANT LOOKS.

But let me tell you how the tea looks'in th© fields. In the plantations about hero the plants range in height from one's waist to his head. Some havo trunks six inches in diameter, and others mere stems. The leaves are like those of the willow tree. They smell like tea when you crush them. The shrub is a species of the camellia. It is evergreen, not unlike tho maple, and the leaves are beautiful. The plant is supposed to have come originally from 1 China, but there is no account of its having been cultivated until about 350 AJ).t It grows wild cn this side of tho Himalayas, and there are certain varieties of it which reach the height of small trees. The planters are crossing the various varieties iii their attempts'to-make new and bettor teas.

I passed through many- of. these plantations on my ride up the mountains. The shrubs rise in'terraces up tho sides 1 of the hill, looking not unlike well trimmed boxwood hedges. Here and there one sees gaily dressed women picking tho leaves, their- black skins iand white calico gowns showing out against the green, while their jewellery flashes in the sun. Each woman has a basket which will hold about two bushels on .her back, kept Lhere by a band which rests over the. • forehead. The leaves aro plucked with tho bands and thrown into the baskets, which, when full, are carried to tho factory. 1 am told that the planters usually have five pickings a year, and on the best lands they havo seven. This <is far ahead of China and Japan, where, the shrub that will yield three pickings is good. ' ! Tho tea planters here are chiefly British. Many of the estates are owned by companies. The planters live in fine bungalows, surrounded by lawns and gardens. • Many of them are the second sons of noble families in England. ■ ROLLED' BY MACHINERY.

. The processes of making tea m India aro different from those of Japan and China. In the latter countries nearly everything is done by hand, and the methods are insanitary to an extreme. In China the leaves' are sorted by women and girls, and the moisture is pressed out of them by treading then* with bare feet. They are rolled over and over on bamboo trays with tho hand, and are fired in red-hot pans by half-haked. perspiring workmen. It is the same in Japan. I once visited a large firing establishment at one of the ports where they were preparing green tea for the American market. They were curing it by what is known as pan-firing. Imagine a long row of ovens filled with copper pans, each 20 inches wide and 30 inches deep. The tops of the ovens were at about the height of a man's waist, or just high enough to enable one to stir tho contents about with tho hands. There wore at least thirty of these pans, and over each bent a Japanese woman, her dims pulled down to her ' waist, and the upper part of her body as bare as tho Venus de Medici. Each was stirring and kneading and rolling the drying tea. The fires were hot and the ,'iteam rose. Pearl drops of perspiration stood out upon the _ backs and busts of tho workers, and it seemed to mo as though tho tea might bo brewed by the. sweat. It took those women almost an hour to finish each lot, and after that tho teas were put up by hand. „ ,

Here in India the tea'is all rolled by machinery. Kvery plantation has its factories, where tho leaves arc withered and. rolled between bteel plates so uarefuily graduated thci> they do not injure the tea. The drying is done by hot blasts and revolving fans, and the result is that the tea comca out portectly pure and clean. It is carefully graded and packed while warm in leadlined. cheats for shipment abroad. HINDOOS DO NOT DRINK.

The chief tea. drinkers of Asia ore north of the Himalaya Mountains. On tho other side of these hills tho native;-, soak themselves in tea, and in Tibet

and the other Asiatic highlands the people make tea soup, mixing the brew with milk, butter and other fats. Down here in Hindustan the Hindoos drink almost no tea, and the Mahometans but little. The custom is increasing somewhat among she townspeople, but there are millions in India who have never seen a tea leaf or sipped a tea cup. Over in Burma they have a way of pickling the leaves of the tea plant and eating them for dessert, as' we eat cheese. The leaves are thrown into boiling water and left there until soft. They are then rolled on mats by hand and rammed into a tube of bamboo cane, which is stopped up and buried in the ground until the tea becomes pickled, when it is ready for sale. The leaves are also prepared with a'mixture of oil and salt, and sometimes with sssafoetida. It smells like limburger cheese, but it j.3 said to be good for digestion, and is considered a dainty. It is vised upon ceremonial occasions. Another method; of'preparing it is to throw the leaves, after they have, been steamed and flavoured, into pits of masonry or wells lineid with planks or bamboos, audi then to press the tea down with a heavy weight. The Burmese are now making a half jmillion pounds of pickled tea every year. I' am told that some of. the Hymalayan tribes churn tea as we churn, butter. The, tea is mixed with soda and put on to boil. When it is quit© hot butter and milk are added, and tlje whole is put into a tea churn. After 'it has been well shaken, about, it is taken out with the foam on it, when it is ready for drinking. The Tibetans and Mongols serve their tea in a somewhat similar manner, using the brick tea prepared by the Russians.- . IN A RUSSIAN TEA FACTORY. During my recent stay - in China I went through some of the' factories at Hankow, and there saw how brick tea is made. Hankow is the chief tea market of' China. It is six hundred miles in the 'interior, on the wide Yangtse River, which is so deep that the biggest ocean steamers can carry 'their cargoes from there to every, part of the world. The chief fields lie south of the Yangtse and most of them are some distance from Hankow. The tea is brought on the backs of men to the river and is shipped up the numerous tributaries of the Yangtse. At Hankow it is prepared in" all sorts of ways for the market. There are exporting firms there who manufacture for the United States, some who deal chiefly with England and also representatives of the French and German importing houses. The Russians have the largest houses, and they monopolise the brick tea y industry, annually shipping millions 'of bricks to Vladivostock and Odessa, to Tibet and Mongolia, and also over the Trans-Siberian railroad to Russia. Many of the bricks are. carried part of the way on camels and not a few go overland into Russian Turkestan. • One of the factories visited covered more 'than an aero of ground.. It employed 1000 Chinese, and it had on hand 1,500,0001b of tea .pressed into bricks and ready for exbort. The bricks filled the whole upper iloore of the factory./..They word laid, up in piles, .mveh *§s--we stafck bricks _ for building, with harrou' aisles running heio and tLire through the room. They had been taken from the moulds and left in the warehouse to cure. Each kind of tea had its own place, and I . saw some from Ceylon which had been shipped to Hankow to .be made into bricks before Russia. HOW BRICK TEA IS MADE.

T was shawn the whole process of brick tea making.- The tea is first ground to a <1 ast and then sifted by half-naked coolies, who'stuff their nostrils with cotton batting to keep the dust out of-their'lungs. These men wore naked to the waist, and the perspiration stood out on / their yellow skins. The air was like a Russian bath, and the sweat poured. I took up a handful of the tea dust and tasted it. It was rather sweet, but there is but little tea flavour about it. It is as thick as granulated tobacco. The. men scoop up the tea dust with brass shovels, each of which holds about two pounds, or enough' for a brick. This is poured into a cloth .and steamed over, boiling watoiv When it has become damp a little more dust is added and the whole is emptied into a rough wooden bowl about a foot square. It now goes to tlio press, and ' a great weight packs the tea dust into a-brick almost as hard as ono of burned clay. Tho bricks are left in the moulds two hours to cool, and then , taken off to be dried.

They are of different sizes and shapes and of many grades. _ Some bring as liigh prices as the costliest teas we have in America. They are made of the first pickings of tho tea, ground to a dust and steamed and pressed ' into shape. Another quality is made of later pickings, and still another of the refuse of 'the factories, consisting of coarse leaves, broken tea and the dust from the tables and floors of establishments where they put up tea in chests. Both green and black teas are used, the bricks of the former looking for all the world like plugs of tobacco, while tho latter are a deep chocolate brown. The \ bricks aro beautifully stamped, sometimes with the ligure of a dragon and always with the liame of- the firm which'sells them. ,

- Tho famous Cunarder Umbria, of 8000 tans, built in ISS4\ at o-n© time tho holder of tho blue ribbon for speed on the Atlantic,, arrived in the Firth of I'ortli from Liverpool on May 9, and was benched at Bridgness for the purpose of being broken up.