Tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade and helped trigger major wars. No other drink has touched the lives of so many people in so many different ways.
World-renowned China specialist Victor H. Mair teams up with Erling Hoh to tell the story of tea and its uses from ancient times to the present, from East to West.
Ancient Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Persian and Arabic annals have been thoroughly consulted and the result takes the reader from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the fabled tea and horse trade of Central Asia, from Britain’s love affair with tea to the 'tea party' that sparked the American Revolution.
Along the way many questions are answered:
• What are tea’s curative properties?
• How did the original green tea evolve into black tea?
• Why did the art of tea drinking become so elaborate in some societies?
• What is the billabong in ‘Waltzing Matilda’?
The True History of Tea brings all these strands together in an erudite tale full of quirky facts and unexpected byways.
