The true history of tea / Victor H. Mair & Erling Hoh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mair, Victor H., 1943- author.

Hoh, Erling, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tea--History.

Tea.

Tea--Social aspects.

Tea trade--History.

Tea trade.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, New York : Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Summary:

For the first time in a popular history of tea, the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals have been thoroughly consulted and carefully sifted. The resulting narrative takes the reader from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the Tang and Song Dynasties, from the tea ceremony politics of medieval Japan to the fabled tea and horse trade of Central Asia and the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters. Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road ? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways. The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in an entertaining tale that combines solid scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

Contents:

Prologue: Tea : leaf of awareness

A botanical excursion : the rivals of tea

The heartstrings of national pride : Southeast Asia and the origins of tea

A slave of yoghurt : tea in the 1st to 6th centuries

Go have some tea! : the Tang dynasty

Cloudy feet in a hare's fur cup : the Song dynasty

Buying peace with the celestial beverage : the tea and horse trade

The taste of zen is tea : Japan in the 12th to 15th centuries

Sen Rikyū the tea master : the perfection of the Japanese tea ceremony

Han Xin counts the soldiers : tea in the Ming and Qing

How the Dalai Lama got his name : brick tea in Tibet and Mongolia

We invented the samovar! : the Russian caravan tea trade

Conquering new lands : the Islamic world of tea

Approved by physicians : the advent of tea in Europe

The progress of this famous plant : tea and the opium wars

A master teapot maker's midnight ride : tea in America

Finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe : India and Ceylon in the 19th century

The heyday of the clipper ships : British tea

Vignettes from the global village : tea in our time

Appendix A: The autobiography of instructor Lu

Appendix B: A debate between tea and beer

Appendix C: A genealogy of words for tea.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [271]-275) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-500-77128-6