The History of Black Tea in China
The Tea of the Emperors
There
is no mention whatever of black tea before the Ming period.
As John C. Evans writes in Tea in China, "No factual
basis exists for assuming an ancient origin for black tea.
Furthermore, all Chinese sources agree that black tea did
not appear by the Ming dynasty but after its founding."
Although black tea—or hongcha (red tea), as the Chinese
called it—became popular in "barbarian lands,"
it has never been much appreciated in China proper. Many
would claim that the workers who produce Keemun, perhaps
the finest black tea in the world today, drink green tea
at their work. Black tea was developed by the Ming on their
ever-expanding government plantations, produced for export.
The principal customers seem to have been the Manchurian
nomads who subsisted entirely on the milk and meat of their
herds. Black tea suited milk fine.
Through the irony of history, these black tea customers—the
Manchu—managed to occupy Beijing in 1644, resulting
in a new emperor and a new dynasty, the Qing. The Manchu
misunderstanding of the Chinese shows in their saying: "They
would steal the milk out of the tea if they could!"
They did not realize that Chinese have an abhorrence of
milk and would never dream of adding it to tea! An eyewitness
in 1793 reported that Qing Emperor Ch'ien Lung "drank
a tea mixture that would little please the Chinese, since
the Emperor's tea was infused with as much milk as water."
Black tea with milk can justifiably called Manchu-style
tea.
Reprinted
with permission from New
Tea Lover's Treasury—The Classic True Story of Tea,
by James Norwood Pratt, Publishing Technology Associate, San
Francisco, California, 1999.
©
2002 All Rights Reserved, In
Pursuit of Tea, Inc.
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