Archive for the ‘The Empire of Tea’ Category

2 comments

with or without hallucination


2011
09.18

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in hallucination, Japanese cult of tea, Sencha, The Empire of Tea | 2 Comments »

Had vast and far-reaching plans for this teablog this weekend, but the Oktoberfest got in the way.  Actually, I didn’t have anything so terribly riveting to talk about, but I did intend to cover the next chapter of The Empire of Tea by Alan and Iris MacFarlane.


It’s all terribly interesting, but you know that if you’ve already read my earlier posts on this. I started out with contemplating The Empire of Tea, then moved on to devouring the Memoirs of a Memsahib and most recently I asked is tea drinking an addiction? due to something that jumped out at me as I was reading the next chapter.


And exactly the same thing has happened again.  In this case, I’d planned to introduce you to the main points of the next chapter or two, but got hung up on one little thing.  Here goes:


‘Tea became like the hallucinogenic drugs that have helped shamans in many other parts of the world to enter or communicate with the spirit world.  It constituted the mystical centre of the rites of withdrawal, self-abnegation and the attainment of nothingness of the new sects…’ (Source: The Empire of Tea p 54)


He’s talking about what he calls the Japanese cult of tea and specifically how tea influenced the religion and society of the Land of the Rising Sun.  I don’t know specifically what new sects he’s referring to here, but the idea that tea became such an integral part of the culture due to its hallucinogenic properties is not something you read in most tea advertising.


Well, not yet anyway.


Now, please don’t take this literally.  I don’t steep a pot of Japanese Sencha and start seeing spiders crawling out of the cracks in the wall.  But at the same time, I can see how drinking tea might provide a monk a bit of hallucinogenic-like thoughts.


Earlier in this chapter, which is called Froth of the Liquid Jade, he says that tea drinking is one of the ‘four ways of concentrating the mind’.  The other three are walking, feeding fish, and sitting quietly in thought. (Source: The Empire of Tea p 54)


At different times, I could definitely enjoy all of these things, but I’ve just drained my teapot and it’s time to brew up again.  With or without hallucination.

a Bavarian mountain that reminded me of Mt Fuji



9 comments

is tea drinking an addiction?


2011
09.08

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in The Empire of Tea, Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Certainly appears to be something addictive at play if you listen to us tea obsessives go on about the stuff.  As I go through The Empire of Tea (a book by Alan and Iris MacFarlane), I feel compelled to tell you about what’s grabbed my attention the most.  Have already glowingly gone on about how much I liked the Introduction in contemplating The Empire of Tea and then the first chapter was covered in devouring the Memoirs of a Memsahib.

But here we are in Chapter 2 and I assume it’s Alan MacFarlane (Iris’s son) who’s asking how and why tea managed to conquer the world.  This short chapter explains how tea became the world’s most popular drink (only behind water).  It goes through the advantages/disadvantages of the other world’s most popular drink candidates, but not before mentioning some impressive facts about proliferation of tea drinking around the world.

More than a few thousand years ago, there was some tea leaf chewing by scattered tribes in south-east Asia, but nothing resembling what we know as tea drinking, then two thousand years ago there were some religious groups who were brewing tea.  Millions of Chinese drank it a thousand years ago, and five hundred years later it was already the world’s most popular drink (second only to water) for more than half of the earth’s population.

Over the last five hundred years, tea has somehow overtaken the world (sounds ominous, doesn’t it?).  As the author states, ‘Tea is now more ubiquitous than any type of food or any drink apart from water.’  He goes on to say, ‘Its world consumption easily equals all the other manufactured drinks in the world put together – that is, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, sweet fizzy artificial drinks and all alcoholic drinks.’

Really? Unbelievable.  Now, I’m careful to bandy about statistics.  But just to be clear, Alan MacFarlane is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. I really can’t fathom him making this claim if it weren’t properly researched.  I still think that’s a surprising statistic.  People drink more tea than all other beverages combined (I don’t have to keep saying ‘aside from water’, do I?).

Rather than go through the list of other drinks, which is exactly what he does, I’d rather leave you with the way he opens this chapter.  I want to do this because I suspect it’s a topic that might encourage some discussion and I’d love to see some of that happen here in the comments.  He answers the question I opened with, and here’s how he does it:

‘Tea is an addiction, but an addiction different from all others.  It is milder, a habit relatively easily broken.  It is more universal.  Most unusually, it is good for the addict.  And it is largely unnoticed both to those addicted and others.  Indeed, the conquest of the world by tea has been so successful that we’ve forgotten that it has happened at all.  Tea has become like water or air, something that many of us take for granted.’

 

(Source: The Empire of Tea pp 31-39)
3 comments

devouring the Memoirs of a Memsahib


2011
08.24

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in tea grower, The Empire of Tea | 3 Comments »

I’d like to go into a bit more detail about The Empire of Tea, which I introduced last week (contemplating The Empire of Tea).

After the book’s Introduction, it opens with a description by Iris MacFarlane of marrying a tea planter and her life on the plantation (she’s the mother of her co-author Alan MacFarlane). This first chapter is called Memoirs of a Memsahib.

I’ve resolved to be a bit more concise in my blogging, when possible, so I’ll boil down her primary themes. The most important seems to be that the people actually growing and processing the tea weren’t treated very well at all. She describes the colonial beliefs with which she was raised and that she brought with her into this new life. She even says near the end of the chapter that the other planters’ wives, who hadn’t bothered questioning the status quo, had had a far more pleasant life than she did.

But the majority of the chapter has to do with the relationship between the master and his servant, as well as the way in which the tea growing society/company did nearly everything it could to keep things as they were. Those are the main thoughts. Her writing is quite compelling, so I’d recommend you get your hands on a copy of this enthralling story.

She watched her mother keep a very close eye on the cook and his accounts years before she knew she’d be a tea planter’s wife. As she writes, ‘…The cook went to the bazaar every morning and my mother wrote down his purchases in her Mensahib’s Account Book. Everything was very cheap but the cook’s figures were daily questioned; Indians were “chilarky“, a word that covered lying, cheating and a general (innate of course) inability to resist being saucily devious.’

There’s much more of this. She’s instructed by the other planters’ wives in how to avoid the servants stealing silverware. The remarkable thing is that she slowly becomes curious about these people’s lives and tries valiantly to do her part to improve the situation. The depictions of these attempts and her awakening to the servants’ plight is what makes the story continue to draw me in. It’s as if the reader’s watching her consciousness develop as the story unfolds.

But I’ll leave you with how she describes her initial impressions of her arrival. On page 5, she says:

I had absolutely no idea of the process that turned this perfumed profusion into a drink from a pot. I arrived in July 1946 with all my misconceptions in place.

Then a bit later on page 9, she continues:

I went to bed happily unaware that I would actually spend twenty years in tea; it would be 1966 before I was carried out on a stretcher from this beautiful, vibrant, exhausting, magical country.

Isn’t that alluring? Why did she have to go out on a stretcher? We have to keep reading to find out. And how about the phrase perfumed profusion? I’ll use that one again, I’m sure.

No chilarky from me. I can’t wait to guide you along through the rest of this book.

(Source: The Empire of Tea pp 1-27)

3 comments

contemplating The Empire of Tea


2011
08.17

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in tea plantation workers, The Empire of Tea | 3 Comments »

Am reading a book by Alan and Iris MacFarlane called The Empire of Tea, and am enjoying it immensely. Have you even heard of this book?

With just the minimum of research, I found out the British title is Green Gold: The Empire of Tea, but that’s not the edition I got my paws on. I’ve got the Yankee version.

I’m in a strange position, because I’d actually like to copy word for word the book’s entire Introduction. It’s that good. He sets out by asking many questions about the history of tea that I’ve wanted to explore as long as I’ve been into this dark, steaming beverage.

As a matter of fact when I started blogging, I thought I’d deal much more with the British Empire and how it was involved in this complex and intriguing tale of the leaf. Instead, I’ve often been sidetracked by important issues like when my kettle failed me, which continues to be one of my favourite blogposts thus far.

Here are the main ideas he introduces as pieces of a puzzle:

In the Eighteenth Century, a unique sort of civilisation grew in the west. Why did this start in Britain? Why exactly then and as he writes, ‘Why at all?’

Not only did the Chinese and Japanese believe it when tea was imported to the west, but European doctors were convinced that there was some ingredient in tea that was beneficial, even medicinal, to the people who drank it. What was in tea that made it so good for you?

How was tea discovered?

Why these specific chemicals: caffeine, phenolics, and flavonoids?

What was the story of how tea went round the world? How did it become so integral to British life?

What were the effects of production on tea plantation workers? And their neighbours?

And the effects of other civilisations that accepted tea or took it on?

Is there a connection between the rise of tea and the growth of a number of great civilisations (China, Japan, and Britain)?

Don’t those questions make you want to read this book? Stay tuned. I’m going to be writing about it at length and plan to share my thoughts and questions that arise as I devour the book.

And I liked the way he wrapped up the Introduction so much that I really have to quote it directly:

‘What started as a tiny set of puzzles and a scarcely-to-be-noticed leaf has ended up in this story as one of the great addictions of history.’

(Source: The Empire of Tea p.xi)