Spies, Smugglers, and How a Bitter Plant Became the World’s Favorite Drink
It’s the most consumed beverage on the planet
other than water. Tea- or chai- is everywhere; from the sachets we make at home to the snacks
and desserts sold in grocery stores. We drink tea as a sacred ceremony. Enjoy it in high
society outings and rely on it to survive in some of the world’s harshest climates.
The story of tea is fascinating, from its first use as a source of food, through
centuries of trial and error until we ended up with this. Tea would play a part in the spread
of religion. Trigger the opium wars and even the American Revolution. It’s the subject of myths
and legends, not to mention countless examples of truth being much wilder than fiction.
And so, well, we’re diving in. Following the unbelievable path of one of
history’s most fascinating subjects. It’s all about tea today on OTR.
In 1857 a young Englishman named Samuel Beeton convinced his wife to help out
with the cooking section of his magazine, a new journal focused on issues of the home.
Now at the time Isabella Beeton was just 22 years old and so for her column, she enlisted the
help of the magazine’s readers, asking for input from housewives and family cooks what was most
important in their own homes. And after receiving more than 2000 letters the answer was clear- it
was tea. And there wasn’t even a second choice. Over the next few years Mrs. Beeton would publish
dozens of recipes for tea; not just the drink itself, but how it should be served to family
members or travelers stopping in off the road. She’d write about the differences between
high tea, noon tea, evening tea and tea for picnics. There were articles about winter tea,
summer tea and she even wrote instructions for what to do when your water isn’t good enough to
make tea- you add a pinch of sodium bicarbonate. Now Isabella Beeton is today regarded as
massively influential in the world of tea. But the truth is all she did was record what
was already happening, because pretty much everywhere tea is more than just a drink. It’s a
social centerpiece. Something that’s a necessity of life- those are Mrs. Beeton’s words-
and a major part of the human experience. Tea is presented to guests in Morocco,
brewed in elegant pots in Russia, and enjoyed as breakfast in Ireland. On Mount
Everest sherpas start each day with tea for good luck, and in Japan well the chado brings
together the four principles of Zen Buddhism. As a planet we drink more than five billion cups
of tea every single day. Restaurants across Asia put pitchers of tea- not water- on the table
for customers. There’s sweet tea. Milk tea. Yak Butter Tea and of course- bubble tea, perhaps
the world’s fastest growing culinary sensation. Almost every single culture has its
own preferences when it comes to tea, but the interesting part isn’t how we
drink it- but why. And how it arrived in all those different countries in the first place.
To trace the story of tea is to dive into a world of corruption and espionage. It’s to follow
the spread of religion and trade, and also drug smuggling, colonization and revolution.
It’s to talk about a commodity as much as a beverage and to follow the stories of the wild
characters who brought it into the mainstream. Nothing about the history of tea is going to
be simple or straightforward, but as always it has to start somewhere, so let’s go back to
the very beginning, and get into the story. There’s a legend told in Chinese mythology that
a very long time ago a child would be born, half-human and half dragon. Almost as soon
as he came out of the womb he was talking, able to walk after just five days and
within a year, he was already fully grown, and leading a tribe in the rugged highlands.
Now Jiang Shinian was known to be strong as an ox and eight feet tall, but what was most
significant was that his skin was transparent, so anything he’d eat or drink, he could see its
effect on the body. And this was important because Jiang was destined to become Shennong, the God of
Agriculture, and the founder of Chinese Medicine. Anyway according to the story, after years
of traveling through the countryside, one day Shennong ate no less than 72 poisonous plants, and
together the toxicity was too much even for a God. So he collapsed on the ground, but just at that
moment, some leaves fell from a nearby shrub and landed in his boiling pot of water. With his last
strength Shennong filled his cup, took a sip and found himself restored and completely healed.
And from then on well he’d have a new title: the God of Tea. Shennong would spread his new
favorite herb across China, and it would become ubiquitous after his son Huangdi would unify the
Empire, creating a powerful tea-drinking society. The story of Shennong and tea is
essential in Chinese mythology and the only problem is it’s a complete
misunderstanding. It wasn’t supposed to be about tea at all, at least not until much later.
Now before we continue let me explain something important. For the first 2000 years of Chinese
writing, the word used for tea is a character known as tu. But all that word meant was something
bitter or medicinal that was boiled in water. According to archaeology and ethno-botany, if
you somehow traveled back in time to Ancient Xi’an and asked for a glass of tu, the odds are
you’d be handed something made with Sow Thistle- a relative of the dandelion. There was also tu
made from Chicory. From Chinese knotweed. From Carpenter’s Herb or Brownwort, and from flowers
like chrysanthemum, jasmine and osmanthus, and it’s not even incorrect to refer to
this as “tea” because it is, in Chinese. But we aren’t here to talk about herbal tea
or flower tea- we’re here to talk about this, and if this doesn’t actually come from Ancient
China- well then what’s the real story? Well for that we need to look a thousand miles
southwest of what was once the Chinese border to the hills of Xishuangbanna, and around an
area known as Pu’er- according to botany and archaeology, approximately ground zero for
a plant called Camellia sinensis, or, “tea.” Now on the entire continent this might be the
region we understand the least. It has a long and extremely complicated history and is the home
to 25 of the 56 recognized ethnic groups in the entire country of China, a nation to which
it’s belonged since the Mongol conquests. We have no way of knowing which of these groups
was the first to domesticate tea. Maybe it happened in more than one place simultaneously.
But all we know is that around 2000 BC all of a sudden tea, or “la” in local languages, starts
showing up in archaeology all across a swath of highlands from Myanmar to Assam, India.
But it wasn’t being used as a drink- it was a source of food, the leaves packed with nutrition
and vitamins. Polyphenols, antioxidants, fiber and probiotics. Tea is one of the healthiest plants
endemic to that highland region but it’s also incredibly bitter when eaten raw, and the leaves
so tough and sinewy that they are almost inedible. So why all of a sudden was tea in demand? Well the
breakthrough was when farmers started packing tea leaves into pieces of bamboo, and burying it all
underground to ferment. This would break down the starch, soften the flavor and even increase
the nutritional content- and we know exactly how important this would become to the local
diet, because it’s still made that way today, a specialty of the rural hill tribes around Pu’er
and Xishuangbanna. And of course it’s a national specialty in Myanmar- a place where fermented
tea leaves are still a part of almost every meal. (Music Playing)
Every day Namsu restaurant receives delivery of fermented tea leaves, straight
from the farm across the border in Myanmar. The region where the tea is grown is called Shan
State, along the Yunnan border and where the plant is endemic. But it’s not just Shan Cuisine
that uses tea- it’s essential everywhere, and you could make an argument that Laphet Thoke,
or tea leaf salad, might be the definitive flavor of Burmese cuisine.
(Music Playing) So, 4000 years ago when we first see people
eating tea as a part of a traditional diet, they were adding Burrata to the top. No- I’m just
kidding. This is a modern interpretation of one of my all-time favorite things. Tell me real quick,
what do we have on the table? We’ll get to these two last, but these three tea leaf presentations.
And if this wasn’t our first location of the day, I would have a beer with this, because it’s one of
the world’s great drinking foods. We talked about this a little bit as they were starting to prepare
the food, but I want you to explain to me just how- this is not on the menu at Namsu, the classic
Laphet Thoke is not the menu here, but when I told you that we were coming and we were going to film
about tea, and I asked if it was possible for your cooks to prepare this…most people know how to
make this. This is a pretty well-known dish across Myanmar. You ask somebody, “do you know
how to prepare a Laphet Thoke?” Everybody does. (Music Playing)
Mmm…You know, it’s so fascinating, you get a different character
of the tea. In the traditional Laphet Thoke, it’s going to be more sour, in this one you almost
get the sweetness and the brightness of the tea leaves. Mmm. It’s such a great ingredient. I don’t
know why this isn’t something that has- in ten years, you’ll be able to get this in every grocery
store, I’m positive. It’s such a fun ingredient. It’s healthy, it’s absolutely delicious, and
it doesn’t taste like anything else. So to me, it’s just- there are these things like the
sataw here in Thailand- these things that are just oversights, that for whatever reason
got missed during the years of everything going back and forth. But that’s going to change, and to
me, fermented tea leaves- I like tea as a drink, I love tea as a food.
(Music Playing) The first evidence of tea in China- the
actual tea plant, not just “tu”- shows up in the tomb of the Han Dynasty Emperor Liu
Qi, built around 141 BC. It was presented in the mausoleum as a valuable item, most likely
brought back during the raids and invasions the Han had begun of the Yunnan Mountains.
Within 30 years of the tomb’s construction Yunnan would be annexed, and the Chinese
would begin tea cultivation closer to the capital in what’s now Sichuan Province.
But at least in the beginning it was still viewed as a source of food. The reason there’s
so much confusion about the legend of Shennong is that starting in the first century BC, well
tea would become a popular version of “tu”, or medicinal herbs, and those herbs were being
used in dishes like zhou or congee. Tu was boiled with millet as a popular breakfast, pounded
with ginger and shallot and served over rice, and turned into a soup of a whole bunch of stuff
mashed together but again- all we can really do is speculate, until the 7th century AD when the
Tang Dynasty would introduce a new vocabulary, and tea would finally get its own character.
It would be a slight adaptation of tu, with just a single minor difference. And its
pronunciation, cha, was most likely influenced by “la”, the original word in Yunnan.
In the beginning, the new character would represent the tea plant, just one
of China’s many medicinal herbs. But it wouldn’t be long before cha was to become
the centerpiece of a new Chinese society. Around the first century AD a splinter branch of
Buddhism was taking shape in India. It would be called Mahayana, and it was based around the
concept of Bodhisattvas- basically delaying enlightenment to help others here on Earth.
Now by that point traditional Buddhism or Theravada had already spread across the
subcontinent and throughout Southeast Asia and there wasn’t much interest in this new
interpretation. But Mayahana missionaries saw potential in China, and began translating their
writings into Chinese starting in the years of the Han Dynasty. When the empire fell in 220 AD
and China collapsed into a period of instability, Indian Buddhists built monasteries
catering to the poor and the hungry, and scholars of Taoism and the writings
of Confucious- well they began to theorize about how it could all work together- Buddhism,
and traditional Chinese beliefs and practices. This hybrid religion, a Chinese
adaptation of the Buddhist faith, would explode into the mainstream in the 7th
century, when the Tang Dynasty brought it to the masses. And perhaps more than any other single
event in Chinese history this, almost overnight, would change the country’s cuisine and diet.
In the original teachings of Mahayana Buddhism- to be the best human one can be no harm should come
to any other creature. Hence the need to follow a vegan diet. Suddenly, monks and devout followers
needed to find a replacement for fish sauce, used in almost everything. Hence the popularity
of a soy-based alternative. With no meat allowed for consumption well temples would serve tofu,
and monks would invent a new option made from wheat gluten and today called Seitan.
And it wasn’t just animal products that were outlawed. Because of its propensity to cause
fights and conflict, alcohol was also forbidden, and this caused quite a problem. See rice
liquor was more than just a drink in early China. It was a way of life- something
you’d share with friends and family and the foundation of social interactions,
and with that now on the chopping block, well something else would need to take its place.
And that something- well it would show up in the unlikeliest of ways.
Around the year 740, just as Buddhism was sweeping across China,
one monastery in Hubei took in an orphan boy named Lu Yu, and allowed him a place to sleep
in exchange for helping out with daily tasks. Among his responsibilities was cooking the
monks daily meal, a humble gruel of onions, jujubes, ginger and tea. Now I don’t know
how good or bad this tasted, but we can get a pretty good clue from the fact that this
poor starving orphan wouldn’t even touch it. In his words it tasted like “ditch water.”
Anyway maybe it was because of the food or maybe Lu Yu was just a rolling stone but soon
enough he’d flee the monastery and set out on a Tom Sawyer-like adventure, joining a traveling
theatre troupe and then becoming a circus clown, performing for food or money all across
the farthest reaches of the empire. Somewhere, probably around the highlands of
Sichuan, he’d encounter tea again and was shocked to find that when it was prepared by
the humblest farmers- made with nothing other than tea boiled in water well it was something
extraordinary. And so entranced was Lu Yu that for the next 30 years, he’d devote himself to
learning everything he could about the tea plant. In the end he’d take everything he learned
and write a manuscript called the Cha Jing, or the Classic of Tea. It would describe in ten
chapters everything from the legend of Shennong, to the subtleties of tea flavor, to the best
way to make the drink at home- in his view, grinding tried tea leaves into a powder,
then stirring them into boiling water. He would also explain why in his opinion tea
was the consummate drink for Buddhists. It was ascetic and unpretentious. Every step- from
cultivation, to preservation and preparation took time and dedicated focus. And its consumption
should be shared among groups of people- in other words making this a perfect
alternative to the evil alcohol. The Classic of Tea would get the attention of not
just Buddhist society, but the Chinese Emperor, who promoted the work far and wide.
Almost overnight, tea shops appeared all across China and Lu Yu would become known
as a God- the God of Tea- even while he was still alive. By the way even now if you visit a
Chinese tea shop, you’ll probably find a statue or figurine of Lu Yu on display on the counter.
Anyway within a generation, tea was now right in the middle of Chinese culture. And it wasn’t
just a beverage, it would become a way of life inspired by Lu Yu’s writing and the new influence
of Buddhist philosophy. It would be served as part of a ceremony called Jian Cha, a deeply spiritual
exercise of making, serving and consuming tea that even now is intrinsic to life in the country.
Tea culture would change forever, the drink would enter the national mainstream and for us, well we
finally have an excuse for our first cup of tea. (Music Playing)
For the last two years ever since opening his first business, Khun Saran has been putting
together what might be Bangkok’s best collection of rare Chinese teas. For our visit we’ve chosen a
Green Tea from a family farm in Sichuan Province, and then later we’ll switch to an incredible
20-year aged Pu’er- hand carried back from the mountains where everything began. But we’ll get
there later because the whole point of the Chinese tea ceremony is not to rush.
(Music Playing) This is cool for me. It’s been- I’m going
to have to be careful how much caffeine I’m taking in today, because we have a lot of tea to
drink, but man, this brings back…I was in China for 12 years and first of all, the tea itself,
so Saran who owns this place was telling us that he just came back China and he’ll go back to go
find the best tea and bring it with him here, and so this is all hand-carried into Thailand
which is amazing. But also, just this culture of not rushing, we’ve been here for, what,
45 minutes, and it doesn’t feel like it. We could spend the entire afternoon
sitting here just having a conversation. It kind of forces you to- you can see how
there’s that connection to Buddhism in tea, it forces you to relax, and to not rush, and
just to be comfortable to sit here and talk to people for a long time, and it’s very serene,
you know? Ahh. It’s also really good tea. (Music Playing)
(Music Playing) By the end of the 8th century, just a few years
after Lu Yu’s book would enter publication, tea would spread east along with
Buddhist monks into Korea and Japan. And it wasn’t just tea that would quickly
become a part of those cultures. It was the tea ceremony, in time taking on the
characteristics of these other countries. The Japanese tradition began when a monk
named Eisai returned from a trip to China having learned a new technique of planting with
limited access to sunlight. This produced soft leaves that would be grinded raw into a powder-
the introduction of what today we call Matcha. And given that Eisai would also become the father
of Japanese Zen Buddhism, which would heavily influence a group known as the Samurai, well soon
enough, the Matcha tea ceremony would replace the Chinese one throughout Japanese society.
It’s called the chado, or the “Way of Tea”, and when done right it’s nearly an all-day event.
Starting with a bowl of hot water or kombu and proceeding to a ritual purification, guests would
then be served a delicate meal of many courses, and only after this would the tea itself begin, in
two phases, with matcha made into thick and thin preparations, each one paired with not just foods
but flower arrangements, artwork and tobacco. Now while the Japanese chado would reflect
the culture of respect and tradition, the Korean darye is more about mindfulness and
humility. A simple ritual of warming, measuring, brewing and serving the drink, focusing not on
ceremony but on the basic natural gifts of fire, water, and tea leaves. This began as a form
of offering, taking root in the Buddhist temples of the eighth and ninth century.
And as Korea and Japan adapted their own tea customs and began to create their own
traditions it stood to reason that eventually the Chinese origins would be cast aside, and
we see new myths and legends show up about tea. In the Japanese telling the plant
was discovered not by Shennong, but by a Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma, a
mythical figure said to be the founder of Shaolin Kung Fu. Anyway in the story Bodhidharma
spent seven years sitting in meditation, when finally he was overcome with exhaustion
and found himself falling asleep. In a last attempt to stay awake to achieve enlightenment,
and I’m not going to accompany this with photos, but he sliced off his eyelids so his eyes couldn’t
close. Then he threw them onto the ground where they sprouted into tea trees. Like magic the
trees grew leaves and the Bodhidharma picked some off and started to chew. Energized from
the caffeine, he would finish his meditation, achieve enlightenment, then introduce the world
to tea, planting the first trees himself in Japan. As far as the Korean story would go well it begins
with the founding of civilization, at least in the local telling. In the beginning there was
a golden bowl that descended from heaven, holding six eggs, which would hatch into six
princes. The first born and chief among them was named Suro, and he would go on to be
a beloved king and a hero of early Korea. When he was old enough to marry, he’d court a
princess from a faraway land, the beautiful Heo Hwang-ok, and as a dowry her Emperor father would
send a boat packed with the greatest bounty of the planet, including the seeds of the tea plant.
The century after the introduction of Buddhism to Japan and Korea is viewed as the height of
China’s soft power. A golden age of progress throughout the region, and the so-called “Romantic
Era of Tea” when the drink became intertwined with everything from religion to culture to diplomacy.
But while this was happening- well thousands of miles to the West, on China’s opposite border,
tea was becoming intertwined with something else, something that would have an even
bigger impact on the rest of this story. And this- well it brings us high into
the Himalayas, where for the first time- tea would become a commercial product.
In the 11th century AD, the new Chinese Song Dynasty was getting nervous about an
increase in raids from the north. Tribes of Mongols were invading deeper and deeper on
horseback, and without a cavalry of their own, the Chinese military was in danger
of being completely overrun. So the emperor Shenzong sent emissaries
deep into the Himalayas. Now this was a time when the mountain Kingdoms were thriving;
cultural and military powers hidden behind the world’s most imposing landscape. The
Khasa of what’s now western Nepal, the Bumthang of Bhutan and of course, the mighty
Tibetans…who ruled from the holy city of Lhasa. The ambassadors from China spread the word; they
needed horses, and were willing to trade anything, the finest silks, jade or gold. But there was
only one product coveted by the people of the high plateau. And so a contract was drawn up in
1074 that every 60 kilos of tea sent from China would be paid for with one single horse.
And within a century 25,000 horses and 1.5 million kilograms of tea were changing hands each
year, along what we now call the Tea-Horse Road. Now tea was not unfamiliar to the highland
people. As far back as the 2nd century AD we find archaeological evidence of tea in Tibet,
boiled and mixed with salt and yak butter. Exactly the same way it’s consumed today. It
was hearty, warming and revitalizing for the people of the cold and hostile region, and
would be a valuable commodity traded between Yunnan and Lhasa. In fact to this day, there are
villages in Yunnan Province built as waypoints for the ancient Tibetan tea trade.
But with the establishment of the route to Sichuan, tea was now affordable and
essential to the high mountain kingdoms and it very much remains that way to the present.
The Tea-Horse Road would completely transform the culture of the Himalayas. Yak Butter Tea
would become central to life and hospitality, monasteries and entire cities would be built along
the path leading from China, and just like in Japan and Korea tea would enter local mythology,
with the most common story crediting the plant to Songtsen Gampo, the founder of the Tibetan Empire
and the spiritual ancestor of all Dalai Lamas. Now from a Chinese perspective, the Tea Horse
Road was a failure- even with all the new horses the Mongols ran roughshod over China and by 1271,
Kublai Khan was sitting on the throne in Beijing. But by that time, Chinese tea served
in the Himalayan palaces had caught the attention of the neighboring states, in
Central Asia and India. And before long, well it would become a sought-after commodity.
And since this story’s about to get rough- well let’s load up on some Yak Butter Tea.
(Music Playing) In the Himalayan Mountains
Yak Butter tea is a tradition, not just for socialization but also survival.
But this is not the Himalayas- this is downtown Bangkok. Trying the drink here is not
exactly the same as if we were freezing at 3,000 meters elevation but hey-
at least the Air Conditioning is on. For the last two years, Bhutan Kitchen has been
the country’s only venue showcasing the food and drinks of the reclusive kingdom, wedged between
China and India. It’s a place I know very little about so as a guide we’ve invited our friend Pema,
who grew up drinking tea in Bhutan’s rural north. We’re boiling the tea? We’re boiling the
tea in water right there, and he’s going to pour it into this container. And he’s going to mix
it? He’s going to make the butter tea. So we’re watching him mixing it all? Ok.
(Music Playing) And this butter is already salted? No, it’s
pure butter. No salt. So then he’s going to put salt- actually, to make the real one, they use
(Bhutanese word) to mix the butter tea. So this “modern style” for making butter tea.
(Music Playing) As if I have not had enough caffeine from our
last stop, let’s just chase that with another tea. So in the- to me, I’m fascinated by Himalayan
food, in Nepal there’s a lot of Indian influence, in Tibet there’s a lot of Chinese influence, in
Bhutan, you get some old-school Himalayan food, and that also includes tea. Pema, good
friend from Bhutan, where are you from? This is a little bit more elegant than
what you’d find there. In my experience, it’s going to be a little bit thicker in
the mountains. I’ve never been to Bhutan, but I have been to the Himalayas
before. This looks easy to drink. Sometimes Yak Butter tea is not
so easy to drink for a foreigner. Try this one! Yeah, I should try
this before we continue talking. Oh, but the flavor- it’s quite savory, it
tastes like melted butter, tea, and salt. (Music Playing)
What’s this? And you eat this with tea, or?
Oh, I like it! Oh, really?
(Music Playing) Alright now when the Chinese traders were
crossing the Himalayas on the Tea-Horse Road, well what they were bringing in their heavy packs
was tea made into cakes- producing an intense and not subtle tea like what we just tried.
Those cakes and, by extension, tea, were barely recognizable compared to what we all
know today. They were made by putting tea leaves through a cycle of steaming and drying,
then compressing everything into a dense brick of up to around 2 ½ kilos in weight.
But as Tea grew in importance and became a part of Song Dynasty social structure, we see
the emergence of different tastes. Farmers and producers started perfecting new methods, and by
the time the Ming banned brick tea completely- well a whole new category had already taken shape.
The first step in the tea making process is harvesting the leaves from the tea plant. After
that- well the methods diverge- and by the 14th century, we see a few main styles of tea gain
popularity. And it would be these variations that soon enough would conquer the world.
Now the primary difference would involve oxidation; see, just like stuff like
apples and avocadoes as soon as tea leaves are plucked from the tree, they start to
brown, and their chemical composition changes. When tea leaves were harvested, then allowed to
fully oxidize before drying, well the result would be what we refer to as Black Tea. In Chinese,
“hong cha” or Red Tea. This would have the richest profile in tannins and the strongest and
most pungent flavor, which is why over the years it would become the base for big foreign flavors,
standing up to ingredients like condensed milk, sugar, spices, and even fruit preserves. It’s
black tea that’s today used in bubble tea, Indian Masala Chai, and Malaysian Teh Tarik.
When tea leaves would oxidize partially, and then be cooked to dry out before becoming
completely dark well that would be called Oolong, named for Wu Long or the mythical Black Dragon,
allegedly inspired by how the tea leaves look when ideally processed. This is the most painstaking
tea to make, involving cycles of rolling, drying, and roasting to develop the best flavor and
until the 19th century, well it was only meant for royalty; the tea of the Forbidden City.
If tea leaves are harvested, withered, and then immediately cooked before oxidation,
that results in Green Tea. In Japanese culture, it’s cooked by steaming; presenting the
brightest green color. Chinese green tea is made by pan-firing, which develops a
smoother flavor. Regardless, green tea is the healthiest of the tea varietals, preserves the
most polyphenols and antioxidants, and it also has the freshest and most vegetal flavor- hence its
use in the food world in stuff like ice creams. White tea involves no processing at all,
it’s just tea, usually the youngest and softest leaves picked and then allowed to sun
or air-dry naturally. It’s called “white tea” because without any steaming or baking, the
leaves retain their fine white hairs. The most exclusive variety of White Tea is made without
leaves at all, just the unopened buds of the tea plant. This is what’s called Silver Needle.
And finally there’s Pu’er tea, named for the region where tea first began and just like
the original teas of Yunnan, it’s fermented, aged for as long as fifty years before being
made into a drink, not a salad like the old days. The Ming Dynasty policy banning low quality “cake
tea” would give rise to the variations that would one day become famous around the world. But it
would also have another unintentional effect. With the country all of a sudden shifting to
consuming loose-leaf tea, new equipment would be needed to make it at home. In the past, all
you’d do would be break off part of a tea brick, grind it into a powder then stir it into boiling
water. But now- well with customers falling in love with the delicate flavors of their favorite
styles, every household would need a dedicated tea pot to steep the leaves. Over time this
teapot and eventually, entire tea sets would become fashionable items, collection pieces and
works of art, giving us the priceless category of what we now call Ming Dynasty pottery.
Anyway. Let’s get back to the story. As the world entered a new era of trade and
exploration, well tea was only cultivated in four countries. In Myanmar, it was still viewed
as a source of food, and typically pickled and fermented; not a product seen by Europeans as
having any value. That left just China, Japan, and Korea, but by the start of the 1600s, the Tokugawa
Shogunate and the Joseon Dynasty would shut down trade in two of those three countries, which
meant that China was the only nation on Earth to offer high quality tea on the export market.
But that doesn’t mean there were any buyers. The first reference by any European to
the product was from Giovanni Ramusio, who in 1555 mentions a drink called Chai Catai-
though he only heard of it secondhand from a Persian merchant who had visited China. The
Portuguese write of Cha after colonizing Macau, but didn’t seem to find appeal in what they
described as “simply water boiled with some kind of herb.” And maybe the funniest encounter
came when a Russian Diplomat was presented with 100 kilograms of tea as a gift for Tsar Michael I,
but the diplomat could not understand why anyone needed so many dead leaves and rejected the gift.
It wasn’t until the year 1610 when we see any record of foreigners actually tasting the
stuff- a manifest of a Dutch trading boat that picked up a single package of Japanese
tea in Macau, transited through Java, and finally delivered it to Amsterdam,
giving Europe its first ever taste of tea. For the next half-century the only Western buyers
of tea would be the Portuguese from Macau and the Dutch from Mainland China, who bought shipments of
it not because they wanted the stuff, but because they found a huge market for these, and sold tea
as a novelty alongside Ming Dynasty ceramics. As for the Portuguese, well the tea they bought
in Macau was so expensive that it would only be served in the Royal Palace, not as a consumer
good. And in the fifty years the Dutch controlled the Chinese tea trade well they would do all but
nothing to actually push the product- and their only lasting legacy would be the name “tea.”
Now contrary to popular belief, this was not a Dutch invention or some western misunderstanding.
In the past, all of the tea China had ever sold had either been delivered by land, or by
northern ports, in the Mandarin speaking part of the country. This is why across Eastern Asia,
the Himalayas, and Mongolia the drink would take the name Cha, or some variation like ja or chai.
But the Dutch were the first to buy their tea from Hokkien traders along the southern coast,
and in the dialect of Fujian, well the exact same character is pronounced “Te”. It’s the
same exact word from the same exact country, just essentially spoken with a different accent.
And for the rest of time the name of the plant would be connected entirely to whether
it first arrived by land or water. If it would be introduced by the Dutch, English
or Hokkien traders, it’s tea. If it came overland from China or was sold via Japan,
Korea, or Portugal, it would be cha or chai. Of course there is one country that’s an exception
to this rule, the only country on Earth to which this doesn’t apply. And of course, that’s Myanmar-
where it’s called Laphet- descended from La, the original 6000-year old name for tea that’s
also still used in the Yunnan Mountains. Anyway. Whatever the name- this plant was about
to explode onto the global scene, and when it did, well it would leave a trail of destruction
that would change the course of history. The first record of tea in England comes in 1657
when a man named Thomas Garway bought a few kilos from a Dutch trader, and started selling
from his house on London’s Exchange Alley. He’d bring this new product to a coffeeshop he’d
open that same year, and thus was tea officially introduced to the English population.
But what would truly bring it to the mainstream was five years later, when King
Charles II was set to marry the daughter of the King of Portugal. For the wedding, the new queen
requested her favorite drink be served to all the guests. That of course was tea, well known as we
mentioned in the Portuguese Royal Palace. Anyway, once on the throne Catherine of Braganza would not
just popularize tea among English nobility, but she even instituted a daily tea time, a practice
that remains essential almost 400 years later. Now in the beginning Catherine’s tea had to be
purchased from the Dutch, as they were the only ones sending the stuff to Europe, but Catherine
and Charles would quickly sign a contract granting the East India Company a monopoly on tea exports
to English holdings, and things would go sideways. In 1664, just two years after the wedding,
the first British shipment would arrive in London of 100 pounds of tea. Two decades later
demand had increased to 12,000 pounds and by the end of the century tea was being sold along
with sugar- see our last video for that story- but basically this was England’s new favorite
drink. Tea lightly sweetened and served with those pastries and snacks that were just beginning
to enter the culinary landscape and all together, well by 1750, it was now five million pounds
of tea each year coming in from China. Now because the East India Company had a
monopoly their profits would skyrocket, but without competition they’d charge a fortune
for the product. Customers were unhappy, tea shops were losing money and this created an opening
for smugglers to undercut the official price. In the 18th century, tea smuggling to England
was quite an enterprise. Buyers would purchase cheap tea from the Dutch in Java, deliver it to
meeting points off the English coast where the tea would be transferred onto fishing boats, then
re-packed inside everything from loaves of bread to bibles. And it would be this smuggled tea that
would soon come to dominate the English market. Now for the East India Company this
would create two big problems. First, they lost a major source of revenue and second,
nobody wanted to buy their overpriced tea. So with a massive surplus and profits falling
the company asked the crown for the exclusive right to sell to the colonies in America,
who had previously bought tea from the Dutch. And to recover some of their losses, they
added in a sales tax of 3 pence per pound. A tax, by the way, on a population who had
no representation in British parliament. This did not go over well and so on December
16, 1773, a few hundred colonists disguised themselves as Native Americans, snuck onto East
India Company ships docked in Boston Harbor, and threw an estimated 92,000 pounds of tea into the
water- $1.7 million dollars worth of product in today’s money. The event would come to be known as
the “Boston Tea Party” and to this day, well every single kid who grows up in America learns about
this as the trigger for the war of Independence. Anyway…let’s take a break for some afternoon tea.
(Music Playing)
Alright, I don’t think we’re supposed to “cheers” in proper
teahouse culture. Pinky out. My fingers are too fat for those cups. (Laughing)
(Music Playing) It’s probably an urban legend, but there’s
a story that around 1840 Anna Russell, the Duchess of Bedford, found herself
becoming faint in the mid-afternoon because in the old days, well dinner wasn’t
served until late. So she started snacking, washing down some cakes and scones with a cup
of tea. Soon enough she started dispatching her guards to deliver notes around London, inviting
other high-society women to join her for some secret afternoon indulging. Soon enough this
would spread throughout the upper class and thus was born tea time.
(Music Playing) If you’re not raised in this culture, it can
be a little bit confusing. I remember as a kid, the first time I was ever taken out for
something like this, I remember thinking, “why can’t I have a big sandwich? Why do I get a
small sandwich?” And why is everyone seventy years old here? And why is it so expensive? I don’t
know that I thought that as a small child, but I’m pretty sure it’s what my parents were
thinking. We have sandwiches, scones, which was also very confusing to me as a small child,
because it’s just- it’s a scone. I’m not trying to be overly critical here, but, as I’ve grown
up, now, I- this is- it’s nice, and we’re sitting here in this beautiful garden. British food (Daria
attempting a British accent). This is where we cut the audio. (Daria) It reminds me- remember the Tik
Tok, “this is good, but nothing beats the ham and biscuit brickle-brackle with beans my mom makes.”
In the aftermath of the American Revolution, with no other customers and tons of excess tea on hand,
the English parliament had no choice but to cut taxes, and by 1784, the price of tea had fallen
so low that smuggling was put out of business, and the East India Company regained its monopoly
on territory still belonging to the crown. But there was a new problem, which
was how to pay for all of it. See ever since the Ming Dynasty had given up
on paper currency, China’s economy depended on silver. And silver was the only payment
accepted for tea, or for that matter, silk or porcelain or anything else sent abroad.
But the British got most of their silver from the New World, and with the American colony now
lost, well this created a massive problem. English merchants tried to find anything else
the Chinese would be willing to barter for, but this was rejected- and as demand for tea
increased well so too did the trade imbalance. And the United Kingdom was running out of silver.
So the East India Company decided to bypass official channels, and get into the smuggling
business themselves. They sent scouts into China to find tea growers or sellers willing to play
ball and in exchange, they would deliver them loads of opium, grown in Colonial India. The
tea for opium trade would be a massive boon to England, and since poppies were essentially
free, cultivated by forced Indian labor…well the trade imbalance was reversed, money started
pouring in, and with as much as 10 percent of the Chinese population now addicted to the drug, the
good times were rolling back in Victorian England. But the Chinese government did not appreciate
this turn of events. And so in 1839 the Qing emperor sent a battalion south to create a
maritime blockade. They raided British ships arriving in Guangzhou harbor and confiscated more
than 1400 tons of opium. And then they destroyed it all in public to show they meant business.
Now until this point the opium trade had been “unofficial” but in response to the situation the
crown sent the Royal Navy to southern China, where for three years the British decimated the Chinese
military. And finally in 1842 China was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, giving full immunity
to all British on Chinese soil, accepting new non-silver-based terms for trade and just for fun,
granting England the rights to Hong Kong island. So thanks to the Opium War, England had its
tea. But there was still one major problem, which was that the Chinese (censored) hated the
British and it was obvious to just about everyone that this would not be a permanent solution.
The only way to actually control both price and supply would be to grow
the tea themselves, instead of depending on a foreign country for export.
Now on one hand, this didn’t seem crazy. Just a few years earlier a Scottish arms dealer
and mercenary soldier named Robert Bruce, because history is ridiculous so of course
that’s his name- anyway he’d been wandering through the mountains of Assam, India when he
noticed tea growing wild. As a matter of fact, even though he didn’t realize it this tea had
been there for thousands of years- just across the border from Myanmar and Yunnan and related
to the first plants ever cultivated. It was clear seeing the tea growing that this was the
right kind of climate to build a large-scale plantation. But what the British didn’t know was
how to turn this into this- in fact, nobody knew, as the Chinese had kept their cultivation
knowledge a secret for more than a thousand years. Only Japan and Korea were also in on it
but again both were closed to the outside world. Getting answers was going to take desperate
measures- and this brings us to the most audacious and unlikely spy in agricultural history.
For the first 31 years of Robert Fortune’s life, well nothing much happened of great excitement.
He’d grown up in a village in Southeast Scotland, and with an interest in plants and botany he’d
worked as a caretaker for a wealthy family, then for the Edinburgh botanical gardens. But in 1844,
with the Opium War over and England now permitted access to China, well Mr. Fortune received a
letter offering him a three-year mission to sail to Hong Kong, cross into the mainland and collect
samples of exotic plants for the Royal palace. But this trip would not go as intended. In the
aftermath of the war, tensions were high, and even though he was just a horticulturalist, Fortune
found himself attacked by soldiers, kidnapped by gangsters and constantly under suspicion. So
he trained himself to blend in. He taught himself Mandarin, began to dress in Chinese clothing
and returned in 1847 as something of a hero, publishing his memoirs to great local fanfare.
Among those who read the book were executives with the East India Company, who realized this
might be the answer to their Assam dilemma. So they offered Fortune, well, a fortune to go back
to China undercover and steal for them the secrets of tea. And that’s exactly what he would do.
Along with his assistant Wang, beginning in 1848 a disguised Fortune traveled across China’s
forbidden interior, visiting tea plantations in Fujian, Zhejiang and Sichuan, posing as a Chinese
dignitary from a far-off province. And three years later he’d get off a boat in Calcutta,
bringing seeds, trimmings, and the knowledge of exactly how to make the world’s best tea.
Now this was not all that Fortune stole from China. While he’d been in the country,
he’d learned that for the export market, the Chinese had a secret, which was that they
were adding small amounts of both gypsum and cyanide to preserve the green color that
brought in a high price. In other words, Chinese tea was actually poison.
Mr. Fortune managed to bring proof of these chemicals back to London where
they were displayed with great prominence at the first-ever World’s Fair. And suddenly not
only did England have a domestic source of tea, but China was disgraced, and all at once, no one-
anywhere- wanted anything to do with Chinese Tea. And this meant Indian tea production
would need to scale up…and fast. Alright now before the British arrived, tea was
not unknown in India. The mountains where those ancient tea plants grew- well that was home to
the Singhpo tribe, related to Yunnan’s Jingpo and Myanmar’s Kachin. And just like those
other groups the Singhpo utilized tea by fermenting in bamboo and consuming it as food.
And since at least the 12th century, tea was brewed as a drink in Royal houses, introduced
by way of Tibet along the Silk Road. This of course is why it’s known as Chai, and not Tea.
But that was imported, and other than the hills of the Singhpo, well tea was never farmed in
India until the 19th century. But that would change quickly. In just the first six years
after the introduction of Chinese technology, 750,000 workers would be conscripted for
the new plantations in Assam, Darjeeling, and in Tamil Nadu in the coastal south.
Now these workers were what’s called indentured servants. Not slaves- that practice
was by now technically outlawed. But it was close enough. Each worker would sign for a
five-to-seven-year term, in exchange for money along with room and board. But fine print
usually said that room and board would be deducted from pay, and that left close to nothing.
Anyway between the new tea plantations, the rush to cultivate sugar, and the other British abuses,
in 1857 Indian workers rose up in rebellion. Six thousand colonists were killed, mostly
women and children. The British responded by annihilating Delhi and Lucknow, massacring
800,000 Indians and in the aftermath, annexing India into the empire as an official colony.
By 1871 there were 300 Indian tea plantations producing 5000 tons of the product, a number that
would increase to 35,000 tons by 1885 and in 1900, it was astronomically higher- 70,000 tons
exported to the United Kingdom alone, and countless more to buyers around the world.
And it wasn’t just India. In 1867 a blight wiped out the coffee industry in Sri
Lanka, so a man named James Taylor- no, not that one- decided to try introducing tea. In
the beginning his operation was small until he’d take on investment from a Glaswegian playboy and
amateur yachtsman named Thomas Lipton, yes, that one- and soon enough Ceylon tea was everywhere.
With the financial success of the colonial plantations the British would begin planting
tea across the rest of the crown holdings, starting in East Africa with Malawi,
then Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. Before long other European colonial powers got
in on the action as well- the French establishing farms in Vietnam starting in the 1880s and
the Dutch forcing thousands of Indonesians to grow tea across West Java.
But it wasn’t just Europeans exponentially growing the tea trade.
In 1868 the Japanese began to reopen to the outside world, and the Meiji government would
finance the country’s revival through tea exports, mostly to Southeast Asia and the United States.
And within a few years of the cyanide fiasco, the Chinese had rehabilitated their own image and were
not only back in the tea trade- but carrying tea from China to the West became a sport; a literal
competition with prizes granted to whoever built the fastest boats. The tea racing ships would be
called Clippers and this would be as popular for fans and gamblers as any modern pastime, although
sadly it would end in 1869, with the opening of the Suez Canal. Today the main legacy of the
tea clippers is a whiskey named Cutty Sark- after the greatest tea ship of them all.
Anyway, by the dawn of the 20th century much of the world was now drinking tea- but
ironically enough one country that wasn’t was India. The bitter black tea grown in Assam and
Darjeeling never quite suited the local palate, and so the English wanted to find a way to grow
their customer base. They tried pushing an ad campaign directed at factory owners, telling
them that if their workers took tea breaks, they’d have more energy and thus would be more
productive. Then around the 1930s someone had the idea to combine this black tea with a traditional
herbal beverage, and thus was born Masala Chai, which would eventually lead directly to sweet milk
teas like Teh Tarik and other global favorites and since we’re due for a break anyway- well it
feels like an excuse to swing by one of our favorite Bangkok tea shops.
(Music Playing) I remember the first time that Daria and I came
into this restaurant. This was in one of the first ones we ever filmed. We filmed here back right
when we started the channel, I think in video number- like, four or five ever. We came here
to film this. We’ve come back- gosh, we were here in the History of Curry, it’s been a few,
we’ve come to this restaurant, but it’s always just because of this. The balance of the spices,
the sweetness and the black tea is just…and again, even here in Bangkok, you have this on the streets
in India and it costs pennies. Here it’s not much more. When we first started coming here, this
was ten Baht on the menu, which is like $0.25 or $0.30, they’ve raised it, it’s about forty
cents now. Man. I am going to crash so hard. In the early 1800s as England was fighting wars
over tea, the biggest issue back home wasn’t supply, it was the quality of the water. See it
didn’t matter how good the tea might have been, it all tasted awful when steeped in the dirty runoff
of the River Thames. So one nobleman, a Lord Charles of Northumberland began to ask his cooks
to soften his tea with the dried peel of bergamot oranges. As he was the powerful Earl of Grey
well this would soon reach the general public. As tea spread across the world in the
19th century, well very quickly we see the emergence of much of what we know today.
Moroccan mint tea got its start completely by accident- when a British clipper in the 1850s
was headed to the Baltics, but got caught in the crossfire of the Crimean War. So the boat
turned around, limped into port at Mogador and unloaded the cargo. Then some enterprising vendors
brewed it up with mint and sugar and since then, well it’s been a north African essential.
Turkish tea would show up much later, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. With coffee suddenly
unavailable, the new government encouraged tea farming, and began cultivation in the province of
Rize. So important would this new crop become that multiple Black Sea cities changed their names to
reflect the chai industry, and today Turkey is the world’s largest per capita tea drinking country.
In Russia, the first shipment of tea might have been rejected by the Czar’s ambassador but
soon enough that mistake would be corrected, and by the years of Catherine the Great tons of
Chinese tea was being sent overland by caravan. Its spread to the general public would begin
in the 19th century, in part thanks to writers like Pushkin and Dostoyevsky- the latter
writing in 1864 that if he had to choose between saving the world and having a cup of
tea, well he would not skip his daily fix. A number of tea innovations show up in the United
States, starting in 1843 when a British immigrant to New York started marketing something he called
“English Breakfast,” which would be exported to England and become a favorite of Queen Victoria.
The classic American Sweet Tea shows up near Charleston, South Carolina, the home of the
only large-scale tea plantation in the US. There it was first served in 1890, at a 25-year
reunion of Confederate Civil War Veterans. Fourteen years later iced tea would be introduced
to the world at the St. Louis World’s Fair, when a sudden heat wave meant the 20 million
visitors were stuck in scorching temperatures. So a vendor at the East Indies pavilion
bought a few blocks of ice, poured his tea on top of it and a new sensation was born.
And perhaps the greatest American tea innovation appears in 1901 when two women from Milwaukee
patented the world’s first tea bag, catching on widely after World War II when everyone was
in motion and wanted something fast and easy. And the years after the War also
brings us more tea breakthroughs. In the 1950s with Malaysia’s post-colonial
economy struggling vendors came up with a method to utilize the scraps and cheapest
leftovers of the tea plant. They’d mix the bitter tea dust with water and condensed milk,
then pour it back and forth to combine everything and mellow out the flavor. Today Teh Tarik or
pulled tea is essential on the Malay Peninsula. The Thai variation- Cha Yen or Thai
Iced Tea dates back to the late 1940s, the invention claimed by a Chinese immigrant
family who would call their brand Chatramue, or Thai Tea number one. This wouldn’t truly gain
popularity however until a government initiative convinced opium farmers in the Golden Triangle to
switch to tea cultivation, and prices went down. You might think that Matcha Ice Cream is a
brand-new thing, but it actually dates back as far as the 19th century when Japanese royal
banquets added tea powder into shaved ice. This would be turned into soft-serv in Tokyo
in 1958, and then brought into the global mainstream by Haagen Daas, launching in 1996.
And then, of course, there’s Bubble Tea, which is now ubiquitous in just about every
major city. This got its start in Taiwan in 1986, and since then the combination of sweet milk tea
with pearls of tapioca has been a rocket ship to the big time. As for who specifically gets credit-
well, there are two shops that say it was their invention, they both have long and convoluted
origin stories and they both spent decades in court fighting each other. But finally in 2019 the
judge threw out the lawsuit because since there were no patents involved, credit didn’t matter.
Officially, Bubble Tea belonged to the world. And because of its success- along
our passion for anything tea-related, our production keeps increasing year by year, in
2023 reaching 6.7 million metric tons sold on the global market. And it’s not slowing down.
Today we use tea in skincare products, as air fresheners and included in everything from
Kit Kat Bars to soft drinks, Starbucks chai lattes and Chinese tea boiled eggs. We add tea to cat
litter and use tea bags as whatever this is but most of all, we just love the classic. Across the
planet we consume five billion cups of tea per day. And 1250 years after Lu Yu told us to keep
it simple- well we’re still following his advice, and we haven’t yet managed to improve on
the original- though that’s up for argument. Tea has become so intrinsic in our lives
that it’s become part of our language. If we don’t like something, we say it’s not our
cup of tea. To share gossip is to spill the tea and much ado about nothing is a storm
in a teacup, or a tempest in a teapot. We drink tea with breakfast when we wake
up in the morning. Take breaks for tea in the middle of the afternoon and enjoy
it with shisha late into the evening. But whether we drink it at sunrise or sunset,
whether we prefer it green or black or Earl Gray…if we add milk or sugar or like ours
hot or cold, if we call it tea or cha, or laphet…the one thing we can all agree is that
this story has gone on long enough. But at least after all this talking- well you know what’s
supposed to be good for your speaking voice… Subscribe to the channel for more from OTR,
thank you so much to everyone who supports us on Patreon, it really helps to keep us
going. Find links below to our Patreon and social media and we’ll see you soon.
This is the first time that you and I have ever had a high tea together. It’s my first
time ever! I think I went to the Plaza Hotel when I was a little kid, after Home Alone 2 when
everybody wanted to do it. And I didn’t understand it. This is a very- if you’re not raised in this
culture, this was very confusing to me as a child. No, I never had high tea. I only
had tea- a tea bag that we’d use 20 times in my household. Nothing high about it.
Alright, what do we have? So again, as a- if you grow up in this culture, I wish Mary was here,
you know Mary, who helped us out with the channel in the past, she’s part-Thai but she’s just so
British. She could maybe explain why this is a thing. Should we do a British accent? British.
Water. Tuesday, mate. No- that was Australian.
Please “Like” if you enjoy the video, subscribe to the channel, and turn on notifications!
–
Who was the first to start planting tea? When and why did we start drinking it, and why does half the world call it “cha” or “chai,” and the other half “tea”? These might sound like simple questions, but the answers explore thousands of years of wars, conflicts, controversies and even acts of espionage. From the spread of Buddhism to the American Revolution, the story of tea is a wild ride through our global history.
–
Please consider supporting OTR on Patreon and thanks so much to anyone who does; your support truly keeps us going. http://www.patreon.com/OTRontheroad
Website: http://www.OTRontheroad.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/otr.offtherails/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
–
0:00 – Introduction
1:05 – The Necessity of Life
3:37 – Shennong
5:05 – Tu vs. Tea
7:51 – Laphet Thoke
13:27 – The Real Start of the Story
14:59 – Mahayana
17:06 – Lu Yu
19:51 – The Tea Ceremony
24:39 – Japan and Korea
28:25 – The Tea Horse Road
31:11 – Yak Butter Tea
36:33 – All the Tea
40:44 – The Trade Begins
44:16 – London and Boston
47:38 – Afternoon Tea
50:17 – Opium Wars
53:51 – The Spy
56:12 – India and Beyond
1:00:34 – Masala Chai
1:02:14 – Everything About Everything
1:08:09 – Credits and Post-Credits
–
Video Credits:
37 Comments
Two notes, then location pins (and these were some incredible locations for this one).
1) First…if you do a quick "history of tea" Google search, you'll probably notice a ton of stories about a discovery of 6000-year-old tea in Eastern China. This story is everywhere and it is by far the oldest record of tea ever discovered. So why didn't we cover it in this video? See here's the thing. There are so many holes with this "discovery" I just cannot understand how it's become accepted as conventional wisdom. It doesn't fit, geographically, with any other evidence. It makes zero sense in context, it's never been peer reviewed, the "evidence" is a chemical compound that can also exist in fungus, and it took fifteen years for the people who analyzed the site to retroactively announce, oh, it's the world's first tea, see- tea comes from China! If this study is ever independently confirmed or more research comes out that supports anything about it, I'll apologize and revise this video. But it is my strong opinion that this is absolute nonsense. So we ignored it for this video in favor of…things that are verifiable. Just in case anyone has read about this and wonders why we didn't touch it.
2) I messed up in the to-camera voicer- minor thing, but since I lived in China forever it bothers me, and I want to clear it up. The script I wrote for myself mentions the discovery of ancient tea in Xishuangbanna and around an area called Pu'er. When I recorded it, I missed the word "and," which implies Pu'er is in Xishuangbanna. It's not. It's immediately to the north, they are side-by-side and this probably won't bother anybody else- but it bothers me, so there you go.
Now…Locations! All in Bangkok.
1- Namsu (Shan State Burmese Restaurant): https://maps.app.goo.gl/pEvezxpSWWQp92sr8
2- Zhong Chinese Tea House: https://maps.app.goo.gl/7tym31AFDvDvKpKp8
3- Bhutan Kitchen: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gDFgX3WZuwRR5BCZ7
4- English Afternoon Tea: https://maps.app.goo.gl/EZzGsEm1QxLcvaPw8
5- Masala Chai: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9JzDnYRDWWrw8MUC6
Cheers and thanks.
Just commenting for the algo. Love the mix of food, history, and culture this channel gives!
Watching this video I got the urge for some tea, so I made me a cup of Genmaicha which I’m now enjoying as the video ends.
Another great production from the OTR team, thanks for making and sharing some of the best videos about food in all of YouTube.
This channel should have millions of viewers!
Re-watching this while drinking green tea. Tea-ception.
No pinky out 🙄🙄🙄
My favorite is Queen Mary by Fortnum & Mason. Green tea ice cream 😍
@40:00 show me you are in Thailand without telling me you are in Thailand 😉
Really interesting video, thanks for posting
အမရေ အီးတွေလဲပန်းကုန်ပါဦးမယ်ဗျာ ။Cheeseနဲ့လက်ဖက်။😅
Bhutan snack "Zhao " is also kind our Burma"Southern Shan State" traditional too.
We called " San Hlaw" in Burmese "ဆန်လှော်"
Your videos are of a Ken Burns documentary quality. Good on ‘ya!
Tea is heaven in my belly.😋🍵
It’s about what still happens now….tax payer military is sent to secure resources for corporate profits …tea, rubber, OIL all secured free of cost to the companies who get $$$$ selling the new products to the masses who fought the wars for it….OIL In the Middle East is the main stolen product now. Shareholders in oil and weapons like using war to get resources as it’s free to them….if they get the right politicians in charge of the military ….
Thank you China for the tea drinking culture.
Another excellent episode, and in glorious 4K! 🙂
Prefer green, white, and lemon & ginger teas myself.
I was told by my doctor to replace every second cup of coffee with green tea for health reasons, that got me into tea at furst… now tea as a food is a new idea I need to look into. Well, tuck into, more likely
It is a drug. And I am addicted to it. We are a planet of drug dealers and addicted people: sugar, tea, cocoa, alcohol, pot, tobacco, talking only about the ”social” ones. Oh, I forgot sex…
There is more than one language, which does not use "tea" or "chai" – in Polish language it is "herbata".
Love me some Wuyi mountain rock oolong tea ❤ from Fujian.
Thanks to your channel I decided to try Burmese cuisine and lephet thoke is my favourite dish. The flavours and textures 😋
Sounds like the fentanyl situation is kinda like the modern version of the opium situation
Awesome video! I love tea and this is a great exploration into it! And we know uncle Iroh would approve haha!
Puerh !!! Woop woop finally a yunnan shout out !!!!
Not usually a "Food Chanel fan" BUT, this was a delightful & educational trip through my national drink as an Englishman. THANK YOU very, very much.
Adam, as a student of history, anthropology, linguistics, and sociology, I have to admit that this is undoubtedly one of the most enlightening documentaries I have come across in a while. Thank you for creating such amazing content. Just my cup of tea!
Well done. I’m Scottish and drink a ton of tea(black) milk one sugar please. Didn’t know about Robert Fortune or most of the other history. Really interesting.
Excellent and beautiful presentation. Have been enjoying tea since the childhood, it makes now some half a century and few years more, and am absolutely in love with this heavenly product of nature and human hard work and expertise. Thank you again for this great story.
Absolutely excellent video! ❤❤❤
You're Spilling it EVERYWHERE! Lately I've returned to coffee and keep to Tea OOlong or Earl Grey mainly as a relax time drink with a sweet treat
secret this guy uses the latest Google AI quantum computing it's not really him speaking – JOKING!!! , returning to just get hungry watching this channel discover foods
Sooo good!
for years i would put green tea in almost everything…… especially if it had water, or other dried leaves in it…………. i dont do it much now days, but maybe i will again. Most people found it weird, but i really liked it.
Wow I learned SO much about lovely tea!!! There is always more to learn about any subject, thanks for the knowledge 💜 also, I'm a bit surprised you didn't mention the different puerh types and dark teas, and also no mention of kombucha! Still an informative vid!
Big fan of "Oil Tea" in Guangxi province where they pound tea with pork fat and add puffed rice, corn and beans as a sort of breakfast. Similar ish to what you're eating in the Bhutanese shop
What an interesting video. Thank you!
I think you have enough material for books in your channel.
OTR making a video on the history of tea, now that is a treat for the weekend 🫖
Richard Dreyfuss?
I have a keyboard and it can be used to type comments!!
…and if u think that was kinda idiotic for how pointless it is, a waste of my time writing it and Yours – reading…. please – feel free to scroll and check comments for the sheer magnitude of those that decided to write how much they like vids 'bout history & food – on a documentary from a channel, that is called 'OTR Food & History"
(and please – don't take it wrong way, I really did enjoy watching this vid, it was of great quality and I'm sure lot of effort, thinking and planing went to make it such).