Dear Take in Mind readers!
In our recent article, “Let’s have a cup of coffee” I sang praises of a so wonderful and delicious drink, the coffee.
Now it’s time for justice! I kindly ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to stop reading this wonderful article, go with me to the kitchen and… prepare a cup of your favorite tea. Use a teabag, or put tea leaves in a pre-warmed teapot – do it however you like! Next to you, near the cup, put sugar, honey, jam, cream, lemon, dessert, or something else to your taste. Inhale the aroma, drink, and… Enjoy! Oh, so nice…
What may we add to your tea-time? Tea “has” aristocratic blood (which we will prove below!) and it does not tolerate empty talk. Therefore, the stories we have prepared today are respective to its noble state, with a deep meaning.
The first story: about tea, body parts, and linguistics
In his book “The History of Essential Foods”, Russian historian William Vasilyevich Pokhlyobkin mentions an ancient legend about some Chinese saint who delved so deeply into the deepest secrets of the Universe that he fell asleep. After that, he was so angry because of this mistake that he cut off his eyelids to ensure that his eyes would never stick together in the future. From these eyelids, grew the first tea plants. In other references, we know the name of this saint (Bodhidharma), and the place where this cut-off punishment had occurred (Mountain Ta).
The second story: tea, sport, and religion
We stay in the East but move to Japan. In the XIV-XV centuries, “tea tournaments” were widely used in the Land of the Rising Sun. In the aristocratic circles, these competitions were performed in two-tier pavilions, the first floor of which was called the “guest terrace”, and the upper floor was called the “tea pavilion”. Special Chinese entourage was given to these competitions (probably in memory and with respect to tea’s origin). The tea pavilion was decorated with Buddhist scrolls from Chinese monasteries, and with Chinese paintings, flower vases, censers, and candlesticks.
Usually, guests gathered on the ground floor of the pavilion, where they enjoyed a small feast. Then the guests strolled in the garden, while the “master” of the tea tournament finished all preparations. Finally, all the participants sat down, and the tournament began. First, three cups of tea were placed in front of the scrolls the depict Buddha. Then the “cup-giver” (usually it was a son of the tea tournament’s “master”) gave to each guest a cup of crushed green tea powder, added boiling water, and stirred tea powder. When all the guests drank the cup with the first tea type, new cups were brought in and a new tea type was offered. During the tea tournament, guests had to select the “good” and “bad” varieties. The winner is the one who correctly guessed a greater number of varieties. Such competitions could last for a long time depending on the wealth of the owner’s reserves: “50 cups competition” and even “100 cups tournament” was an ordinary entertainment!
By the way, it is quite logical that the art of making tea and tea drinking in Japan of the 15th century gradually turned into a religion – Teaism. Teaism was a cult of admiration for the beautiful essence among the litter of everyday life. This cult preaches the purity of harmony, the sacrament of mutual mercy, the romance of human relations. Teaism has symbolized worship of the imperfect and incomplete, a soft attempt to achieve something in our incomprehensible life, and also help to determine our sense of proportionality with the Universe. That’s very cool, isn’t it? So, Pastafarianism with its Flying Pasta Monster is far from being original.
The third story: tea, matchmaking and the fight against alcohol
Nowadays, tea has become almost synonymous with the British lifestyle. The surprising fact is that the triumph of tea in the United Kingdom is owned by the Portuguese, namely the Portuguese king’s daughter.
On May 29, 1660, at his thirtieth birthday, the eldest surviving child of the executed Charles I of England triumphantly returned to London and was proclaimed as the new king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Together with the throne, Charles II inherited a lot of debts. One of the solutions to this problem was the marriage with a wealthy foreign princess and receiving an appropriate dowry. Such a girl was soon found, and the daughter of the king of Portugal, Juan IV, Catherine of Braganza became an official bride of Charles II. As a dowry, Juan IV offered the cities of Tangier and Bombay, and a few less impressive things, like a few ships loaded with luxury goods, most of which were then sold to pay off Charles II’s debts.
Catherine, like all Portuguese nobility, considered tea as the most favorite drink (please pay attention that it was tea and not the wonderful Portugal wines). As she went ashore in Portsmouth, England in May 1662, she immediately asked a cup of tea. Unfortunately, her innocent request was perplexing (tea was a rarity in Britain) and the princess was offered a good mug of beer instead of a strange tea drink. Either Catherine was capricious or the beer was of poor quality (but I really doubt the latter), but the proposed substitute for tea did not improve her mood and her well-being. The story ended nicely: Catherine and Charles II got married two months later. In the beginning, Catherine, a devout Catholic, faced certain difficulties in adapting to the local lifestyle, but over time, she became a trendsetter for the British aristocracy. However, in the gastronomic preferences, Catherine remained faithful to Portugal traditions, including tea drinking. Soon she “infected” the English nobility with this drink, and this, by the way, was also considered as a victory over alcohol, which the lords and ladies drank obscene quantities before.
The fourth story: tea, medicine, and bribery
In Germany, tea was first mentioned since the 50s of the XVII century, however, tea was perceived there as a medicine, and not as a stimulating drink. The pharmacy price tag “Herba thea” from Nordhausen from 1657 may serve as a confirmation of this fact. One of the main tea distributors (as well as of chocolate and coffee) at the courts of European crowns was the Professor of medicine at the University of Frankfurt Oder and the private physician of the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm I of Brandenburg, Bonteku Cornelius Dekker (1647-1685). In his treatise, he argued that tea can give a new life to a man who is exhausted and “with one foot standing in the grave”. Bonteku claimed that 50 cups of tea a day is a nice dose, and as a natural limit he defined… 200 cups per day. Some suspicions that he was bribed by the Dutch East India Company (the key European tea distributor then) have never been refuted.
Fifth story: tea, greediness, and revolution.
One of the key pages in US history, The Boston Tea Party, is related to tea not only symbolically. Tea was first brought by English colonists to North America in 1704. Naturally, the market for such a popular product could only flourish, and the royal treasury naturally wanted to maintain the monopoly on these goods. But the colonists were smart and desperate; so, they began to smuggle tea from China, bypassing English customs. This caused great damage to the income of His Majesty since tea was a subject to 120 percent duty. In 1767, the English parliament enacted a monopoly on the import of tea into America only on the ships of the East India Company, which had the right to set tea prices on its own. The company immediately raised the tea tax to 200%. This action caused widespread indignations in the American colonies. On the night of December 15-16, 1773, a group of radical Bostonians boarded three tea clippers owned by the East India Company and dumped 342 chests of highest quality tea into the water. The bay turned into a giant teapot with hundreds of tons of fine leaf tea, which, unfortunately, was brewed with cold ocean water. The British government, having received news of this “tea party”, sent the Royal navy to the American shores to pacify the rebellious. But the Americans did not calm down and “organized” new similar tea parties, and finally, these became the first steps for the revolution and future independence. By the way, if the board of directors of the East India Company would not have been so greedy, maybe the modern political map would have been completely different.
In conclusion, we really want to remind the bear cub from the wonderful fairy tale “Hedgehog in the Fog” by Sergei Kozlov (and the animated film by Yuri Norshtein) and ask our readers: “Oh, who other than you know how to count the stars?!” After all, tea, as you already understood, is also a romantic drink…
Have a nice tea party!
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Featured image by dungthuyvunguyen from Pixabay.