TEA.
By H. T. Wade.
ROM time almost immemorial the words China and tea have been so intimately associated that when the one of them is mentioned the other immediately and almost involuntarily suggests itself; and possibly in the whole range of the history of commerce there is no other known instance where the product is so thoroughly identified with the land of production as is the article tea with its parent home, China. And surely, if for no other reason, China would seem to have a prescriptive and justifiable right to call herself the home of the tea plant by reason of the long centuries in which tea was a national beverage before its virtues and its value became known to other countries of the world. Anyhow it is on authentic record that tea was extensively cultivated for drinking purposes in China in A.D. 350, while it is quite possible to believe that it was well known to the inhabitants many years before that date. Again, China is further identified with the tea plant by having furnished the very name by which the world-renowned product is universally known—tea.
On the other hand there are not wanting those who claim Assam as the original home of the plant because the shrub happens to be indigenous to that part of India; but when one remembers the contiguity of Assam with the Chinese province of Yunnan, where undoubtedly tea grows, both lying on the same parallels of latitude, Assam's special claim to the honour would not appear to be any too strongly substantiated. Indeed, Japan might equally well put in a claim to be considered the parent land of tea, for the two varieties, Thea Assamica and Thea sinensis, can both be traced back to very remote times, "the first still growing wild in India and the other occurring still wild in Southern Japan." On the authority of the writer of the article on tea in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" we have it that "no strictly wild tea plants have been discovered in China, but an indigenous tree (Thea Assamica) is found in Assam, and that it differs in many respects from the China plant in that it is a tree attaining to a height of fifteen to twenty feet and that its leaves reach a length of nine inches and upwards, while the leaf of the Chinese plant never exceeds four inches in length." This rather emphatic statement seems open to doubt, for it is competent for any one to see, what the present writer has frequently seen, tea trees of a height of twenty feet or more growing in the neighbourhood of the Treaty port of Kiukiang in the province of Kiangsi; while the leaves of the gnarled trees in the old time tea orchards of Yunglowtung and Yunglowsze in the province of Hupeh, which form a large component part of the heterogeneous mixture which goes to make up tea bricks for the markets of Thibet, attain to a length not one whit less than that ascribed to the Assam plant. But be these facts as they may the solid fact remains incontrovertible that for nearly fifteen hundred years—that is from A.D. 350 to A.D. 1838—China tea, and China tea alone, was recognised as the article of commerce known as tea, and that "China has been the fountain head whence the tea culture has spread to other countries." And even at the present day by far the most highly-prized and the highest-priced teas from India and Ceylon are produced from plants of indisputably Chinese origin. Coming to dates more within the compass of common knowledge, we know that it is only seventy years ago since it was discovered that the tea plant was indigenous to the East India Company's territories in Upper Assam, and that during Lord Hardinge's Governor-Generalship of India tea plantations were successfully established on the Himalaya range, worked by natives from the tea districts of Fokien supplied with plants and seeds and all the paraphernalia necessary for manufacturing the article. A little later fresh supplies of "men and arms" were sent over to India, and under the skilful guidance of Mr. Robert Fortune, well known in China for his charming books of travel in the tea countries of China, the industry was prosecuted with enlightenment and vigour. The last fifty years have witnessed the expansion of this great enterprise to this very day, when its proportions are stupendous and really phenomenal when considered in conjunction with the marvellous development of the tea trade in Ceylon.
Though deprived of her pride of place by the united activities of India and Ceylon as the greatest producers of tea for export purposes yet China holds a great place as a producing country.
Take the figures for the year 1907.
| Lbs. | ||||
| The total output of | Indian | tea was | 213,722,195 | |
| „ | „ | Ceylon | „ | 182,220,611 |
| „ | „ | Java | „ | 27,760,000 |
| „ | „ | China | „ | 134,198,100 |
| (not including 80,563,500 lbs. brick tea). | 557,900,906 | |||
The consumption of tea in China is estimated to be 5 lb. per head which, if correct, would necessitate the addition of the stupefying amount of 2,000,000,000 lbs. to the certified export figures. On the other hand the internal consumption of tea in India and Ceylon, insignificant as it is, affects no calculation.
While it is undeniable that China has been fairly ousted from the home trade by her virile offspring, and that "the consumption of China tea in the United Kingdom barely reaches 6,000,000 lbs. or 2·1 per cent. of the whole quantity consumed as compared with 4·3 per cent. in 1904 (Hosie) in the United Kingdom, though the direct export to the United Kingdom is more than double that amount, yet happily other markets still remain, and while the direct export to foreign countries during the past ten years has varied but little, averaging as it has done 196,576,670 lbs. per annum, signs are not wanting of a more favourable disposition towards China tea in England, and of a desire on the part of exporters from China to push their wares more energetically by freer advertising and reasonable appeals to the common sense of the consumer. The average cost of China tea is yearly coming more into line with the laying down prices of British-grown leaf. Hitherto that average has been much too high. This stumbling block once removed, and a little more attention directed to consistent manufacture, the future of China tea in the home markets should not be absolutely hopeless. The situation has not inaccurately been summed up in the words of an editorial of a Ceylon planting paper, "the way in which the China trade has steadily gone back is not at all conclusive proof that there can be no important recovery under changed conditions and methods. In other words the swing of the pendulum may be witnessed in this department of agriculture and commerce as well as in any other, seeing that China tea has suffered no radical injury." But this large and important question may be well left here for later consideration.
