Tea
… our tea sommelier presents a conversation piece Lapsang Souchong (正山小種), the world’s very first black tea … Originating in Tungmu Village of Fujian, China, in the late Ming Dynasty, this Wuyi tea is no stranger to European royals. Portuguese Jesuits and merchants already “busied themselves” with Chinese tea in 1560 shortly after entering Macau, … the colorful accounts of a certain Scotsman Robert Fortune’s infamous corporate espionage comes to mind.
The antagonist landed in the tea farms of Wuyi Mountains in the late 1840s, donning a long, fake pigtail, Qing dynasty Chinese robes and all, absconded with tea seedlings, tea plants and secrets of the trade on behalf of British East India Company, brought them to India in 1851 and fatally changed the fortune of the Chinese tea industry.
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