🌹 🎶 Tea.. it's complicated
A Ramble through the Horniman Museum Chá, Chai, Tea Exhibition
Tea = Love.
I learned that early, as the warm, brown fluid poured from my grandparents’ woolly tea cosy-clad teapots at family gatherings. Since then, it has flowed alongside the babbling river of conversation sharing life’s joys and griefs. From those early childhood cups of black ‘builders tea’ with milk and sugar to Tea Ceremonies in Singapore and having my tea leaves read in Turkey, tea has always been closely knitted with love.
Spotted on TfL this week before my trip to the exhibition
Tea = It’s Complicated
I learned that later, as history lessons revealed that this bastion of British identity was colonialist plunder.
So I went to steep in the complexity at the Chá, Chai, Tea Exhibition at the Horniman Museum, curated by Asian community groups. The many layers are evoked beautifully by this animated poem by celestialpeach_uk
Tea = Nature
Amongst the verdant mountains of Yunnan Province, China, ancient Camellia Sinensis tea trees tower at heights of 50 ft, rooted in their homeland of South-West China, North East India and Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Used medicinally during the Shang Dynasty (1500 BCE–1046 BCE), by the Tang period (618- 907 CE) tea had become a popular drink pressed initially in bricks and brewed loose leaf by the Song Dynasty (960 – 1279 CE)
Tea = Language
Closely associated with chat, the global names for tea swirl around Te and Cha/ Chai. Tea Sage Lu Yu (733-804), author of Chá Jīng, the world’s first known tea manual, says that from many names the Chinese distilled han zi 茶 (Cha in Cantonese/ Mandarin, Zo/Dzo in Wu Chinese and Te/ Tey in Min Chinese.) The radicals/ parts of the han zi character depict humanity surrounded by tea leaves and trees, an ecology both venerated and violated over centuries of brews.
艹 - leaves
人 - person
木 - tree
Tea = Global
Chinese Han Emperor Wudi (157-87 BCE) sent his General Zhang Qian to open up diplomatic routes with the West in 139 BCE and Central Asia in 119 BCE, which centuries later would be dubbed The Silk Roads by German traveller Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877. Travelled by innumerable traders, this network of routes facilitated diverse socio-economic and cultural exchanges across sprawling territories from East to West. Tea travelled initially to Korea and Japan, becoming a foundational part of sacred and secular ceremonies, and from there was traded across Asia, The Middle East and Europe. By the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644 CE) tea was traded with ceramic and porcelain teapots, cups and accessories. Tea had gone viral.
Today China, Kenya, India and Sri Lanka produce 75% of the world’s tea, with global tea drinkers consuming a boggling 6.5 million tonnes, exchanging and experimenting with recipes from Bubble Tea to spicy Chai. Tea variants are defined by the degree of leaf oxidization from green, yellow, white to oolong, black and dark and vary according to regional climate and cultivation.
Tea Plantation, Munnar, Kerala, India
Tea = Colonialist Oppression
In 1600, The East India Company (EIC) was founded by a coalition of English merchants, explorers and politicians “to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies (the which it may please the Lord to prosper)" Ostensibly a trading company, having set up shop in Indonesia and India, the EIC embarked on ruthless colonisation of modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Hong Kong, enslaving local populations and trafficking Afro-Caribbean slaves across the Indian Ocean. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 brought about the dissolution of the company and the establishment of British Royal rule via the British Raj in 1858, which continued until India became independent in 1947.
China carefully regulated the tea trade and forbade the export of the tea plant, trading initially with the Portuguese and Dutch. Tea reached British shores in 1660, becoming an elitist luxury drink and the EIC began trading with China in the early 1700s. The Chinese requested payment in silver and, as the demand for tea boomed, the EIC began farming opium in India and smuggling it into China in exchange for silver. Between 1775 and 1839, annual opium imports from India to China rose from 75 to 2,500 metric tonnes.
Lin Zéxú’s letter to Queen Victoria, displayed at the Horniman Museum
Faced with an epic scourge of debilitating addiction, the Emperors of the Manchu Qing/ Daicing Gurun Dynasty (1636-1912) banned opium in 1813. In 1839, Lin Zéxú, Governor General to Dáogung Emperor (1782-1850) began a campaign to stop opium production, writing a letter of protest to Queen Victoria published in The Times and requesting European traders to turn in their opium supplies in exchange for tea. Justifying their actions as a defence of ‘free trade’ the British embarked on two Opium Wars which resulted in the ceding of Hong Kong to British Rule in the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 until it was ‘returned’ in 1997. The Convention of Peking (1860) ceded further territory, legalised opium and allowed Europeans free movement.
Robert Fortune (1812-1880) a Scots botanist fluent in Mandarin working for the EIC in disguise as a visiting official, managed to smuggle 20,000 tea plants and the secrets of tea production from China. Planted in Darjeeling in 1841 by Dr Archibald Campbell, these stolen seedlings became the first Alubari Tea Garden of Darjeeling. Subsequently the British rapaciously established numerous tea plantations, causing widespread destruction to the environment, indigenous peoples and local socio-economies. By 1874, 113 gardens covering 18,888 acres had been created in Darjeeling district producing 3.9 million pounds of tea. Racist marketing was employed to portray Indian Tea as superior to Chinese.
The Museum acknowledges that it is built on the wealth of Frederick Horniman’s ‘Pure Tea,’ sourced from South African and East Asian colonialist plantations and produced by slaves. Whilst his parents were abolitionists and Horniman did not own tea plantations, his campaigns for social reform and protection of workers in the UK did not extend to tea workers. Recognising the hurt and wishing to address the injustice of this legacy, the Museum has chosen to tell the full story and centre the voices of the communities impacted.
For centuries, tea has been produced by indentured, enslaved, exploited and trafficked workers. Video stories of contemporary tea workers testify to the long shadow cast by sustained colonialist socio-economic injustice. The exhibition also includes the powerful photographic series, Empowerment, the True Crown, I Am Sugar (2018) by Richard Mark Rawlins, acknowledging the bitter, brutal truth that sugar used to sweeten tea was historically produced by enslaved African peoples in the Caribbean. In response to Stuart Hall’s statement“I am the sugar in the bottom of the English cup of tea,” the photos show a black power hand rising from an English tea cup.
Tea = Empowerment
Crossbows of Chinese soldiers who fought in the Opium Wars feature in the exhibition alongside powerful stories of resistance. In 1921, 30,000 tea workers from plantations in Chargola Valley, Assam walked out in protest about their harsh working conditions and low pay. Assamese colonialist police opened fire and killed many of the workers who had reached Chandpur Train Station, causing huge outrage and increased movement towards Indian independence.
Today, Economic & Social Justice Advisor, Sabita Banerji, who was raised on a tea plantation, is bringing civil society organisations together at The International Roundtable for Sustainable Tea (THIRST) to work for a fair and sustainable tea industry where workers and farmers are empowered and their rights and environment are protected. She advises tea drinkers to choose high-quality, Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance brands and to advocate for better conditions for tea workers.
Equipping us with the awareness to make empowered choices, the exhibition also prompts tea drinkers to be aware of the ecological footprint of tea. Drinking 1 cup of tea a day uses 25g of C02 = heating a house for a day or driving a car 23 miles. The environmental impact increases if we boil more water than we need.
Tea = The Future
Simmered over centuries of conflict, colonialism, cultural exchange and conversation, tea remains a complex and enduring love globally. Humanity remains wrapped in a love story with tea, whilst the storms of climate change brew and long-oppressed voices call us to reckon with the past and build a better future.
