Stealing of Tea Formula
How did the British steal past ancient centuries tea formula from China?
The tallest Robert Fortune touched the front. He pulled a rusty razor and started shaving the initial part of the Fortune head. It was either a razor, that Fortune felt that ‘as if he was not shaving my head, he was screaming.’ Tears rose from his eyes and started turning on the cheeks.
This is an episode of an area located somewhere in Shanghai in September 1848, from China. The Fortune was a spy for East India company who has gone to the prohibited area within China and has been on tea campaign from there. But for this purpose, the first condition is that it shaved hair from the upper part as per China tradition. After passing through this tragedy, Fortune’s translator and leader, wearing a long rod in his hair, wearing a Chinese shore, and warned him to keep his mouth closed.
There was still a problem that was not easy to hide. Fortune’s height was longer than a fit on the usual Chinese comparison. He solved his solution to telling people that the he came from the other side of China wall, where people are long enough.
Robert Fortune succeeded in making his luck with tea
There was a lot of stake in this campaign. If Fortune was successful, China’s 100-year-old monopoly was over and the East India Company started giving tea in India and started providing it throughout the world. But on the other hand, if he was caught, he had only one punishment, Death! The reason was that tea production was the national secret of China and its rulers had been trying to safeguard the secret for centuries.
Two billion cups daily
According to a research, Tea is the world’s most popular beverage after water, and around 2 billion people daily start their day with tea.
This story of tea is not less than a thrilling novel. This is a story that has wonderful conceptions, even the spying adventures, imperialist festivals, lucky moments and unfortunate events.
Several stories are known about how tea started. According to one ancient Chinese Dimalai King Shengong had a clear idea of cleaning that he ordered all the remedies to boil water. One day the king’s water was boiling in a forest that some leaves flew from the air to fall into the ground. When Shengong drinks this water, not only does it like taste, but drinking it also has a cheese in its body.
Tea Plant
It was tea leaves and after the experience of their benefits, the king ordered the people to try it. This drinks spread across the corner of China. Europe first became known to Tea in the beginning of the 16th century, when Portuguese started trading of these tea leaf. Within one century people of the whole world started drinking tea in different way.
The East India Company was responsible for all kinds of commodity trade from the east. they had to buy tea from expensive market and from the long way to the rest of the world, the delivery of the remaining parts of the world further increased tea prices. That was the reason that the British wanted to intensify itself to start tea in their colonial India so that China’s address should be cut off.
The biggest obstacle in the project was that how the tea plant grows and how it receives tea, despite the surreal efforts, the curtain was not able to get rid of it. That was the reason that the company now sent Robert Fortune to this dangerous spy campaign.
For this purpose it had to go to those regions of China, where no European stepped down after Marco Polo. It was known that soldiers in the mountains of the province grow the best black tea, so he ordered his leader to turn around. Apart from shaving the head, grabbing the imitation fist in the hair and forming Chinese merchants, Fortune kept a Chinese name “Sing Howa” means ‘Shine Flower’.
The East India Company had given him instructions that “Apart from moving the best tea plants and seeds to India, it is assumed that you can provide all possible information about the cultivation of this plant. The charge for this work 500 Pound per year.
Fortune’s work was not easy. He did not want to learn from Chinese tea methods, but from there, he had to steal this rare plant. Fortune was a trained specialist botanical and his experience had told that some plants would not work, but also to bring India and their seeds to smuggle massively, so that there will be massive production of tea there.
Not only this, it also needed Chinese laborers to help farm and produce agricultural tea on industrial basis.
During that time he had to get all the information about all types of tea plants, season, cultivation, production, methods, whether green tea or black, white, or red tea.
Fortune was not intended to get ordinary tea plants, but he wanted to get the best tea so they can grove the world best tea in India.
After a three-month journey on the boats, poles, horses, and difficult roadways, Fortune succeeded in reaching a large tea factory in Koh Valley. In addition to the fastest smell of tea here, a wooden plate welcomed Fortune. It was an ancient poem in praise of tea on it:
Before it was understood in Europe that green tea and black tea plants are different. But seeing this, Fortune’s surprise was actual that both types of tea are obtained from the same plant. The actual difference is in both cooking methods.
Fortune here deeply inspected every stage of tea becoming obscure and kept taking notes. If he did not understand anything, he used to ask his guide.
Critical error which turned into fortune
Fortune did hard work and ultimately he was able to save base of tea, seed and few workers also managed to smuggle India. The East India Company monitored this plant in Assam area.
But they made a serious mistake in this matter.
Fortune bring plants, which was accustomed to the cold seasons of the high mountains of China. The hot weather of Assam did not like them, and they died after one another.
It was a strange consent before it went away completely fail. It was the East India Company’s good Luck or China’s unfortunate fact that there was a matter of issue of a plant growing in Assam.
This plant was discovered by a Scottish tourist Robert Bruce in 1823. The local plants similar to tea used to grow as a wild bush in the mountains of Assam. However, according to most experts, the beverage made by it was less than tea.
After the failure of the Fortune plants, the company focused its attention on the local plant of Assam. When Fortune studied it, it became known that it is very close to the Chinese tea plant, but its generation is the same.
Tea production in Assam
Smuggled tea production and leaf-making technology and trained workers prove to be very useful. When the leaf was developed according to these methods, people started making it particularly fun during the experiment. And in the history of corporate world, the biggest failure of the Intellectual Property was also successful.
After the success of local tea, the company allocated its trade by allocating the area of Assam to the cultivation of this Indian plant and within one decade, the production of China left behind the quantity, quality and price in all three cases.
Due to lack of exports, Chinese tea plants started to dry and the country which was famous for tea, was shifted to a corner.
The British introduced an ‘innovation’ in making tea. The Chinese used to drink the tea in water for thousands of years, but the British began to drink first sugar and later milk.
The fact is that even today Chineses feel strange to mix something else in tea. Where the Indians adopted the other English habits, they also joined the tea that they saw in their rulers.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad writes in his book .Tea is produced and sugar is being used according to Chinese speculation, but there is no mention of anyone else’s dream that Latvia can be polluted with milk density. . But in the seventh century, when the British heard it, they did not know what they thought about the innovation of the milk. And since the tradition of tea in India happened through them, therefore spreading this innovation also spread here, however, the matter reached here so that people should drink tea in milk instead of breastfeeding tea.
People make tea in a kind of fluid, drink a meal and are happy that we have tea. Who can say to these people?
Oh, little boy, you’re not the one! ‘
