Never mind the radiation. Recently declassified documents showed Monday that British contingency planners worried there would be a dramatic shortage of tea in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. The shortfall of the staple British beverage would be “very serious” if the country were to come under attack with atomic and hydrogen bombs, according to a memo drafted between 1954 and 1956: “The tea position would be very serious with a loss of 75 percent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and with no system of rationing it would be wrong to consider that even one ounce (28 grams) per head per week could be ensured.”

My oh my, what would they have done? Perhaps it was an attempt to divert attention away from the fact that a thermonuclear war would leave everyone crispy, so if we could just focus on tea, the event wouldn’t sound so scary. Being without tea . . . was pretty scary.

If only war left so little to be concerned about.

I’d like to thank British Intelligence for putting everything into a proper perspective for us. I bet they would have loved our school house drills.

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It is our wont to pursue the reductionist path to an easier, improved life. But does it really help? Are all of these improvements we keep pursuing in the name of science and health enhancement really making a difference in the big picture? I’m not so sure. This kind of reductionist thinking just seems to further perpetuate the root cause of the hurried lifestyles within which we find ourselves trapped. The more we look for ways to reduce the time it takes to live healthier, the less time we take to live healthier lives. Hmmm! It reminds me of a dog I used to have that spent most of every day sleeping because he got so tired from chasing his own tail. He’d run around in circles until he got so tired he collapsed and slept. Then he would get up and repeat the whole process throughout each day, every day. I wanted to be able to tell him that if he would just stop chasing his tail, he wouldn’t be so tired all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I think all the research they are doing to show how beneficial the ingredients in tea are is a good thing. It’s how it is used that’s the problem.

Better than swallowing down an extract of an isolated compound found in tea, why not just try stepping back and taking some time to make a regular tea practice part of your daily routine? We sleep less and less, work 10 + hours a day, shove whatever nutritionally depleted fast foods into our mouths we can manage to squeeze in between meetings, run around on “essential” errands during the little free time we have and crash at the end of the day wondering why we are so fatigued. Then we look for that quick cure, that pill or energy bar we can swallow with our coffee or soda to help energize us and push away the fatigue for a while. Are you detecting anything wrong with this picture? Anybody remember Occam’s Razor? This is a heuristic maxim that essentially states that the simplest solution is the best. Anybody think that going out and spending millions of dollars on research and expending huge amounts of energy in the process is a simple solution to our fatigue problem? How about this for an alternative solution: Slow down! Think about how just stopping to perform a simple, elegant healthy tea practice can naturally combat fatigue. The first reduction of fatigue comes from just removing yourself from your daily stress long enough to take time to engage in tea practice. Next, by fully engaging the preparation of tea in the moment, you put yourself in a meditative state that helps to de-stress your system and creates a state of sublime relaxation to further reduce your fatigue. Finally, you drink the tea as the culmination of your practice, which provides both an energizing and relaxing state through the effects of its unique compounds.

At least now you know you have a choice: Gulp down that EGCG pill with your coffee while in your car on the way to work or, take 15 - 20 minutes out of your day to engage in a very relaxing and healthful tea practice. I’ve made my choice, how about you?

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Inducement enough that vast new acreage was planted, mostly in Assam but also around Darjeeling in the foothills of the Himalayas and around Ootacamund, a similar hill station in the Nilgiri mountain area of the south. Everyone was sure of getting rich - the estate managers who didn’t know a tea plant from a cabbage, the highly paid boards of directors in Calcutta and London with their still more highly paid secretaries, and, of course, all the investors - rich as Croesus! As a doctor in Assam was later to diagnose the mania: “Although tea has the reputation as a beverage that cheers but does not inebriate, its cultivation in new districts exercises the most strangely intoxicating influences on those engaged in it, equaled only by the sanguine dreams of gold explorers.” Greed and tea had met once again to produce a repetition of the youthful follies of the Assam Company, but on a vastly greater scale. Millions of pounds sterling were squandered in the name of tea, and by 1865 the very word had become a stench in the nostrils of the investing public. It took another five years for the young industry to recover from the tea mania and the resulting financial disasters. By then the tea men who survived had learned their business and the old established estates that had escaped the speculative blight were flourishing. The future was, in fact, rosier than any of them suspected.

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The current group of competitors is unique in their dedication and intelligence; remarkable for their success so early in their competitive careers. Further, they have been with me for my conversion from coffee to tea. Drinking tea with me at practices and tournaments, reminding me to bring hot water or tea or both to overnight tournaments - this bunch loves tea! Many join me at lunch each day to drink some Golden Lion’s Paw or Nepalese Oolong. Just last week, they became enamoured of “King of Pearls” jasmine.

During the first day, debaters compete in four rounds of debate, taking about ten hours to complete. Up at 4:00 AM, on the road at 5:00 AM, and debating from 8:00 AM until 7:00 PM . . . it is a looooooong day for both debaters and coach. At the team meeting, the debaters begged to be allowed to sleep in next day, and not appear at the tournament site until their first round began at 11:00. All agreed that I would drive the individual events competitors at 7:00 AM next day to allow debaters some extra rest.

There I was, at 6:15 AM, enjoying a nice cup of Golden Lion’s Paw, when my cell phone rang.

“May I join you for tea?” It was a debater who should have been enjoying some shut-eye.

“I thought you wanted to sleep in?”

“Not as much as I want tea.”

He padded from his hotel room to mine, dressed in a pair of ratty sweats. Together, we drank cup after tiny cup of delicious brew. He talked about each of his debate rounds, and I talked about tea. If you know and/or love a teenager, you can appreciate that special teen inertia that will fiercely stay awake for HOURS to play a new computer game, but turn into a grumpy bear when disturbed at slumber.

Never underestimate the power of tea!

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We’re happy to pass along the opportunity to participate in this exciting video contest which is sponsored by the Tea Association. Get out your videos and throw your hat into the game. They’re looking for creative voices expounding the joys of drinking tea. Here’s a great chance to help spread the word about the wonders of this healthy beverage while going for the big bucks - not a bad win/win senario.

The root beer phase was followed by the chili con carne phase. Pop measured cayenne like he did yeast. The entire neighborhood suffered watering eyes and cayenne-induced sneezes. Word would travel from the post office to the railroad depot, “Bart’s making chili again.” Dad declared “this will put hair on your chest!” as he served it. (Apparently the fact that one could not taste anything for four days after had a direct effect on the secondary sexual characteristic of body hair.) Chili was also produced in five gallon batches, and could not be “sissified” by the presence of beans. Chili was followed by wine-making (dreadful), sauerkraut (ditto), and corned elk brisket (think salty pink pearl eraser).

Almost forty years later . . . Dad and I are going in together to buy tea plants. I found a website that sells tea plants, and a wonderful publication that covers cultivars, propagation, pests, and processing. We plan to start with four plants and expand from there. Do you suppose we’ll harvest enough for a cup of tea next year?

*We loved sitting out on the street, casually tossing down a big gulp of root beer when the sheriff made his once-a-week drive through. The sheriff, a family friend, never so much as blinked at the bevy of little boys pulling on stubbies in front of the Baptist Church.

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Chengdu is known for three major things: pandas, spicy food and teahouses. In fact, Chengdu is said to have more teahouses than Shanghai, despite the fact that the population is less than half. Tea is so infused into the lives of the people of the city that many stay at the teahouse all day, talking and playing games. Teahouse owners even provide visitors with ear cleaning and fingernail trimming (not in the tea, please) to keep them comfortable!

Entire communities meet at Chengdu’s teahouses, and it is therefore no wonder that during the Cultural Revolution most teahouses were shut down to discourage anti-revolutionaries from scheming.

There is a teapot that is unique to Chengdu teahouses as well. Usually made of brass and having an absurdly long spout, servers use these teapots to refresh customers’ teacups without interrupting conversations.

The people of Chengdu are known for love of life, and their passion for tea is a critical component. Hopefully they’ll be enjoying their tea again soon.

editor’s note: this article re-blogged with permission from tavalon.

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his face was worn and old.

He meekly asked the man of fate

for admission to the fold.

What have you done, St. Peter asked,

to seek admission here?

I ran a tea estate on earth for many and many a year.

The gate swung open sharply as Peter

touched the bell.

Come in, he said, and take a harp -

you’ve had enough of hell.

-quoted by Arup Kumar Dutta, Cha Garam!-The Tea Story

An overlooked hero of India’s tea saga is the Assamese Maniram Dutta Barua. He was the man who first called the native tea plant to the attention of the brothers Bruce and aided them in other ways. He was Assam’s wealthiest nobleman and served her Raja as vizier. Following the East India Company’s annexation of Assam in 1839, he joined the newly-formed Assam Company as Dewan or land agent. The Dewan understood economics as well as he did English and, realizing that tea was tobe Asam’s future, he was determined to stake his share in it. He joined the Assam Company to acquire the rudiments of tea cultivation and manufacture and once he had them he resigned, in 1845, to establish tea plantations of his own. He immediately encountered undisguised hatred from the European planters, an ungrateful Charles Bruce included. Over vehement objections, he imported Chinese tea makers through Calcutta and “dared” set himself up as the country’s first private planter near Jorhat on Cinnamora Estate, so-named because Cinai-mora locally means “Chinese-made.” He prospered and his white colleagues stewed.

Their chance to teach this native upstart his lesson came at last in 1857 when the Sepoy Rebellion panicked India’s colonial masters. Maniram, now master of two producing tea estates, was in Calcutta at the time representing his old friend the former Raja of Assam before the East India Company Governor-General. On the transparently trumped-up charge that he was leading a conspiracy to oust the British from Assam and restore the Raja, he was arrested, sent back to Assam and, after a travesty of a trail, hanged on 26 February 1858. It is a measure of the whites’ hatred that the planters of the Assam Company, led by George Williamson, recommended that the police officer, who arrested the Dewan should receive a reward from the government! For themselves, they demanded his properties, which were duly confiscated and auctioned off at throwaway prices to the Anglo hero George Williamson. A descendant of the Dewan’s, Arup Kumar Dutta, tells the rest of the story in Cha Garam!:

He did not enjoy the fruits of his ill-gotten acquisition. So unpopular did he become after purchasing the Dewan’s property that he found it impossible to run his gardens. All the laborers, including the Chinese tea-makers left, so that no tea could be manufactured in the 1858-59 season. Finally he was forced to sell Cinnamora to the newly formed Jorehaut Tea Company, and Singlo to another purchaser, at a very cheap price. The realization of the injustice that had been perpetrated brought about a sea-change in George Williamson from then on. From a businessman he metamorphosed into a philanthropist. He donated the entire proceeds of the sale of Cinnamora and Singlo to the people of Assam. He set up libraries and educational institutions . . . (and) finally left India and dies in England in 1865.

The Barua family plays a prominent role in Assam tea today, but the fate of their ancestor was intended as a warning to India’s entrepreneurs that European colonialists would tolerate no competition from them. Pioneer tea planters number a few Indian names like Bipra D.P. Chaudhuri and B. Rai in Darjeeling and others elsewhere - but very few. Indians remained on the fringe of their country’s tea industry until after Independence in 1948. Such were the realities of colonialism.

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In my other life as an English teacher, you can imagine that I have loved (and loathed) Shakespeare. As I write this, two of my classes are loving “Much Ado About Nothing,” which certainly wasn’t hurt by Kenneth Branagh’s beautiful 1993 film version. Two other classes just finished “Julius Caesar,” and we traditionally end the year with “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” reading and performing Act III outdoors. Shakespeare’s power to influence can further be proven by the fact that no one has ever named their child Iago. His character associations were that bad, after just one two hour play! Many and many a bon mot has its origins at the tip of the bard’s pen. Like tea, Willie-the-Shake is complex.

Imagine my delight when I happened upon a website that tells how tea influenced English literature’s heaviest - and most mysterious - hitter. After reading about some of the other figures, though, I am wondering if my leg is being pulled. Help me readers . . . is it fact or fiction?

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Buying gifts for loved ones is no different. We often feel a sense of obligation to get something. We run around, in the little time we have free, to find something that we hope the person will like, but find ourselves content with anything that says that at least I took the time out from my busy schedule to get this card or gift for you. It’s often just an appeasement, a way to non-verbally communicate the message that at least you remembered, so now Mom can’t say you didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I know you love your mothers. It doesn’t matter. We get so preoccupied with our lives that even taking time out to do something for a loved one can feel like an imposition. It’s sad, but this is what it has come to for many of us.

For all tea lovers, it would be easy to buy our mothers a gift of a lovely tea pot and/or wonderful tea. I’m sure she would enjoy it. In fact, I could even provide you with a very convenient link to the tchingstore.com store site right here in this article so you wouldn’t even have to leave your house or office to purchase the gift. Before you do that, however, think about what is most important and most appreciated by our mothers when it comes to us - their children: TIME. Our time. It is the most valuable commodity we have to offer. Instead of simply moving your mouse and clicking on a gift, or running out frantically during your lunch hour to pick something up, give her your time. It would be a much appreciated gift and one that would benefit the giver as well as the recipient. For this Mother’s Day, I think it would be wonderful if we all took the time to do some form of tea practice for our moms. It doesn’t have to be formal or elaborate. Give some thought to creating a relaxing, peaceful, and beautiful environment. Be thoughtful about picking some favorite pots from your collection that are simple and elegant to use. A zisha pot with soft, simple lines would be nice. A glass pot where she can see the agony of the leaves as they unfurl in the pot would add an extra visual element. Pick a few teas that would give a good introduction to the range of flavors and aromas. If you have a nice tea tray, you could use that to prepare the tea for her and maybe add a small and simple flower arrangement in the middle of the tray ala Ikebana.

Now comes the most important part of this gift. You have created a wonderful atmosphere with which to do your tea practice and now you want to be fully in the present with her as you engage her with this practice. Do it as a meditation on mom. Engross yourself in the moment and be wholly aware of yourself, your mother and your surroundings. You don’t even have to talk if you don’t want to, but certainly feel free to. Make each movement and each look mean something. This is the woman who endured the pain of bringing you into this wonderful life and who helped shape who you are as a person. Take your time in showing her your pots and even sharing why you chose each one; what is special about it for you. Share with her your knowledge and feelings about each tea you chose; where it comes from, how it is produced etc. Be careful not to get lost in your own stories, though. This is about her, not about you. Engage her by having her look at the dry and wet leaves, smell the aroma of the steeped tea and enjoy the color of the liquor. Help her to take the time to savor the flavors of the tea and how to fully engage her tongue with them. Don’t be too rigid about all of this. If you see that she wants to talk and engage you in conversations other than tea, go with it. Be in the moment and be with your mother in a way that lets her know that she is the most important person in this moment. Don’t let yourself be distracted. Remember, this is a meditation on mom. Be fully present for her to help reconnect the two of you - or more if there are other family members - in a way that goes beyond your normal interactions. I guarantee that if you take the time to do this for your mother, it will be the most appreciated Mother’s Day both of you have ever had. Happy Mother’s Day!

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