About the Exhibition

After water, tea is the most frequently consumed beverage on the face of the earth. In ancient China tea was regarded as one of the seven daily necessities of life; for many Japanese it has served as a ritual element in the quest for enlightenment. For Americans it is often associated with the American Revolution; in the Middle East and North Africa it is a sign of hospitality and poured with dramatic flair; and in England afternoon tea holds an immutable place in the popular imagination. Some like it hot, some like it iced, some with milk, some with lemon. Some want tea black, some green. Some tea drinkers prefer whole leaves, while others use tea brick shavings or tea bags. Whatever form it may take and whatever context it is taken in, enjoying a cup of this ubiquitous beverage is an act performed no less than three billion times a day all around our planet.

Tea has played a variety of striking roles on the world stage—as an ancient health remedy, an element of cultural practice, a source of profound spiritual insights, but also as a catalyst for brutal international conflict, crushing taxes, and horrific labor conditions. It is thus not surprising that the theme of tea has figured prominently in the visual and literary arts. Scenes of tea embellish ceramics and textiles and are the subject of paintings and drawings, and all manner of vessels have been fashioned for the preparation, presentation, and consumption of tea. Odes are written to its perfection, and social interactions have come to be shaped by the etiquette of tea. Steeped in History opens a window onto the long cultural, culinary, and historical journey of tea and reminds us that what initially may appear to be mundane can in fact be replete with spiritual, philosophical, economic, and historical import.

The Ten Virtues of Tea
Tea has the blessing of all deities
Tea promotes filial piety
Tea drives away all evil spirits
Tea banishes drowsiness
Tea keeps the five internal organs in harmony
Tea wards off disease
Tea strengthens friendship
Tea disciplines body and mind
Tea destroys the passions
Tea grants a peaceful death

—Attributed to Japanese Buddhist priest Myôe (1173–1232), who had the words inscribed on a tea kettle

Teatime

All the varieties of tea and their related traditions and activities have their source in one plant: Camellia sinensis, native to southeastern Asia. Strictly speaking, the term “tea” refers only to the beverage produced with leaves of this plant, whether it is black, green, oolong, yellow, red, or white tea and whether it is loose-leaf, compressed, powdered, or “CTC” (cut-tear-curl). The difference in color and shape is due to the manufacturing process and the varying levels of oxidation to which the tea leaves are exposed—black teas are fully oxidized, oolongs are semi-oxidized, green and white teas are nonoxidized. Chamomile, rooibos, mint, and the like, which are derived from other plants, are herbal infusions, not teas.

Today two main varieties of the tea plant are recognized. One is Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, the Chinese multiple-stem shrub with small leaves, which is long-lived and can withstand cold weather. The other is Camellia sinensis var. assamica, the Indian single-stem plant with larger, softer leaves—more like a tree if left unpruned—which is more delicate, shorter-lived, and best grown in subtropical and rainy regions.

Part One: China, Cradle of Tea Culture

I care not a jot for immortal life, but only for the taste of tea.

—Poet Lu Tong (775–835)
 

Camellia sinensis was already in use as a medicinal plant in the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE). By the time the Chajing, the first book on tea, was written in 780, tea was widely cultivated in southwestern China and had been elevated to an “elixir of immortality” in Daoism, used as imperial tribute, savored by literati, and transported on camelback to the Central Asian steppes. The aesthetics of tea culture flourished, evidenced in poetry, paintings of tea scenes, and especially in the Chinese mastery of producing ceramic tea wares.

During the Tang period (619–907) tea was compressed into bricks and then shaved and boiled in a cauldron, often along with other ingredients. The Song era (960–1279) brought the development of grinders to make powdered tea, which was then formed into cakes or simply whisked with hot water in a tea bowl. The first teapots specifically designed for brewing loose-leaf tea were created in the 1500s. These were unglazed pots from Yixing, still coveted today by collectors worldwide.

Loose-leaf tea and teapots are what the first European traders encountered when they arrived in China in the sixteenth century. Unknown to European consumers, tea was at first imported in small quantities as a companion import to spices and silks. As tea drinking became more popular, teapots and other Chinese ceramics were found to make practical ballast for sailing ships—stowed at ship’s bottom to help stabilize the sailing. After the voyage these items were sold at a profit. Soon the demand for tea and “chinaware” increased as part of the chinoiserie phenomenon, the passion for all things Chinese that spread across Europe in the seventeenth century. China remained the sole provider of tea in world trade throughout the eighteenth century.

Part Two: The Way of Tea in Japan

Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea.
The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos,
the fountains are bubbling with delight,
the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle.
Let us dream of evanescence,
and linger
in the beautiful foolishness of things.

—Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea (1906)
 

Tea was introduced to Japan, along with Buddhism, during the early Heian period (794–1185) by monks who had traveled to China to study Chan (Zen) Buddhism. At first it was drunk primarily in monasteries and aristocratic circles. After the Buddhist priest Eisai (1141–1215) brought home the powdered tea (matcha) that was popular in Song China (960–1279), tea became more prominent in Japanese arts and culture.

Tea drinking spread among the military aristocracy and the interactions between the warrior elite and Zen priests produced one of the early forms of chanoyu (literally, “hot water for tea”), known in the West as the Japanese tea ceremony. Under the guidance of Sen no Rikyû (1522–1591), who is considered to have been Japan’s foremost tea master, the ceremony was formalized along the principle of chadô (the “way of tea”), the path to enlightenment through the everyday gestures of preparing and serving tea in mindful awareness of the present moment. Partly as a reaction against the strictures of chanoyu, an alternate form of tea ceremony—not as well known in the West but no less significant in Japan—developed during the second half of the eighteenth century. This was senchadô, or the “way of sencha tea,” which traced its roots to the Chinese literati tradition and made use of the steeped loose-leaf, rather than powdered, tea that was common in Ming China (1368–1644).

Tea was so central to Japanese culture by the second half of the Edo period (1615–1868) that everyday items of dress or household objects were frequently decorated with tea-related motifs. Women became students and practitioners of the tea ceremony, which previously had been an almost exclusively male domain. The opening of Japan in the 1850s brought Western topics and themes to the arts, and encouraged the development of tea wares specifically designed and produced for Western markets.

Part Three: Tea Craze in the West

Tea may be the oldest, as it is surely the most constantly congenial,
reminder of the West’s debt to the East.

—Francis Ross Carpenter, introduction to The Classic of Tea—Origins and Rituals, by Lu Yü (1974)

Until tea was introduced in Europe in the early seventeenth century, Europeans had not the faintest notion of “liquid jade,” as tea was called in China. Initially, tea was used most often as a remedy. Before it gained popularity in England, tea drinking spread to The Netherlands, where the import arrived along with Chinese and Japanese porcelain vessels for its preparation and serving. The upper classes fully embraced the three exotic caffeinated beverages—coffee, tea, and chocolate—which arrived in Europe more or less at the same time. Gradually these imports became more affordable and their consumption spread to the general population. In England this was due in part to the opening of a new type of establishment, the “coffeehouse, “which, although initially restricted to men, was a place where people of all walks of life could congregate and talk over a cup of coffee or tea. As the regimen of tea was perfected, artists and marketers strove to create the perfect tea accoutrements, and these sometimes became status symbols. Furniture was especially designed for afternoon tea, and the European porcelain industry took off after the long-held Chinese secret of porcelain making was finally understood in Germany in 1708.

The first tea to reach America was imported by the Dutch, and the habit of tea drinking spread quickly in the colonies. In fact, the colonials drank more tea than in England. As in Europe, teatime became a prime opportunity for courtship, gossip, playing cards, or for showing off the latest tea service. In order to control the profits of the tea trade, the English Parliament sought to eliminate foreign competition by passing legislation that required colonists to import their tea solely from Great Britain, which led to their buying smuggled tea—at half the price of British tea. This—accompanied by a number of tax acts that collected revenues for the Crown and at the same time penalized colonists’ consumption of smuggled tea—led to tea becoming forever associated with revolutionary actions, of which the Boston Tea Party is only the best known. Works of art on view recall the role of tea in Revolutionary protests, and a stunning array of elaborated tea vessels reveal the continuing popularity of the beverage in Western culture today.

Tea and Revolution

Although every American is familiar with the events of the Boston Tea Party, other “tea parties” took place in different locales. In Greenwich, New Jersey, protesters burned tea in the middle of the town square. In Philadelphia, citizens threatened to tar and feather any pilot who would help a ship carrying tea into the harbor, and in one case they convinced a captain to take his tea cargo back to London. In Charleston, South Carolina, ship owners were so concerned about the public outrage that they threw the tea cargo aboard their vessel overboard in order to save the ship from being damaged. Citizens of Chestertown, Maryland, followed the Boston example and threw tea in the water, as did New Yorkers after discovering they had been deceived by a captain who insisted there was no tea in his ship’s cargo. In Annapolis, Maryland, a threatening crowd accomplished the destruction of a ship and the tea in its hold, forcing the owner of the brigantine “Peggy Stewart” to set her on fire on threat of his life.

Part Four: Tea and Empire

It was opium which bought the tea that serviced the E.I.C.’s [East India Company’s] debts and paid the duties of the British crown providing one-sixth of England’s national revenue. During the first decade of the nineteenth century…China’s balance of trade was so favorable that 26,000,000 silver dollars were imported into the empire. As opium consumption rose in the decade of the 1830s, 34,000,000 silver dollars were shipped out of the country to pay for the drug.

—Frederic Wakeman Jr., The Fall of Imperial China (1975)

Britain’s ever-increasing appetite for tea brought enormous profit to the British Crown and to the East India Company, but toward the end of the eighteenth century, circumstances began to change. The refusal of China, the sole supplier of tea, to accept anything other than cash payment (preferably silver bullion) had engendered a serious trade imbalance; meanwhile, the East India Company had accrued increasing debt in the course of expanding its control of India beginning in 1757. By the 1830s, the British had responded to these events in two ways: first by actively engaging in the opium trade to China, and second, by developing tea plantations in northern India. Britain’s opium sales to China guaranteed the cash that the British could then use to purchase Chinese tea. One addiction supported another.

Although the tea plant was indigenous to parts of India, this region had not previously produced tea for export. The first Indian tea grown on British plantations in Assam was shipped to London in 1838. Under the British system of indentured labor employed on the new tea plantations, the lives of Indian workers were scarcely better than those of enslaved Africans. By 1920 more than one million Indian laborers were producing tea for export, and Chinese tea had virtually disappeared from the world market.

In Victorian England, tea drinking flowed from the aristocracy to the working classes. Fancy dress and luxury tea wares set the standard for high society. In India, where the tea was grown, it was served to British colonialists by teams of servants. During the first half of the twentieth century, British colonial interests brought tea cultivation to other areas, especially Sri Lanka and East Africa, making its production a truly global enterprise. While the craze for tea drinking seems to be ever on the rise, tea is today squarely in the center of heated discussions demanding that trading relationships be fair and equitable for all parties. Final works in this section reveal the ongoing dialogues concerning tea in relation to politics, agriculture, health, and society.

Tea and the Opium Trade

In 1793 the Qianlong emperor wrote unequivocally to King George III: “I set no value on objects strange and ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.” The British realized that what was needed to improve their trade imbalance with China—incurred in part by paying cash for tea—was a commodity that they could use to generate profit. The solution they found—opium—would rip apart the seams of Chinese society, leading to untold suffering and political and financial ruin. Opium had first been brought to China in the eighth century by Arab traders. Much later, the introduction of the pipe by the Dutch in the sixteenth century expanded the Chinese use of opium, which was mixed with tobacco and smoked. The Dutch and the Portuguese eventually did quite handsomely with this trade, but the British operation, organized on a much grander scale, was particularly insidious in that Britain produced opium using—and frequently abusing—indentured labor in India and then sold the drug inside China. This trade prospered despite concerted efforts by the Chinese to stop the flow of the drug, efforts that were undermined by the complicity of Chinese smugglers. As opium consumption in China rose in the 1830s—with an estimated three million Chinese addicted—the balance of trade was reversed and silver flowed from China into the coffers of the East India Company.

Tea and British Colonialism

The first eight cases of British Empire tea were shipped from Assam to London in 1838. By the turn of the century European tea planters held more than a quarter of the total settled area in the Assam Valley; they expanded the large-plantation system to other parts of India and Ceylon, and within less than a hundred years Indian tea had taken over the world market, while Chinese tea was virtually forgotten in England. However, the human price for achieving in a century what had taken China thousands of years to accomplish was incalculable. The Indian tea plantations utilized the indenture system to gather laborers from overpopulated rural areas of India. The British Government of India had established the use of “penal contracts” to bind these indentured laborers to their plantations. Such contracts gave plantation owners the right to fine, imprison, punish, and forfeit the wages of those who failed to perform their duties or attempted to leave the plantation. The mortality rate on tea plantations was very high, due to malnourishment and exposure to airborne and waterborne diseases. Physical and sexual abuse were rampant, and the danger of wild animals or poisonous snakes was a constant worry for the tea coolie. In short, the system was perhaps worse than slavery, which Britain had abolished in 1833.

The indenture system was not unique to India; it was also employed on British plantations in Mauritius, Fiji, the West Indies, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. By 1914 the Empire was comprised of eighty territorial units, eleven million square miles, and four hundred million colonial subjects. The ability of some Londoners to live in luxury was enabled by the creation of an interconnected imperial world in which the freedom to consume at home depended on the domination of others abroad.

Fair Trade Tea

The fair trade tea movement, which has grown considerably over the last few decades, reflects an attempt to address some of the inequities that tea-producing countries experience by setting up and monitoring fair labor practices, health and living conditions, and environmental standards on the plantations. While the work of fair trade institutions is worthy of praise, critics contend that it caters mostly to large plantation owners—ironically subsidizing a dysfunctional structure left over from exploitative colonial practices—and that it fails to address the needs of small-scale growers, who are increasingly being marginalized by the global economy. Others note that it is too easy to acquire the status of “fair trade retailer” by adding just a few fair trade teas to the general catalog and that some retailers take advantage of this, motivated by the desire to capture the fair trade market and not by a true respect for ethical practices.

Clearly, more work needs to be done to create satisfactory living and working conditions for the workers who produce the tea we enjoy; to build market access for small- and medium-scale tea growers and make the certification system accessible to them; to encourage the development of cooperatives among small farmers working in remote areas without infrastructure; and, last but not least, to develop and enforce regulations for truly sustainable environmental practices in order for nature’s cycles to be preserved and respected instead of exploited and drained.
 

Lesson Objectives:

1. As students explore tea drinking in China, Japan, and the West, they will compare not only their interconnected histories, but also the cultural values that surround tea practices in these regions.
2. As students learn about the striking roles that tea has played on the world stage—as an ancient health remedy, an element of cultural practice, a source of profound spiritual insights—they will also examine this commodity as a catalyst for brutal international conflict, crushing taxes, and horrific labor conditions.
3. Through an historical journey of tea worldwide, students will be reminded that what initially may appear to be mundane can in fact be replete with spiritual, philosophical, economic, and historical import.
4. As students explore literary traditions in relation to tea, they will use these genres as inspiration for their own writing.
5. As students survey visual arts related to tea, they will design and create works in service of the beverage.