Why is all the tea gone?

This post is ultimately about the globalization and westernization of the eastern tradition of tea, but it is also a history lesson :)

Whenever I speak with people about tea, most would say, "Oh, I love tea." Then they will continue to describe their favorite as Sleepytime or Vanilla tea. However the reality of the situation is that what most westerners regard as tea is actually the scraps of processed tea leaves that have been injected with loads of artificial flavor. Allow me to elaborate: Many years ago the great country of Britain imperialized the now great country of China, specifically Hong Kong. There, they were introduced to Chinese tea, Green tea, Oolong, Pu Huer, and White tea. The British brought some back to the UK and the people of Britain ate it up like a fat kid eating a ice cream cone; needless to say, it went fast, Britain realized the high value of the crop, they wanted more.

So Britain returned to China to buy some more tea, but they were informed by China that they would only trade them tea in exchange for silver. Britain said, "No Problem!" So for a while Britain was happily trading silver to China for tea. However, a time came when Britain began to run out of silver. They thought, "Oh, we're gonna need our silver back from China so we can continue to trade tea." So what they did is traded opium for silver. You could image how this would end poorly. Long story short, China was so fond of Britain getting it's people addicted to opium, thus the opium wars broke out.

Consequently, Britain came up with the idea to grow their own tea so they didn't have to spend more money getting it from China. So they took seeds from every kind of tea and planted them in their other eastern territory, India. However, because of the varying climate in India only one kind of tea was able to grow and prosper, and that was black Darjeeling Tea.

You may have once wondered why the English drink tea with milk and sugar, well that is because black Darjeeling tea tastes like shit. However, that is all Britain could afford to drink at this point, so it became a marketing game.

Today, the tea that we drink in the states, that is the tea you buy at the grocery store is just that, processed and flavored tea. In china, there are thousands of acres dedicated to growing and harvesting quality tea leaves, but as one could imagine, this takes labor. So the American way has alleviated this labor and created factory's where not just the leaf but the branches as well are processed, ground ad flavored.

You may have noticed that when you pour a cup of tea you get one or two cups per little pouch of tea. This is because when you mix the artificial flavors with hot water, the flavor is instantly extracted from the tea. With Chinese tea it is not uncommon to get between 15 and 30 pours out of one serving of leaves, and in fact, the flavor get better after about the 6th or 7th pour because the flavor is in the leaves rather than on the leaves.

What's the point?
Well I wanted to just show that although we may not notice it, globalization affects the United States too and not always in positive ways.