H. T. Wade

“ As for the Chinese process being a dirty one, as so strenuously urged by the Indian planter to the detriment of China tea, the objection to the manipulation of tea by hand (and by feet) instead of by machinery has about the same logic on its side as has the objection to the grape being trodden under foot before the wine is produced. No one gives much thought to the fact when drinking a favourite claret. Machinery has been tried in China, both at Foochow and at Hankow, but has not proved successful owing to the lack of a continuous supply of leaf to keep it going. ”

“ Every pound bought had to be paid for in a very short time, and this fact, coupled with the fear of a falling market, has continuously forced the pace and driven the tea into the consumer's teapot. The demand from the masses for strong tea was met by the extra strength from the British-grown varieties. This demand exists mainly from English tea drinkers of middle and lower classes, who have always insisted that all their beverages should be pungent, strong and stimulating, whether it be porter, ale, coffee or other liquor, regardless of the effect upon the nervous system. ”

“ The opening of Batoum ruined the Bombay market, and so great has been the demand for Hysons for the newer market, and so high the prices paid, that the natives now seldom include the Hyson in a chop, but send it down to Shanghai three weeks ahead of the arrival of the bulk there. Later again Batoum and France have made such inroads into the young Hyson grades that a special preparation of them has been made, commonly designated small leaf Sow-mees. And as the demand for special lines continues to increase so much the nearer comes the day when the "chop," as a chop, will cease to exist. ”

“ It is a time-honoured belief that because tea arrives in almost unwieldy quantities in the markets of China within a month that it must be philanthropically shipped off without delay to relieve the local congestion. Further, buyers are actuated by the fear that if they do not buy tea immediately it is offered on the market they will miss their opportunity, and be left out in the cold until another tea season comes round. The result of these ill-consideredly hurried shipments, while usually disastrous, is at the same time preventable. ”

“ Although finest China tea is returning fair profits at the time of writing, it is only because it is not in over supply and is being judiciously managed. Last year finest China tea was in rather too full supply, with the consequence that the importer who had not his special outlet and had missed his chance of sale on arrival had finally to put up with fabulous losses of 50 per cent. or more. To attempt to hold China tea nowadays is fatal, even the very commonest and cheapest kinds. ”

“ When a sufficiency of leaf has been picked, it is thrown into large flat basket-trays and exposed to the sun. As the leaves begin to darken and curl up they are gathered up and manipulated into balls. When there is a very large quantity of leaf to be twisted, and not too much time to do it in, the twisting is done by the feet. And this, and the treading the fired leaf into the chests in which it is packed, are the only sentimentally dirty elements in the manufacture of China lea. ”

“ There is none of the science in picking which obtains in India. In China the leaves are picked off wholesale with any amount of stalk. In India due care is taken that the lowest leaf in a "flush" or shoot shall be so nipped off as to leave the bud in its axil uninjured on the branch, as from it the next flush will then develop, and the supply so continued. There is a good description, of how the leaves should be plucked, and what special grade of tea the leaves supply, in Colonel Money's "Cultivation and Manufacture of Tea," which might well be taken to heart in China. ”

“ For great and natural original strength is in the leaf undoubtedly. Again, greater strength and increased productiveness might be ensured were those tactics followed which have been so successful in India and Ceylon, viz., replacing worn-out sections of the patches or gardens by newly planted areas on more fertile soil, and by more scientific manuring. The system now adopted in India is called "Green manuring." It has been ascertained that leguminous trees, shrubs, and annual green crops provide the organic matter and the nitrogen required by the tea bush for its fullest development. ”

“ And in due time from across the seas comes the effort to sell, with the result that such fluctuations in prices occur as are unknown and impossible in any other article of produce in the known world. It is this absolute inability to control prices in any degree which has driven the genuine old exporter from the field, and is one of the causes of the decline of the China tea trade. ”

“ And here again the choicest black teas are not always exempt from suspicion and rejection, for it is a matter of common knowledge that "when the inspection law was first enacted in the United States of America the first inspector appointed to New York City thought fit to reject as unfit for consumption a small shipment of part of the very choicest Souchong produced, on the ground that the flavour was foreign to tea, and, consequently, that the tea was inadmissible under the standards of purity approved by the New York Tea Board." ”

“ Nor is it obvious that machinery can ever be made use of in China, save perhaps in the thickly planted green tea districts of Chekiang, for, "owing to the peculiar nature of the Chinese laws as to inheritance and probably also, in some degree, to the despotic genius of the Government landed property is much divided throughout the Empire : and so it is that tea is grown in gardens, or patches or plantations of no great extent." ”

“ On the authority of the writer of the article on tea in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" we have it that "no strictly wild tea plants have been discovered in China, but an indigenous tree (Thea Assamica) is found in Assam, and that it differs in many respects from the China plant in that it is a tree attaining to a height of fifteen to twenty feet and that its leaves reach a length of nine inches and upwards, while the leaf of the Chinese plant never exceeds four inches in length." ”

“ The increased demand for other than China tea is entirely due to this and not to any desire for quality or flavour, but merely for strength in the cup." That strength is kept in the leaf by the foreign method of rolling. In China the sap is expressed in the native efforts to get curl and twist in the sun-dried leaf by their mode of manipulation, and consequently much of the real strength of the tea is lost. To retain that sap without the aid of machinery is a question which may yet be solved by native genius when once properly centred upon the great advantage to be gained by the effort. ”

“ Figures and facts have been adduced to show sufficiently that China is still a great tea producing country, and a factor to be reckoned with in the future production of the article. It is unfortunately true that the great markets of England and Australia have been lost to her, the latter, perhaps, irrecoverably, for India and Ceylon supply exactly the article that the Commonwealth requires—something dark and strong and cheap. ”

“ Not only has the English market been almost entirely lost to China, but that of Australia, with the largest per capita consumption in the world, has become hopelessly so. China tea no longer presents a fair mercantile risk. ”

“ Until such time as large areas of tea land can be leased or owned, cultivated and carefully managed as they are in India. Ceylon, and Java to-day, there can be nothing similar to an Indian plantation or a Ceylon estate in China, where the land is owned by the foreigner, the plants tended and cultvated by the foreigner, the leaves picked day by day, and day by day manufactured by machinery on the spot. ”

“ I am strong in the belief that with a scientific enrichment of the soil and a more intelligent attention to the growth and cultivation of the plant the resultant extra-productiveness would largely tend to the cheapening of the initial cost of the leaf—a cost that will be further lessened by the removal of the present illegitimate internal burdens ”

“ In China it is a case of each shipper for himself. It is only those who have witnessed the opening of the Hankow tea market in the month of May who can form any idea of the conduct of the business. They will have seen the extraordinary and irregular prices paid, and the speed with which the article is shipped off to markets too often quite unable to deal with more than a moderate quantity, a speed which may be gauged by the fact that some 600.000 half chests out of a possible total supply of 800.000 half chests of Congou are afloat within the very limited time of six weeks. ”

“ The average cost of China tea is yearly coming more into line with the laying down prices of British-grown leaf. Hitherto that average has been much too high. This stumbling block once removed, and a little more attention directed to consistent manufacture, the future of China tea in the home markets should not be absolutely hopeless. ”

“ Subsequently when green tea became an article of foreign trade it was discovered that this new departure was grown and made in the more northern provinces of Chekiang and Anhwei. To the black tea botanists gave the scientific name of Thea Bohea because largely grown on the range of hills of that name. The latter was designated Thea viridis from the comparative greenness of its leaf. But the plants have now long been known to be of one and the same description, though Chinese rarely make both kinds of tea, black and green, in one district. ”

“ In India there is no tax on the pro- duction or export of tea ; in China there is a specific export duty of $125 per picul, based on an average value of Tis. 25, and a series of taxes on the article from the place of production to the port of shipment, levied by the local oflicials and generally known as likin, which amounts on the average to rather more than the export duty, "with something added for irregular levy and delay and loss of interest." *
Obviously no industry thus burdened can compete with a rival free of all burden. ”

“ The produce of each estate is manufactured into the trade article entirely by machinery, and the busy work goes on uninterruptedly for ten months in the year. In China there are no plantations worthy of the name. The plant is cultivated for the most part on the slopes or bases of hills, generally in small patches around the endless farmsteads, where the drainage is quick and the necessary moisture unfailing. The small tea patch is the farmer's heritage. ”

“ Inventive native genius should surely be able to manufacture a rolling machine to be worked by hand which would answer all the purposes which the Indian machine is supposed to meet, or in any case to devise some means whereby the loss of strength of the tea may be minimised. ”

“ In India and Ceylon everything belongs to the planter, land, produce, machinery, besides control over the manufacture. It is in his power to make such a quality of tea as he may have a special market for. In his hands lie the power to increase or reduce the out- put and to regulate shipments, and a com- bination has been actually entered into by the Indian and Ceylon growers to adopt a common policy to regulate the quantity made, shipped and sold on the London market ■• Growers are no longer independent units. ”

“ An independent step, but one quite in the right direction, is now being taken by a private enterprise well fitted financially and with ability to carry its project to a successful issue. The Pure China Tea Importing and Distributing Company, with its buying agencies in Hankow and Shanghai, and a London distributing office, are prepared to place in the hands of those requiring it strictly choice pure China tea packed in China and distributed in original packages only at most moderate prices. ”

“ At one time green and black teas were made indiscriminately at Canton from Bohea, at the pleasure of the manufacturer and according to demand. The Chinese, as is well known, do not drink coloured green teas, but only the sun-dried article, and are said to express surprise that civilised nations should so unnecessarily go out of their way to take poison when the genuine, unadulterated article is at their disposal, and more often than not at a lower price. ”

“ There are those who look upon the future of the tea trade with England as hopeless. There are again those who think the present limited trade will drag on for years under much the same conditions as now exist. The Indian view of the prospects of China tea are thus summarily dismissed in an article on the Indian tea companies, in the Daily Telegraph of August 17, igo8 : — " China's export may be expected to decline if India's advance." Everything points to an Indian advance, though "as regards Ceylon the opinion pre- vails that its output will not increase." ”

“ This difference, it is true, was somewhat reduced last year, 1907, when, owing to a temporary demand in England, the export rose to 214,683,333 lbs.; but for the past decade, 1898 to 1907, the average of 196,500,000 lbs. has been maintained; an average not likely to be disturbed for some time unless any further phenomenal expansion should take place in British-grown production to the expulsion by so much of China tea, or consumption outstrip the general average production, and so create a demand which China is well fitted to supply. ”

“ They are now placed in the basket in greater mass and pushed against its sides by the hands in order to allow the heat to come up through the sieve and the vapour to escape; a basket over all retains the heat, but the contents are turned over until perfectly dry and the leaves become uniformly black."
Thus much for the manufacture of black tea, from which may be gathered the main fact that often a considerable time may elapse after the sun-drying process and before the teas are put into the firing pans. Thus it is that black teas are heavily fermented. ”