British Tea Culture

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British Tea Culture In nowadays, apart from the Chinese tea culture, the other two most famous tea cultures are the eastern Japanese tea ceremony culture and the British black-tea culture. While Chinese tea culture has a very long history, there are also many legends about Britain's contribution to tea. It’s said that it’s the great power and the active trade promotion that made the British tea become one of the international tea beverages in the world and be planted in about 50 countries around the world. Then how the tea trees were introduced to Britain and how the British people made the black-tea? One of the legends is that: About in the 1880s, a Britain's tree-planting gatherer who named Robert put the tea seed into a portable-type insulation can, which made of special glass and secretly took it to a ship bound for India. After that, more than one hundred thousand tea saplings were cultivated in India and large-scale tea gardens formed at the same time. Then, the British tea culture came into being. Another legend is that: In the era of sea expansion, because the western countries were always fighting for colonies in East, it became more and more difficult to get tea from China to Europe. However, in 1823, Robert Ruth, an enterpriser and adventurer from Scotland found wild tea in India, and therefore, the history of British tea began. But in fact, the materials of British tea are from India and Sri Lanka. It’s said that an envoy of British queen, George McCartney made an unsuccessful visit to China in 1793. The emperor Qianlong refused the trade request of British, but the British mission still managed to take the collected precious Chinese tea seed to India, making use of the opportunities to travel around the mainland in China. Then, through British East India Company’s cultivating and planting widely, the tea produced in Indian

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