Further Adventures in the Tea Trade

English tea - a neo-colonialist celebration

Tea, apparently, is an evil and disgusting vestige of colonialism, a filthy brew of wickedness emblematic of oppression, racism and exploitation. Leftists and progressives who know imperialism when they see it never touch the stuff. Those that insist on drinking it are reprobates, fascists, villains, and probably homophobes as well.

This is the sort of thing that, as they say, you simply cannot make up. No. In all seriousness, it is a sentiment lifted from an article that appeared in the Guardian – where else? – by a supposed “journalist” Joel Golby written for all those pearl-clutching latte elitists desperately concerned to purge every last trace of colonialism from their miserable, guilt-ridden lives. “Liking tea,” he writes, “has its roots in colonialism…” and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we? The article – no kidding - was a follow up piece to how post-colonial social justice warriors should eliminate HP sauce from their diet! Both items – tea and HP sauce – are – horror of horrors! – British, and in these enlightened times only members of the Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan would even consider keeping such things in their kitchen.

The barking mad absurdity of this is unfortunately not isolated nor even a joke. Several posts ago (see here) these pages featured a restaurant in Portland named Saffron Colonial that had fallen foul of the lunatic self-righteousness of joyless cultural Marxists. In that case, the restaurant in question serves fine teas by local tea suppliers - and they may well serve HP sauce too - to accompany a British Empire themed menu. They have attracted protests and petitions, hatred and tantrums, because they dare to serve British food. This has become a favorite battle-field for contemporary Left-wing bullies. Not content with insisting that men sit down to urinate it seems these tedious busy bodies have decided that we must now eliminate all things British from our diet. 

The present author was therefore amused to be walking along in Muslim post-British Langkowi recently when he saw the following restaurant catering to tourists:

This classy and popular establishment is owned and operated by a young hard working Indian family. Not a social justice warrior in sight. The menu features cuisine from British India and celebrates the great diversity of India brought about by historical waves of invaders: Turkoman, Mughul, Portugese, French, British, etc., a heritage of which the Indian owners are proud. The menu also features a selection of excellent teas from the tea plantations of Malaysia, such as those in the Cameron Highlands, which were established, of course, by the British.

Inspired by Mr Golby's unhinged rant about the politically incorrectness of tea drinking, this page is duly dedicated to tea. 

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First, a note about coffee. In India - most notably Calcutta - tea (chai) is consumed with milk and sugar. It is more a confection than anything else. It is very milky and very sweet, and taken in small earthen cups. In Pe Nang, where the author has been resident for the last month or so, this mode of consumption is reserved for coffee - the renowned Penang White, a unique local speciality. It too is taken more as a confection than as a beverage. 

A 'Penang White', for those coffee connoisseurs who are unaware of it, is made from beans pan-fried in butter and sugar rather than roasted in the usual way. It is then served with condensed milk. It is enjoyed throughout the Prince of Wales Island and is a feature of many coffee establishments in the old quarters of George Town such as the ramshackle cafe on China Street pictured below: 

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The real joy of George Town, however, is the many Chinese tea houses and tea traders. It will no doubt come as a surprise to the Chinese that tea drinking is a vile colonialist habit to be eschewed and frowned upon by all right-thinking people: the Chinese tradition of tea drinking extends back thousands of years, and even in more recent times the Chinese of George Town (and the wider Malay peninsula) were supporters of the British and enthusiastically embraced British habits. This includes the British manner of preparing tea (the 'Western method'), although the more traditional methods ('Gong Fu') continue as well. 

TWG Tea Salon, Gurney Plaza, George Town.  An up-market store featuring the very finest (and most expensive) teas in the world. 

A traditional Chinese tea house, George Town

Residing in George Town allowed the present writer to explore a full range of fine Chinese teas. There are several categories listed below:

The Chinese character for tea

White Tea - very little processing. More or less fresh tea buds sun dried. Subtle and fresh. Extremely light in flavor. Sometimes with slightly nutty notes.

Yellow Tea - a rare grade of tea once preserved for the Imperial court. A flavor profile in between white and green tea with a lingering sweetness.

Green Tea - young buds and leaves, but unoxidised. Chinese green tea is pan-baked to stop oxyidization. Japanese green tea is steamed. The Japanese style has grassier flavours. The Chinese style is nuttier and more complex, less grassy. Fresh tasting with some astringency and a clean finish on the palette. 

Oolong Tea - semi-oxydized tea with a wide range of flavours depending on the extent of oxidization. Darker grades produce fruity notes. Suitable for serving with food. 

Black Tea - fully (or near fully) oxyidized tea. The Chinese refer to it as "hong cha" = red tea, because the liquor it produces is reddish. The most common grade of tea drunk in the West. Full flavoured. 

Pu Erh Tea - fermented dark teas. Often fermented for ten or more years. Very earthy flavours. These teas are a real joy - hearty with complex flavours - but can be quite expensive. 

Scented Teas - jasmine tea, rose tea, Earl Grey etc. 

The author's tea set with a collection of Chinese teas. Essential equipment when travelling. The small 'buttons' of tea shown are various grades of Pu Erh (fermented) tea. 

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PREPARING TEA

There are two main methods of preparing tea: the traditional oriental method – called Gong Fu (or 'Kung Fu', a term that merely indicates a subject of study that requires ritual and patience) – and the modern Western method. Everyone is familiar with the latter. You put some tea leaves in a tea pot, pour over boiling water, let it sit for a few minutes, then it is ready. This can be refined in several ways, such as by using high-quality loose leaf tea, and by using water at the optimum temperature and steeping for the optimum duration, but it is essentially a straight-forward method that requires little expertise. Gong Fu is rather more elaborate, an art, but it is not a difficult art to master. Below are some notes on preparing tea according to the traditional method:

GONG FU

1. Pour hot (not boiling*) water over the leaf tea to clean it. Dispense with the water immediately. This cleans and softens and activates the leaves.

2. Pour hot (not boiling) water over the leaves a second time. Let stand for about thirty seconds. 

3. Pour into a small cup. Drink. (You should "slurp" tea, taking plenty of air into the mouth when drinking. This maximizes flavour.) 

4. Repeat steps 2. and 3. for a second cup. 

Most good teas can be used for six or seven or more infusions. Each infusion will be slightly different. The idea is to taste the tea in small cups over many infusions to extract and experience the full flavour profile of the tea. 

In the 'Western method' the tea is left to infuse for two minutes or more and all of the flavours are extracted at once. In the 'Gong Fu Method' the flavours are extracted in a series of short infusions which are sampled from small tasting cups.

* = most grades of tea should be infused in water at about 80-90 deg.C., which is to say just under boiling point.  

Note: One of the surest ways to improve enjoyment of any tea is to purchase loose leaf tea from a single tea estate rather than a blend of teas from many estates. This will cost extra and only speciality stores will be able to oblige, but it makes a great difference. Tea from one location differs in flavour from tea from other locations. 'Blends' even out these differences are produce a uniform product. 

* * * 

The secret of tea is this: that while a stimulant, it is – quite unlike coffee – internalizing. It both stimulates and relaxes. This is the attribute of tea first discovered by the Chinese and adapted to the typical temperament of oriental spirituality. Coffee, by contrast, is an externalizing stimulant. It was, accordingly, adapted to the quite different spiritual temperament of the Saracens, namely an outward-looking and active mode of contemplation compared to the more quietist internalizing contemplation of the Far East. 

This is to generalize, certainly, but everything the present author has seen on his long journeys both recent and past confirm it. In the Sino-Asiatic world in which he is currently travelling, tea has historically been regarded as a spiritual adjunct, aside from its social roles. In the Near East and other parts of the Muhammadan world by extension, coffee tends to play this part; it has historically been used as a stimulant by the Soofis and the Irfans and assorted Islamic mystics. As a stimulant it is better adapted to the typical modes of Muhammadan spiritual life. These modes are externalist. The Muhammadans, for instance, do not have an institution of monasticism and world-renunciation, nor practices of internalizing meditation. As a stimulant – paradoxical though this seems – tea is better suited to the internalized modes of oriental spiritual life. It was for this reason that tea was revered as the fabled “celestial drink” of legend - a sacred drink - before it became a common beverage. The remarkable property of the drink is that it both stimulates and elevates.

We might compare the different modes of stimulation of coffee and tea, Islamic and oriental, with, say, the different narcotic properties of hashish on the one hand and opium on the other, where hashish is 'externalizing' (exciting the senses) and opium is 'internalizing' (dreamy, sleep-inducing). The differences are not absolute, but they are real enough. In general terms we can say that coffee is best adapted to Islamic modes of spiritual practice. Tea, on the other hand, goes naturally with the practices of Taoism, Boodhism and related oriental modes of spirituality. These are not merely historical accidents. The two stimulants, tea and coffee, have different effects upon the human sensorium and upon consciousness itself and so are each adapted to different temperaments. 

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Yours,

Harper Mc Alpine Black

The Goddess of Mercy: Tea and Temples

Temple of the Goddess of Mercy

Of all the many Chinese temples in George Town and throughout the Prince of Wales Island, the central temple, the oldest, and the acknowledged spiritual centre of the Straits Chinese is the temple of the Goddess of Mercy on Pitt Street. It is not as splendid as many of the more lavish temples - in fact it is small and humble - but it is regarded as the most auspicious and the most blessed. 

As is the usual practice, its location was chosen according to the requirements of sacred geomancy (feng sui); it was made to open onto a long vista towards the sea. Originally, it was sacred to seafarers, the temple of sailors and traders from South China who travelled to and from the Malacca Straits. 

At a certain juncture, however, Arab traders constructed a building in the line of sight of the temple, for which the Chinese put a curse on the building. Then, at much the same time, a large area of sea was reclaimed so that what is now Beach Street, which was once the foreshore, has ended up being further inland from the dock. In this process the entire feng sui of the Pitt street temple has been lost. 

Moreover, its function as a temple for seafarers has ceased to be relevant and instead it has become a temple for the great Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin. She is the patron goddess of seafarers, but her broader attributes as goddess of universal mercy have come to the fore and the whole Chinese community – not just sailors and traders – today see the temple as their spiritual home. Chinese come from far and wide to visit the temple. On any given day it is a busy hub of pilgrims and devotees. 

Cast-iron censors in the temple forecourt 

The site of the Goddess of Mercy temple in George Town is marked by two wells, known as the two 'Dragon Eyes' (although it is said there is a third well under the main altar, a third eye.) This is a picture of one of the wells in the forecourt of the temple, accessed from Pitt Street. 

* * * 

A few notes on this goddess:

*Guanyin is one of the major deities of Chinese religious practice in South Asia. She is extremely popular and widely venerated.

*In Boodhist reckonings this deity is the male boddhisatva Avalokiteśvara who appears in the Lotus Sutra in a masculine form but who may take other forms according to the requirements of ‘skilful means’. In China, the deity is feminine.

*The Chinese tradition gives many accounts of the origins of this goddess aside from the accepted derivation from Boodhist sources.

*The twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the chapter concerning Guanyin, is often treated as a separate sutra by the Chinese. It is read, chanted and recited throughout the Sino-Asiatic world.

*The names of Guanyin in various languages refer to “he/she who hears crying” or similar. That is, the deity who hears human suffering.

*This goddess is known as Kannon to the Japanese (after whom the camera brand was named.)

*The goddess is assimilated into Taoism as one of the immortals, Cihang Zhenren, a woman who lived in the Shang Dynasty.

*The resemblance between Guanyin and the Christian Virgin Mary has often been noted and is sometimes made explicit in iconography. She is often depicted as a mother nursing an infant. When Christianity was banned in Japan, on pain of death, Christians would use statues of Guanyin as a substitute object of veneration.

*She is known as the ‘Guide to the Pureland’. Many believe she guides the souls of her adherents to the western Pureland after death. 

* * * 

IRON GODDESS OF MERCY TEA

There is a very fine Chinese tea called Tieguanyin, a name meaning 'Iron Goddess of Mercy' - Iron Goddess of Mercy Tea or Tea of the Iron Boddhisatva. It is an expensive premium variety of oolong tea from the Fujian province prepared by a complex curing process and is widely sought among tea connoisseurs. The present author was fortunate to find and sample some in a tea house in Cintra Street in George Town. Regarding the origins of the tea there are several legends. Here is one:

There was once a peasant farmer named Wei who every day would pass by a derelict temple containing an iron statue of the goddess Guanyin. Over the years he watched its condition deteriorate and felt very sorry that, being poor, he did not have the means to restore the temple. One day, though, he went to the temple, swept it out and lit candles, thinking it was the least he could do. That night the goddess came to him in a dream. She told him of a cave behind the temple and promised him that a treasure awaited him in return for his devotion. The next day he went to the cave and found a shoot of a tea plant. He took it, planted it in his field and nurtured it into a bush. Then he gave cuttings of the plant to his neighbours and they planted them out. Soon they began selling the rare tea as "Tieguanyin", the tea of the Iron Goddess of Mercy. They all prospered and grew rich and at length the temple was restored.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Adventures in the Tea Trade

Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao Tse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

Tenshin

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Coffee, as a friend of this blogger has pointed out most unhelpfully, is not without its spirituality. Its use was largely pioneered and promoted among the Soofi orders of the Mohametans and even to this day there are Soofi groups among whom the 'coffee maker' is an esteemed officer. We will concede this, but otherwise the blogger will have none of it. He recalls a conversation on exactly this subject with the late Lithuanian scholar, Dr. Algis Uzdavynys, himself a ten-coffee-a-day man, who explained that the Soofis used the stuff as a means of staying awake during all night vigils. The night vigil, especially during the sacred month of Ramadan, is meritorious in Mohametan piety, and there are Soofis among whom it is a preferred practice. They discovered that coffee, good and strong, will waylay sleep and thereby facilitate extended prayer and recitation through to the dawn salat. They employed it, that is, as a crude stimulant. 

This is most unsubtle, of course. Two lines of cocaine will do the same, and it hardly amounts to a spiritual adjunct in itself. It is more true to say, therefore, that coffee has been used in a spiritual context, yes, but it is stretching a point to ascribe to it any particular spiritual powers beyond keeping one awake. Tea, on the other hand - so this present writers insists - is much more than a mere analeptic. Far beyond just stimulating and refreshing, its energies are inherently internalising and meditative. It is, in and of itself, a spiritual drink. Coffee is incidental to a few Soofi outfits; tea is integral to entire traditions, most notably Taoism, Zen and the Japanese Boodhists.

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Around the Darjeeling hills there is no shortage of tea experts and aficionados who are ready and willing to impart their knowledge and enthusiasm to novices, such as the present author confesses to be. They will explain the history and the processes of quality tea growing to anyone interested. There are, moreover, many tea gardens that offer guided tours that are informative and instructive. The young lady at Happy Valley Tea Gardens, a small concern just out of Darjeeling proper, is - it must be said - deeply knowledgable, articulate, terribly pleasant and gives a thorough account of every aspect of the entire growing, drying and fermentation operation, and is therefore to be recommended. She offers, furthermore, an excellent tea tasting session, explaining all the subtleties and mysteries of flavour. One comes away feeling that the whole business is not so complex after all. There are those who would love to mystify it, but in essence it is simple.

Regarding processes, it goes in stages as follows:

1.Picking

2. Withering

3. Rolling

4. Fermentation

5. Drying

6. Sorting

The leaves are picked. Then they are left to "wither" (i.e. wilt) which reduces their liquid content. Then they are rolled, which is to say slightly bruised. Then the bruised leaves are left in the open air to oxidise ("fermentation")- that is, they go black upon exposure to air. Then, at a crucial point, they are dried to stop further fermentation. Finally, they are sorted and graded. 

So, it is not really very complicated in itself, although tweaking of each stage in the process produces different results, and this is where the experts and egg-heads come in. Picking at different times in the plant's growing cycle will yield radically different flavours. Withering can be longer or shorter. And so on. In particular, the oxidisation stage is all-important. The amount of caffeine and such qualities as anti-oxidents are largely determined by how long and in what conditions the rolled (bruised) leaves are allowed to ferment. 

As far as the finished product is concerned there are really three main types: black, green and white. Green teas have had less processing - especially oxidation - than black teas, and so-called white teas are altogether virgin, having had very little processing at all. Black teas are the most common but have more caffeine and less antioxidants than green or white due to longer oxidation.

Teas are typically graded according to degrees of physical intactness as follows:

1. Whole leaf

2. Brokens

3. Fannings

4. Dust

Whole leaf grades produce a more subtle cup of tea. The broken grades - in which the leaves are broken into smaller portions - typically produce stronger and fuller cups of tea, with tea dust producing the strongest brew of all. 

Then there are seasonal variations. These are:

1. First flush
2. Second Flush
3. Autumnal

First flush - spring teas - are finer and more subtle. The second flush - which is to say the second picking - produces a more full-bodied tea. Autumn teas are more full-bodied again. 

Beyond these grades, teas are then classified according to a quite esoteric system of codifications. The very best grade is coded by the letters FTGFOP which stands for Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe - although the standard joke in the tea trade is that it really stands for Far Too Good For Ordinary People. Sometimes, to these letters the numeral 1. will be added, thus: FTGFOP1. This is your highest quality tea. Lesser teas are graded: TGFOP, GFOP, FOP, and so on. 

If readers aspire to become a professional tea snob then these are the codes to learn. 

None of this, however, counts nearly as much in practice as the garden from which the tea comes. Location, soil, climate, slope, season - these are the key determinants. 

* * * * 

Every year, they say, some 50,000 tonnes of Darjeeling tea is sold and consumed throughout the world. This is a most curious fact because, in actuality, the tea gardens of Darjeeling only produce about 10,000 tonnes of tea per year. Thus, some 40,000 tonnes is spurious. The lesson from this then is beware of imitations. Genuine Darjeeling tea now carries a government-enforced stamp of authenticity, thus:

When purchasing what you believe to be genuine Darjeeling tea look for this label. It will no doubt add to the price of the product but you can at least be sure that the product is the real thing. Darjeeling tea is prized for its special characteristics: its depth and complexity of flavour, its floral and fruity tones and especially its "muscatel" qualities. The tea you buy should reward you with exactly these qualities. This is the true test, above and beyond the label. The question is: Does it taste like a genuine Darjeeling tea, or is it just an ordinary brew like any other with an expensive label?

* * * * 

Muscatel flavours are characteristic of Darjeeling teas and are most pronounced in the more full bodied second flush, summer and autumn teas. These, at least, are the preferred teas of the present author, in his shamefully limited experience. Here is a sample of those he has tried at Darjeeling tea houses and would not hesitate to recommend:

Red Thunder

From Gopaldhara Garden, a full-bodied muscatel, 6000 rupees a kilo. 

Castleton Muscatel

From the Castleton Gardens, a second flush summer muscatel, 7000 rupees a kilo.

Thurbo Second Flush

From the Thurbo estate. Described as a Tippy Clonal FTGFOP1, only 10,000 rupees per kilo. 

Giddaphar Muscatel

From the Giddaphar garden. A FTGFOP1, second flush muscatel. 2400 rupees per kilo. 

An Orange Pekoe with Red Thunder

* * * * 

For an excellent blog from one of the world's foremost and expert tea travellers, see

http://www.discoveringtea.com

* * * * 

Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace… 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.

- Tenshin

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Tenshin's Book of Tea & the Chai Wallah

Okakura Kakuzo, Tenshin

There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealisation... It has not the arrogance of wine, the self- consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.

Among the many excellent photographs on display in the Japanese section of the Tagore museum at Jorsanko in north Calcutta are some intriguing pictures showing the Indian sage in the company of Okakura Kakuzo, also known as Tenshin. They caught the present author's attention because he has previously read Tenshin's famous and eccentric little treatise on tea, The Book of Tea, and because he had no idea that Tagore was an associate of that Japanese writer. The photographs raised many questions about contacts and context. They also sent this writer back to his edition of The Book of Tea, a wonderful little book that is a paean to tea drinking, especially in relation to Japanese aesthetics and Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. It is subtitled 'A Japanese Harmony of Art, Culture & the Simple Life':

In this work, Tenshin - now regarded as somewhat old-fashioned in his aesthetic theories - expounds the doctrine, nay the religion, of "Teaism", (as he calls it) a whole world-view, and specifically a view of the world of the Orient, centred upon tea. And why not? As Tenshin writes, "Mankind has done worse!" He asks:

Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself....

And thus begins his extended meditation upon the celestial beverage as the cultural bond of the Orient. In an earlier book, Ideals of the East, Tenshin composed a famous statement of his philosophy that is partially reiterated in The Book of Tea. Like Tagore, he was a Pan-Asianist with a strong internationalist identity. In this sense neither of the two men were narrow nationalists. They have sometimes been criticised and even despised by their countrymen for this. It was a universal perspective, inclusive of the great virtues of Asian civilization, they shared. Tenshin writes:


"Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life."

In The Book of Tea he places tea-drinking at the centre of this Pan-Asian vision. There are certain ironies attached to this, however. Tenshin, like Tagore, promoted the virtues of the 'East' against what he called the 'White Disaster' of European colonialism. Yet he wrote all his works in English and it was in fact the British who joined both sides of the Himalayas with tea. We might think of tea as natural to India - the finest teas, Darjeeling and Assam, come from India after all - yet it was the British who introduced tea growing south of the Himalayas as an economic foil against the Chinese, and it was the British who deliberately promoted tea drinking to the Indian population. Far from being integral to the traditions of Hindoostan, it was only as recently as the 1920s that tea drinking became commonplace throughout the Indian sub-continent. India and China may constitute the two sides of a single Asia, as Tenshin proposes, but it was the White Devil and episodes of European imperialism that made tea the common beverage of both civilizations. Pan-Asian "Teaism" is as much a creation of the British as it is a natural feature of traditional Asian unity.

* * * *

Reading Tenshin's Book of Tea while residing in the back streets of old Calcutta one is confronted by the stark contrast of raw India against refined Japan. There is certainly nothing of the Japanese tea ceremony to be found in the Indian approach to the beverage. The Japanese make tea drinking a fine art: perfectly subtle, beautiful, aesthetic. They discern countless subtleties of flavour in a wide variety of teas according to soil and climate and mode of preparation. The Indian approach, on the other hand, lacks all subtlety. It is a raw and abundant joy, an earthy festivity, but not by any means a refined art.

India’s distinctive tea culture resides in the institution of the chai wallah. They are on every street corner. The tea is strong, milky, sweet and heavily spiced. It is taken in small, potent doses that resemble the way coffee is consumed elsewhere. It is brewed, not steeped. Often it has been simmering for hours. There is nothing delicate about it. If not for the sugar and the spices – ginger and cardamom especially, but sometimes bay laurel and black pepper or cinnamon – it would be bitter. Usually, it is served in small red rough-hewn earthenware cups called bhar which are only used once and then broken, returned to the earth or recycled. More recently though the plastic cup has become popular, a terrible turn of events because of the vast amount of pollution they cause. Much of the charm of chai is in the earthen cups. They are very practical. They have a protruding lip that enables one to hold it with two fingers – a third finger on the base underneath – and avoid burning one’s self since chai is served and consumed piping hot.

In Calcutta, where the author presently resides, the chai cups are the main trade of the city’s potters. They scoop the clay from the Hoogley River and it is to the river that the cups ultimately return.

The present author, let it be known, is himself an enthusiast of tea, a devotee of Teaism. Once more out of phase he has developed an aversion to the ubiquitous coffee culture that has taken hold in Australia and the wider Western world. Coffee is a drug for the shallow journalistic mind. Coffee is the drug of the chattering classes. Tea is the drink of the contemplative. It is with a some disdain that the author watches restless disgruntled Western tourists scouring the streets and markets of Calcutta in search of a coffee fix. The chai wallah is everywhere. Chai culture is a delight. It is a sad symptom of self-consciousness, as Tenshin says, that the "maritime" West has succumbed to the coarse stimulation of the coffee bean. Teaism forever! 

If you are looking for a good resource on the culture of tea drinking in India you cannot go past the following excellent blog, Chai Wallahs of India: http://chaiwallahsofindia.com

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black