China Black

There is no mention whatever of black tea before the Ming period. As John C. Evans writes in Tea in China, "No factual basis exists for assuming an ancient origin for black tea. Furthermore, all Chinese sources agree that black tea did not appear by the Ming dynasty but after its founding." Although black tea—or hongcha (red tea), as the Chinese called it—became popular in "barbarian lands," it has never been much appreciated in China proper. Many would claim that the workers who produce Keemun, perhaps the finest black tea in the world today, drink green tea at their work. Black tea was developed by the Ming on their ever-expanding government plantations, produced for export. The principal customers seem to have been the Manchurian nomads who subsisted entirely on the milk and meat of their herds. Black tea suited milk fine.

Through the irony of history, these black tea customers—the Manchu—managed to occupy Beijing in 1644, resulting in a new emperor and a new dynasty, the Qing. The Manchu misunderstanding of the Chinese shows in their saying: "They would steal the milk out of the tea if they could!" They did not realize that Chinese have an abhorrence of milk and would never dream of adding it to tea! An eyewitness in 1793 reported that Qing Emperor Ch'ien Lung "drank a tea mixture that would little please the Chinese, since the Emperor's tea was infused with as much milk as water." Black tea with milk can justifiably called Manchu-style tea.


Reprinted with permission from New Tea Lover's Treasury—The Classic True Story of Tea, by James Norwood Pratt, Publishing Technology Associate, San Francisco, California, 1999.