A Tea Journey Through Books #01: Tracing “The History of Tea.”
This book, 『お茶の歴史』 (The History of Tea), has a simple title, but as you read on, you begin to feel that it is not merely a “history of tea.” Rather, what it depicts is the interplay between tea and history. Tea is not presented as mere background appearing within history; it is portrayed as an active presence that has played a role in the flow of history, intertwined with trade, religion, politics, and culture.
What’s more, that presence is astonishingly dynamic. Today, we tend to receive tea as a beverage of preference, but the tea depicted in this book is clearly different. In some places it becomes a source of nourishment; in others, a strategic commodity; and in still others, a companion that helps steady the mind. It functioned as a medium connecting people to people, and region to region.
As I read, modern information environments suddenly came to mind. Like social media or AI, something spreads widely, changing into different forms in different places, while at the same time condensing new knowledge and culture. In the way this book portrays tea’s spread, I can’t help but sense a structure that resonates with that kind of phenomenon.
The Authors’ Backgrounds and Passion
The authors are the historian Victor H. Mair and the journalist Erling Hoh. Mair is a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, known for his research on the history of Central Eurasia and East Asia. He once served in Nepal as part of the Peace Corps when he was young, and says he was captivated by masala chai he encountered there. A stay in Darjeeling also deepened his interest in tea, and those experiences eventually led him into Buddhist studies and Chinese studies.
The other author, Erling Hoh, is a journalist born in Stockholm and raised in the United States, who has also spent time living in Taiwan. He has contributed to magazines and newspapers on topics such as Chinese culture and history, and current affairs. He recalls childhood memories of gathering around his grandmother’s teapot, and during his university years in Stockholm he also encountered café culture where people drank Lapsang Souchong. He also writes that, through life in Taiwan, he came to understand anew the richness of tea culture.
As a scholar, Mair understands just how significant a role China played in spreading tea to the world. At the same time, he was also troubled by the way its history has been told in a form where myths, legends, and facts are intermingled. That is why he felt it necessary to reorganize and reexamine the history of tea on the basis of historical sources. This book is also a work born from that conviction.
The way these two collaborated is vividly described in the acknowledgments as well. Victor handled the research, and Erling took charge of the writing. They held long discussions in Stockholm and Philadelphia, and the manuscript gradually became more coherent from start to finish. They say the writing advanced with particular intensity during the few weeks they spent at Erling’s summer house in Sweden.
They split firewood, grew potatoes in the field, exchanged arguments during the day, and at night digested what they had discovered that day. In a pastoral yet intellectual life that Tolstoy would likely have delighted in, there was always a cup of tea by their side.
Historical Dynamism and the Flow of Tea
Throughout the book, the dynamism of history and tea’s broad currents are depicted again and again. Beginning in ancient China, it spreads to Japan; to Tibet and Mongolia; to Russia; to the Islamic world; and then onward to Europe—and even to America.
As tea spreads through each region, it changes into different forms, intertwining with local environments and cultures, religions, and the mechanisms of trade. Though it is the same tea, in one place it becomes a source of nourishment that supports survival; in another, a companion for spiritual discipline; and in yet another, a commodity that moves global trade.
And so, as you keep reading, even though you are supposed to be tracing the history of tea, you begin to feel as though you are surveying the flow of world history itself.
What Keeps Changing, and What Does Not
Seen this way, tea is a mysterious presence. It has been food, a pleasure item, a culture—and at times even a strategic resource. Looking at how it spread, it seems tea itself was the very dynamism of movement within history.
Yet at the same time, the fact that humans have continued to drink a cup of tea is something that has not changed for thousands of years.
Things that keep changing, and things that do not.
The history of tea, perhaps, is also a history of spreading outward while, in each place, condensing into culture.