Author: Xavier

My name is Xavier.

I live on the other side of the pond but you had probably found this out thanks to my “strange” English.

I am a tea addict and I studied several (and I do mean several) years ago marketing, hence this blog, which will try to combine both worlds.

Whisky in a cup of tea

July 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Did you know that Al Capone drank whisky in a cup of tea? It might be a hoax but I heard it on a rather serious radio and I found it cool enough to mention it here. A more “serious” reason than the “cool” factor was that it provided a good introduction for the topic of this article.

Some time ago, I asked one of our fellow bloggers here what he would like to see in this blog and his answer puzzled me as he had heard that there was a link between the consumption of alcohol in the United States and of tea and that, the first one was decreasing while the second one was increasing. If you had asked it to me, I would not have come up with a link between these two as it seems completely counter intuitive.

However, I decided to pick up this challenge and to investigate this topic, which was also a perfect way to illustrate one of my latest posts in a practical way.

The first thing was to decide the scope of my data analysis. I decided to go for the three main markets for these two products: America, Europe and Asia (the fact that the sources I later found also had this segmentation is pure luck. You don’t believe me, do you?). I could have gone with several countries but after giving it much consideration, I could not find to which countries, I should compare the United States. Moreover, a focus on one single country might not have been representative of what was going on.

Knowing the geographical area, I decided to check for data.

… … …

… … …

… … …

These were my first results, as it seemed complex to find anything in a single database. I decided to split the search into alcohol and tea and since I knew where to look for tea, I thought it made it easier.

After looking on the Internet with several keywords, I found out that the available statistics on alcohol consumption were from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and expressed in terms of consumption per capita in litres of pure alcohol. Let’s put it in other words, they converted all the drinks into pure alcohol (I have no real clue how it works but the basis seemed coherent to me) and they had databases covering each year between 1961 and 2017. The earlier years were not always coherent or complete but I had a base to begin working with.

For teas, I had to answer a rather simple question: how much tea was drunk? I had access to several sets of tea related data but not a single one giving me this information.

My educated guess was that “what a country/area produced each year + what a country/area imported each year – what a country/area exported each year” was a good estimate of how much tea was available for consumption. Obviously, this is only an estimate as not all this tea is drunk each year but if you have a better idea, I am all ears.

However this was not enough as I couldn’t compare tons and litres. I needed a way to convert these available tons in litres of tea. After a lot of thought and look all around, I decided to go for 12 grams of tea per litre, which means that with 1 ton you could get 83,333 litres of tea (again if you have other figures, let me know).

The nice thing was that I had access to the same timeline as the WHO one, which made comparison and statistical analysis easier.

This is all for now but stay tuned as next time I will compare the data and try to see how they evolve over time and if there is any link between them.

Don’t feed the trolls

June 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Don’t feed the trolls is a known motto of the Internet but sometimes I have to feed my inner troll. First because they don’t always look like those of the Hobbit and two because mine is a travelling one that is always looking for some data to bring back to me and to help me feed this blog.

On the Trollstigen road

This month it has been busy trying to figure out a way out of the maze to find what it was not looking for and it might have find it but too late (trolls and time are two alien concepts).

This means that you will have to wait a little to know what comes next on Teaconomics.

Back to the future

May 28, 2019 / / 0 Comments

As you might have noticed (for example here or here) I have an interest in prices of our nice little drink: tea.

I usually focus on old prices (sometimes among centuries) and I might still do that soon but another interesting thing is to focus on prices, on future prices. Don’t worry, I will not drown you into million of complex mathematical formulas or some barbaric letters like α or β but more into the minds and whereabouts of people doing this.

If you do an Internet research on this topic, you will find I am sure a lot of different things. I did it but only in English. I am sure there are other interesting findings to make in other languages such as Chinese or Japanese but since I don’t speak either, I couldn’t look in this direction, if you can and if you do, I would be interested to hear about it.

But let’s go back on our main topic.

After some research and cross references, I found several articles about price of tea and how to “predict” them in a mathematical way. However, guess what? The numbers and formulas weren’t the same. I hear you saying “how typical” and things like that.

But let’s get out of these clichés and look a bit more at what the different researchers/students worked on and how they did it.

First, some were working on Indian teas (with a further subdivision into Northern and Southern ones) and others on Ceylon ones. Obviously, if you don’t have the same geographical perimeter, you don’t get the same tea prices in the past and therefore not the same analysis.

Second, two different methods were used and both are valid. I will explain myself. In order to get models that match the past (and thus can predict the future if there aren’t too many changes in the overall conditions as mathematical models only work if “all other things being equal” (a standard sentence in this field of work), you must keep out of the system, the outliers (small mistakes or data that for one reason or another don’t fit into the general picture) and the things that mess up with the general trend. One of these things can be the season effect (which obviously is true for commodities), like for example the Christmas season is usually an important event but is not representative of the sales of the whole year and as it comes back every year, it can be discarded. On the other hand, one can make the hypothesis that the discarding of this data is a waste of efficient information (or because there is a lack of belief in the seasonality of certain things) and thus keep all the data.

With two simple explanations of the first steps when facing a lot of data, it is possible to understand why results are different from one research to another.

But how does it truly work?

OK. Let’s say that you’ve got your data (enough of it) and you cleaned it the way you want. There are several types of mathematical models that can be applied to a certain set of data to fit the past evolution and then to “predict” the future ones. This means either having the intuition or the knowledge that one might do the job (more or less) or having to test several before finding the one that suits the data you have. Earlier this was done with pen and paper but today, computers can do quickly and far more efficiently than we can, easing the task).

Random data points and their linear regression by Sewaqu

Once a model suits the data you have and you have all its values, you must check to see if the outliers you left out make any sense. In other words, is there a reason for the price dropping or increasing by 50% a peculiar month? For example tea prices could go up because the production isn’t up to what the market needs because there was flood or lack of rains or …. If you manage to find a plausible explanation for every out of place data, then it is likely that your model is adequate and that you can use it to predict the future price of tea leaves.

But obviously, it implies “all other things being equal”, which is always the tricky part and can lead to new results and a complete rework of what has been done.

And remember, Don’t worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely eighty-eight miles per hour the instant the lightning strikes the tower… everything will be fine.

A chain that doesn’t block anything

April 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I heard on radio last week that big names in the food industry were going for something that up to now for me was something more linked to cryptocurrency (yes I know it sounds horrible but I am sure you have heard of bitcoins) than to anything food related: the blockchain.

For those like me that don’t really know what it is, blockchain is a succession of encrypted blocks containing information on something and linked to the previous block in the chain and to the next one by small parts of code, securing the whole chain and most importantly the data within.

What is the use of it for people that have nothing to do with geeks? With a simple QR reader downloaded on your smartphone, you can have access to this whole information by just flashing the QR code.

You will probably ask what kind of information. The example I heard on radio was in the mashed potatoes industry. With this specific blockchain, they wanted the customer to be able to know which factory processed the potatoes and even which operators did it (or checked the machines used).

I am sure that by now you see some processes where the tea industry could use this blockchain. The first and foremost would be to track down where exactly the tea we are drinking comes from. This would help solve some “mysteries” or uncertainties regarding the place of origin of some teas. A second use would be to be able to know what happened to the tea during the fabrication process, just to be sure that everything is as it is supposed to be. A third use would be to be able to follow the tea from the plucking to the store, not only through space but also through time, meaning that there would be no question regarding the way, the means of transport, the freshness of a tea.

For example, people could buy fresh tea from Japan knowing that it was transported by cargo plane. Thanks to this, the consumer could act according to his principle and buy only products that follow his/her own sets of rules.

Obviously this blockchain thing only works if everyone along the chain (from producers to sellers) is playing the game but with enough pressure for the consumers, it should not be a problem as companies are more than willing and eager to be transparent regarding their products.. What is more problematic is the capacity to check the veracity of the information provided by the whole chain. As producers are spread in different countries and sometimes deep inside them, it might be difficult for them to invest time in blockchains or for third parties to check whether or not the provided information is the right one.

One solution could be in the use of trusted and independent middlemen in charge of checking the information related to tea or even bringing them in the blockchains. To ensure their total independence, they should not be funded by the sellers but by the customers. It might be a little bit costly (but I doubt it) but it would enable the move of the tea industry to another level of transparency and cooperation. The idea here is not to create a new “thing” (if I may quote de Gaulle) but a simple yet efficient tool that could be used across the whole tea industry to improve it through the sharing of information.

Don’t get me wrong, in spite of this rational approach focusing, I also do think that mysteries and myths are a part of the charm of tea. Quite an intriguing approach, isn’t it? Or to quote a man who is on our side: “The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.”

Curiosity killed the cat or didn’t

March 29, 2019 / / 2 Comments

I am always looking for old books or old references to tea, both because I like history/books and because I like tea. I must confess that I am lucky to have a habit that allows to mix both (it would be nearly impossible I was a deep hardcore Star Trek fan or something like that).

Cover of the Encyclopédie

This allows me to sometimes find interesting things and I made such a discovery a few days ago as I found out that the original Encyclopédie was online and in a searchable version (it is not new but I hadn’t looked for it before), this Encyclopédie is the one written with the editing of Diderot and D’Alembert (two French philosophers), in the middle of the 18th century that was a representation of the thoughts of the “Lumières”. Out of curiosity, I looked to see if there was an article on tea and there were 3: two on plants and one on tea. The plants were the tea plant itself but this article contained only a description (with an indication to the reader that more was available in the “main” article) and a tea from the Antilles, that apart from sharing the same name (but for false reasons according to the article) has nothing in common with the tea.

I read the article on tea and I found interesting common mistakes or things that showed that some clichés were already common at that time or perhaps should I say that they have their roots even before the 18th century.

For example, Japanese workers plucking tea for the imperial tea had to avoid eating fish or meat, had to wash themselves 2 to 3 times a day in hot waters or in a river or as if it wasn’t enough had to pluck tea with gloves.

There seemed also to be a confusion between the tea plants in China or in Japan that were closely related but it seems not alike and that produced two different sort of quality (more on that later in this post).

According to the reports/books from that time, the tea plants didn’t need much space and were used as fence between rice fields or liked to grow in the most sterile places. Or the fresh leaves were known to have a special effect as they attacked the nerves and produced trembling, bad effects that seemed to disappear once the leaves were dry.

There are other information that left me puzzled: for example, tea is named theh by the Chinese and tsjaa or tsjanoki by the Japanese. I always had problems with the old designation of the tea varieties but it seems more complex than I thought and is not really linked to any name I know for tea and the way its name was brought back from China.

However, there are also some interesting things that are true or partly true. For example, the imperial tea (in Japan) was named ticki tsjaa or powder tea and according to how it was drunk, I think it was matcha, with the best coming from Udsi. This tea is said to be expensive because of the care taken all along the production chain with a kin (it seems this is a weight measure in Japan representing 600g) being paid 30 or 40 thaels or 42 to 46 écus, which converted in silver (this is how its value was determined would make between 1,285 g and 1,407 g, something between 530 and 620 euros or between 0.88 euro per gram and 1.03 euro per gram. Pretty impressive isn’t it? However I am not sure if this evaluation is to be trusted as evaluation in other monetary systems was a bit tricky.

The Chinese tea was divided and sold in 4 different qualities but drunk in a special way that reminded me of gong fu cha. The lowest quality was not given a name and was made of a mix of everything harvested without any intent to sort them. The third one was ban-tsjaa and was dried in stove and then hand-rolled. The second one is not mentioned or at least I couldn’t find any split in the text between the third and the Imperial tea (obviously the best one). The only difference in the production process was the care for the selection of leaves and the fact that it was more dried and then made into dust.

Apart from the text on the usual wonderful medical effect of tea (this drink was already a panacea, something that we all know) with the “once you tried it, you cannot stop drinking tea” sentence, there is also an indication that at the time of the writing, 8 to 10 millions French pounds of tea were sold in Europe yearly, something between 4,000 and 5,000 tons. Out of curiosity, I looked at the statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and in 2016, Europe imported 518,778 tons.

This might seem impressive but since I have no clue how the author of the article on tea found this figure, I will avoid drawing conclusions.

Regarding this old saying that I used as title for this post, I think that we can agree that today, curiosity didn’t kill the cat and allowed it to find something quite interesting.

I had a dream

February 28, 2019 / / 2 Comments

I read a few weeks ago about a museum that a famous French designer (Yves Saint Laurent) had two museums exhibiting his work, his inspirations and some of his notebooks with drawings of dresses he made or inspirations he had. This made me think about how things could shake down the “old house” and bring some fresh and new air in tea. After all, tea is not only for old ladies.

Inspired by what I saw on the Internet about mode and art, I began thinking about something that would do the same for… yes, tea (I know I wrote it two lines above but I wanted to write it down once more just in case you might have missed it) and how it would look like. I know of some exhibits that did that in the past in several towns (and I might have missed some of them in my look around) but I wanted to improve them and to build something new.

Obviously, there should be a drinking and informative space to allow people to discover where it comes from and what it really is. I know that there are many nice pictures or info/data on tea production, processing and consumption. This could help break some mythos or as some would say some “fake news” that are for tea unfortunately floating like leaves in the stream. However since this is not the main topic in this post I will not elaborate but most of them have to do with health benefits.

I would also add a part with “real” plants if I could say so. I do not think we could make any tea out of them but showing the real thing is always a good idea, as people do not know quite often, what they are dealing with.

However the main thing as I intended to say in the first sentences would be notebooks or old books (I saw many of them on the Internet) showing the ideas behind the blends or the minds at work. There are lot of people around here blending tea and making different things out of it. This kind of alchemy is perhaps what sets tea apart from coffee and properly done it could be the highlight of a museum. I wrote alchemy because for most people, this is what it looks like. For others, it is more a try and fail process that in the end brings something together.

Obviously, there is commercial secrecy around these recipes but I am more interested in the overall creative process than in the final product. Perhaps there could be temporary exhibits split along different brands with some notebooks, pictures… written or made specifically for it or made by specific artists in collaboration with different creators/artists…

This part of the creation process is unknown by other people out of the business and deserves more advertising. As I said earlier, this creation of a blend is a mix of art and craft, something unique that could open the eyes of people, enlightening their smell and increasing their willingness to taste new things.

After these first exhibits and after having found the strengths and weaknesses of the overall idea, the same organisational principle is to be used with other things like “pure” teas or how people in the smaller gardens and/or in the more creative ones are doing sometimes quite unorthodox things. If you need to see what I am talking about, just look at some of the findings of Lazyliteratus over here.

There are always new things to wonder about and to show to the curiosity of people. Displaying the creativity of the industry, an industry that always is on the move towards new things, is a good idea to attract people to this “museum”.

The real problem is more how to duplicate things all over the world as tea comes and goes from different places, it is not like designs that is linked to a peculiar city. There are two possibilities, duplicating things all around the world in different cities or places or making a travelling expo that would stay in one place or in another for as long as necessary.

Both have their pros and cons but for now I will get back to my dreaming state and let the wings of my tea museum dream unfold as I had a dream…

On the road again

January 31, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes economists like to develop their concepts in what seems to be a sandbox way before applying them to reality to check if they are worth anything. When I say in a sandbox way, I mean based on certain hypotheses that to other people can seem completely out of reality. But this is how it works; since economics focuses on the way economic agents interact and behave and because these economic agents are complete beings and things, you need in order to study them to “simplify” things and to see then how what you found out works in real life.

One example is the work of Johann Heinrich von Thünen, a German nineteenth century economist that developed a mathematical formula to know what was the best use (in terms of production type) for a piece of land based on the transport costs to a market and the rent a farmer could afford (based on the yield of a given product, its selling price and its costs of production). Of course there are “weaknesses” or simplifications as I said earlier. For example, the differences in transportation costs, in topography, in soil fertility or the changes in price/demand were not taken into account in this simplified but quite important model.

I am sure you are now wondering why I am speaking of this right now and if the economics part of teaconomics has taken control of my writings.

But not at all. You will have to be patient for a little while before seeing where I want to go.

As I said, Johann Heinrich von Thünen didn’t take into account the differences in transportation costs and their impact on the overall chain. These differences can come from three sources: differences in infrastructures, efficiency of transport companies and different means of transport but they will have different impacts on the transport chain and thus on the best place to implement such and such resources (at least in his model).

What is the link between all this and tea? The answer is in the title of the song Hit the road Jack, transport. This is the reason why colonial empires devised and created transport networks to insure that the production of the colonies (mostly commodities) would get to the mainland as quickly, as cheaply and as efficiently as possible (okay, they also wanted to get their soldiers where needed as quickly and as efficiently as possible).

This is what was seen in tea too as earlier, you needed to get the freshest tea on market and to be the first to land in let’s say London. This is why clippers, the fastest sailing ships were built (before being becoming irrelevant because of steam and the Suez Canal (a new transport infrastructure)) and used to transport light and valuable cargo that needed to reach the ports as quickly as possible (tea, opium, people…). Today this trend is still alive for some teas (first-flush Darjeeling for example), planes are used in order to get them as fast as possible to the market.

Tea Clipper Foochow – sand painting by Brian Pike

But every journey begins with a first step. For tea, it is simple you need to get it from where the gardens/factories are to where the customers are, which means getting them out of the mountains/hills/remote locations where they are most of the time situated and then through the cities and/or the oceans. Unfortunately (or not), we are not playing in a sandbox and thus the model developed by von Thünen can’t be used right away to place tea gardens there, factories somewhere else and cities (or markets) in a third place. As with most human related things, we have to deal with how nature and humanity interacted over the centuries, creating a complicated and not always efficient network.

You will ask why does it matter? What do I as a customer get from an efficient transport system built around efficient infrastructures (one of the first steps for an efficient transport system)?

Let me tell you that the overall efficiency of any transportation system can make a lot of difference. For example, according to the World Trade Organisation World Trade Report 2004 (p.119) that quoted an article by the Economist, the poor road infrastructure in Cameroon increased the production costs of beer by 15 per cent and then you had to add the transportation costs to every place in the country. This meant that a beer costing 1 in Douala by the sea would cost 1.3 in an eastern village.

Now imagine this applied to a commodity that needs to be shipped through a country and then to another one far, far away (it seems a bit like the beginning of a fairytale, doesn’t it?). Based on the previous ratio (which might or might not be a bit too much for tea), it would mean paying tea at a much higher price. For a production process that has been refined over hundreds of years with as I said a focus since the beginning on exportation like India, it seems rather unlikely. However, it was a problem a few years ago at least in some parts of the country with two major impacts: difficulties to get supplies in and difficulties to get tea out.

Is it still the case today? I read that investments have been made with a special focus on this topic but only time and experience from people in the country will tell us how things have evolved and will evolve.

You must unlearn what you have learned

December 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Everyone knows that in Europe, tea is something English (or British if you prefer), that they invented everything regarding tea rituals and that they are at the core of everything related to tea.

Well, I won’t tell you that everything in this common belief is a lie but let’s say that not everything is true.

As I once wrote, Hamburg is also a major hub for tea in Europe and in spite of the evolutions described in my article is likely to remain its role for some years as it holds a significant advantage in terms of logistics and know-how that will take years for any other interested in the role to reach.

The second point you might know is that tea is said to have become mainstream in the United Kingdom following the marriage of King Charles III with Catherine of Braganza in 1662. This Portuguese princess is said to have introduced tea drinking at least in the English court as this drink was widespread among the Portuguese nobility.

As for early knowledge of tea or mention of it, it has nothing to do with English or Northern Europe people. According to All about Tea by William Ulkers published in 1935, the first mention of tea in Europe was in 1559 in the second tome (but to ease our understanding third to be published) in a compilation of travel books by an Italian Giambattista Ramusio, Navigationi et Viaggi (Navigations and Travels). He translated the works of Haji Mohamed, a Persian traveller, who had spoken of Chai Catai (literaly Chai of Cathay or in modern English, tea of China), a plant that grows in the district of Cathay, which is called Cacian-fsu , ie Sichuan, This was followed by several mentions by Italian, Portuguese and even French mentions of tea, for most of them priests or missionaires; which seems logical since apart from the Church missionaries, only the Portuguese could travel towards East Asia. Afterwards, Dutch and English boats managed to get access to these seas and began bringing back goods among them tea, which was seen as a medicine plant and drink. For a reason I don’t really understand (apart from the obvious “let’s not make our trade too attractive so that people will stay away of it” that doesn’t fit with everything going on at that time), Dutch merchants introduced tea in Europe at the beginning of the 1600s and sold it later on to the English (1652). The first recorded public auction in England for tea happened after that in 1657.

Based on common knowledge and the clichés about tea, I always thought that France wasn’t in the lead for tea. However, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV of France, during the Regency and in the early years of Louis XV of France (in other words between 1707 and 1738), a man called Nicolas Delamare, police commissioner, wrote a Traité de la Police (Treaty on Police) and in it mentioned in the 4th book that (the translation from old French being mine) Tea is the leaves of a shrub that come to us from China, the use of which began to be known in Paris, around the year 1636.

However, like in other countries, things were not going straight ahead for the new medicinal drink and several debates were going on in France like in other countries. For example, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris in 1650-1652, Guy Patin wrote between 1648 and 1659 several letters to different people where he mentioned tea (I found them online in Correspondance française de Guy Patin edited by Loïc Capron, Paris : Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de santé, 2015, http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/patin/).

The first one was on the 10th of March of 1648 to Mr Charles Spon, where he stated that a badly written thesis by Dr Philibert Morisset on “Does Chinese tea increase mentality?” was to be defended and that this thesis was only made to flatter the chancellor, which was at the heart of this plant reputation, a reputation that will immediately disappear with the noise. The idea being that tea was a panacea.

On the 22nd of March of the same year, he wrote to the same correspondent that one of our doctors, who is much more a braggart than a skilful man, named Morisset, wishing to favour the impertinent novelty of the age, and trying thereby to give himself some credit, has spread here a thesis on tea, with a conclusion that is as well done as this president has his head well done. Everyone has disapproved of the thesis. There has been some of our doctors who have burned it and reproaches have been made to the Dean for having approved it.

On the 27th of March of 1648, he wrote that tea was being taken by the Cardinal Mazarin to deal with his gout, which was in line with the belief that this medicinal plant could cure everything.

Some years later, he wrote on the 22nd of June of 1657 to Johannes Antonides Vander Linder, physician and professor in Leiden (in the Netherlands) asking him (among other things) about the properties of this leaf that was quite common in the Netherlands, saying that for some it was Indian while from others it was Chinese or from Europe (and this debate raged on until much later), stating too that it was quite a hype and that the spouse of a magistrate wanted him to prescribe this “new” plant but that being careful and cautious, he wanted before using it to have some proofs of its efficiency.

The last letter on this topic was written on the 7th of March of 1659 to a Dr. Sebastien Scheffer in Frankfurt, where he stated that this hype for this Chinese plant was only a hoax and that most tea was not true one but made of other plants from Europe, the only way for him to have good tea was to go in China, something that only Jesuits could do.

Another more famous letter writer that spoke about tea was Mme de Sévigné, a famous woman letter writer during the reign of Louis XIV. She corresponded with her daughter for over 25 years with 2 to 3 letters each week and mentioned two times tea.

On the 16th of February of 1680, she wrote that another noblewoman, Madame de La Sablière was drinking milk with her tea. Some says that this was done to cool the tea to prevent her bone teacups from cracking. Perhaps it was the origin of the English custom of drinking tea with milk.

Some years later, on the 4th of October of 1684, she wrote to her ill daughter that the Princess of Tarente (Emilie von Hessen-Kassel) had said to her that she drank 12 cups of tea every day and that her father was up to 40 every morning.

The debate regarding the properties of tea kept on and for example in 1671, Philippe Sylvestre Dufoud, an apothecary, banker, collector and author, which dealt with medicines from the Orient (like at that time tea, coffee, chocolate) wrote De l’usage du caphé, du thé et du chocolate (On the use of coffee, tea and chocolate), which was partly a translation from the works from other people. This book was followed by a rework and re-edition in 1685 under the title Traitez nouveaux et curieux du caffé du thé et du chocolate (New and curious treatise on coffee, tea and chocolate), which became a success and was translated and reprinted several times.

As can be seen above tea was quite popular among some parts of the population in France but in spite of that (or is because of it), it never managed to get the same popularity as in England and even if France was for a long time an importer of tea, it was mostly to smuggle it in the United Kingdom where taxes were too high.

Was the French Revolution the killing blow to this trend? Was it a little earlier the several wars under Louis XIV and Louis XV with the loses of territory and ships suffered by the French East India Company? Some other reason? I couldn’t find a definitive answer yet but there is probably a good explanation to this

However these findings made me think about what I thought to be the history of tea in Europe and as said by a small and green one, which was not a cup of green tea but a Jedi Master, sometimes you must unlearn what you have learned.

Every story has a beginning

November 25, 2018 / / 0 Comments

From The First Tea War: a History

The following extract is a transcription in modern English of the unpublished memories of Zhèng Hai Dong, a Chinese scholar that finished his apprenticeship at the beginning of the First Tea War.

I opened the door silently not willing to disturb my Master. As I walked in, I see him on the right side of the window writing with a pencil on a table full with scrolls. As always, he is dressed with yellow clothes, the only outstanding thing on it being a embroidered dragon, one with 4 claws, his uniform as he calls it but mostly the symbol of his charge. Right now, he seems to focus on the characters he is drawing at the exclusion of anything else. For now, my own dragon is without any claw but this is why I am here, to learn and to one day be like him in a way with claws on my embroidered dragon.

Through the window a little wind blows that makes the flame hesitate as if it wanted to disappear. A mighty roar can be heard outside, one that seems to give back strength to the fire that sparkled with what seemed to be the strength of a thousand matches.

A pot made of clay is on the fire and boils producing a little music heard in the entire room, a room that I know well, full of books, scrolls… on shelves, on the floor, on tables… Someone looking at this room for the first time might have thought that it was kind of a mess, perhaps an organised one for someone but a mess nonetheless.

Walking towards the pot and bringing shining green leaves within a small jar, I was ready to use forceps to take some leaves out to pour them into the clay pot when I heard a deep voice that stopped me right in my tracks

“Did you read all the treatises I gave you to read?”
“Yes Master.”
“Tea has intrinsic aroma…“

Why does he always try to test my memory? I remember everything I read here from the beginning, every words he told me.

“But tribute tea manufacturers like to mix small amount of Dryobalanops aromatica camphor, supposedly to enhance the aroma. The local people of Jian’an never mix any incense into tea, afraid to robe the natural aroma of tea.”
“If you can quote Cai Xiang’s works why didn’t you check the leaves you were going to take. They smell like they were badly stored and I think I can even smell some mushrooms in them.”
“Master I know you are a tea expert but no one could smell something like that from where you stand.”

Turning towards the door, my Master looked saddened at me with eyes whose colours were shifting from one to another, bringing fire to them but what looked like a weakening one, a thing that always bothered and frightened me. I know it has something to do with his powers and that one day if I succeed, I will be like him but I find this frightening.

“Did you listen to anything in the months you were here, young one?”
“I listened to everyone of your words.”
“Did you learn anything from what you listened to or from what you read?”
“A lot, I can tell you the whole list of Emperors from the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors until today.”
“And yet you learned nothing about who we are and how things works.”

At this moment, I hear them both, speaking at once, the deep human voice of my Master and the mighty, so human and yet so inhuman voice of … how should I call Him? I know how He is calling himself and how others calls Him but is it His true name?

“Because We are One and one day you will too become One.”

At that moment, his eyes turned back to normal and I could only hear one voice and a roar in the distant but his voice was empty, sad and tired as if he was missing something or someone and wanted to get back to where he was.

“But We are also two and we have to.”

* * *

Later that day, I heard my Master calling me and when I came back into his library, I saw he was packing things up.

“Hurry, go to the stocks and bring me the usual selection of teas for travelling.”
“Where are you going?”
“WE have been summoned and we will obey. After you go to the stocks, I need you to bring me the true Dragon Well leaves, those from the imperial bushes that the Quianlong Emperor wisely protected. I will prepare them myself as any error in the tea would have tremendous and unwanted consequences for me. And don’t forget after to pack some more just in case. I don’t know what will be expected from us but I am worried we might not be able to get back home anytime soon.”

And this is how our trip began, a trip that would lead us to wars, to battles and sufferings, to great losses and to great discoveries, through Asia for the greater good or so we thought at that time.

Look into the eyes…

October 29, 2018 / / 0 Comments

No, don’t look at me but look at him below.

Freud circa 1921

I am sure you are now really scared and ready to tell me everything and anything but don’t worry. I won’t ask too many things.

My topic today is more about clichés, “projections” or things we expect and so on.

So let’s think for one minute at your three favourite Western (by this I mean European or American) tea companies Now go on their websites or on their publications… Don’t you see a pattern or something in common (apart from the obvious teas they might have in common)?

No? Really? Well, my bet is that in 2 from these 3, you will find hints about someone exploring the wild (or not so wild) world to find the best or rarest teas. And if it is not someone exploring, it is the experience of the taster-in-chief.

You don’t need to worry, this isn’t a tropism linked only to tea, it is much worse in coffee but let’s try to stay on tracks.

What does this tell us? The obvious answer is that they really do explore the world. Let’s just assume for the purpose of my analysis that it is true. To be honest, the ideas developed afterwards are still valid even if they don’t sail the 7 seas).

Why is it so important? Because for us, it means this explorer hand-picks only the best leaves and teas for us, leading us to believe that the products of this company are the best.

However, I think it runs a little deeper than that. For me, the explorer bringing tea home is an archetype, i.e. a constantly recurring symbol that makes us think of the same things, even if it is at an unconscious level.

The explorer going in the unknown to bring the best of these countries to Europe is a cliché of colonial times when some people were doing this (or glorifying themselves about it, a bit like Tartarin de Tarason), more were thinking they could do so and even more were imagining things about these lands and the products brought to them.

All this created a mythology, which got into the collective imagination in Europe and America and that shows into this explorer image.

But you might ask ok it is a stereotype but why does it matter to companies?

It is all about trying to differentiate one brand from another but at the same time totally failing to do so because we are all excepting the same thing. But I am getting a little bit too quickly here.

The brand is the identity of a company or of a product but what are its effects? According to Kotler in Principles of marketing,. Pearson Education Australia (2009), a brand identity is built around attributes, benefits, values and personality.

Attributes are the values, things that a company wants to be identified by. Benefits are what the customers get from these attributes (the generated satisfaction), values is quite self-explicatory as is personality.

If one thinks about a company putting in the first row of its advertising or of its corporate message, the explorer getting in the wild world to bring back the best unknown products, the picture is quite obvious. Such company would want to promote exoticism, unicity, high quality and adventure. The customers buying his products from such a company would value the quality of their products but also their uniqueness, allowing them to feel like this only because of unconscious clichés going back to the old times.

If 2 out of 3 companies promote these images, why aren’t they trying to be more innovative in their branding approach? Simply because it works. It is sad but it is so. If you have something that works or that might work, you will not feel the need to go explore new territories. This protective and conservative approach is when you think about it quite opposed to the image the tea companies want to promote.

Before I conclude, you might ask: what is the link between this post and Freud. Some of you might have even thought that I was going to make a psychoanalysis of tea drinkers and you were probably disappointed. Freud came to me when I began gathering different elements before writing. He is not the inventor of the archetypes but the pictures of Carl Gustav Jung that I could find were far less scary than this one and I wanted to frighten you (no Halloween had nothing to do with that).