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It’s in your gut

February 22, 2015 / Xavier / 2 Comments

Send your grain across the seas,
and in time, profits will flow back to you.
But divide your investments among many places,
for you do not know what risks might lie ahead.

Ecclesiastes 11.1-11.2

Why start with a quote from the Bible and one that seem to focus on investments?
To answer that, I must get a few days back in time when I was working on my stock of tea, putting them from bags into metal tins and trying to rationalise which tin should contain which tea.

Gordon Gekko in Wall Street Copyright 20th Century Fox

Then I must forward two days later when I was driving for work from one place to another and I heard someone on radio talking about stock picking, the name of a method to select stocks to invest into.
The more I heard them, the more it made me think about how we pick up teas. I kept on coming back to the way companies/banks/investors manage and pick their investments and stocks, wondering if there was anything in it for us?
Before we go any further in this post, don’t worry, this won’t turn into a lesson on investing.

What are the goals of any investor? Have the higher return on investment for the risk he/she is willing to take. Common sense says that if you risk a lot, you will probably earn more but this is not sure as it depends on a lot of factors and also on the expectations or likeness to take risks.
Classical strategies are to have some secure assets that will bring you the same amount of money whatever happens and some more risky ones that should reward you with a higher return on investments.

But how does this translate to tea selection?
Stop everything you were doing and look at your teas before thinking on how you picked them up.
Yes, that’s right, you have some you know are good ones and some newer that you expect much of.
In other words, you diversified your portfolio by splitting your stocks between secure assets (those you know) and risky ones (those you want to discover).
The split between both depends on your willingness to accept risk or if you are in an adventurer mood.

Technical analysis by Kevin Ryde

How do you select your more risky tea? You start by gathering some information on the place it was grown in, the kind of tea, how it was prepared, what is in it (if it is a flavoured tea), who is selling it… You will then compare these data to the one you already have, which will tell you what you should expect from it and you will perhaps even try it to see if it suits your tastes.
Based on all these information, you will decide if you want to buy a small portion of it, a bigger one or none at all.

And this was just an example as those of us who have a fondness for a peculiar tea (like Oolongs, Darjeelings…) are following an another strategy: the index fund, in which you try to replicate the moves of a peculiar set of an index, believing that no tea picking can beat on the long run, the constant quality of these peculiar assets you like, making the search for other good quality teas not worth the time and energy spent on it.

By acting like this, we just went to the same decision process that portfolio managers when they decide to invest in something.

Tea Cupping at Kairbetta Tea Estate, Nilgiri Region, South India Photo by Jack Strand

The only difference between both is that for tea, there are no mathematical models or computers trying to decide if you have to buy this tea or not based on a lot of maths.
And this is something I am sure will stay forever as I think that between personal tastes, crop quality, soil, harvest, the man behind the tea processing… there are too many human or natural factors turning a tea into the tea we like for a computer or model to summarize and decide for us.

And just when I was writing this, I found something said by a Canadian Kevin O’Leary (that I don’t know) that sums it up quite nicely.
“When you’re an investor, you can look at the quantitative and qualitative elements of an investment, but there’s a third aspect: What you feel in your gut.”

Go West

January 28, 2015 / Xavier / 2 Comments

No, this has nothing to do with the famous Pet Shop Boys’ song. What? No one else remembers this song? Such a shame. No, this one is not from the Pet Shop Boys but from Talk Talk.

Come on guys, know your classics or perhaps I should get back to tea? I think it is safer if we all agree to take the second option.

Go West is just the physical movement of the tea going from China to Russia, which will be our topic today. As my last post, I wrote this article after reading a book by Martha Avery titled The Tea Road, China and Russia meet across the steppe, a book which gave me a lot of information on this peculiar road (historical, economical,…).
The first recorded Russian experience with tea happened during the first recorded Russian embassy to the Khotogoit in 1638, the Khan made them try a “strong and bitter, green and fragrant” drink and then gave them some to bring back home, hoping to start a profitable business and to earn firearms to deal with the Manchu and the Chinese.

However, some Russian habits like a likeness to drink tea in glasses suggest that they might have had access to tea via the Persians, who drank tea like this and not the Chinese who drink tea in cups. And the first recorded trade agreements with people from this southern tea trade road were recorded during the reign of Ivan IV (1538-1584).

An example of a Russian tea glass

“Podstakannik mit Gold” by Jürg Vollmer / Maiakinfo – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons –

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Podstakannik_mit_Gold.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Podstakannik_mit_Gold.JPG

It seems that, in spite of the early reserved reactions, a taste for tea had developed by the end of the 17th century.

Following the first treaties between the two great powers, a border was defined and several fortresses were built on the Russian side; one of them being Kyakhta (funded in 1728), which became a major trade city for the Tea Road thanks to its status as the Russian one and only open trade city.

The Russian tea road

The Tea Road, source: CCTV News

The tea trade grew steadily until it reached its highest level in the 1850s with for example in 1851, over 9 million pounds of leaf tea and over 4.5 million pound of brick tea going through this town.
The rise in fast oceanic trade (and textile from Great Britain and cotton goods from India) led to a fall in these figures but the “lower quality” brick tea made for non-European Russians continued for a while to flow through Kyakhta.

A view on Kyakhta

A view on Kyakhta

http://www.vintage-views.com/RussianPictures/images/0124k5-plate2.jpg

Another sector that kept on following the inland road was the best teas or family teas, produced in the Southern China Fujian plantations, with families owning since generations these “gardens” and their name being used as a sign of quality. This was so important that until the 20th century, any good Kyakhta tea merchant had to know a list of these plantations and be able to recognise them.

And since the Russian drinkers of these higher teas needed less roasted teas, which suited overland transport (and not oceanic ones), Kyakhta was also used as a major trade gate for these teas.
I guess you will all agree with me that the typical image of the Russian tea is one of a roasted tea with a camp fire smell and taste to it, which was only a small part of the business (and probably not the most lucrative one).

Funny isn’t it?

Another proof can be found in a book titled Report on the Russian Caravan Trade with China by Harry Parkes where he looks at the trade going in and out of Russia with an eye for tea.

What does he say about it? “The superiority of the tea consumed in Russia to the generality of that imported in the United Kingdom may be accounted by the circumstance of its being a more costly kind, unsuited on account of its expensiveness to our markets, where, if imported, it is only used to mix with or flavour other teas.”

It seems that at that time (1854), Russians were known to drink high quality teas (and also lower ones as we saw above), whereas England was a country where people drank low quality teas or where people were unwilling to pay for a good quality tea.

I think this had something to do with the way, tea was being imported in both countries. The early maritime shipments produced a low price tea which seems to have been heavily roasted and was not always of the highest quality available, whereas the non brick teas imported through the Russian merchants were from specific and well-known plantations, with a lighter taste and a population willing to pay for it (Russian Europeans in Moscow and Saint Petersburg).
However in the end, the rise of the British East India Company, the opium solution (see here for more detail), the increased speed of the clippers, the Suez Canal, steam combustion, the appearance of tea plantations in Darjeeling and Assam made the Tea Road decline evermore and before the end of the 19th century, it was no longer an attractive place to trade tea through (and Kyakhta had also to face competition in the 1860s after the opening of the whole Russian-Chinese border to trade).
Such is history; some routes, countries and places flourish when those from before struggle and in the end vanish.

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North

December 26, 2014 / Xavier / 6 Comments

I began reading The Tea Road by Martha Avery or how China and Russia meet across the steppe (the original subtitle). As could be expected from it, it is far more than a book on tea and contains a lot on Russian-Chinese relations and how the steppe influenced both of them (at least where I am in the book right now).

However, what I found really interesting was the chapter on Da Sheng Kui or “Great Prosperous Chief” an unknown (to me) Chinese conglomerate that came to dominate the trade with Mongolia and the tea trade with it and this post is written thanks to elements from the book as I couldn’t find elsewhere information on this company.
So I would first like to thank the author Martha Avery for her work on this unknown (to me) topic.

Why focus on this company? I will give you some figures taken from the book to explain my choice. 9 Chinese firms were dealing with Mongolia but the largest was Da Sheng Kui.
It was active in business from 1700 to 1929 and at its height, it employed 7,000 people and had a turnover of 10,000,000 silver dollars (19th century currency unit).

After the Quing took the power, China recovered from the difficult economical conditions of the late Ming period (mostly caused by the Little Ice Age and several natural catastrophes, which in China produce quite often a change of dynasty).
An increase in general welfare, population and less taxation created the right conditions for the merchants to flourish, even if the Quing limited the contact with outsiders and wary of the power of wealthy merchants limited their trading licences to better control them.

The history of Da sheng Kui is closely linked to the Quing dynasty and to their conquest of Mongolia.
His founder Wang Xiangqing sold his services to Manchu forces guarding a passage in the Great Wall before going with them in Mongolia to supply them with local and Chinese products (mostly tobacco, food, tea, livestock…) and at the same time, making useful contacts with the Mongolian tribes.

When they had taken control of most of their nomad neighbours, the Manchu established new trading rules abolishing the previous horse markets and issuing licences for lü meng shang or “travelling Mongolia companies”.
These companies could not have fixed places of residence in Mongolia, could only follow a predetermined route, could not pay for goods with silver (the metal more sought after by the Chinese) and could not stay in Mongolia for more than one year.

However, Wang Xiangqing first followed its “tradition” by providing the military and administrative base close to the Western parts of Mongolia (as some tribes still fought up to the mid-1750s) with the logistical network to bring them supply.

What really gave Da sheng Kui its competitive edge came in line a little bit later as under Jiaqing reign (1796-1820), the company was one of the two issued a long piao or Dragon Ticket, a ticket that was not only a licence to commerce but also one to become a kind of bank.
This was a very effective syphoning tool as the Mongolian nobility that wanted to buy good either for themselves or to sell to their “banners” (the area under their rule) would ask for a loan to the agent of Da Sheng Kui making their “banners” accountable for these loans that were paid back mostly in livestock.
When combining high pricing (for selling), low pricing (for buying), high interests and monopoly, it is no wonder that the company made huge profits.

This banking office was really important in their trading process as it gave them the money to caery their other businesses.
And the loaning office became even more important as after 1789, the Mongolian princes had to make regular visits to Beijing to pay tribute and attend at the Manchu court. Without the money to travel or unwilling to keep so much silver on them (as the travel, “proper face” and tribute expenses were quite high), they had to request the bank to loan them an amount of money determined according to the number of adult males in their “banners”. The bank personnel travelled with the princes and paid for everything.

But let’s get back to tea, somewhere in the 18th century with enough resources and in order to maximise profits, the company developed many specialised subsidiaries specialising in selling and buying different products from the whole China.
For tea, the company was San Yu Chuan or Three Jade Rivers, which mainly sourced its tea from selected locations in Hubei and Hunan.
In the early years of the 20th century, it bought between 6 and 8,000 cases per year for Mongolia (something between 380,000 and 510,000 kilos), with more being bought to be sold to the Russians.
San Yu Chuan mixed the origins and supply sources to adapt to the demand both in terms of quantity (just in case one area could not produce enough tea) and quality (through improvements in terms of process).

Without the right to settle, Da Sheng Kui had to use caravans to go and distribute its products to its customers and back to China with a maximum of 15 caravans on the road at one time, each of these including 14 smaller ones (nearly 3,000 camels).
The cases containing tea were filled with bricks of different size and the number in one case was the name of the product sold to the Mongolians (which preferred certain products of certain origins to others).

This successful company disappeared in 1929 for an unknown reason but probably because of the political turmoil in China.

What I find interesting in this history is how the political, financial and trade systems were combined together to create a monopolistic system that supplied tea (among other things) and took away all the resources from an area.
Tea as an instrument of power? Who would have thought that?

I find however that the amount of information on this company and on the others is not really big. Perhaps in Chinese? Do you know anything about these trade companies? About this trading-political system?

Without the answer to these questions, I will stop and resume my reading of this interesting book and see if I can find more information on this tea road between East and West.

Teamancer

November 24, 2014 / Xavier / 4 Comments

– Call me Mr.. P.

He was standing in a big office at the top of a building, one of many owned by a big software corporation, one that is not known by many but that I know is providing so-called “defensive” software for most big companies/administrations.
I made a mental check of my appearance even if I had done it in the elevator after going through the usual security screen when you deal with such big fishes.

This was not an OCD but something necessary to deal with corporates. You aren’t in my profession for long without knowing a couple of things and the more you are “up to it” and the more the Mr. Johnson call you. And one of the golden rules is to be able to merge in your surroundings.

What I do? You don’t expect me to tell you, do you?
– And you can call me Mr.. Beaumont.

– Are you French?

– I am from here and there.

– If you don’t want to talk, let’s go straight ahead to business.

– I am all ears.

– I heard that you have a certain talent to find items that are rather difficult to find or to obtain. And I would like you to find something for me.

– What have you lost?

– I didn’t say I had lost anything. I am quite surprised you don’t try to secure a deal with me.

– Do I need to? If you spoke to your Mr. Johnson, you know who I am and that I am among the best in my field. But also that I don’t secure deals. I have my rates and I don’t discuss them. If you send someone to look after me, you have already accepted them. […] So I ask you again. What have you lost?
Without a word, Mr.. P got up and went to a little screen and dialled something on it before getting back to his seat and waiting there without saying a thing.

I knew this game, I had been playing it for a long, long time by now and I had become quite good at it by now. So I just kept silent and waited.
Before long, I heard a ding coming out of nowhere and Mr. P. just turned around and brought some kind of kettle before pouring coloured water in a small ceramic cup.

After smelling it, he drank it quietly, taking its time and enjoying it before turning back to me.
– Tell me Mr. Beaumont, what do you know about Camellia?

– Camilla?

I began mentally looking for all the Camilla I knew or that were related to this company before being stopped in my tracks.

– No. Camellia sinensis.
I just looked at him, trying to find out what this was all about.
– It seems you don’t get it. Camellia sinensis. The tea plant.

– You want me to retrieve some tea for you. Is that it?

– You say “some tea” like I was sending you to look for something quite ordinary. I know what you are charging Mr. Beaumont. I have enough to deal with you but I don’t like wasting my time or my money and I wouldn’t send you hunting some ordinary tea.

– Then tell me, what will I be looking for?

– A treasure Mr. Beaumont, a real treasure. A storage of 2008 Pu’er, the first year, the former Chinese government approved a standard declaring pu’er tea as a “product with geographical indications”.

– And I guess you know where I can find them?

– Not really. If I knew everything I wouldn’t need you.

– So I am to find some old thing and you don’t have a clue where it is hidden?

– I can help you but I cannot expose myself too much. I will give you a name that can lead you to something, a French called Leloup.
When I left the building, I had accepted the mission but I had no real clue about where I was heading and what I was going to do.

Never say never

October 20, 2014 / Xavier / 6 Comments

I know I said that studies should be taken with caution but I found an interesting one and I wanted to share its conclusions with you.
This study shows that price tag can change the way people experience wine.

If you want, you can read it here or you can read my summary (with some short cuts as I am no neural sciences expert).
20 students (among them 11 males) who said they liked and occasionally drank red wine were asked to perform a test to “study the effect of sampling time on flavor” while they were performing another test.

Each one was told they would be tasting 5 different Cabernet Sauvignons, identified by price and put in a random order but there were only 3 different wines.

One of them was given its normal price tag, another its normal price and a lower one, and the last one its normal price and a higher one.

The final results were that the students could taste 5 different wines and that the more expensive ones tasted better.
I will spare you all the neural things but the obvious thing is that more research has to be done to see if experts will replicate these first results.

Let’s take a step back and think about the results and how they could be used for tea.

It would mean that for specific origins and flushes; the higher the price, the higher the pleasure to drink it.

I guess we won’t have any answer here unless someone made blind tastes with other people.
If you think tea is a normal product (ie with price defined by a cost-based approach), this is disturbing. However, if we think that some teas (not all of them) could in a way be considered luxury goods, then the picture changes and they partly become Veblen goods, goods whose demand is proportional to their price.

I said partly because only a few people will ever pay millions of Euros for some tea
What teas could fit into this pattern? My guess is that teas with a certain prestige around their name, teas with limited harvest each year could perfectly fit the bill.

This does not mean that we might pay too much each and every tea but that the high price of some teas will create the perfect conditions for our mind to believe we are drinking an awesome tea.
Sometimes our mind doesn’t mind playing a little fool trick on us but remember it is the one saying “Trust in me…”

Are robots more likely to have good shoes or to drink good tea?

September 25, 2014 / Xavier / 8 Comments

I will share a secret with you: I am doomed. I know in the end, we all are but in my case, I am doomed earlier than you.

Why? Because a study said so.

Now you are thinking that I am really out of my mind but not at all. Once at school I read in my English a text that said that according to a study, left-handed had a shorter lifespan than the others because the world is made for right-handed, which will lead one day to a fatal accident.
This is why I only have a relative confidence in studies that show up from time to time telling you that something is that or something else is that.

Because they are based on maths or science but we (the whole of us) are lacking the information to know what is really inside them.

With luck, you might get access to the article and data that allowed someone to give you an information but most of the time, you will only get a summary like the one I made at the beginning. The other problem is that if you get access to all the data, you (like me) are probably lacking the background to double-check things.
You are probably wondering why I am speaking about this or why do I have a title that is somewhere on the road between a survey and a new version of Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).

The answer is simple: because I am reading more and more things about how green tea (and now even white tea) seems to be the new solution for almost everything (I am only slightly exaggerating).
Don’t get me wrong, I like when new people drink tea and I don’t have anything against scientists and new discoveries and findings.

What I don’t like is people doing things for the wrong reasons (unless they change along time) and under influence of people that are supposed to be experts in their respective domains.

To me this whole thing screams like marketing but the bad side of it, like when companies are trying to sell their products using whatever arguments they have even if they are false or more likely half right (the most famous example being the soap that washes whither than white (is that a kind of new colour that we don’t know about?)).
I have troubles with the concept of new discoveries being made of über product that do all for you, even more when this über product is linked to tea and when big companies jump on this opportunity to launch a new product (that is not at all what the scientists tried and tested) selling it thanks to these new arguments.
You can listen to scientists and to ads but please use your mind when hearing something and try to learn a little more about what they say (and not only through the Internet) and don’t fall for easy traps.

In other words, drink tea but don’t expect wonders apart from the taste and the experience (if it was so wonderful, it would be used in the whole world).
And now, it is time to tell you the results of my new study on robots and if they are more likely to have bad shoes or drink good tea…

Rise and fall and …

August 22, 2014 / Xavier / 5 Comments

After a first glimpse at Indonesian history, mostly on how tea came to it and how the Dutch implemented different agricultural policies (http://teaconomics.teatra.de/2014/06/24/an-unexpected-journey/), it is time to see if Indonesia was such a big tea producing tea country and what happened to it.

As for my previous article on this topic, I did some research but I had troubles with some raw numbers or general statements that don’t say if they are related to quantity or value. In the end however I managed to find some raw data and information through all the colonial period and early independent one and this is what I will try to present here.

In 1885; sugar, coffee and tobacco represented 72% of the total value of the different exportations from the Dutch East Indies but tea was growing up fast as in 1928, 17% of the tea produced in the world came from these islands and in 1929, tea was the fifth export (in value) before tobacco and coffee.

However, what is unusual is that at that time the main market was not the “motherland” (a common thing for all colonial power) but London with the British houses ruling the tea market in Batavia. (1) Was it pragmatism from the Dutch with acknowledgement of where and who was the market or just a manifestation of the British supremacy over this trade?

From hints I gathered, it would say that the second option is probably the most realistic one since the main problems faced by the Dutch prior and during World War I was the irregular quality of the tea being harvested, which was a problem for their sales to America and Australia, where the Dutch had launched from 1913 on a marketing campaign to sell their products. (2)

This shows that they tried to get around and find new markets.

Assam teas were introduced in 1878 and quickly became the only ones used, probably because these plants were more efficient and also because the London market was the one targeted at that time.

However, things only heated up in 1900 when European companies (including British ones) began investing in bigger and better lands, resulting in a quick growth between 1919 and 1931 and a good reputation of some teas like those of Permantag Siantar (3)

The production changed from year to year and in 1921, there was a huge crisis (without any indications of what might have happened) that made the production dropped as showed in the table below (and don’t blame me for the wrong figures, I just copied them).

in kilos	1919	1920	1921
Java	42,500,000	47,000,000	28,000,000
Sumatra	4,000,000	5,000,000	4,000,000
Total	46,500,000	52,000,000	32,000,000

Tea production in the Dutch East Indies (1919-1921) (2)

But where did they go?

in kilos	1919	1920	1921
Netherlands	25,136,000	16,865,000	11,203,000
United Kingdom	12,356,000	11,718,000	6,638,000
Australia	7,262,000	8,753,000	9,786,000
USA	2,278,000	3,475,000	2,537,000
Canada	634,000	796,000	38,000
Europa	722,000	36,000	17,000
Singapore	466,000	452,000	60,000
China	1,117,000	35,000	0
Others	275,000	452,000	472,000
Total	50,246,000	42,582,000	30,751,000

Tea exportations from Java, 1919-1921 (2)

in kilos	1919	1920	1921
Netherlands	1,729,870	1,165,779	1,450,892
United Kingdom	1,790,072	2,663,784	2,389,733
Australia	15,000	0	600
USA	64,000	118,344	0
Singapore	549,320	34,582	119,065
Java	89,591	12, 630	35,167
Others	2,652	25,468	2,336
Total	4,249,505	5,130,587	4,197,793

Tea exportations from Sumatra, 1919-1921 (2)

in kilos	1919	1920	1921
Netherlands	26,865,870	18,030,779	12,653,892
United Kingdom	14,146,072	14,381,784	9,027,733
Australia	7,277,000	8,753,000	9,786,600
USA	2,342,000	3,593,344	2,537,000
Canada	634,000	796,000	38,000
Europa	722,000	36,000	17,000
Singapore	1,015,320	486,582	179,065
China	1,117,000	35,000	0
Java	89,591	122,630	35,167
Others	277,652	477,468	474,336
Total	54,486,505	46,712,587	34,748,793

Tea exportations from the Dutch East Indies, 1919-1921 based on (2)

I hope I got it right as the French word was not exportations but rather exploitations, which could have something to do with the ownership but this hypothesis seems rather strange and out of place, so I kept the exportations idea.

Apart from obvious mistakes in the Sumatra figures (the figures simply don’t add) and a difference with the total produced (that could be explained for Sumatra by rounding things down), these tables are interesting and show for example that the first exportation country for tea was not the United Kingdom but the Netherlands.

The only explanation is that these figures are just the ports of destination and not the countries of final consumption (even if both can be the same), which would be consistent with the British houses ruling the market and with the usual obligation in the colonies to go through a limited set of ports, mostly located in the motherland, where products would be transformed or simply shipped to another country.

The production by the natives was stopped by this 1921 crisis as a lot of factories either stopped buying from them or paid such a low price that only the big plantations were able to keep on growing tea. (2)

What is rather interesting is that in these years, the Dutch tried to move ahead as for them, even if the United Kingdom was the best client, it was still below the pre-war level and this could mean that diversification was the way to go.

This lead to several initiatives like making rules on the tea sales regarding quality and general conditions (rules made by the Handels vereeniging (Trading Organisation) and enforced by the Vereeniging voor de thee cultuur in Nederlandsche-Indie (Organisation for the culture of tea in the Dutch East Indies), the Thee Export Bureau (Tea Export Bureau) in Batavia and the Chamber of Commerce for the Dutch East Indies in London) while making huge advertising efforts thanks to the financial support of the Vereeniging van Thee-Importeurs (Association of Tea Importers).

There were also intents to sell to new countries like Canada or other English speaking countries using the networks of the British companies already active in Indonesia. (4)

These efforts produced an increase in the exportations and therefore in the production in the following decade with the main buyer being the United Kingdom and then (but well behind) the Netherlands, Australia and Egypt.

in kilos	Java	Sumatra	Total
1930	61,419,000	10,159,000	71,578,000
1931	65,922,000	12,060,000	77,982,000
1932	64,188,000	13,293,000	77,481,000

Dutch East Indies tea exportations in 1930-1932 (5)

Tea, the second export in value before World War II, suffered like all the other exportation crops first from the Japanese invasion as the number of plantations dropped (from 138 to 97) and then from the Indonesian War of Independence.

By 1948 (one year before the end of this war), only 25% of the pre-World War II plantations were still cultivated and the 1947 tea production was of 1,500 tons (1/40 of what it was before WWII). However in 1949, the situation was already improving. (6)

I don’t have any further sources or articles on what happened after but my guess (feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong or if you have more information) is that the tea plantations suffered from the different fights in the country as well as the development pattern focusing on industry and oil until tea became trendy and again …

Robequain Charles, Le développement économique des Indes Néerlandaises. Le rôle des capitaux hollandais et étrangers in Annales de Géoographie 1934 t.43 n°241
de Wildeman Emile, A propos du Théier in Revue de botanique appliquée et d’agriculture coloniale, 2e année bulletin n°16, décembre 1922
Robequain Charles Problèmes de colonisation dans les Indes néerlandaises in Annales de Géographie 1941 T50 n°281
de Wildeman Emile, A propos du Théier in Revue de botanique appliquée et d’agriculture coloniale, 4e année bulletin n°29, janvier 1924
Albenque A. Le commerce des Indes Néerlandaises depuis 1931 dans Annales de Géographie t.43 n°242, 1934
Evolution de l’économie indonésienne in Etudes et conjoncture – Economie mondiale 5e année n°2, 1950

‘Cause I’m TNT

July 27, 2014 / Xavier / 2 Comments

First I should confess that I should have written down the good tips @lahikmajoe wrote to me (http://lahikmajoedrinkstea.blogspot.fr/2010/07/wiens-teehandlung-schonbichler.html) as I had no Internet connexion while I was in Vienna but after coming back, it seems I did rather well.

I didn’t manage to find this nice tea shop/salon and after reading through his article once more I am quite saddened, even though I was even more saddened to discover that a place with such a promising aspect had moved to an unknown address a few years ago.

Anyway, while in Vienna, I made three discoveries : one is Haas und Hass (even if @lahikmajoe had talked about it and I remembered more or less where it was supposed to be), the second one is Café Schwarzenberg and the third one is the secret behind the title.

Haas und Haas is situated near the cathedral in Vienna and is both a shop for different specialities (tea, chocolate…) and a place where one can sit and have a morning tea, a high tea, an evening tea under the shadows of ivies.
I selected a Milky Oolong from their long list of teas and they did it right and on spot.
However a green tea (I don’t remember which one) was a bit too bitter, probably from a little too long in the water or from a little too much leaves (as I didn’t see the leaves, I can’t say).
From what the people around me had, I think the high tea thing was rather good.

Café Schwarzenberg is one of these classical, typical Vienna coffee houses with everything being where and how it should be.
The tea selection was not big but contained a little bit of everything and a mention that it was up to their customers to make the tea the way they wanted.
And then I got this…

What a shock.
Even if I couldn’t check the temperature (let’s be snobby for a couple of seconds), I got the feeling that everything was perfectly made and the cups of tea were perfect.

Now I am sure you are wondering what I found out and you will probably have guessed it has something to do with the title.
Vienna is full of coffee houses and I went to several ones, getting loose leaf tea in a paper filter (usually a Darjeeling) but it was always bitter and you know why?
Because it was fully loaded. I took a look at one of these filters and they were too heavy with between 4 and 5 g of tea for a medium teapot.
No wonder that it was too strong and that I couldn’t anything about it.

This is something that got me puzzled for some time now: why do people always try to put too much tea? Do they believe that they give us enough tea for our money? Do they believe that the stronger the better (like most people prefer a good cup of coffee)?

An unexpected journey

June 24, 2014 / Xavier / 0 Comments

Indonesia as one the biggest tea producer (in numbers) before World War II? When I read this in one of The Devotea’s posts, I was quite puzzled and I started to dig into this topic.

According to Wikipedia and the FAO, Indonesia was in 2011, the 8th producer of tea in the world with a production just over 140,000 tons.
But this didn’t give me a hint about the situation prior to World War II and its evolution since that time.
I turned out to good old Internet and a good legal resource to find old scientific journals in French and in other languages Persee and after some researches, I found a lot of old French articles from the 20s-30s but with a few from the 80s-90s dealing with this topic (at least in part).
I found quite a lot of information and that these people had already faced a problem I had: that most books or articles on this topic were written in Dutch. (1) If anyone has access to any info and can pass it to me, it would really help.

I won’t go yet into details about the numbers but tea was important to the Dutch East Indies (as they called Indonesia then), not for local consumption but for exportation, the goal of the first European colonies (there were also settlement colonies but Indonesia was not one of these and the Netherlands were never overwhelmed with a big population).

Parts of Indonesia were first dealt with by the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) until it was nationalised in 1796 by the Batavian Republic (after going bankrupt)
During the Napoleonic Wars, most of the possessions of the former VOC were occupied or controlled by the British before being given back to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands following the Congress of Vienna and the Anglo-Dutch peace treaty that followed.
What had the VOC achieved? A lot but I didn’t find a lot regarding tea in Indonesia (tea trade is another topic). The only exception was the land ownership, which was quite complex and in a way became more complex thanks to the VOC because of the different treaties it made with the local powers and the differences in what both parties understood from the terms and the concepts used. (2)

Following two wars in the area against local people and the Belgian Revolution in 1830, the Netherlands was in need of money as they were facing bankruptcy. Rhis is when they decided to get the most of their colonies. The new Dutch East Indies governor Johannes Van den Bosch’s priority reflected that new policy with a peculiar focus given to the increase of the resources (and therefore the money) drawn from the territory he was appointed to
To do this, he implemented (among other things) the Cultivation System in which the local peasants had to dedicate 20% of all lands to exportation crops or to work 60 days every year on government owned plantations. (3)
This system that slowly turned Indonesia into a huge plantation with sales going through a whole network of middlemen gave enough cash to the Netherlands but faced opposition because of famines and epidemics created by the priority to export crops, because of independent merchants that preferred free trade and because of the publication of Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company.

The public opinion in the Netherlands forced the government to change its politics with first a “Liberal Period” focusing on free trade, free investments by anyone willing to do it, which saw an increase in the number of big plantations (owned by European and American companies) and in the exportations. (4)
Obviously, this led to a focus on plantations being optimised when it comes to crops thanks to the work of the different specialised or not garden stations that tested, implemented and improved the different cultures, following what could be defined as the British model implemented in India and probably elsewhere in the world. (5) (6)

This policy was followed by an “Ethical Policy” (starting in 1901) with a focus on the local people and the civilisation mission focus in the colonies. However, this new approach had to deal with money problems to fund these investments (in infrastructures, education…).

I just went quickly through some general things regarding agriculture in Indonesia that will allow me to introduce tea production and the reason for the sudden changes during and after World War II.

One question however remains to be solved: when was tea introduced in Indonesia?
I found two answers: 1826 with seeds/trees coming directly from China and with the first batches sent to the Netherlands in 1835 (7) but this would mean that it was there before Robert Fortune stole it from China. The other answer is 1898. (4)

(1) Coolhass W. Ph. Outre-Mer néerlandais in Revue d’histoire des colonies t.44 n°156-157, 3e et 4e trimestres 1957
(2) Durand Frédéric, La question foncière aux Indes Néerlandaises, enjeux économiques et luttes politiques (1619-1942) in Archipel Volume 58 1999
(3) Durand Frédéric, Trois siècles dans l’île du teck. Les politiques forestières aux Indes néerlandaises (1602-1942) in Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer t. 80 n°299, 2e trimestre 1993
(4) Evolution de l’économie indonésienne dans Etudes et conjoncture – Economie mondiale 5e année n°2, 1950
(5) Maas J. G. J. A., La culture et la sélection du Palmier Elaeis aux Indes Néerlandaises dans Revue de botanique appliquée et d’agriculture coloniale, 4e année bulletin n°34, juin 1924
(6) van Haal C. J. J., La sélection des Caféiers aux Indes Néerlandaises dans Revue de botanique appliquée et d’agriculture coloniale, 19e année bulletin n°209, janvier 1939
(7) Robequain Charles Problèmes de colonisation dans les Indes néerlandaises dans Annales de Géographie 1941 t. 50 n°281

To the unsung heroes

May 29, 2014 / Xavier / 6 Comments

Since our dear friend TheDevotea asked some of us to blog for Lady Devotea’s Birthday (something he called Lady Devotea’s Birthday Blog Bonanza whatever that might mean), I decided to postpone my usual blog posting and find a better topic that the one I had in mind, which I did quickly.

I know that I said that tea is not for women only but after thinking about it, there is still something that links together women and tea.

There is the obvious duo made by Catherine of Braganza and Anna Duchess of Bedford, both of them being famous all over the world.
There is the less known (at least for me) Penelope Baker, host of the Edenton Tea Party, an all women boycott without disguise (as they all signed a proclamation sent to a London newspaper). Those were heroes and they decided among other things not to buy British teas as long as the taxes were not cut.

But the link runs deeper than that and in fact, it goes back to China and the myths about some teas being plucked by virgins clad in white robes with gloves and stuff like that.
I don’t judge it as in every civilization, you find similar myths or ideas about the magical power given to herbs/food by such young women.

But even nowadays, you find more women working in the tea gardens when it comes to plucking (men working usually in the other areas of the tea gardens/factories) as they are said to have higher yield than men when it comes to tea and also because plucking is said to be an “easy” job as one doesn’t need much physical strength to do it.

Both these ideas created a kind of “fetishism” of the woman in the tea gardens, and they are truly the unsung heroes of the tea industry.
Just look all over the Internet for pictures of the plucking season and guess what you will see in most (and I do say most) countries?
These women are so clearly identified with tea that when the Tea Board of India decided to protect Darjeeling tea by creating a certification and a logo, guess what they went for?

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