The Peculiar Truth about the Tea Thief

• 1848: A stranger ventured into the Huang Mountain region of northern China. He appeared with his manservant at a tea plantation. His hair fell down his back in a long braid, and he wore traditional Chinese attire. But the stranger’s face had Western features, especially around his eyes. The manservant explained to the plantation boss that his master was a noble representative from a province beyond the Great Wall, hence his appearance.

• The stranger had come to the area on behalf of his people to admire the tea farms. He was given a tour of the premises and shown how the tea leaves were processed for market.

• No one suspected that the stranger was a thief and a spy working on behalf of the British Empire. His secret mission would change the course of agricultural history.

• 1839-42: England and China engaged in the First Opium War. The British were exporting the drug to China; the Chinese didn’t want it. The trade war grew into a full military battle, which the mighty British Navy won.

• In revolt against their defeat, China raised taxes exorbitantly on all tea exports, thereby making tea too pricey for the average Englishman. Yet the British had been drinking tea since they were introduced to the beverage in the 1600s, and it had become a staple of national life.

• So the famed East India Company, the main importer of tea to Great Britain, devised a plan: they would steal tea plants from China and grow their own plants on their colonized lands in India.

• However, tea cultivation and production was a 2,000-year Chinese tradition that few outsiders knew about. Tea had never before been grown anywhere in the British Empire. The East India Company needed a spy in country who could not only steal the precious plants but also to learn all there was to know about tea farming and preparation.

• One major problem: After their humiliating war loss, the Chinese banned all Westerners from their soil on penalty of death. Anyone who spied for the British would be risking his life for tea.

• 1848: The East India Company found their spy in a Scotsman named Robert Fortune.

• He had already visited China and Japan as a traveling botanist on behalf of the Royal Horticultural Society, so Fortune was well acquainted with the territory and its flora. During those trips, he had disguised himself as an Asian to blend in. He was the natural choice for the task.

• At the farms, Fortune observed how only the tips of the tea leaves were harvested, and the pickers were adept at their work. Yet he wondered why he could only find farms that grew green teas, which came from the Camellia sinensis plants. Where were the black teas grown? Eventually, Fortune discovered the truth: both black and green teas come from the same plant. The only difference is how they’re processed. Black tea ferments for a few days in the sun; green tea for only a few hours.

• Fortune saw how the leaves were set on special mats to dry in the sun; how leaves were cooked in giant woks; how they were then rolled with giant rolling pins; how rows of workers removed stems. The entire process was a tightly-held secret that even few Chinese knew.

• Smuggling tea plants out of China was no easy task. They withered away after being removed from the soil. Potted plants grew mold. Special boxes, designed like miniature greenhouses, had to be constructed to keep the plants alive during transportation.

• Fortune’s stolen goods eventually made their way to India, where they thrived. Darjeeling was the site of the first Indian tea plantation in 1856. Then the plants took root in the British colony of Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. The East India Company’s mission was an astonishing success.

• Tea still thrives in those regions and is exported across the globe, all thanks to one man - a thief and spy - named Fortune.