STRANGE BUT TRUE

THE WEIRD HISTORY OF TEA: Tea Smugglers, Opium Wars, Boston Rebels, Stolen Plants, Fortune-Telling, Strange Ceremonies, and Other Bizarre Stories from the Teapot

von Guy Wann, Sparktrail Press

210 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Tea looks harmless enough. A few leaves, some hot water, maybe a biscuit nearby minding its own business. But behind that polite little cup is a history packed with smugglers, emperors, samurai, spies, wars, taxes, stolen plants, fortune-tellers, bizarre rituals, and people who became dangerously emotional about when to add the milk.STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF TEA follows one remarkable leaf from ancient China to monasteries, royal courts, colonial plantations, Boston Harbor, Victorian drawing rooms, Tibetan mountains, Moroccan tea tables, Russian samovars, Japanese ceremonies, and modern bubble tea shops.Along the way, discover how tea was once used as medicine and money, why British taxes created a massive smuggling underworld, how the Boston Tea Party turned a beverage into a revolutionary weapon, why a Scottish botanist traveled through China in disguise stealing tea plants and knowledge, and how Britain's appetite for tea became tangled with opium, empire, and war.You'll also meet tea-drinking monks trying not to fall asleep, samurai turning tea into a competitive sport, emperors obsessing over foam, fortune-tellers staring suspiciously into soggy leaves, and generations of perfectly reasonable adults arguing over milk as though national security depended on it.Funny, cheeky, surprising, and packed with strange true stories, this is not a book about how to make tea.It is the story of how tea helped make history.Put the kettle on. Things are about to get weird.

• Reihe: STRANGE BUT TRUE
• ISBN: 9798173013477
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 09.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published