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A Time For Tea: Travels Through China and India in Search of Tea
Traces the history of tea, and describes the author's experiences visiting the places where the tea industry began
287 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
39 people are currently reading
504 people want to read
About the author
Jason Goodwin
45 books412 followersJason Goodwin's latest book is YASHIM COOKS ISTANBUL: Culinary Adventures in the Ottoman Kitchen.
He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University - and returned to an old obsession to write The Gunpowder Gardens or, A Time For Tea: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award. When the Berlin Wall fell, he walked from Poland to Istanbul to encounter the new European neighbours. His account of the journey, On Foot to the Golden Horn, won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize in 1993.
Fascinated by what he had learned of Istanbul's perpetual influence in the region, he wrote Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, a New York Times Notable Book. 'If you want to learn,' he says, 'write a book.' Lords of the Horizons was described by Time Out as 'perhaps the most readable history ever written on anything.'
Having always wanted to write fiction, he became popular as the author of the mystery series beginning with The Janissary Tree, which won the coveted Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2007. Translated into more than 40 languages, the series continues with The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, An Evil Eye and The Baklava Club. They feature a Turkish detective, Yashim, who lives in 19th century Istanbul.
YASHIM COOKS ISTANBUL is an illustrated collection of recipes, inspired by the cookery in his five published adventures.
He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University - and returned to an old obsession to write The Gunpowder Gardens or, A Time For Tea: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Award. When the Berlin Wall fell, he walked from Poland to Istanbul to encounter the new European neighbours. His account of the journey, On Foot to the Golden Horn, won the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize in 1993.
Fascinated by what he had learned of Istanbul's perpetual influence in the region, he wrote Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, a New York Times Notable Book. 'If you want to learn,' he says, 'write a book.' Lords of the Horizons was described by Time Out as 'perhaps the most readable history ever written on anything.'
Having always wanted to write fiction, he became popular as the author of the mystery series beginning with The Janissary Tree, which won the coveted Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2007. Translated into more than 40 languages, the series continues with The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, An Evil Eye and The Baklava Club. They feature a Turkish detective, Yashim, who lives in 19th century Istanbul.
YASHIM COOKS ISTANBUL is an illustrated collection of recipes, inspired by the cookery in his five published adventures.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 18, 2012
ah well, I wrote it... But in fact I'm as proud of it now (having carefully scanned and proofed the text for the new ebook version) as I was when it first came out.
The New York Times review, by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt:
Was it that in his boyhood dreams of glory he imagined himself to be one Captain Hawkeye (until spectacles were prescribed), who “owed a lot to a cherished line of English traders and pirates”? Or was it simply because among his two grandmothers’ cluttered possessions he had found Chinese tea caddies from their British imperial pasts?
Whatever the cause, readers are fortunate. For a young English travel writer named Jason Goodwin has been inspired by something in his past to devote his funny, evocative first book to the history and geography of tea. After all, tea is a fluid that one might take for granted these days, but a Zen myth holds it to have originated when a monk frustrated by his sleepiness tore off his eyebrows and cast them on the ground, whereupon the first tea bushes sprang up to provide him with a stimulant. And a 19th-century writer in the Edinburgh Review compared tea to nothing less than the truth: “suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had courage to taste it.”
In fact one takes tea so for granted that instantly upon thinking about it one encounters one’s ignorance: In what sort of soil does it grow? How is it processed for market? Is there a system for grading it? Why can’t one grow it in the garden?
But Mr. Goodwin, a charming tease, withholds instant gratification. Instant of cutting straight to the cha (as tea is called in Chinese), he first exercises his skill at evoking a sense of place. “In Hong Kong the inanimate do business along with the quick. Each ramp on a concrete flight of steps proclaims the merit of a product; dustbins call your attention to the Hong Kong Bank; an enormous Marlboro cowboy hangs tough on the flank of a high-rise — as you come close, he shyly disintegrates into a swirl of meaningless squiggles but recomposes himself, as moody as ever, as you walk away.”
Or he deftly dissolves the present into the past, for instance by riding the Hong Kong-Canton hydrofoil and then imagining what it must have been like for ships of the East India Company to travel in and out of the Pearl River estuary at the height of the tea trade 200 years ago.
Or he sums up Chinese history in a few brush strokes: “China’s concern through millennia has been to keep floods and barbarians controlled. The Great Wall of China was like a dam to hold back people.”
But one wants him to get on with it. How many kinds of tea are there? What is the difference between the best and the worst?
All in good time, gentle reader. As Professor Zhuang, chairman of the Fujian Tea Society, explained to the author when asked about classifying teas: “There is a system. It makes about 8,000 distinctions. Perhaps there are more exceptions to the system than distinctions within it. I have 73 years in tea, but I do not know the system. . . . In the West you use an alphabet. In China we learn characters. It is the same with tea.”
By and by one gets the point. Mr. Goodwin is not going to explain tea. It is far too complex a subject to systematize. When the Japanese seized Taiwan in 1895 and rationalized the business of buying tea, they came up with the following grades: “Standard, Fully Standard, Standard to Good, On Good, Good Leaf, Good, Fully Good, Good Up, Good to Superior, Fully Superior, Superior Up, Superior to Fine, On Fine, Fine, Fine Up, Fine to Finest, Finest to Choice, Choice, Strict Superior, Choicest and Fancy.” One could get confused.
What Mr. Goodwin has in mind is to reveal the process of growing, preparing and marketing tea in its natural setting. So we visit auctions and tea gardens, learn about the agony of the leaves and the twist, witness the process of fermentation and drying.
And then comes the climactic moment when Armajeet Sing, a Darjeeling broker, bends over the tasting table of a tea-garden manager named Navim. “Armajeet’s nose descended on the volcano. It was a historic nose, a Persian nose, passed down from Zoroastrian priests to hawking desert lords, from hawkers to warriors and from warriors to the invaders who rode into the desert of Rajasthan. It was quite large but straight and slim; the skin was fine and very pale over a slender bridge, with nostrils that might have been turned in Cremona. It flared over the volcano, burrowed in and re-emerged with a scattering of wet tea-leaves adhering to its tip, which trembled slightly over the verdict. The small mustache was a discreet cushion for the instrument.
“Armajeet straightened up. Navim stooped anxiously.
” ‘Very useful,’ said the Nose. For a brief moment I thought I saw Navim actually smile.”
Mr. Goodwin ends on an offbeat note. He describes the sad fate of the clipper ship Cutty Sark, which was built in 1869 for speed but arrived on the scene just as the age of steam began and was “petrified by history.” Like Mr. Goodwin’s fantasy Captain Hawkeye, the Cutty Sark came too late to trade tea.
But if ship and swashbuckler are ossified, Mr. Goodwin’s imagination stays vibrant. It has summoned up all the tea in China and India. And made one thirst for a spicy cup of the brew.
end of review
The New York Times review, by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt:
Was it that in his boyhood dreams of glory he imagined himself to be one Captain Hawkeye (until spectacles were prescribed), who “owed a lot to a cherished line of English traders and pirates”? Or was it simply because among his two grandmothers’ cluttered possessions he had found Chinese tea caddies from their British imperial pasts?
Whatever the cause, readers are fortunate. For a young English travel writer named Jason Goodwin has been inspired by something in his past to devote his funny, evocative first book to the history and geography of tea. After all, tea is a fluid that one might take for granted these days, but a Zen myth holds it to have originated when a monk frustrated by his sleepiness tore off his eyebrows and cast them on the ground, whereupon the first tea bushes sprang up to provide him with a stimulant. And a 19th-century writer in the Edinburgh Review compared tea to nothing less than the truth: “suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had courage to taste it.”
In fact one takes tea so for granted that instantly upon thinking about it one encounters one’s ignorance: In what sort of soil does it grow? How is it processed for market? Is there a system for grading it? Why can’t one grow it in the garden?
But Mr. Goodwin, a charming tease, withholds instant gratification. Instant of cutting straight to the cha (as tea is called in Chinese), he first exercises his skill at evoking a sense of place. “In Hong Kong the inanimate do business along with the quick. Each ramp on a concrete flight of steps proclaims the merit of a product; dustbins call your attention to the Hong Kong Bank; an enormous Marlboro cowboy hangs tough on the flank of a high-rise — as you come close, he shyly disintegrates into a swirl of meaningless squiggles but recomposes himself, as moody as ever, as you walk away.”
Or he deftly dissolves the present into the past, for instance by riding the Hong Kong-Canton hydrofoil and then imagining what it must have been like for ships of the East India Company to travel in and out of the Pearl River estuary at the height of the tea trade 200 years ago.
Or he sums up Chinese history in a few brush strokes: “China’s concern through millennia has been to keep floods and barbarians controlled. The Great Wall of China was like a dam to hold back people.”
But one wants him to get on with it. How many kinds of tea are there? What is the difference between the best and the worst?
All in good time, gentle reader. As Professor Zhuang, chairman of the Fujian Tea Society, explained to the author when asked about classifying teas: “There is a system. It makes about 8,000 distinctions. Perhaps there are more exceptions to the system than distinctions within it. I have 73 years in tea, but I do not know the system. . . . In the West you use an alphabet. In China we learn characters. It is the same with tea.”
By and by one gets the point. Mr. Goodwin is not going to explain tea. It is far too complex a subject to systematize. When the Japanese seized Taiwan in 1895 and rationalized the business of buying tea, they came up with the following grades: “Standard, Fully Standard, Standard to Good, On Good, Good Leaf, Good, Fully Good, Good Up, Good to Superior, Fully Superior, Superior Up, Superior to Fine, On Fine, Fine, Fine Up, Fine to Finest, Finest to Choice, Choice, Strict Superior, Choicest and Fancy.” One could get confused.
What Mr. Goodwin has in mind is to reveal the process of growing, preparing and marketing tea in its natural setting. So we visit auctions and tea gardens, learn about the agony of the leaves and the twist, witness the process of fermentation and drying.
And then comes the climactic moment when Armajeet Sing, a Darjeeling broker, bends over the tasting table of a tea-garden manager named Navim. “Armajeet’s nose descended on the volcano. It was a historic nose, a Persian nose, passed down from Zoroastrian priests to hawking desert lords, from hawkers to warriors and from warriors to the invaders who rode into the desert of Rajasthan. It was quite large but straight and slim; the skin was fine and very pale over a slender bridge, with nostrils that might have been turned in Cremona. It flared over the volcano, burrowed in and re-emerged with a scattering of wet tea-leaves adhering to its tip, which trembled slightly over the verdict. The small mustache was a discreet cushion for the instrument.
“Armajeet straightened up. Navim stooped anxiously.
” ‘Very useful,’ said the Nose. For a brief moment I thought I saw Navim actually smile.”
Mr. Goodwin ends on an offbeat note. He describes the sad fate of the clipper ship Cutty Sark, which was built in 1869 for speed but arrived on the scene just as the age of steam began and was “petrified by history.” Like Mr. Goodwin’s fantasy Captain Hawkeye, the Cutty Sark came too late to trade tea.
But if ship and swashbuckler are ossified, Mr. Goodwin’s imagination stays vibrant. It has summoned up all the tea in China and India. And made one thirst for a spicy cup of the brew.
end of review
November 13, 2012
This is one of those great books which I like to categorize as 'History of Things'. Through tracing the history of a thing, in this case, Tea, we unravel many more stories en-route. Tea is something that has always been central to my life, it never answers back and it's always there for me in a crisis. I think this book is an essential read to anyone who consumes tea on a regular basis. It provides fun anecdotes all the way through and the author 'Jason Goodwin' is a great companion on the adventure of tea.
March 15, 2013
I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, like Samuel Johnson, so Jason Goodwin's round-the-world tea romp was a
pleasure to read. My one reservation was that Goodwin skated right over the horrible injustices of the early tea plantations
in India. Officially, England had got rid of slavery in 1832: in fact, the British tea trade in India never could have developed
without the "indentured" service of entire tribes, uprooted and moved hundreds of miles from home and never allowed to return.
Still, fun to read - with many cups of tea!
pleasure to read. My one reservation was that Goodwin skated right over the horrible injustices of the early tea plantations
in India. Officially, England had got rid of slavery in 1832: in fact, the British tea trade in India never could have developed
without the "indentured" service of entire tribes, uprooted and moved hundreds of miles from home and never allowed to return.
Still, fun to read - with many cups of tea!
Currently reading
September 21, 2007Thought I'd brush up in preparation for the vegan tea party!
August 16, 2020
An interesting book that looks history of the tea trade and the tea trade "now" (I put in ""'s because the book was published in the late 90s), with the author's travel experiences in China and India and the UK for researching the tea trade. Goodwin writes with an observant eye and also with a sense of humor that makes the book enjoyable. I would be interested in seeing a sequel where Goodwin goes back and sees how much the tea trade, along with China and India, have changed since his experiences that led to this book. I imagine with the web and smartphones, and Covid, and the systematic changes in China and India, the tea trade would be very different from when he wrote this book.
March 11, 2024
A good travel memoir with plenty of information on the history, cultivation, brewing, and export of tea.
November 26, 2017
Interesting, but I thought it was clumsily written.
May 30, 2014
This is no dry history but a thoroughly enjoyable journey through China and India with a witty and erudite tea enthusiast! Having read the author's history of the Ottoman empire (Lords of the Horizons)I expected to be entertained along the way and was not disappointed as he re-traced the steps of his 2 grandfathers, both involved in the tea trade, and mused on the decline of the Empire.
Want to read
May 31, 2009Had to return it before I read it.
March 12, 2013
I really enjoyed reading this book. Tea has a fascinating history and the author does a great job taking the reader from its complicated beginnings to the modern day.
September 6, 2014
The history of the tea trade combined with the authors adventures in Hong Kong and India. Well written and enjoyable.
February 23, 2016
Two of my favorite things; India and Tea
June 5, 2013
Never finished. Kinda boring. He has become a so much better writer!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews