Tea: Fancy a Cuppa?

Land girls enjoy a hot cup of tea after a hard day of rat-catching on a Sussex farm during 1942. Source: Ministry of Information via Wikimedia Commons

A few weeks ago, a southern African friend of mine was dropping me back home after a thirsty morning of shopping. It was a hot afternoon, and we were gasping for some refreshments. I invited my friend in for a ‘cuppa’ (British English for a cup of tea). "Iced tea?", she queried hopefully. To her disappointment, my considerable collection of tea solely consisted of the hot beverage kind. She exclaimed: "You're so British! Whoever heard of drinking hot tea on a day like this!"

 Most days in Pretoria are hot at this time of the year, and frankly the idea that the weather would somehow impair my taste for tea was a novel one. (Recently, when I moved, my first concern revolved around the potential absence of a kettle for a day or two.) I mildly explained that hot tea was drunk all year round in the Indian subcontinent.

 "Masala Chai" by Miansari66 - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Vogon: Courtesy of Hitchhiker Wiki

I've been known to drink six to eight cups of tea in a day simply by visiting an assortment of relatives and friends. By the way, this isn’t bragging, it’s standard cultural practice. Tea is considered refreshing. I haven’t tested this theory, but I’m pretty sure my relatives would look at me quizzically if I said it was too hot to drink tea. In any case, my joint British and Indian cultural conditioning would render me uttering this about as improbable as a Vogon*  offering me tea (*refer to DA’s  Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).



In one sitting alone, I believe I've drunk four cups of tea. If served in the tiny, disposable clay cups, many more.

Disposable clay pottery cups used to drink tea on the station platform in India. By Hamon jp (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0  via Wikimedia Commons

Indian tea, by the way, is not the dunk your teabag in a mug variety. Not for the faint hearted, it is either boiled up with milk and sugar for maximum strength and sweetness (think six teaspoons of sugar in Indian trains), or served in the traditional loose-leaf in a teapot style shared by more formal British tea drinkers.  

Drinking multiple cups of tea is nothing for either Brits or Indians. Coffee has carved a niche in British and Indian society, but tea still reigns supreme. No decent sized supermarket in Britain is complete without a good selection of teas, and yes, Britain as well as India still have plenty of  “those quaint tea houses”.

British Tea Clipper 'Titania'  by Jack Spurling (1870-1933) via Wikimedia Commons

The British East India Company (EIC) first introduced tea to Assam, India in the early 1800s using Chinese seeds, planting and cultivating techniques. By 1833 the EIC had lost its monopoly of trading rights in China and decided to branch off into India. The Tea Committee created by the British saw indigenous tea plants already growing in Assam, and decided this would be the ideal location for the introduction of Chinese tea seeds. The EIC cultivated plantations of both indigenous Assam tea and China tea. After the EIC was absorbed by the Crown, the British administration (the British Raj) in India offered lucrative land-leases to potential tea planters in order to spread the cultivation of tea.

"Munnar Top station" by Bimal K C from Cochin, India - Top Station - Munnar. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

For almost a century India was the top producer of tea. During the First and Second World War, tea prices began to rise as German submarines sunk tea ships. Tea reserves stored in London were sent to warehouses outside the city to safeguard stocks from bombing. Eventually shortages led to tea rations in Britain even up until 1952.

"Van Girl- Horse and Cart Deliveries For the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, London, England, 1943 D16845" by Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Stone Richard - This is a photograph D 16845 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Today China is the largest producer of tea, but India remains the largest consumer of tea as a nation. According to the UK Tea & Infusions Association, the UK is the second largest per capita consumer of tea, second only to Ireland (*Wikipedia ranks the UK 5th).