The last hard currency of the Qing Dynasty export trade, how was a foreigner easily crushed?

Tea, elegant and vulgar **** drink of the good. But what you may not know is that once upon a time tea even determines the rise and fall of the country, has an inestimable strategic value. Tea is China's modern exports of important commodities, in the value of exports occupy a dominant position until the end of the 19th century, China has been the world's largest tea producer and exporter. 1882 exports reached 100,000 tons (we must know, now China's tea exports is just more than 300,000 tons). Even after the Opium War tea trade still for the Qing Dynasty to earn a huge trade surplus, according to modern Chinese customs revenue and distribution statistics, only after the Opium War to the Qing Dynasty before the fall of the four major ports of Guangzhou, Shanghai and other tea tax collected nearly 20 million taels.

In 1834, the British East India Company lost its monopoly on tea imports, and producing its own tea became the main goal of the colonial giant. But in order to transplant Chinese tea they had to acquire the secrets of Chinese tea production. They hired botanist Robert Fukun as a commercial spy to penetrate into our country with a remuneration of 550 pounds per year. Fukun as a commercial spy to steal the tea planting and production technology in the interior of China.

Fujun, a half-Chinese, lived in the country from 1842 to 1845 and is said to have mastered the art of using chopsticks. The Marquis of Dalhousie, then the British governor-general in India, gave Fukun orders to select the best tea trees and tea seeds from the tea-producing regions of China to be transported to Calcutta, and then from Calcutta to the Himalayas. A number of experienced tea planters and tea processors were recruited to help develop tea production in the Himalayas.

Fujun entered China from Hong Kong in 1848, at a time when the country was very hostile to foreigners. He wore a fake braid and made up as a Qing Dynasty man, so that the farmers in the countryside could not recognize him as a foreigner, and then infiltrated into the main tea-producing areas of China with the help of two Chinese men (who were paid by Fukun) in the tea-producing areas of the country, to learn about what kind of climate and soil are suitable for growing high-quality tea. In the Ningbo area, he collected many tea varieties. He often came across the situation that because of his generosity, the hosts often took out the best tea they had in their collection to serve him as a thank you for his visit.

He inquired about the secrets of the tea ceremony from the monks of the temple where he stayed in Wuyi Mountain, especially the water requirements in the tea ceremony, and learned about the process of making green tea into black tea, which was generally drunk by most Europeans at that time.

After that, Fu Jun recruited six tea growers and tea makers, and two tea canister makers, for three years, based on the advice of some Chinese advisers to European trading houses. These Chinese tea experts left China without arousing any suspicion or concern. in March 1851, Fu Jun and the workers he recruited arrived in Calcutta on a ship full of tea seeds and tea saplings, and then traveled to the southern foothills of the Himalayas to begin trial planting of tea. 3 years later, the British had fully mastered the knowledge and technology of tea planting and tea production. This was essential for tea growers in India as well. The know-how accumulated by our ancestors over nearly 5,000 years of history was thus stolen. The theft is considered "the greatest theft of trade secrets in the history of mankind".

By 1903, the proportion of Chinese tea in the world's sales to Westerners had fallen to 10 percent, with Indian tea replacing Chinese tea as the mainstay of the world tea trade. China's tea production suffered a severe blow as a result. The Chinese people lost a large amount of foreign trade income, coupled with the war and turmoil at that time, life is more difficult, suffering is more profound. Tea also revolutionized the British capital and economic system, and the British established tea industries in Burma, Ceylon, East Africa, and other areas suitable for growing tea, and tea became a tool for British colonial expansion.

The influence of tea also spread to colonies in the Caribbean and the South Pacific, where it helped satisfy the British demand for sugar. Together with trade with the East, it contributed to the rapid growth of the British economy, establishing the unrivaled influence of the pound in the global economy for nearly two centuries.