Tea has played a prominent role in Chinese history and in China’s relations with foreign cultures near and far. It was a luxury product, along with porcelain and silk, that defined Chinese civilisation and was eagerly sought after by all peoples who acquired a taste for its stimulating brew. Tea was also pivotal in the ‘opening’ of China to the modern world through the first Opium War (Sigmond, in Tea its effects, medicinal and moral, 1839–1842). We tend to only focus on the ‘opium’ side of the equation forgetting that it was the desire to acquire large quantities of tea that brought the British and other Western nations to the shores of China in the first place. In the 21st Century, as China is on track to become the world’s largest economy and reshape the global order in ways that are still difficult for Westerners to comprehend, tea and tea culture is being ‘rediscovered’ and ‘redeployed’ within China as a means of reinforcing a sense of unique Chinese identity and national character. In this paper I further explore the place of tea in Chinese and world history. I conclude by examining the rise of Chinese tea nationalism and consider how tea is shaping Chinese identity in the 21st Century.
