Britain stole Chinese saplings and lost tens of billions.
In the night rain in Xiaoxiaojiang Village, the green forest hawkers heard about it. There is no need to escape your name in the future, half of the world is a king. - Li She: For you who are keen on drinks, Assam milk tea must be no stranger, this ** people-friendly milk tea, but there is a profound lesson hidden behind it.
The emergence of Assam caused a heavy blow to the tea ** of the Qing Dynasty. Assam is home to two famous landscapes, one is a temple and the other is a tea plantation. Assam is one of the important production areas of black tea in the world, and the black tea here is one of the main tea places in Europe, but the black tea of Assam is not a local product, and behind the vast tea plantation, there is a hidden ** against the Qing Dynasty.
Before the Opium War, Britain and the Qing Dynasty were both major powers that could not be ignored in Asia and Europe, and they were important participants in the world. With the advantages of the Industrial Revolution, Britain has achieved remarkable results on a global scale.
Their industrial products were very popular around the world and brought huge profits to Britain, but there was one place where British industrial products were not cared for, and that was the Qing Dynasty.
The quality of British industrial products, such as **, had obvious advantages, but they could not be successful in the Qing Dynasty. From the princes and nobles to the common people, the Qing Dynasty was accustomed to using its own industrial products, especially textile products, and the British made very little profit in the Qing Dynasty, and almost every business was only enough to match the cost.
From a ** perspective, this is a very common thing because no one can guarantee that their business can be successful forever.
From the point of view of both directions, the losses of the United Kingdom can be said to be extremely heavy. As one of the main exporters of the Qing Dynasty, Britain exported a large number of commodities to the Qing Dynasty every year, of which tea was particularly dominant, accounting for almost half of the foreign market.
Most of the British colonial gains over the years, such as ** and **, etc., flowed into the tea of the Qing Dynasty**, which was unacceptable to the British. According to records, at that time, the British loved tea to the point of obsession, and the average Englishman consumed about one liter of tea every day.
In this context, tea became a luxury item in the UK, and it continued to climb. In order to curb the sales of tea, the UK even needs to raise taxes, but in the face of huge market demand, the restrictions have no effect.
Every time British merchant ships arrived in the Qing Dynasty, they returned laden with tea, resulting in a huge ** deficit and making Britain's finances tight. The British tried to change the situation several times, but the Qing Dynasty's policy of seclusion had little effect.
In order to solve this problem, Britain launched the Opium War, trying to make up for the ** deficit through the high profits of opium, and launched several wars against China in order to open more treaty ports.
After the UK's efforts to open up the Chinese market, tea imports continued to grow. However, despite the increase, the UK is still struggling to meet the growing demand for tea.
At that time, tea was a unique specialty of China, and although the Qing Dynasty was defeated, it still dominated the tea market, and no matter how much it suffered, it could make up for it through the profits from the sale of tea.
This is not uncommon in the modern economy. So, how to solve this problem? The only solution is to expand the scale of tea production and master the tea resources.
Tea has a long history in China, as early as the Shang Dynasty, there are records of tea consumption, when tea was mainly eaten in three ways: chewing fresh leaves, boiling into vegetable soup and boiling tea.
With the passage of time, tea has become the undisputed number one drink in the Central Plains, and both nobles and commoners will drink it in large quantities every day, which has made the tea industry develop rapidly.
During the Qing Dynasty, tea was no longer limited to beverages, it was infiltrated with multiple factors of power, money and culture, and related industries were numerous. Tea cultivation and production techniques have also reached new heights, and many foreigners have tried to learn it, but few have succeeded.
However, Britain's obsession with tea has not waned. Through its military might, the British occupied several colonies, including areas of India with a similar climate to those of the Qing Dynasty.
This means that as long as the UK has mastered the planting technology and seeds of tea, it can start planting immediately, so that imported products can become domestic products, which can not only change the loss, but also bring huge profits to the country.
However, it cannot be directly involved, it must be carried out by a civilian, secretly supported. That's when a man named Robert Fortney came to prominence.
Robert Fortney's gardening experience and love of plants led him to become a botanist by chance, and his life in the Qing Dynasty gave him a unique advantage in conducting tea research.
In his private capacity, with the mission of the British**, under the cover of Qing Dynasty clothes and fake braids, he successfully infiltrated the tea production base, and despite the restrictions imposed by the Qing Dynasty on foreigners, he was able to smoothly penetrate most of China's tea-producing areas.
With years of study, he has an in-depth understanding and proficient skills in the production and production of tea. However, he alone could not do all the work, especially the roasting of tea.
Even in the Qing Dynasty, roasted tea workers were a scarce type of trade, and only a few people were able to master this skill. Therefore, he used the power of money to hire a large number of skilled tea roasters, and at the same time brought high-quality tea seeds to the British colony of India, and established a large-scale tea production base in the Assam region.
Without worrying about sales, Robert Fortney's tea plantation soon became hugely profitable. During this period, he not only hired a large number of tea planters and production workers from China, but also trained new workers locally.
After several years of development, tea production in the Assam region has increased significantly.
With the gradual development of tea production in Assam, Britain gradually shifted its tea to India, and only a very small part of high-quality tea was still imported from the Qing Dynasty. This shift led to a sharp decline in the amount of tea in the Qing Dynasty, at least ten times.
This caused heavy losses to the Qing Dynasty, at least tens of billions of ** per year. At the same time, the sales of British industrial products in the Qing Dynasty also increased significantly, especially civilian products such as ashes and matches, which almost completely replaced the local products of the Qing Dynasty.
This series of events led to the Qing Dynasty's ** being almost completely subject to the British.
At that time, Robert Fortney acted like a spy, stealing tea from China, which brought huge losses to the Qing Dynasty and later China.
Today, the Assam region has become the world's largest industrial production park and the second-largest tea auction center, exporting 150,000 tons of tea a year, profits that would still belong to China if it weren't for the theft.
This incident is a wake-up call that some of the things we consider "original" are at risk of being stolen at any time. This is like our traditional Chinese medicine, in recent years, the status of traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Chinese medicine has been declining, and some people even have doubts about it.
Does this mean that Chinese medicine is a lie? In fact, the decline of traditional Chinese medicine is closely related to the loss of a large number of prescriptions.
In the TV series "Mansion Gate", there is a passage that describes the real historical event of the Japanese plundering traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions during the war of aggression against China. Nowadays, although many Chinese medicines are difficult to find in Japan, they are very popular in Japan, and these Chinese medicines, which have been renamed "Kampo medicine", are sold worldwide, and even at a time when Chinese medicine and Chinese medicine are not well recognized worldwide, Kampo medicine has successfully entered the European and American markets and become a common medicine.
Suffice it to say that without strong military protection, there are no secrets in a country, because everything can be snatched away. And once that happens, we can only suffer in silence.
This is true for both tea and Chinese medicine, and the only way to change this situation is to use force to deter those "thieves" and "robbers" so that they dare not steal our things, let alone use our things.
The dispersion of tea not only indirectly led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty, but also posed a continuous challenge to modern Chinese tea. However,"Shame and courage"In the face of the fact that it cannot be changed, the only thing we can do is to change ourselves, continue to cultivate new varieties of tea, and constantly improve the technology of tea production, so that Chinese tea can once again occupy the top of the world and earn more profits for China.
Moreover, this time, with our strong military strength, we will not repeat the mistakes of history. Tea has always been a native product of China. Perhaps in the course of history, some tea has gone overseas, but this does not weaken the strength of Chinese tea itself.