The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels Through India and China in Search of Tea

by JasonGoodwin (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.26

  Jason Goodwin, inspired by his grandmothers who spent their lives in China and India observing the custom of afternoon tea, set off to explore the relics of this imperial age and its worldwide trade, delving into the extraordinary history of tea. Evoking a vanished world, he follows the origin of tea, its use, influence and importance, from the the Canton factories through the establishment of British India and the Opium Wars, all the way to that great tea metropolis, London.

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.26

  The author's grandmothers spent their lives in China and India, daily observing the imperial custom of afternoon tea. Inspired by their memories, he set off to explore the fast-disappearing relics of their world - an exploration which reached back into the history of the tea trade. In a journey through the lost European cities of the China coast, the crumbling tea city of Calcutta, and the legendary gardens of Bohea and Darjeeling, the author evokes past and present with a sense of the ironies of history, following the tea trade from its origins in the Canton factories through the Opium Wars and the settlement of British India, to its influence in the present day. The book was shortlisted for the 1990 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.