Tea: Did you mean...?

This map illustrates the global spread of tea and its many names, tracing how two primary root words—“cha” and “te”—originated in China and dispersed across cultures through trade. The linguistic patterns reveal how tea’s journey followed...

The English East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1600, and it came to control both trade and territories in India, as well as a trade monopoly with China. Goods the EIC traded included spices, cotton cloth, tea, and opium, all in such...

With thousands of square feet of canvas capturing every breath of the trade winds, a 19th-century tea clipper was the absolute pinnacle of sailing evolution. The Cutty Sark was just such a ship, carrying tea and then wool across the far-flung...

A print showing Japanese tea vendors. Edo Period, c. 1846, print from a 1632 original. Copied by Kanō Osanobu and Kanō Masanobu. (From Poetry Competition of Artisans, vol.2)

A bowl of whisked green tea (matcha), typical of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

The Tea Ceremony is an elaborate ritual of respect in which people take tea together. The person who prepares the tea honors her guests through her preparations and presentation, and the guests pay her respect by participating properly.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony.

In which John Green teaches you about the American Revolution and the American Revolutionary War, which it turns out were two different things. John goes over the issues and events that precipitated rebellion in Britain's American colonies...

American colonists dump British tea into Boston Harbor in the Boston Tea Party, 16 December 1773, illustration from The History of North America by W. D. Cooper. London: E. Newberry, 1789. Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Matcha, the powdered green tea used in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.