Alice Loxton

There have been all of these attempts which just totally failed.

And this is where we introduce a new character to the story.

Get comfortable because this is quite a story.

So, let me introduce you to Robert Fortune.

He is a Scottish botanist, an explorer, and in 1848 he was instructed by the East India Company to, in an infamous episode of corporate espionage, travel to China in secret

and do something pretty daring.

Gather the tea seeds, the plants and the understanding which would enable the British to grow tea.

Now this is a pretty devious move, to put it kindly.

Fortune disguises himself in traditional Chinese clothing and hairstyle.

He sneaks into areas of China which are completely forbidden to foreigners and he goes to the factories and he sees how tea is made.

An impressive disguise.

So he brought back 20,000 live plants and convinced a small number of workers to travel to a northern province, as he called it, to grow the tea.

And this was, in fact, British-controlled India in what we would now know as Darjeeling.

And that is why we have Darjeeling tea as well.

Now, it's really interesting to read about Fortune's take on the whole affair.

He wrote this book about it and he talks about it like this amazing adventure.

He was the first to see these secrets.

He wrote, I often look back upon those days with feelings of unalloyed pleasure.

And of course, the interesting thing is he might have had a great time, but for China, they see this very, very differently.

Yeah, absolutely.