The True History of Tea

A lively and beautifully illustrated history of tea, one of the world’s favorite beverages, and its uses through the ages.

World-­renowned scholar of Chinese history Victor H. Mair teams up with journalist Erling Hoh to spill the tea on this remarkable beverage and its uses, from ancient times to the present and from East to West.

This accessible and entertaining history of tea makes use of the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals to explore the subject in rich historical detail. The resulting narrative travels from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters.

Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways.

The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in a compelling tale that combines scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

82 illustrations

Erling Hoh has been a correspondent for Archaeology and written on Chinese history and culture for Natural History and other publications.


Victor H. Mair (1943–2026) was professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of many books including The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West.