4.2 Tea Industry

Tea planting in China stretches back to nearly fifteen hundred years ago.

Apart from its popularity for local consumption, the delicate flavour of Chinese green and red tea captured the taste of the foreigners, especially the British and Americans.

The figures of the Imperial Maritime Customs in 1907 reveal a great total of 214,683,333 pounds of Chinese tea were exported to foreign countries, of which only 13,250,000 pounds went to Hong Kong.

Sometimes, semi-finished tea leaves were imported into Hong Kong from China for further processing, This included sieving leaves, roasting and then cooling the tea, and finally packing it.

Then the finished products would be re-exported to America in large volume, and to Australia, South Africa and England in limited quantities.

Credit : History Museum of HK.