It's true, all the tea used to be in China. Because nobody else could grow the stuff, tea was once as valuable as gold. So what happened? Well, 5,000 years ago tea was invented in China when a tea leaf fell into a pot of boiling water. 3,800 years later a former buddhist monk committed its cultivation and manufacture to writing. Soon after, the Japanese began drinking tea. In 1560 A.D. the Portugese, with their growing command of sea trading routes, brought it from China to Europe. At the turn of that century, tea began flowing overland from China into Russia as well. Throughout all of this, nobody could grow tea but the Chinese.
Meanwhile, tea was rapidly becoming a very fashionable drink among the Dutch aristocracy, who brought it to the American city of New Amsterdam in the 1650's. According to historians, when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1674 and renamed it New York they found that the people living there drank more tea than everyone in England put together. "Hmm," thought the British, "maybe we should tax this stuff . . . "
The Dutch, by the way, are the ones who started calling it "tea" (most cultures still call it "cha" or "chai," which is the sound you here when most Chinese people say "tea"), a pronunciation they learned from the Fujians.
In England itself, the arrival of tea in the mid-1600's had revolutionized english society by ushering in the concept of an afternoon meal and tea gardens where men and women of all classes could interact. Tea consumption in England increased six-fold within a period of just 9 years, replacing ale as the most popular national drink. England's growing desire for tea led to the creation of Pidgin English, the start of the Opium wars in China and the creation of the most powerful company in history: the East India Company. Still, the chinese weren't telling anybody their secret and China remained the only place where tea was grown.
Well, that's not entirely true, the Japanese had figured it out in the 12th century. But, they had an advantage: Japan was lucky enough to have a climate suitable for growing tea. Tea just didn't grow well in Russia, America or northern Europe. But the British were intent on controlling the tea trade, so they sent a Scotsman to do their dirty work. In 1815, Robert Fortune snuck into China and escaped with some tea tree seeds and notes about the secret art of tea cultivation.
Thanks to this bit of international intrigue (and the strength of British imperialism), the tea we drink today comes from all sorts of different places:
