This voluminous source was a major factor (45) in tea becoming the staple of European households that it is today. By the early 1900s, annual production of India tea exceeded 350 million pounds. Perfecting production methods took many years, but ultimately, India became the world’s largest tea-producing country. It sold for between 16 and 34 shillings (40) per pound. The harvest was a mere 350 pounds and arrived in November. In May 1838, the first batch of India-grown tea shipped to London. After trial and error with a plant variety dis- covered in the Assam district of India, the British (35) managed to establish a source to meet the growing demands of British tea drinkers. Swedish and English botanists grew tea in botanical gardens, but this was not enough to meet demand. In 1763, the French Academy of Sciences gave up, declaring the tea plant unique to China (30) and unable to be grown anywhere else. But most often the growing climate wasn’t right, not even in the equato- rial colonies that the British, Dutch, and French controlled. Some plants (25) perished in transit from the East. Europeans looked for ways to circumvent China’s monopoly, but their attempts to grow the tea plant (Latin name Camellia sinensis) failed. In 1669, it imported (20) 143.5 pounds of tea-very little compared to the 32 million pounds that were imported by 1834. Several European tea companies formed, including the English East India Company. Some proprietors touted tea as a cure for maladies. Yet as world- wide demand grew, tea caught on in Europe. China had a monopoly on the tea trade and kept (15) their tea cultivation techniques secret. This was a far cry from the Chinese (10) preparation techniques, known as a “tea ceremony,” which had strict steps and called for steeping in iron pots at precise temperatures and pouring into porcelain bowls. However, it was an unpromising start for the bev- erage, because shipments arrived stale, and European tea drinkers miscalculated the steeping time and measurements. The opening of trade routes with the Far East in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- (5) turies gave Europeans their first taste of tea. Tea was grown in China, thousands of miles away. Paired Passages-Tea Passage 1 Europe was a coffee-drinking continent before it became a tea-drinking one.
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