I drink two cups of Green Tea every day. I have blogged about my love of Green Tea. But when I reached for the box this week at the store it coincided with what I was teaching that day in my classes. Whole wars have been fought over this stuff. This week my class studied (among other things) The Opium Wars when the British began importing opium into China to trade for Green Tea because the Qing Dynasty only accepted silver for payment. The British didn't have silver but they had lots of opium from their poppy harvests in Afghanistan. So the Brits decided to try trading in opium rather than silver. When the Qing tried to shut down the opium trade after millions of Chinese citizens became addicts, the British declared war and won so they could continue the drug trade. Oh, and all this controversy today in Hong Kong is directly related to this war. History never stops giving gifts.
