The Mongolian people recognized that tea was a medicine, food, drink and functional trade good. Because the Mongols retained a primarily nomadic lifestyle, coins where seen as valuable, but could only be used to trade with outsiders. Tea was valued because it was directly useful. Mongolian milk tea is still a staple of the Mongol diet today. This is a thick tea made by breaking bricked tea into boiling water. Stirring constantly for a few minutes, fresh whole milk is added until a ratio of one part milk to 5 or 6 parts tea is obtained. Sometimes served with a little salt and fried mullet, this is similar to Tibetan Butter tea. Brick tea is still exported from China today to the areas inhabited by today's nomadic Mongols.
Because of the reach of the Mongols, extending between the Sea of Japan to the Danube river in modern Poland and from northern Siberia to the northern reaches of India, tea became part of trade and life for many people. After the Mongol empire ended, the ruling forces (which ever happened to rise to power during Russia's multiple power struggles) attempted to divorce themselves from an association with their former conquerors. Tea was seen as something "common" and generally disregarded by the ruling classes. Eventually this changed, thanks to a Russian envoy who did not even drink tea.
In 1636, an envoy by the name of Vassli Starkov was sent from the court of Tsar Michael the First to Altan Khan of the Mongol people. The Khan offered a gift to the Tsar of 250 pounds of tea, which Starkov initially refused. Thanks to the insistence of Altan Khan, the tea was accepted and brought to the Russian court as a gift rather than as a Mongol traditional trade good. In this form, tea had returned to Russia as a item of high court instead of a conquerors' habit.
Because the route to China was so difficult, the cost of tea was high enough to prohibit it's general spread outside of the wealthy aristocrats. In 1679 a treaty with China was reached that involved furs for tea. The following rulers, including Alexis I and later Catherine the Great, passed laws that tightly regulated the trade, but at Catherine's death in 1796, Russia was consuming almost 3 million tons of tea from China annually. Camel caravan through Siberia was carrying all of this.
The Trans-Siberian Railway, reducing the time tea took to get to Russia from 18 months to several days, eventually replaced the old tea route in 1880. The last caravan ended in 1925, but the import of tea to Russia increased to the point where in the twenty first century demand has grown to over 160,000 tons per year. Tea is as Russian as caviar and vodka and, happily, more affordable.
Source: EzineArticles
