How did a wild plant growing in Assam become central to the modern global tea industry? The answer begins with Britain’s tea crisis.
Tea historians believe that the tribes living in the mountainous regions around south-western China, Tibet, and India’s North-East were the first to harvest the leaves of the miang, or wild tea tree, which they boiled to concoct a medicinal beverage. The custom of eating pickled leaves from wild tea bushes, and a vegetable relish called letpet, for chewing or making a medicinal decoction, even today prevails among some tribes of South and Southeast Asia. The Singpho tribe of North-East India, for instance, have, since time immemorial, been drinking a brew called phalap, made from the leaves of wild tea plants.
