Stairwellblog

Tea always seemed like a peculiar concept to me: put some dried leafy stuff in hot water, add saccharin supplement, and be soothed.

Perhaps Starbucks enlisted me at too early an age with Grande Caramel Macchiatos and its many variations. How could I even compare leaf-flavored hot water to a caramel chocolaty caffeinated shake that my mom somehow allowed me to drink before school?

In the last year, though, I’ve voyaged out to discover what the big deal was, why my dad, who remembers nobody’s name remembers Earl Grey’s when he’s sick, why my roommate always makes a cup of chamomile before bed, why the English dedicate a whole time in their day to the brew.

Enter: Sarah Rose. Author of the new release For All The Tea in China.

It’s kind of strange how things work out. One day a weird girl is weirdly wondering about why people don’t find tea that weird, the next, she’s interviewing the author of a book about the history of tea!

Rose’s For All the Tea in China is a nonfiction book that reads like a fictional page-turner. As you travel with Robert Fortune on his journey through China to steal the recipe for the beloved beverage, you realize that putting some dried leafy stuff in hot water is a perfected, ancient art. There was a time when tea made the world go round. It influenced foreign policy, and it catapulted men into adventures into the unknown. You could say that tea is drink that launched a thousand ships…or one man, Robert Fortune, with the tenacity of a thousand ships to bring tea under British power.

I got to interview Sarah Rose, a native of Chicago, about For All the Tea in China. Here’s what she had to say:

1. How many cups of tea did you drink while writing “For All The Tea in China?” Or, oh no. Are you a coffee drinker?

For about 2 years in the middle of the book, I couldn’t touch the stuff. I would look at a cup of tea and shudder. I got over it. Now I love tea again. (and no, I’m not a coffee drinker)

2. I follow you now on Twitter. You Tweet a good amount of clever and fun 140 or less characters. As a writer and published author, why did you join Twitter? Does Twitter and other forms of new media “do” anything for the modern writer?

I joined for mercenary reasons, I thought Twitter might be a good avenue to promote FOR ALL THE TEA IN CHINA. There is a pretty active tea community on Twitter. But once I got on, I was hooked. Twitter is a running diary of randomness, a way of keeping up with the world, with tea, and with friends.

3. You recently Tweeted: “Am excited possible new gig will include mag content for iPad – cool new world for #writers” What is your “new gig,” and what do you see the iPad and similar technology has in store for writers.

Since it’s still in the realm of the possible – not the confirmed – I can’t say more yet. But it’s just so easy to buy things on the iPad, I think there’s real hope for the written word there. Not as much because of the multimedia capacity – though that’s awesome – but because it’s the easiest way in the world to spend very little money quickly. And I’d really like to see magazines and books survive so I’ll hope for magic.

4. As a Chicago-based blog, and being a Chicago native myself, I have to ask: Does being a Chicagoan influence your writing or your inspiration?

Being a Chicagoan influences everything I do. First of all, it is the greatest city on the planet. I feel overwhelmingly lucky to have grown up in a place that boasts a deep pool of talent with very little bullshit. It’s a good place to become good at things, no one is watching you fail. No one cares. Then you move to the East Coast and everyone thinks you’re so talented and normal.

5. For All the Tea in China narrates mostly the adventures of Robert Fortune and his escapades to bring Chinese tea to the English masses. Do you see Fortune as a hero or a thief? You explored China, too. While writing your book did you ever feel a kinship to Fortune? Like you were both searching for something in China?

Fortune and I were in a struggle with each other. I would sit down at my computer thinking, ok, Bob, you and me, we’re in this together, can we please make a page work today? His Victorian arrogance frustrated me, but I also couldn’t help but admire his pluck, his swashbuckling improvisation. He spent three years in China, a stranger in a strange land, in the name of science and commerce. My first experiences in China were much less glamorous – I was a backpacker right out of college and Hong Kong is where I went broke, so I got a job and stayed. Returning for the book, I had a mission: to find what was left of pre-nationalist, pre-communist China, to see if there was anything old left in the most rapidly modernizing place on earth.

Was he a thief? In modern eyes, most certainly yes. At the time there was no sense that botanical products could obtain any kind of intellectual property protection whatsoever. There was no intellectual property. But he knew what he was doing was illegal, that the laws of China expressly forbid his presence there.

6. You say writing For All the Tea in China took five “grueling” years. Why so grueling? And for the sake of our tech buffs out there, what word processing did you use?

Grueling isn’t the half of it. Five abusive years. Five miserable years. Five years of degradation, abject poverty, frustration, humiliation. Publishing is a ridiculous business. No one with self esteem should ever write a book.

For the tech buffs, I used word 2002, I think. Someday I’ll need a fancier version, but see poverty above.

7. I heard through the grapevine, aka Twitter, that you recorded your voice for the For All the Tea in China audio book. What was that experience like? Have you listened to the final product? Have you used any other new methods to market your book?

I did record the audio! We just won some fancy awards for it – from Library Journal and AudioFile (Phile?). It was probably the very last time I’ll ever read For All the Tea in China, so it was kind of touching. And it was isolating, I was alone in a booth every day for a week. Just me and the product of all this labor. But I’m so happy I got the chance to do it – I actually had to audition to read my own book.

I would do anything to sell this book. A writer needs readers. If I thought it would help to bake cookies for every single person who sent me a bookstore receipt proving they bought the thing, I would. It has always been my hope that tea shops would pick it up, what the industry calls “non-traditional retail sales”. Michael Harney, of Harney and Sons, sells it. But it’s too disappointing to walk into tea shops in every city asking for it and only finding “Three Cups of Tea”

8. I understand your research came from mostly Fortune’s journals. What other methods did you use for your incredible research? What role did the Internet play in your research?

I made several trips to the British Library in London, where the remainders of the East India Company documents are kept. It’s a wonderful place and I had a mad crush on the brain of their China expert. The Company documents provided a good check on Fortune’s personal memoirs, I could confirm where he was when and what he was doing. I also spent a lot of time flying home to the Regenstein Library – my mother still lived in Chicago then. It’s the greatest open stack library on the planet, a tremendous resource, the entire world should bow down before the Regenstein and kiss what used to be Stagg field. (beware the radiation)

The internet was more helpful in the last years than it was in the beginning. When I began this project, I stood in the basement of Regenstein xeroxing all of Fortune’s books because they were only for sale for $145 by some rare academic press that made its money gouging libraries. Now everything is available on Google Books – I can download Fortune to my eReader. Oh, brave new world.

9. I left your book with a much deeper respect for botany and tea. The time and science that goes into each. What would you say was the most important thing you took with you after writing this book?

I, too, fell for the botanists in a big way. I’ve come to think of them in the same way I think of the guys at Xerox Parc in the 70s, the geeks who paved the way to a technological revolution. Nothing was ever the same again.

And personally, I have developed a healthy wariness of book writing. When I proposed this book, I was young and green, hopeful and optimistic. Now I am old and wizened and feel every mile, every disappointment . So really the most important thing I’ve learned is how truly special books are as a form. For two or three nights, or over the course of an airplane ride, some stranger engages with a project from my pen. I command their attention. They imagine my thoughts and follow my story. And people actually like it! I get letters. There is no magazine story that powerful – well, none that I’m likely to write, anyway. I’m still not certain writing books is worth all the pain – but the reward is profound.

10. What do you see for yourself in the future?

Someday I’ll write another book. I’m still feeling pretty bruised. Every time I talk about a new project, it ends up sounding like I’m describing weight lifting.

So for the moment I’ve had a great year travel writing for various magazines. It’s even more financially ruinous than writing books, but the immediate perks are better.

I need to earn a living. So I’ve been thinking about getting a real job. You know, one of those plentiful, rewarding, glamorous writing jobs.

For All the Tea in China can be found in a bookstore near you, or online.

(http://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China-England-Favorite/dp/1400165377)

Or download a copy to your Kindl.

Follow Sarah Rose on Twitter: @TheSarahRose

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