Robert Fortune’s Dangerous Mission To Obtain Tea From The Chinese

A. Sutherland – AncientPages.com  – After a four-month-long voyage, the Scottish botanist Robert Fortune finally reached Shanghai, China. It’s a hot September day in 1848 but he had no time to rest.

Robert Fortune must turn into a Chinese, with everything that it means in appearance, clothing, speech and his way of behaving. Simply, he had to create his new identity.

He would operate in disguise of a Chinese official to blend in with the surroundings and be able to spy.

His mission was dangerous. It was a spy mission during which, Fortune had to steal 13 thousand tea seedlings of Chinese tea plants (Camellia sinensis) from China to India on behalf of the British East India Company.

So he changed his name to Sing Wang (means: ‘brilliant flower’), shaved his head, and then grew a pigtail. He learned to eat with chopsticks, began to speak Mandarin, and put on Chinese clothes in order to better blend with the locals.

He was even brave enough to fight pirates who attacked him on one of his visits.

Everything began on May 7, 1848, Fortune was working with the plants at Chelsea Physic Garden, London, when he was suddenly visited by Professor John Forbes Boyle, a famous botanist, and adviser at the East India Company.

He wondered if Fortune might think of going out for tea-hunting in China. The conditions were extremely generous; Fortune would get 500 pounds – five times as much as he earned in the Chelsea garden.

It was a tempting offer and he agreed.

Fortune understood his mission could result in a death sentence if he was caught as a spy. China was a closed nation and spying foreigners, attempting to steal the nation’s secret knowledge of tea production would be executed without hesitation.

Source: AncientPages.com – Read rest of the story here