Page 139 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

125.

into the United States averaged upwards of one-hundred-thou­

sand chests (each chest was equivalent to eighty pounds avoir­

dupois) each year. After 1835 the total zoomed to over two-
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hundred-thousand chests. American merchants and their

vessels also supplied teas from Canton to the Northern European

markets of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Bremen and Hamburg. The tea

market was extremely complex, with up to twenty varieties for

sale to foreign buyers. There were basically two types of teas,

green and black, which came from different plant varieties.

Within each type there were many grades from high quality (the

first crop) to low quality (the last or usually fourth crop).

Green teas, which grew in the coastal central province of

Kiangnan (later divided into the two provinces of Kiangsu and
Anhwei), did not vary in grade as did the black teas, which came

from the southern province of Fukien. The American market over­

whelmingly imported green teas, the largest-selling kind of

which was Young Hyson (a medium grade). (The Chinese themselves

never drank green tea but used it only for medicinal purposes.)

On the contrary the European markets, including England, much
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preferred black teas, usually Souchong and Congo. The very

best teas the Chinese did not sell, but the Hong merchants often

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Figures of tea importations are found in "Amounts of
Tea Exported from Canton in Arnerican Vessels, 1804- to 1839,"
Merchants' Magazine and Cormnercial Review, XII (1845), 50.
45
nescriptions of teas and their marketability are found
in: J.P. Cushing's Letterbooks, Bryant & Sturgis MSS; Letter,
Bryant, Sturgis & Co. to Bell & Co., May 1839, Bryant & Sturgis
MSS; Howard Corning, "Sullivan Dorr, China Trader," Massachusetts
Historical Society, Proceedings, LXVII (1941), 160-62; W.S.W.
Ruschenberger, A Voyage around the World: Including an Embassy
to Muscat and Siam (Philadelphia, 1838), pp. 409-10.