The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels Through India and China in Search of Tea [Hardcover]

Jason Goodwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1990

The author's grandmothers spent their lives in China and India, daily observing the imperial custom of afternoon tea. Inspired by their memories he set off to explore the fast-disappearing relics of their world - an exploration which reached back into the history of the tea trade. In a journey through the lost European cities of the China coast, the crumbling tea city of Calcutta, and the legendary gardens of Bohea and Darjeeling, the author evokes past and present with a sense of the ironies of history, following the tea trade from its origins in the Canton factories through the Opium Wars and the settlement of British India, to its influence in the present day.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Chatto & Windus; 1St Edition edition (March 15, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0701136200
• ISBN-13: 978-0701136208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,884,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Time for Tea, February 25, 2003

By 

Leah Rousmaniere, author of the forthcoming I... (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels Through India and China in Search of Tea (Hardcover)

This book was also published in paperback in the United States under the title A Time for Tea: Travels Through China and India in Search of Tea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). Informed and entertaining, the book is a combination travelogue-history; the author visits China, India, and a few other tea-related places (Boston, as in Tea Party), all the while telling us how tea is grown, processed, and drunk; how it was first discovered; and how it came to be exported to the West. I found it totally engrossing. Had it been written by an American, I would class it in the category of New-Yorker-style writing: intelligent, witty, light - yet informative. I suppose the book may now be out of print in the American version, but it's certainly worth tracking down. Highly recommended.