424. Dr. Dave Wang's Paper Helped Local Business Flurishing

Usually, an academic paper helps other scholars to deepen their research and general readers to gain knowledge on the subject. With this post I would like you to enjoy the fact that Dr. Dave Wang's examination of traditional Chinese civilization in North America has helped entrepreneurs to create and develop traditional business. Jon Strother wrote a Special  report for The Post and Courier, in which he told his readers the true story of how a business man created a traditional tea store and make a big business in the United States. From his report we know that Mr. Kyle Brown, from Charleston, South Carolina "has found a strong connection between the early tea trade and Charleston. The Holy City, New York, Boston and Philadelphia represented the four major ports of entry for Colonial tea imports. Little wonder then that Charleston staged its first revolutionary “tea party” even before Boston's more famous one. The tea seized on Charleston's docks in 1773 in response to the British Tea Act was stored in the Old Exchange and then sold a couple of years later to help fund the Revolution. Subsequent protests in Charleston simply dumped the tea into the harbor. 

Despite the setbacks imposed on the tea trade by the Revolutionary War, Americans' thirst for tea continued to grow. According to Dave Wang in an article for the 2011 Virginia Review of Asian Studies about China's cultural influence on the United States, “The Chinese-American tea trade increased steadily after 1785. With the increase of population and wealth, the American people demanded larger and larger quantities of tea.”

 

Jon also told us that "Now there are growing signs of revived interest in historical teas and tea-ways, and Brown's radar is finely tuned to them. Oliver Pluff's teas are currently carried at more than 200 historic sites across the country, from Monticello to Yosemite National Park. “Tea marries really well with history,” he says, “and that's really what we're about.”

 

It will be cool when I drive down to Kyle's traditional tea shop in the south and enjoy his historical tea sometime in the near future.