330. Chinese Tea was Popular in Colonial North America

Since the early 1700's, tea had been used as a social beverage in the colonies. Judge Samuel Sewall had a good record of Boston life in the turn of the 17th century. The guests enjoyed tea in a meeting at the residence of Madam Winthrope, he wrote on April 15, 1709.

According to Peter Kalm, who toured North America in the mid-18th century, tea had not only replaced milk as a breakfast beverage, but also was drunk in the afternoon. From the letter that Ms. Alice Addertoungue wrote to Benjamin Franklin in 1732, we can tell that tea was widely used in social gatherings. Alice told Franklin, “The first Day of this Separation (with her mother—writer) we both drank Tea at the same Time, but she with her Visitors in the Parlor.”

During the tea hour, social and economic affairs were discussed. Interestingly, since teatime provided an ideal opportunity to get acquainted, young men and women enjoyed it very much. Tea had become the excuse for many a social gathering. Being invited to drink tea became a special thing for the colonists. Benjamin Franklin wrote a note showing his appreciation for Mr. Fisher’s “Company to drink Tea at 5 o’clock this afternoon, June 4, 1745.”

329 Europe, the main resource for the colonists to learn about China

Europe was the main resource for the colonists to learn about China before the "China Fever", generated by the famous voyage of the Empress of China, the first American commercial ship that reached China in 1784. There was no direct contact between China and North America before then. All Chinese products were brought to North America through Europe.

For the same token, Americans’ knowledge about China was also derived largely from European literary sources. Ever since the 17th century, the reports of European missionaries in China had been “so filled with admiration that European intellectuals were seized with a mania for things Chinese." Chinese philosophical “impact on Western philosophy was of far greater and more lasting significance.

The admiration of Chinese culture had become the characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. Some prominent European thinkers turned to Confucian philosophy for theory to support their arguments in their debates on moral, political or religious issues. European "admiration for things Chinese reached its climax in Valtair's Essai Sur les Maurs (1756), which presented Confucius (551-479 BC) as “an anticipation of the philosophies of the eighteenth century"