The problem was that the Chinese had always been secretive about the complicated processes of turning tea leaves into a refreshing beverage, and no one outside China knew how to get an industry going. Enter a remarkable Scotsman named Robert Fortune. For three years in the 1840s, Fortune traveled all around China, disguised as a native, collecting information on how tea was grown and processed. It was risky work: had he been caught, he would certainly have been imprisoned and could well have been executed. Although Fortune spoke none of the languages of China, he got around that problem by
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