tea

Resham Gellatly and Zach Marks spent eight months traveling through India, meeting with hundreds of India's chai wallahs — or tea vendors — who highlight the country's culture and diversity.

British tea drinking is on the decline. U.K. leaders might have welcomed such news in the 1970s, when the length of the tea break became a major point of political contention.

In the 1700s, steep taxes made tea too pricey for most. Smugglers like the notorious Hawkhurst Gang helped feed England's growing taste for tea, operating with a mix of popular support and fear.

Archaeologists found the 2,100-year-old tea leaves in the tomb of a Han dynasty emperor, suggesting tea was highly valued. But was the emperor drinking tea as we do, or using it as medicine?

In some fancy hotels, Christmas tea has become a refined respite for harried shoppers. But the tradition's roots are much rowdier: efforts to fight public drunkenness.

Tea drinking has long been synonymous with female tittle-tattle. Though men drank as much tea and gossiped as avidly as women, it was the latter who got stuck with the bad rap.

China and its trade practices are often blamed for U.S. economic woes. But once upon a time, it was the tea trade with China that created American magnates — with some catastrophic consequences.

These days, green tea has its health halo pretty firmly affixed. But in Victorian England, adulteration was rampant, and the drink was seen as a "stomach-churning, nerve-jangling threat to health."

People in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest were drinking cacao and tea-like yaupon in places where neither grew. That suggests an extensive trade network to deliver a caffeine fix.

The practice of reading tea leaves had its heyday during Victorian times, when fascination with the occult and self-analysis thrived. It was safer than other forms of divination and persists today.