Tea and the milky way
QUESTION When was milk first added to tea? Was this habit started by the British? Milk tea — made with tea, water, milk, butter and salt — was a nourishing drink of the Mongols and Manchu from at least the tenth century.
in 1644 the Manchus took Beijing, overthrowing the Ming dynasty, and established Qing dynasty rule (1644-1912) over China, treating their homeland of Manchuria with special status.
When Europeans established trading links with the Chinese in the 17th century, it was with the milk tea-drinking Qing.
Distinct from the ethnic Han Chinese, the Manchu were a nomadic race and heirs to the equestrian culture of the northern steppes.
like other pastoral peoples on the borders of China (Uighurs, Tibetans and Mongols), the Manchus ate mutton and drank milk — habits and tastes that were foreign to the Han Chinese.
The first known example of a westerner drinking milk tea was Johan Nieuhof, steward to the Dutch embassy in Beijing from 1655 to 1657.
He wrote a detailed account of his experience, An Embassy From The Eastindia Company Of The United Provinces, in which he described a royal feast given by the ‘barbarian’ ambassadors outside the city gate at Canton in 1655 — which was five years before tea was introduced to Europe:
‘At the beginning of the dinner, they were served several bottles of the or tea, served to the table, whereof they drank to the ambassadors, bidding them welcome.
‘This drink is made of the herb the or cha, after this manner: they infuse half a handful of the herb the or cha in fair water, which afterwards they boil till a third part be consumed, to which they add warm milk about a fourth part, with a little salt, and then drink it as hot as they can well endure.’
For more than 200 years, the experience of the British and the Dutch trading with the Qing was that of long audiences and banquets, with negotiations over bowls of milk tea. This probably accounted for the British and continental practice of adding milk to tea.
Milk and lemon are known to break down bitter tannins in tea. in the following century, the poor quality of imported teas meant it was beneficial to soften the harsh taste with the flavour of milk.
Derek Patterson, Wirksworth, Derbys.
QUESTION Where did all the parachute silk come from in World War II?
BEFORE World War ii, parachutes were made of silk, though some were cotton, and most of Britain’s and America’s parachute silk came from Japan.
Parachutes were essential to Allied military strategy, not just to save the lives of pilots escaping from burning planes, but also to drop troops behind enemy lines.
in 1940, when Britain faced the threat of invasion in its darkest hour, Winston Churchill instructed the War Office that ‘we ought to have a corps of at least 5,000 parachute troops’.
This led to the development of British airborne forces. More than 13,000 Allied paratroopers landed during D- Day, including men from the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions — mostly using parachutes made from the new manmade fibre, nylon.
in 1935, Dr Wallace Carothers, a scientist working for DuPont in America, had created nylon, the first true synthetic fibre. it was commercialised quickly.
After determining that low- cost production was possible and settling on a target market of women’s hosiery, DuPont built a full-scale nylon plant in Seaford, Delaware, and began commercial production in 1939.
Silk-like nylon stockings were a huge hit and demand skyrocketed, with up to four million pairs sold in just one day in the U.S. in 1940.
in Britain, DuPont products were licensed to the chemical firm iCi. Recognising the utility of nylon, iCi joined forces with Courtaulds to form British Nylon Spinners in 1940.
A factory was established at lockhurst lane, Coventry, and later moved to Stowmarket, Suffolk, home of the iCi paints division.
By the time of Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941, silk shortages meant British parachutes were being made exclusively from nylon. in the U.S., DuPont switched from women’s hosiery to parachute production in 1942.
By the end of World War ii, British Nylon Spinners was producing more than two million pounds of nylon yarn annually to meet military demand, not only for parachutes, but also life rafts, hoses, tyres, valves and gaskets.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
QUESTION Has a pop star ever written a novel of note?
FURTHER to earlier answers, John lennon was probably the first rock star to test his literary mettle.
in His Own Write in 1964 and A Spaniard in The Works in 1965 were collections of short stories, poems and illustrations inspired by the nonsense writer Edward lear and the Goons.
They were better than the much-hyped work of rock music’s Bob Dylan. His 1971 novel Tarantula was rightly dismissed as pretentious. He redeemed himself in 2004 with his excellent memoir Chronicles.
Better still is the work of U.S. singersongwriter Josh Ritter. His first novel, Bright’s Passage, in 2011, which tells the story of a widowed World War i soldier, was met with universal acclaim.
Jeremy Baines, Hove, E. Sussex. THE U.S. comedian Steve Martin is also a terrific banjo player and novelist. His first novel, The Pleasure Of My Company in 2003, tells the story of Daniel Pecan Cambridge, who has obsessive compulsive disorder.
Better still are his Shopgirl in 2000, a satire on the beauty industry, and 2010’s An Object Of Beauty about the art world.
Elaine Birch, Nottingham.
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