Who Invented Chai? Well, It's Complicated | AJ+
Vložit
- čas přidán 19. 05. 2018
- Tea is warm, nurturing and perfect for digestion after a massive carb-loaded meal. And for many Americans, specifically those in diaspora communities, tea is how they connect with family and their roots. But for many societies around the world, tea has a bit of a complicated history - and it traces back to colonial empires.
Learn more here:
NPR. “How Tea + Sugar Reshaped the British Empire.” www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...
BBC. “The Dark History Behind India and the UK's Favourite Drink.” www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-in...
USC. “How Tea Shaped the Modern World.” www.universityofcalifornia.ed...
Music tracks courtesy of APM and Audio Network.
Presented by: Sana Saeed
Edited by: Michael Zipkin
Animations by: Chia Liu
Produced by: Sana Saeed, Kathryn Wheeler and Omar Duwaji
Senior Producer: Imaeyen Ibanga
Executive Producer: Sarah Nasr
Music tracks courtesy of APM and Audio Networks.
Footage and images courtesy of Getty.
I'm Somali and we drink shaah. It's a big part of our culture, everyday life, and out gatherings. It tastes a lot like chai and I'm certain we got it from South Asia. I'm from the North which was colonized by the British who brought over South Asians to work. They lived in that part of Somalia until the Civil War in the 80s. I think that's part of it but hundreds of years before that we traded often with South Asia and the Middle East so I think that's where we got it from.
That's true I remember I asked my uncle once to drink shaah and he said if you drink it you will know every secret in the world I actually believed it SOMALILAND FOREVER
No brother Qaat is big part of your culture, everyday life ;-)
All the admiration and reverence from a brother in Arabia.
@@williammarston1861 Not a brother and qaat is a cancer
@@dramaqueen465 sister how do u make ur shaah?
I asked an India 'Walla' what the secret to his Chai was. He said that he used equal parts of water and milk. He also said that he boiled his milk before hand a few times to get it creamier. Delightful !!!
Most America tea is southern sweet tea. Not like chai.
totally professional some people call is chai
true . . . with ice and lemon wedges, no milk, lots of sugar, very thin black tea
America is a big place with lots of tea options. Most bottled tea is like southern sweet tea, but I think the most popular teas in southern california (where i’m from) are english/irish breakfast teas and taiwanese/east asian milk teas. I’d love to see a survey on this though :^)
@@ibrahimahmad3917 It's Ice Tea actually and no Chai is very clearly tea with milk and spices. That just is what it is.
@@justpreeth, cai (cay is the word for tea in Turkish) is just plain black tea with or without sugar in a lot of places worldwide.
Chai should be brewed strong with fennel seeds and cardamon and a little ginger, topped with a generous amount of milk and boiled till it's sizzling. Lastly, I don't care if the British brought Chai here, our Chai here is so different and loudly represents our culture through the use of authentic spices
I'm chinese, I fell in love with masala chai the first time I made it, it was so much better than the instant powder ones, I'm very curious about Indian and Pakistani cuisine and culture. So far I've made Goan fish curry and Dal tadka. Love from China and Australia
Masala Chai is from India only
I am from Kenya and chai has been an integral part of the daily life of Kenyans including myself because of British Colonialism which brought Indian immigrants to Kenya to build a cross country railway in the mid 19th Century and with them came their amazing cuisine including chai. I came to the US for college in 93 and after about 10 years of relying on Starbucks chai 💋😫😝👎🏿 started making my own chai again and becoming a purist in terms of the spices used. I am a full-fledged Chai connoisseur/snob and only drink what I make with the 9 spices and fair trade black tea leaves I get from home 🤣🇰🇪
"tea is, kinda, the result of empires clashing." ??? tea or cha already had thousands of years of history/culture before the colonists arrived...
They got too narrow viewpoint. I think they make conclusion first then derive hypothesis and proofs.
@@shankysays I think the context in which they were speaking made it clear that they meant "consumption of tea in cultures outside of mainland China", and that they were just saying "tea" for the sake of brevity, maybe they should have gone into greater depth on precolonial tea cultivation, or maybe that would have distracted from the focus of video. I could see either point argued, and I do think it is valid of Ruijter to complain about the video glossing over that part of tea's history, but I don't think it is fair to say that they were working backwards from their conclusions. Sorry to disagree.
watching chai and samosa while its raining here in my city.
i know what i am having this evening.
Interesting but 2 remarks :
- Using tomatoes in Italian cuisine is somehow irrelevant as an example of colonialism, because Italy never had colonies in South America, plus the tomatoes where not grown then to be sold in Europe, they were discovered there, seeds were taken and grown in Europe. So you don't need to colonize a place to bring some seeds back home.
- It is unfortunate that Taiwan is not mentioned, probably because its rich tea history is not because of colonialism but because of pure business development at least at first, then grew under Japanese colonization, so as it doesn't relate to AJ's American audience, it is not worth being mentioned....
I have a entire pantry dedicated to all the different teas around the world from India, China, Japan, Russia, Middle East.
Love tea so much.
Taste of tea depends on the procedure of making it,not everybody can make a good cup of tea.Besides if you can make chai from pure mik it tastes a lot better.Some people are lactose intolerant,so they can't really enjoy real chai at all(FACT-chai without milk is like smartphone without internet)>>>FYI--You guys didn't mention about the largest producer of chai in the world i.e ASSAM.
The word for tea, in China, “茶” which pronounces “chá”.
@Foreign Policy both
Here in oman people are chai addict they cannot function without thier chai.
We make it with cardamom and Cinnamon or saffrons or ginger
And it tast amaaaazing 😋😋
YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN TO MENTION FEW HISTORICAL POINTS. TEA WAS ALWAYS AVAILABLE IN AREA OF INDIA CHINA AND SRI LANKA
I just know that a Persian PM hid the chai seeds in his cone and brought them to Iran
Chai -Samosa our breakfast combo
The best quality chai is not boiled in the pot. First you boil the water, then you take it off the heat, then you add the leaves. For even better quality, try a pour over brew. Steeping too long creates bitterness and off flavors. With pour over, you can have three to six infusions, with the second and third considered the highest quality.
You must be white.😂😂😂😂
I am speaking from having been taught by Tibetan Buddhist monks, who have sweet tea and salty tea made with ghee . . . lots of milk . . . I think it is more a cold weather drink.
It is delicious. Made with milk, ghee, a little salt, black tea
Tibetan tea is SUPER different. Salty and buttery. And yet absolute awesomeness. I am sitting at a cafe in Delhi's Tibetan colony while typing this :D
mickey morgan is salty tea soup-like?
Just black tea. Half raging boiling water. Half ice. Helps bring out a strong flavour quickly.
i am tibetan , born in india . In my family we make both chai and butter tea( its tibetan tea ), and when there is guest we have both and server depending on what they want .
say indian
This is actually incorrect in that Tamils a large south indian ethnic group had tea far before the brits arrvied due to historic ancenstral trade routes to china as well as indonesia and cambodia...Its not even called Chai (a north indian word) so quit stereotyping and over generalizing. Also you gloss over east India (the seven sisters) and their historic tea roots not all of india is north india some indians have been drinking tea far before brits arrived.
"Chai” is the Chinese word of Tea as well
Just the Iced Tea in summer make the US a huge tea consumer.
I want the apartment
I have this amazing friend who introduced me to the tea world
Tea was probably discovered in assam by a Brit called Alexander Wayne not related to Batman ..... Mr Wayne apparently was invited to a singfho tribe family for breakfast and they already knew about brewing tea . He liked it and told his mates and rest is history. It was in 1820s .
No. It was discovered in China
6:00 that's incorrect. Chai was available even in 3rd class compartment of trains in colonial India. It might had started as a elites drink but it became commoners drink very early.
Sana you presented very well thank you. I just wanted to add in some missing info and I hope I'm not wrong remembering the history. As you pointed out that initially tea was the elite drink before becoming a household treat, true but it wasn't after when British left that every poor peasants also started drinking tea. It was actually after the Boston tea party incident during the late 1800 that British Empire had a glut of tea and didn't know where to sell. At the same time their hold was weakening in China. So Thomas J Lipton hooked every household on tea drinking they went to every nooks and crannies and served free teas for a long time until people were hooked on tea and they all eventually became their consumers.
Nice video, Sana.🍵 It's amazing how so many "common" things have such a rich, complicated history.
ALSO: is it weird that as an SF native I was excited by the 04:12 point where you shop at Salama Halal on Geary (I can see Pharaohs in the background - I love their Cairo Smoked Sausage🥙)?
BuddyL what is cairo smoked sausage
I’m technically Irish/Welsh/Scottish, but my family has been in America for so long that we don’t have much connection to our roots. So in attempts to get to know my own culture(s) and also in work dealing with the endangered language of Yurok and the surrounding culture, I’ve learned that one of the absolute easiest ways to learn a lot about a culture is food. It’s really cool that you can just follow the history of chai and find ways to explore so many key points of history, and so many cultures, little and big.
I just know we used to import the tea from india our history in Baghdad say the one a prince married a Indian princess just to get trade deal for tea
And I'm here my whole life thinking Chai is a Swahili word from East Africa.
I guess colonialism really was EVERYWHERE
marvin mandela I told an indian frd that chai origined from China, he was so shocked and had to check it on google
It’s not always colonial. Cultures that acquired tea through the overland route from China knew it as a form of the Mandarin name ‘chá’ (茶). The Persians passed it on as ‘chay’ (چای) to the Russians, while the Arabs called it ‘shay’. Swahili acquired the name this way through traders from the Middle East, and not European colonials.
On the other hand, cultures that encountered Chinese tea through the sea trade knew it by the name in the dialect from the coastal province of Fujian: ‘te’. The Dutch acquired tea via Fujian, and carried the term to Europe. That’s why most European languages call tea by some version of ‘te’. The Portuguese, on the other hand, had their own Chinese port at Macao, where the ‘chá’ term was used. The Portuguese call tea ‘chá’.
This is actually incorrect in that Tamils a large south indian ethnic group had tea far before the brits arrvied due to historic ancenstral trade routes to china as well as indonesia and cambodia...Its not even called Chai (a north indian word) so quit stereotyping and over generalizing. Also you gloss over east India (the seven sisters) and their historic tea roots not all of india is north india some indians have been drinking tea far before brits arrived.
Rohan Misra it is colonialism at work because ppl tend to forget there were trade before the brits came
Debo Datta You keep saying this but produce no sources.
Chai just means tea right? When we say chai we are just talking about tea or are they referring to masala chai with milk, spices, sugar etc.?
I already knew this. Did anyone else find it profound?
I'm sorry ik this is a serious video about the origins of tea and whatever but these two at 6:58 are just so adorable i mean look how he looks at her and then later he smiles at the camera it's just so cute.
My uncle's Turkish tea is my favorite!
Can someone help me get something she is saying Chai and is drinking karak do they call it chai the karak? Beacause in my country we call the tea chai and tea with milk Karak ....
Chai is nothing but habit of our daily life in kashmir also... And British effect
kashmir daily Heya, Mr. Kashmiri! North Indian over here. Hope you are doing well, Kashmir is often so troubled (I don't get _what_ our governments are doing to help, if anything).
Hiii.. What about you, what do you know and think about kashmir_political perspective.... Geographical... Etc.
kashmir daily I think Indian Government is to blame for a lot of it and I understand why Kashmiri citizens feel so against remaining with India. We gave you special status, but that has ended up excluding you from proper integration with rest of the nation. The government has meddled with your state elections a lot of times and I have never heard anyone from the centre acknowledge it, let alone apologise. I also am aware of - only a little though - of all the human rights violation AFSPA has caused by abusing their power, including many ugly cases of sexual assault. Where is your justice there?
But there is also immense strategic importance to the area. I can see why India does not want to let go, for it will then make Pakistan taking over a strong possibility, making India very vulnerable. As for Kashmiri independence, I don't think powerhouses like India and Pakistan would ever let that happen.
All this struggle over territory truly sucks and while I am trying to gather what I learnt from school and news, _you_ people are living it in reality. It is directly affecting you. I can't really understand your fear or situation no matter how hard I try. But I will do my best to keep aware of every territory's political stance. My parents, for example, are adamant on Kashmir being India's and only India's. But I don't want to ignore all the mistakes my gov. made out of some misplaced sense of 'patriotism'.
That is all, I guess.
Dear Arunima Tiwari, I am agree with you. But the fact is that kashmir has more unemployment rate why, we have been targeted and murdered bet. economic growth is deteriorating, daily wages are more less, you wouldn't believe what conditions are here, we have been targeted outside kashmir on what they called love jihad and all that. Does not have became Indian government communal. Why is this so, after all we love our country. inspite of separate constitution. we are human we want peace, development but we are worsening and involved in new conflictual segments day by day.... And have hardly any choice of future. But we hope that good days will come soon..... Thanks.
kashmir daily I hope so too. I went on a college trip to Srinagar three years ago when tensions were high. I saw how stagnant the economy is and how scared the citizens are with my own eyes. I hope you guys find leaders who lead you out of this. Meanwhile, I will study up on all that I have been missing out on about J&K. I should know way more as an Indian.
Assam Tea is the best in the world 😍😍
Hargish Borah yes
Yeah 😍😍
Best tea leaves, I've heard.
Unfortunately, this North Indian over here can't afford it. 😂
Yeah Arunima 😂
And we called it cha
I make chai in a stockpot. cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, vanilla bean, black tea, and sometimes i add crushed hazelnut on the top. it's good
I didn't seriously drink tea until university. I blame my grandfather for this: he travelled with a Thermos full of tea almost everywhere. (My family is Jamaican, so I had both coffee and tea in my house growing up in equal measure.) Standard Jamaican tea is tea with evap milk and sugar -- basically British "builder's tea".
Sana, it's a similar situation with spicy food in our culture too. If it weren't for colonists trading South American peppers, briyani today would suck.
mansoor tanweer The history of how chili peppers were globally distributed is an amazing story in of itself. The Spanish brought them to North Africa during the wars against the Ottomans in 1540 to 1580, and the Arabs began trading them east to Persia and India
Ooooh, I didn't know that. It would be cool to see.
but now a days people even in northern provinces eat spicy food. i just visited Peshawar a couple of years ago where i ate biryani and it was spicy. biryani was not even popular in Punjab kpk and balochistan until the early 2000. we use to eat pulaos and other rice dishes. but today biryani and spicy foods are popular through out the country thanks to the muhajirs who brought a beautiful culture with them.
We Indonesian drinks tea with a lot of sugar
punjabi Muslims never worked on tea plantation
These are Assamese, Nepalese ,gharwal who worked in plantation
Take some water in a pan and start to heat it.put some ginger and leave it until it gets boiled..when ut starts to boil put the tea leaves..and after 2-4minutes..pour it in a cup ,,,cut a lime and pour the juice to the tea....so helpful and soothing to your stomach after having a humungus feast....
Indonesia like tea
I think this video is misleading, China traded tea during the silk road period trough the whole of Asia. It was not due to colonial British that started the trade. The same with coffee, it was traded by Arabs to Turkey and Turkey traded it to Europe...
joimy95 the brits basically dumped all the opium to China and started a war cuz they want tea that bad and China want nothing from them
Lisa Ya-Han Chang true brits like otger euros were true a holes.
she really said put a cup with a tea bag in the microwave... does that shid even boil?
ALSO TEA WAS READILY AVAILABLE IN AFRICA AND SOUTH AMERICA AS WELL
رَبَّنَا ظَلَمْنَا أَنفُسَنَا وَإِن لَّمْ تَغْفِرْ لَنَا وَتَرْحَمْنَا لَنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ
We call it Shahee . It is a very important part of our culture & is the first thing we offer to any visitor . It is also served after every meal . Me and my wife have kept this culture in the US . We spice it using cardomom . clover & cinnamon . We do not mix it with milk .
1:55 how did he react when he found out his parents identity and the retention of his culture wasn't exactly their culture?
Java version of tea: the west side love to boil a bunch of it with water only, while the east side have to add a lot of rock sugar because it's a shame if a household don't have sugar they would consider it rude to serve tea plainly.
Always use whole organic milk (even a tbsp. of ghee), never let the tea boil, use cloves, anise seed, brown sugar or honey. Thanks for the cinnamon tip!
In Marocco tea is also a big part of our culture but our tea isn’t with milk we have green tea with mint or Chiba tea
How I make Chai ☕️ is sort of traditionally Indian with a dash of my own flair. I heat a pot of water with loose leaf black tea and cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, fennel, black pepper, cloves, anise and garam masala and bring to boil for a minute and then pour organic raw cow’s 🐄 milk and let it mix/heat and come to boil and then turn the heat down to medium heat for another minute or so before turning the heat off and serving.
I learned a lot from this video!
Tea don't grow in England.... So it's hard to believe it's a British thing.
is that “sooji ka halva” at
2：06.
you are way too desi in a foreign land.kudos.
Hmmm I think its interesting that she used the word "diaspora" and maybe even problematic since this video isn't about people just from South Asia (there's literally an Algerian woman in the video). I think diaspora is a good word to indicate the connectedness of people from a region, but when you're talking about how tea is common thing across a lot of the not-white world, it doesn't really fit.
Chai the leaves 🍁 itself came from India and British adopted the tea because they used to trade with the Indians.
NOPE the leaves is actually FROM China. The British took It to be planted in the subcontinent
I am Sudanese and TEA IS LIFE AND I CAN NEVER GO A WEEK WITHOUT A CUP OF TEA
A Canadian version, Chia tea, ground cardamon from shells, anise, and a tea spoon of maple syrup and milk....Mmmm...Kman
Well I'm British so I have it with boiling water, teabag and milk...the proper way :P
Indian tea is called Masala tea in the UK and it's soooooo good.
In greece (like turkey, north africa etc,) we don't put milk and it's more aromatic
gingergreek once a German told me she doesn’t drink beer from can so make me say I don’t drink tea from tea bag 😂😂 so competitive
nah brah
the proper way is having loose leaf tea in an infuser and boiling it. No additives no nothing.
K M
Right, I've alerted M.I.5 and the queen about your outrageous statement. Hope you like prison food pal.
K M yeah dude I enjoy that kind of tea a lot, but I'm also lazy lol
well im north african frm egypt & since we have been colonised most of our history i wouldn't know what it used to be but now we drink it black or with milk or with mint so nothing specific still...
milk in tea isn't the "proper" way lol its the bastardized form. good black teas should be flavorful, but not bitter/acidic to the point where you need milk in it - that is a result of the British "exporting" black teas through stealing a small handful of black tea plants and two chinese people lol. you cant selectively breed such a small gene pool, you got what you got, so you all ended up with acidic bitter black tea that needs milk. ive tried it and its nasty.
Well the British only used Tea for medicine until Catherine of Braganza introduced the afternoon tea habit.
This fact is barely known and I don't understand why.. Maybe some ppl will get offended that the english were not the OGs 😂
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Braganza
The etymology of tea can be traced back to the various Chinese pronunciations of the word. Nearly all the words for tea worldwide, fall into three broad groups: te, cha and chai, which reflected the history of transmission of tea drinking culture and trade from China to countries around the world.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea
And yes of course Masala chai is from Desi Land
indian tea rule world. a indin start his day with a cup of tea. tea with milk. north east india, south india nilgiri and kerla. tea auction contact at culcutta. ( exchange) Tea is one of the industries, which by an Act of Parliament comes under the control of the Union Govt. The genesis of the Tea Board India dates back to 1903
Idc where it's from it just taste good .
Very interesting
Thanks for sharing
I once read somewhere that the Brits originally preferred coffee and only switched to tea in a big way when a blight struck the coffee plants in their colonies.
Jigme Choedzin Balasidis at current the Brits drink more coffee than tea.
So you're saying they're reverting to their old ways? That may well be. :-)
Who the hell makes chai by boiling tebags in a pot, damn uncultured af
I don't get how the British made south Asians tea popular every culture always had tea so even I'm sure our ancestors used to also drink it afghans have their green tea Persians Arabs have their coffee
Drinking it right now...have to hv it once!!! #chai😍#Desi
In my culture (Armenia) we also use tea to cure flu. Tea with honey.
And of course the Queen of Chai tea is Green Cardamon (anybody know what to do with black cardamon?)
Who remembers chai wala Arshad Khna
Can we please appreciate Moroccan tea. Like. It’s literally LIFE 😭🇲🇦
No
no matter how you look at it, the ultimate history/culture of tea is in China. i felt like the whole thing about colonialism created tea was a bit out of the picture. now that tea is around the world we should look at the style of tea in it's own respective region, instead who invented it. great video anyways.
Greeks love the chai. They think it has medicinal properties. My mom used to give it to us if we were sick
In Arabic tea is “Shai” closer to chai
It’s either black or with milk and it differs from chai in the use of cardamom an cinnamon sticks
And would sometimes use regular milk instead of evaporated milk
Same for iranian tea, tho I've barely seen anyone putting milk in their black tea
Iam somali so tea is like drinking water
FEW OLDEST TEA COMPANIES ARE!. CYLONE TEA. BROOKBOND AND LIPTON
anybody call it saih?
ALSO JUST TO LET YOU KNOW GYROS IS NOT GREEK IT IS TURKISH. THE FAMOUS ITALIAN ESPRESSO IS ALSO TURKISH!. ALDO FAMOUS PLIAF WHICH WE LOVE TO EAT IN AFGHANISTAN. PAKISTAN AND INDIA IS ALSO TURKISH
Could we come down a notch and jusr redpiil this? It's just a caffeine delivery system, with all the baggage that comes with people getting high on it.
Damn the girl can talk fast lol 3:15
Yes Chai is Translation of Tea in Hindi
Chai is also middle eastren
I'm Drinking Chai while watching this
Can't stand the word because in my language it means tea. I need to keep reminding myself that people aren't offering me tea (even if they did, the bastardization of milk in tea is unacceptable)
I Still think chai has more South Asian roots instead of colonialism, as it was changed by the locals, by adding spices to it.
I thought that Chai is a tea, it's the same pronunciation for "tea" in Arabic language
Cha is for tea in mandarin chinese
The woman with the turban and glasses said it best.
What is this video even about? Just some random comments. Put it together please.
I Lub Chai
Love me some chai. Pakistani here
are we? are we post-colonial?
poe jeong Well, the Raj doesn't rule anymore, and American "imperialism" is much harder to define since it tends to govern international space rather than directly rule territory
Some say yes, some say no because the direct affects of colonialism still impact the whole of the world and also many areas are still colonized like Sápmi
Tea/chai is the cheapest energy drink ☕! I think turkish tea is best!
ummm,...the subcontinent is considered southeast asia?
and she is from lahore
basically punjabi landlord how she suffered from colonialism?
For me, the association between Chai tea and Starbucks is stronger than Chai tea and Asian culture...