In The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, author and history professor Paul Kennedy claims that China’s power peaked around 1600. Meanwhile, Western Europe was rising and surging, thanks to the Renaissance, scientific breakthroughs, and empire-building around the world.
Historical facts, however, do not agree with Paul Kennedy where the decline of China is concerned.
In 1800, the Middle Kingdom was still the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Globally, as much as one-third of all goods came from China (28% in 2018).
Chinese porcelain earned America's envy. Chinese tea filled Americans’ pots. That’s why the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, was such a big deal to Americans from all walks of life, who fiercely opposed tea tax and monopoly imposed by the British. Chinese tea, in a sense, was a catalyst for the American Revolution. As a matter of fact, the tea dumped into Boston Harbor’s cold water was shipped from Xiamen, Fujian, a busy trade port in southern China.
The Boston Tea Party was actually a Chinese Tea Party.*
Chinese tea and porcelain symbolized as much as substantiated Americans' wealth and status at the turn of the 19th Century. Before that, bragging rights went to any American household having more chairs than its immediate neighbors.
Newly-independent America had a crush on millennia-old China. This was puppy love on the part of the Yankees, however. When America became more mature and much more powerful as a nation, it started wondering if China was really an ideal object of its love.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Once the beholder changes, so will beauty.
Still, as Chinese tea had never really left a bitter taste in America's mouth, the Middle Kingdom's seductive fragrance lingered on. Before long, America would romance China again. Old flames die hard.
*It is a popular myth that American colonists, in defiance of their British overlord, switched from tea to coffee overnight following the Boston Tea Party. Truth be told, in 2014, 80% of American households still had tea in their kitchens (The Washington Post, September 3, 2014).
美國對中國 "一見鍾情"
在他所著的《大國興亡》一書裏，曆史教授保羅·
然而，在中國盛極而衰方麵，甘氏論說不符史實。
在1800年、中國仍然執世界製造業之牛耳，
中國瓷器令北美既羨且妒，中國茶備受洋基們熱捧。有此背景，
波士頓茶派對其實是個中國茶派對。*
以當時洋基們的角度來看，
美國在獨立之初，羽翼未豐之際，
情人眼裏出西施。情人變，西施就變。
話說回來，中國茶香不絕，魅力不消。未幾、洋基們又再心動起來。
*美國坊間有此佳話：波士頓茶派對翌日，反英的美土殖民即棄茶而
--- Lingyang Jiang
The Boston Tea Party of 1773
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