If you are the kind of person who likes to spend a rainy afternoon with a book and a cup of tea this book is for you. The author, a tea lover, starts out by exploring the colonial world in which both sets of his British grandparents resided. One set lived in Amoy, China, and the other set lived in Calcutta, India. When they died they left the author their tea accoutrements and that is what set the author upon his journey to learn about their colonial lives. This is a book about the culture of tea and the countryside in which it is grown. It is not the history of tea. There are specific books about the history of tea that do a better job with the history than this book, but this book shines at placing tea in its natural settings and letting the reader know the people who live in such places and labor to grow the tea that millions drink. ( )

Poorly written, a tossed together set of research notes with seemingly random threads that meander. There are interesting tidbits, but the digging through required to get there isn't worth it. ( )

I have read and enjoyed the first two books in Goodwin's Yashim series and was given this as a gift, what Brit could resist a book on tea, especially one from an Empire family!

Goodwin has tea in his roots on both sides, Chinese and Indian, and the book follows his family's relation with tea as well as the history of the plant itself.

It is possible that I have given this a higher rating than most because of nostalgia, I lived in Hong Kong twice, the second time just before the book was written, as well as in Guangzhou later on,it helped tha I had heard of the places in the book. I enjoyed his writing style, as well as his account of the people he met along the way. Well-researched and enjoyable, just what you want in a travelogue. ( )