ABSTRACT
When coffee and cacao first reached China, they found a formidable competitor, tea, firmly established there, and they have never successfully challenged its supremacy.1 S. W. Williams (1895, 1: 776), writing late in the nineteenth century, said that coffee and cocoa were unknown in China. More recently, Anderson and Anderson mention coffee as gaining popularity among modern overseas Chinese, and among recent imports to South China. Fruit drinks have long been used in China, and sodas and fruit squashes are now widely used, but they are recent, having become popular with students only in the 1930’s. Soybean milk, long used as a beverage, has also gained favor in recent times (Dudgeon, 1895: 17; E. N. Anderson and M. L. Anderson, 1977: 342, 371; V. Y. N. Hsu and F. L. K. Hsu, 1977: 307). Since none of the above beverages were of great importance in traditional China, we will say no more of them, but turn instead to tea, China’s leading beverage.
