Xiamen, the Historical Tea Trading Port of Amoy

Tea History

Oct 19

Xiamen (then called Amoy) in the 19th century from the Asian Civilizations Museum collections in Singapore.

Panorama of Amoy in 1933 © 2010 Historical Photographs of China

Xiamen in the 21st Century © 2012 Tranquil Tuesdays

Xiamen 厦门, Fujian 福建 is a city I have been to a number of times as a base when traveling to the historical tea terroirs in the surrounding rural areas of Fujian and Guangdong province.

Xiamen (previously known as Amoy) is also one of the oldest tea trading ports of China.

I totally dig Xiamen because a. it has such a different feeling than any other Chinese city I’ve visited (and at a certain point many Chinese cities start feeling about the same) b. it reminds me of San Diego, California.

This particular strip of Xiamen (Simingnan Lu 思明南路) reminds me of Singapore Chinatown which is no coincidence since Xiamen is the ancestral home for many Singaporeans of Chinese descent.

While this definitely looks rebuilt, you can see the architecture of the city is influenced by Victorian and Neoclassical style buildings…which makes sense when you consider the colonial history of Amoy that has everything to do with the tea trade.

Colonial Tea History of Amoy

Among the items most desired in the European colonial market, tea was unique because the Chinese government prevented European attempts to take tea plants, tea seeds or the knowledge required to grow and make tea.
The entitled desire for more access to more tea led to two Opium Wars—both of which had more to do with tea than opium. According to van Driem, “…the Opium Wars are an outcome of the British wanting to have tea but being unable to pay for this cherished commodity without resorting to the peddling of narcotics on the grandest scale ever seen in history.”
from “It’s Time to Decolonize Tea” published in Whetstone Magazine’s W Journal

One of the terms of the Treaty of Nanjing, signed in 1842 to end the Opium Wars, was Amoy became one of the first treaty ports to be opened to foreign trade. And not any foreign trade but primarily the tea trade!

Amoy was strategically located near a lot of China’s most famous historical tea growing terroirs (and Xiamen continues to be). Though I suppose a good question is, did those tea growing terroirs become famous due to their proximity to trading ports like Amoy or vice versa?