For All The Tea In China (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798198491052)

In the shadowed mountains of Qing China, one plant could change an empire.

When Scottish botanist Robert Fortune is tasked by the powerful East India Company with an impossible mission, he enters a land closed to foreigners, ruled by suspicion, and guarded by men who understand the value of tea better than gold.

Disguised as a Chinese merchant, Fortune journeys through mist-covered cliffs, hidden tea gardens, smuggler trails, lawless river towns, and imperial provinces on the brink of upheaval. Alongside a band of unlikely allies - an irritable old tea master, his determined nephew, a dangerous tea roller with blood on his hands, and a cynical guide who trusts no one - Fortune must steal not just tea plants, but the ancient knowledge needed to make them thrive.

But they are hunted every step of the way.

Imperial magistrates close the roads. Secret brokers sell information to the highest bidder. Rival smugglers, Company traitors, and hired killers stalk the expedition from the mountains of Wuyi to the crowded docks of Shanghai. And as the stolen plants begin their perilous voyage toward India, Fortune is forced to confront a darker truth:

Empires do not merely move goods. They reshape worlds.

For All The Tea In China is a sweeping historical adventure of espionage, survival, betrayal, and ambition - based on one of the greatest acts of industrial theft in history.