Robert Fortune was a Scottish gardener, botanist, plant hunter - and industrial spy. In 1848, the East India Company engaged him to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China - territory forbidden to foreigners - to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea. For centuries, China had been the world's sole tea manufacturer. Britain purchased this fuel for its Empire by trading opium to the Chinese - a poisonous relationship Britain fought two destructive wars to sustain. The East India Company had profited lavishly as the middleman, but it was now sinking, having lost its monopoly to trade tea. Its salvation, it thought, was to establish its own plantations in the Himalayas of British India. There were just two problems: India had no tea plants worth growing, and the company wouldn't have known what to do with them if it had. Hence Robert Fortune's daring trip.The Chinese interior was off-limits and virtually unknown to the West, but that's where the finest tea was grown - the richest oolongs, soochongs and pekoes. And the Emperor aimed to keep it that way. In a Mandarin's dress, with a black braid sewn into his hair, Robert Fortune ventured deep inside the country, risking his life for science, adventure, and a place among the great plant explorers. From Kew Gardens to grimy Old Shanghai, and on to the remote Wu Yi Shan hills, Sarah Rose tells a true tale of pirates, rebels, subterfuge, espionage, and how one man triumphed over an exotic and corrupt Empire.

萨拉·罗斯Sarah Rose，作家，现居住在纽约，生长于芝加哥。罗斯分别从哈佛大学和芝加哥大学获得学位。她是美国纽约文学基金会的受助者。《改变世界史的中国茶叶》（For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World 's Favorite Drink and Changed History）是她的处女作。

译者：孟驰，福建农林大学东方学院（现福州工商学院）英语语言文学学士，译著《迦太基必须毁灭》