There is a very famous novel but I could not find out whether it has an English translation. The name is 南方有嘉木. It is a beautiful title. I translate it as “A Beautiful Tree In The South”. It refers to tea tree. It is a story about a tea farmer family between Ching Dynasty and the first Republic. They were in Hangzhou and a lot of the times the tea were Long Jing and Jiu Qu Hong Mei ( the red tea that Leo calls Red Plum Classic ). Of course the story itself is more about love and hate and politics than tea. But interesting to read about how they used to drink tea and all the people in tea houses and tea business. I remember when the main character had a crush for a song girl, and when she felt sick, he sprinkled some long jing leaves on top of the water in a gaiwan for her. He had a bad relationship with his arranged-marriage wife, but always enjoyed great sex with this song girl whom he attracted with tea.
I read the novel many years ago after seeing a TV series inspired by it. The book was much better than the TV
