For all the tea in China

Now Royle had a proposition to make: Would Fortune be willing to return to China in the employ of the East India Compay as a tea hunter? […] He was being engaged only to collect tea. The property rights to all the other plants he collected – the ornamentals, grasses, seeds, seedlings, flowers, fruits, ferns, and bulbs – would be Fortune’s alone. With such generous conditions it would be possible for him to start collecting on his own account and to sell samples at auction for potentially vast profits. […]
But what the company had now requested of him was a much bigger undertaking than simply collecting. Fortune would have to steal samples of one of the world’s most economically valuable plants, keep them healthy, and arrange for their successful trans-plantation on another continent. It was the most formidable task a botanist had ever faced. He would have to speak to Jane. […]

With Wang walking five paces ahead to announce his arrival, Fortune, dressed in his mandarin garb, entered the gates of a green tea factory.
Wang began to supplicate frantically. Would the master of the factory allow an inspection from a visitor, an honoured and wised official who had travelled from a far province to see how such glorious tea was made?
The factory superintendent nodded politely and led them into a large building with peeling gray stucco walls. Beyond it lay courtyards, open work spaces, and storerooms. It was warm and dry, full of workers manufacturing the last of the season’s crop, and the woody smell of green tea hung in the air. […]