I often hear people say
they would not do something they don’t want to have to do: “…for all the tea in
China!” And when you think about it, all the tea in China would be a pretty bad
deal for most people. I mean, firstly, where would you even put it? And then
what could you do with it? Only a certain percentage of people would even know
how to set up a business to sell tea on such a massive scale. Because after
all, you’d have to pay for storage, shipping, and I’ll bet there are all kinds
of FDA regulations you have to follow even before you can sell any of the tea.
Plus, there’s setting up a business, branding, packaging, marketing, etc., and
all the while they tea would be going bad just sitting in your back yard and
garage and bathroom, or wherever it is you’re trying to keep it, which would be
considered unsanitary conditions, preventing its legal sale. And then, isn’t
China going to notice that all its tea is gone and send agents to find out what
happened to it? Do you think they’re going to be nice about it all disappearing
and ending up in your possession? They’re not likely to believe the line of you
having gotten it as a reward for doing something you didn’t enjoy doing. And
even if they just let you keep it, aren’t you going to be accused of hoarding
tea, trying to monopolize the market or set up a brutal tea cartel, or at the
very least attempting to make tea prices skyrocket by sitting on it like you were Teafinger or something (which
you’d inevitably do without a way to package and sell it quickly), and then it
might be expropriated by the United Kingdom, since they couldn’t live without
their tea time. And so getting all the tea in China would probably not only not
be a great wage for anything, it would likely be more of a burden than a
reward; unless you really, really
like tea a lot.
