Tea is a familiar drink, and yet it is far more than a luxury. Behind its aroma and its bitterness lies the maturity of a culture, born of climate, soil, people, trade, and faith.
I have visited tea plantations in India, Japan, and Bangladesh. Tea is a living thing rooted in the land, and it also reflects a nation's philosophy. Every country expresses its own philosophy through tea. Bangladeshi tea, for all its quality, has yet to appear on the world's tea map, and it is a shame that it remains so little known.
- China: A country that symbolizes tea as a civilization
As the Cha Jing, the Classic of Tea written in the eighth century, tells us, tea was established as a philosophical system more than 1,200 years ago.
Tea is a ritual that joins heaven, earth, and people, and a culture in its own right. Across China's vast territory a rich variety of teas thrives: Oolong in Fujian, Pu'er in Yunnan, Longjing in Zhejiang. In recent years teahouses, tea art, and even tea utensils have been exported strategically as tourism resources, proof of how mature the country has become as a cultural industry.
The way China now extends the qualifications of its tea masters and tea tasters overseas holds real lessons for other countries.
- India: A country that made tea an imperial heritage
Indian tea spread in the nineteenth century under the British East India Company as a pillar of colonial management, and it grew from the Assam variety, a plant native to the region itself. Assam, Darjeeling, Nilgiri. The place names themselves are now brands.
Darjeeling in particular has been called the champagne of tea, its muscatel aroma bound up with aristocratic culture.
Yet the shadows of colonialism remain: Low wages, land disparity, the strain on the environment. Fair trade and organic practices have made progress in recent years, but it will take time before tea truly becomes a source of national pride.
India is both a mirror and a warning for Bangladesh. From a production center to a cultural center. That transition will decide its future.
- Japan: A country that raised tea to spirit and elegant beauty
Tea seeds reached Japan with Zen monks in the late twelfth century, and in the sixteenth century Sen no Rikyu raised tea to an aesthetic, governed by the principles of harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility.
Tea reflects the state of the mind more than the taste on the tongue, and the freedom of a once in a lifetime encounter lives inside the formality of the tea ceremony.
As an industry, Shizuoka, Uji, Sayama, Yame, and other regions have built local brands, many of them now protected by GI certification. Demand for matcha has spread across the world, so much so that it has become hard to buy even at home.
Outside matcha, though, the domestic market keeps shrinking in both consumption and production as its farmers age, and a cultural revival is underway through matcha sweets and tourist tea plantations.
The key to the future lies in seeing matcha once again as a drink that nurtures the soul.
- Bangladesh: An untold treasure
The tea fields of Bangladesh. Standing among the hills of Sylhet, Juri, and Srimangal, one is left breathless by their potential.
The hills, wrapped in mist, run on into Assam, yet the aroma is more delicate, closer to a Darjeeling.
A floral fragrance, a lingering citrus finish. It would be a shame to let such a tea stay unknown.
In 2025 the country produced about 94.9 million kilograms of tea yet exported only 1.64 million, down from 2.45 million the year before. The leaf is there. What is missing is the story to tell.
This country has strengths of its own. A young and hardworking workforce, a generous climate, a range of teas from black to white, and the smiles of its people.
Bring these together and it could stand as the champagne of the East. What it needs is a story, and the context to carry it.
The tea plantations of Bangladesh, woven of light and people, embody a quiet poetry of labor.
- Making Sylhet a global brand
The first step is place of origin, and the acquisition of GI, geographical indication. Names like Sylhet Tea or Juri Valley Tea create stories of their own. Bangladesh now has 64 GI registered products, and tea is not among them. Moulvibazar, the heart of tea country, has already registered its agarwood, so the district knows the procedure. And the dispute over the Tangail saree showed what happens when a name goes unregistered.
Alongside registration, a tasting system staffed by experts would make quality visible. Tea should take root as a domestic culture before it is exported, in city cafes and tourist tea salons. And its stories can travel through photographs, film, and essays, until tea becomes a culture people talk about.
There is much to learn from Japanese tea making, from China's way of spreading its culture, from India's branding, on the way to a tea art in a Bangladeshi style. Bangladesh already has one curiosity all its own: Seven layer tea, seven strata standing in a single glass, poured by the different densities of milk and syrup. But this is not enough. We must make people see the history of tea in Sylhet and Bangladesh that stands behind it.
Towards a fragrant future
Tea is an art of earth, people, and wind. Bangladeshi tea is a sleeping poem the world has yet to read.
The afternoon light on the hills of Sylhet, the smiles of people at their work. Those moments were proof that the tea was alive.
What the world wants now are things that nourish the soul. Bangladeshi tea comes closest to embodying that.
The question now is whether someone will step forward to tell the story.
I believe that one day the steam rising from the hills of Sylhet will warm teacups all over the world.
Izumi Osaragi is an IFJ-accredited Japanese photojournalist and visual artist whose award-winning works merge poetic composition with documentary insight to explore the boundaries between society and culture.
