A Cup Without Tea for Tea Without a Cup

Once upon a time, there was a group of people who used to drink tea at 4 pm. The act of drinking tea at this time was foundational to their culture. Tea was a core part of their identity and history.

Often, they would face prejudice and hatred from non-drinkers of tea who would refuse to see them as equals. They came up with conspiracies that the tea-drinkers were using the 4 pm tea parties to collude with each other to take over institutions, that they manipulated the tea-trade to control the flow of money in the world and that they were stealing apple-juice from children to add to their tea.

Such slander lead eventually to a pogrom against the tea-drinkers,  who were systematically purged from governments, universities and corporations. Eventually, in the nation of the sausage-eaters, they were rounded up and boiled alive in large industrial kettles.

Seeing the world's hatred of the tea-drinkers and knowing that they could not count on any nation to keep them safe, certain elder tea-drinkers realized the need for a separate nation built just for tea-drinkers.

It was decided to settle tea-drinkers from around the world in the land of tea plantation, which was the ancestral home of the tea-drinkers. During the distant past, tea plantation had been under the mandates of various empires, and the tea-drinkers had been scattered across the world.

Unfortunately, the land of teaplantation was now occupied by others: coffee-drinkers, toast-crunchers and egg-eaters. So, as the tea-drinkers moved into tea plantation and started cultivating tea, there was a backlash from the other people living there.

The coffee-drinkers, despite recognizing the tea-drinkers as fellow caffeine addicts, nonetheless looked down on them as evil in need of eradication. Every time a coffee field was burnt to make way for tea, the coffee-drinkers grew more and more irritated. Soon they began burning tea gardens in retaliation.

As the situation devolved, the surrounding nations (who were all avid coffee-drinkers) decided to destroy the tea nation once and for all. So they coordinated a military invasion to happen exactly at 4 pm, when they knew that the tea-drinkers would be too busy celebrating teatime to mount a defence.

Unfortunately for the coffee-drinkers, the tea-drinkers managed to regroup and successfully beat back the invasion. The tea gardens, far from being burned down, had now expanded to include more territory which previously belonged to coffee-drinking nations.

The coffee-drinkers expelled all tea-drinkers who still resided in their lands, who were all taken in by the tea nation. Now there was a diversity of tea being grown - oolong, darjeeling and earl grey. Some drank the tea with different concentrations, some with milk and some with sugar.

Any coffee-drinkers who still lived in tea plantation were allowed to drink coffee, but could not publically wave coffee-bean-flags. Tea-drinkers and coffee-drinkers could not legally marry.

Tea-drinkers from all nations were allowed to freely come to tea plantation (except for a curious nation of people who ate nothing at all, who did not let  its citizens leave lest they be corrupted by food. However, this strange nation fell apart once its citizens realized that though they may not agree on which food or drink is best, they all agree that food and drink is good). Tea plantation was to be a nation for and by the tea-drinkers (though drinking other beverages was tolerated, which was not something that could be said for their coffee-drinking neighbours).

Some of the outer territories of tea plantation existed in a legal limbo - with a majority population coffee-drinkers who were neither citizens of tea plantation nor of their own nation. These territories had been taken during the teatime war by the tea-drinkers and was held under tea plantation military occupation.

These coffee drinkers demanded their own nation and that those coffee-drinkers who were forced to leave during the war be allowed to return. The tea-drinkers refused, scared that the return of the coffee-drinkers would make coffee the most popular beverage in tea plantation.

After decades of low-level violence, the then leaders of the tea-drinkers and coffee-drinkers were poised to make peace. They met in the land of the pickled-fish-eaters (not to be confused with the nation of the raw-fish-eaters, who were known for making cheap electronics, cool swords and odd cartoons), under the auspices of the president of burgerland (the most powerful nation at that time).

Unfortunately, the peace deal fell through. The tea-drinking prime-minister was assassinated by a rogue group tea-drinkers who preferred tea with higher concentrations. The coffee-drinkers were split on whether or not one ought to add cream to coffee, and could not decide on common leadership. The war resumed.

The pro-cream faction controlled the left bit of the coffee-drinkers' disputed territory and the anti-cream faction the right bit. Though the anti-cream faction wanted to live in peace, the pro-cream faction kept shooting missiles filled with coffee grounds at the major cities in tea plantation. The tea-drinkers had an automated system that intercepted the missiles before they could land, so were unaffected. The missiles became part of daily life for the tea-drinkers.

The conflict continued to fester in this small corner of the world. Meanwhile, an insane group of coffee-enthusiasts, upset at the burger-eaters' involvement in the affairs of the coffee-growing regions, carried out a major terrorist attack in burgerland. The burger-eaters, incensed at this turn of events, shunned coffee-drinkers and coffee in general. They and their allies invaded several coffee-drinking nations (though not all allies - for instance, the nation of snail-eaters refused to help in one of the invasions). These events made the burger-eaters sympathize with the tea-drinkers.

Furthermore, a large number of green-tea-drinkers (who had split off from the main tea-drinking community back when the land of teaplantation was occupied by a foreign empire and were thus no longer considered true tea-drinkers) existed in burgerland, and they believed that the establishment of a modern tea-drinking nation in tea plantation was a prerequisite to the end of the world (which they saw as a good thing) and so pressured burgerland into being pro-tea.

Exactly fifty years after the first teatime war, when the attention of the world was focused on the conflict between the wheat-eaters and the potato-juice-drinkers, the pro-cream faction (funded by the kebab-eaters, who were upset that relations between tea plantation and other coffee-drinking nations were being normalized) decided to invade tea plantation.

They destroyed tea gardens, smashed teapots, burnt tea leaves and killed many young tea-drinkers who were listening to music. They even killed some old tea-drinkers who had survived the horrors in sausageland. The pro-cream insurgents took many tea-drinkers hostage. The tea-drinkers, who nearly had their right to drink tea acknowledged by the coffee-drinkers, had years of diplomatic work undone in an instant.

By now, the coffee-drinkers in the left bit had gotten fed up of cream. The pro-cream faction held onto power only by eliminating the anti-cream faction and mandating that all coffee be served with cream. Nonetheless, when the tea-drinkers dropped bombs filled with spent tea-bags on the pro-cream faction, all the coffee-drinking bystanders also got hurt. The other coffee nations condemned the war but did very little to help their fellow coffee-drinkers.

Thus continued the conflict, with no end in sight. Neither the pro-cream faction nor the high-concentration-tea faction wanted peace, and they  controlled their respective governments. The nations eventually lost interest once more; the world kept spinning.

This article is dedicated to:

• Carl von Culinaritz, a general of Pumpernickelia, author of 'On Warming Leftovers' and founder of the western gastro-military tradition
• Bun Soup, a general of the noodle-eater empire, author of 'Artichoke of War' and founder of the eastern gastro-military tradition
• Risotto Macaroni, author of 'The Pizzaiolo', a foundational text on the study of pizza-land politics