* Including the Moravian Jesuit missionary named Kame, the Latinized version of whose name is memorialized in the genus.

* The company shipmasters' need for stability at sea – which they achieved by stowing the light cases of tea (and bolts of silk) on top, the heavy crates of china underneath as kentledge – led unintentionally to a passion for chinoiserie in England and America that flourishes to this day.

* Jardines, which went on virtually to create Hong Kong, and which still plays a dominant role in business in the territory, is understandably weary of being pilloried for the role it once played in the selling of ‘foreign mud‘. It has to be said that some in the firm's ranks objected at the time – Donald Matheson, for example, grew so distressed at the social and medical effects of the drug that he resigned from the firm. He was a rarity, however, and China to this day has not quite forgiven the company, delivering a sharp rebuke from time to time, just to keep it on its toes.

* Like theine, tea's weak equivalent of the caffeine in coffee.

* Wu Han was arrested and brutalized, and died within three years. Yao Wenyuan, who wrote the attack on Wu Han's play, went on to become one of the infamous Gang of Four, a steersman of the Cultural Revolution. Once Mao had died he, Mao's widow and their two colleagues were arrested and put on trial: Yao was sentenced to eighteen years in prison.