Idiom
all the tea in China
Meaning
Something very valuable or priceless.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I wouldn't sell my grandmother's ring for all the tea in China.”
“I do not want to move away for all the tea in China.”
“She loves that painting so much that she wouldn't part with it for all the tea in China.”
“He refuses to work for that dishonest company again, even if they offered him all the tea in China.”
“The scientist would not share her secret research results with the rival laboratory for all the tea in China.”
“My brother says he would not go skydiving for all the tea in China because he is terrified of heights.”
“The captain promised his crew that he would not abandon the sinking ship for all the tea in China, staying until everyone reached the lifeboats safely.”
“The old farmer had refused developers for decades; his land meant more to him than all the tea in China.”
Examples
simple
“I wouldn't sell my grandmother's ring for all the tea in China.”
“I do not want to move away for all the tea in China.”
contextual
“She loves that painting so much that she wouldn't part with it for all the tea in China.”
“He refuses to work for that dishonest company again, even if they offered him all the tea in China.”
“The scientist would not share her secret research results with the rival laboratory for all the tea in China.”
“My brother says he would not go skydiving for all the tea in China because he is terrified of heights.”
“The captain promised his crew that he would not abandon the sinking ship for all the tea in China, staying until everyone reached the lifeboats safely.”
complex
“The old farmer had refused developers for decades; his land meant more to him than all the tea in China.”
Origin
A late nineteenth-century British formation, the phrase relies upon the historical association between China and a vast, nearly unquantifiable export of tea. The idiom uses the sheer volume and substantial trade value of the Chinese tea crop as a metric for an amount of wealth so great as to be considered a redundant bribe.
Key words
Related idioms
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