到1901年，美国人口接近8000万，人均咖啡消费约5千克，而茶仅0.5千克，差距为10比1，促使英国种植园主大力推销茶。1904年圣路易斯世界博览会有62个国家、45个州中的43个州参加，7个月吸引近2000万访客，冰茶被面向大众推广。
博览会的核心展品是一座雕刻精致的柚木耆那教神龛，高约35英尺、宽20英尺，据称凝结了65名熟练雕刻工两年的劳动。1898年至1907年，印度和锡兰对美国的茶叶出口从700万磅增至1650万磅（约2.4倍），博览会场地以45万美元售出（约合今天1600万美元），而该神龛后来在拉斯维加斯赌场以“幸运之门”重现，并由4名工人用3个月复原。
Castaways于1963年开业、1967年易主，并在1987年关闭，但在1965年《移民与国籍法》推动下，耆那教移民于1979年组织起来，使洛杉矶地区的社区从20世纪70年代末约65个家庭增长到今天约1500个家庭。捐赠的神龛在2008年建成的7.5万平方英尺、1800万美元综合体中成为焦点，支撑2019年估算约16万人的美国耆那教群体（占美国人口不足0.05%），并处于480万印裔美国人侨民和3.3亿美国总人口之中。
By 1901 the United States had nearly 80 million people and drank about 5 kg of coffee per person versus 0.5 kg of tea, a 10-to-1 gap that pushed British planters to market tea aggressively. At the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair—62 countries, 43 of 45 states, nearly 20 million visitors over seven months—iced tea was promoted to mass audiences.
The fair’s centerpiece was a carved teakwood Jain shrine about 35 feet high and 20 feet wide, said to represent 65 skilled carvers working for two years. Tea exports from India and Ceylon to America rose from 7 million lb in 1898 to 16.5 million lb in 1907 (about 2.4×), while the fair site sold for $450,000 (about $16 million today) and the shrine later reappeared as a Las Vegas casino ‘Gateway to Luck’ rebuilt by four men in three months.
After Castaways opened in 1963 and changed hands in 1967, it shut in 1987, but Jain migrants—enabled by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act—organized in 1979 and grew in the Los Angeles area from about 65 families in the late 1970s to roughly 1,500 today. The donated shrine became the centerpiece of a 75,000‑sq‑ft, $18 million complex completed in 2008, reinforcing a small U.S. Jain population estimated at ~160,000 in 2019 (<0.05% of Americans) within a 4.8 million Indian‑American diaspora and a 330 million national population.
Source: The long, strange journey of a temple from profane to sacred
Subtitle: How an object made to sell tea, then used to promote gambling, finally became holy
Dateline: 12月 18, 2025 05:43 上午 | BUENA PARK AND ST LOUIS