They grew the food, dug the roads and paid tribute to the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader, in silver coins, tea bricks and yak butter, which the other high-ups would rifle as they pleased.
In addition to being commemorated on stamps, coins, tea towels, mugs, flags and a refrigerator, the handsome twosome will be the subject of countless motion pictures, including a Lifetime movie, a Hallmark miniseries and a film entitled The Royal Romp, which is currently the subject of a bidding war between Cinemax and the adults-only section in every local video store and Redbox kiosk.
Where paper had zilch intrinsic value, gold and silver coins were worth the tea, timber or livestock for which they might be exchanged.
There's also Afghanistan: On The Dollar Trail, a dangerous study of where aid money really goes, and a film that will make you think twice the next time you pour a cuppa, Flip The Coin: The Bitter Taste of Tea, which probes the dichotomy between the corporations who provide tea for the west and the poverty-stricken people who pick it for them.
The objects include coins, rings, goblets, medals, coffee and tea services, bowls, candlesticks and plates.
2) The name. 3) The fact that if two of your favourite biscuits are chocolate digestives with a layer of caramel, they will melt under the tea into useless poo coins.
They bought tea and coffee from a coin-operated machine at the midmorning break.
"They're really two sides of the coin of social inequality," Fraser says over tea, taking a break from preparations for the show.
My half price tea and biscuit only costs one coin.
Underneath the clatter of bicycle chains and the clomp of boots marching, I find the ping of coins tossed at a Buddhist temple, the jangle of tea cups, whistling, a burst of thunder, wind, laughter, rain upon stones, silence.
He sees both candidates as opposite sides of the populist coin, with Trump tapping into the destructive, dark side of populism embraced by so many in the tea party.
