Puer Tea

by Zhang, Jinghong. ,Project Muse.

  HISTORICAL GLORY

  Yiwu is a township in Mengla County, Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture, in southern Yunnan (map I.2). It is located on the east bank of the Mekong River, close to the border with Laos. The township covers a mountainous region of 864 square kilometers. Its population of about thirteen thousand is composed of 34 percent Han and 66 percent other ethnic groups, of which 29 percent are officially recognized as Yi, 21 percent as Yao, and 16 percent as Dai (YTG 2007).

  Prior to tasting the aged Puer tea in Hong Kong, I had been to Yiwu twice. The first time was in 2002, when I happened to be there with a crew that was making a film about people involved with the tea business in Yunnan. On that trip, I stayed for only one day. The second time was in early 2006, when I went for one week, with a clearer aim to observe the area for future fieldwork. I was struck during those early journeys by two things: the unique way that tea makers shaped Puer tea into cakes using their hands and the weight of a stone press, and the typical Han style of old family houses surrounded by rural scenes. As it turned out, these two features were closely linked, because the tea is processed in the old houses.

  I learned more about the tea from Zhang Yi, the retired leader of Yiwu Township, who had taken the lead in reviving the technique of handcrafting Puer tea in the mid-1990s, after Puer tea had gone largely unnoticed in Yiwu for almost half a century.

  Zhang had worked on local chronicles and was so familiar with the history of Yiwu that in 2002 he was invited by the film crew to act as a guide. Following him into the old houses, I heard stories about families whose histories were bound up with the Puer tea production and trade of many years before. These stories were recounted by Mr. Zhang and other locals in the Shiping accent, a Yunnanese dialect. According to their versions of local history, from the mid-seventeenth to the eighteenth century, many Han migrated to Yiwu and the nearby regions from Shiping, a southeastern county in Yunnan (Zhang Yi 2006b: 72–73; see also Zhang Yingpei 2006: 77). Before the arrival of the Han, the indigenous people (ben ren) had cultivated tea trees, usually under the authority of Dai overlords. At present, these indigenes are identified by the authorities as Yi. Some researchers think that this ethnic group is actually closer to Bulang (Mu Jihong 2004: 63), while others argue that it is closer to Hani (Gao Fachang 2009: 29). In reality, many non-Han people in the area describe their ancestors as indigenous, but call themselves Yi in accordance with the official classification.1

  According to one study, before the Han arrived, at least 5,000 mu (a unit of measure equivalent to 0.0667 hectares) of tea lands were cultivated by the indigenous ethnic group (Zhang Yingpei 2006: 75–77). The new Han immigrants gradually acquired rights to the land, sometimes by buying it and sometimes through intermarriage with local Dai aristocrats (Dao Yongming 1983: 61; Liu Minjiang 1983: 57–58; Hill 1989: 332). By making use of obsolete areas and clearing new areas, they developed their own tea plantations and came to rely on tea as an important part of their economy.2 As a result of the efforts of both the Han migrants and the original groups, the tea cultivation area increased. The loose tea would undergo rough processing by the tea growers before being traded to the Han merchants, who established commercial tea companies that organized fine processing for pressing the tea into cakes and traded the products (Liu Minjiang 1983: 57; Zhang Shixun, interview, 2007). According to recent research by Puer tea experts based upon examining examples of old tea and the genealogies of tea producers, many commercial brands, such as Tongqing Hao, were established by Han families in Yiwu in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries (Deng Shihai 2004: 82; Zhang Yingpei 2006: 122–123). Puer tea made in Yiwu and the nearby mountains entered a buoyant commercial period and became very famous. The region prospered, and according to one writer from 1799, “hundreds of thousands of people came to trade in the tea mountains” (Tan Cui [1799] 1981: 387). The trading networks of Yiwu's Puer tea extended in several important directions: to Beijing, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Tibet (see map I.1).3

  Now, after many years of wear, old family houses that had once been famous commercial tea companies stand along the old street of Yiwu. Some are still occupied by the families’ descendants, others have been transferred to new owners, and still others have been destroyed, with only the stories told about them remaining. The houses of Tongqing and Songpin, whose tea I encountered in Hong Kong, have disappeared.

  When I was with the film crew in 2002, our guide, Zhang Yi, took us to one particularly well-preserved house, which used to be the site of the famous company Cheshun Hao. From some rough tea material piled on the ground of the parlor, the owner took out an old dusty wooden signboard. The film crew took a shot of the board, for which they were charged ¥10 by the master, a descendant of Cheshun Hao. The signboard was inscribed with the words “Tribute to the Emperor” (Rui gong tian chao); in return for sending Puer tea to the emperor of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the emperor granted them the signboard. As Zhang Yi and other locals pointed out (fig. 1.4), this was the highest possible honor.

  There are six connected tea areas east of the Mekong River in Xishuangbanna: Yiwu, Yibang, Manzhuan, Gedeng, Mangzhi, and Youle.4 Collectively, they are known as the Six Great Tea Mountains (Liu Da Cha Shan). All are in Mengla County except for Youle, which is in Jinghong City. The fame of these tea mountains is linked to the tribute tea sent to the Qing emperor in Beijing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Six Great Tea Mountains used to be controlled by the Dai ruler of Jinghong, the indigenous regime in Xishuangbanna. Later, the Qing administration gradually extended its control into this area, conquering local officials and replacing them with imperial bureaucrats, under a political reform known as gai tu gui liu (literally “replacing tusi [native officials] with imperial officials”). A new Puer Prefecture of Qing China was established in 1729, with Puer as its capital. At that time, the east bank of the Mekong was removed from Dai control and added to Puer Prefecture. Shortly after, the Six Great Tea Mountains became the base for tribute tea to Beijing (1732–1904) (Giersch 2006; Zhang Yingpei 2006). The oldest known cake of Puer tea, Golden Melon Tribute tea (jin gua gong cha), found in the Palace Museum in Beijing (now kept in the Chinese Tea Institution in Hangzhou) (see the imitation in fig. 3.3), raised the profile of the Six Great Tea Mountains, because the tea material originated in Yibang, which was also inhabited by indigenes, Dai, and Han migrants (Zhang Yingpei 2006: 109). Golden Melon Tribute tea was produced more than one hundred years ago. Yibang was the political, administrative, and tea-trading center of the Six Great Tea Mountains from the 1750s until the early 1900s. After Yibang's decline, Yiwu rose to prominence in the early 1900s and became the production and distribution center for Puer tea (Zhang Yingpei 2006: 11–14).

  A common saying is used to demonstrate the Qing royal court's appreciation of Puer tea in their daily diet: “Dragon Well tea (Longjing) for summer, and Puer for winter” (Huang Guishu 2005: 86–88). Among the various types of Chinese tea, Puer is thought to be the most helpful in digesting greasy food. This feature is said to have perfectly suited the needs of the Qing royal families, who were descended from the northern nomads of China and had meat as their staple food. After an initial rough processing in the Six Great Tea Mountains, the tea materials were sent to the capital, Puer, or to Simao, where the General Tea Bureau (Zong Cha Dian) was established, for fine processing.5 This fine processing took place under strict supervision, and the finished products were carried overland to Beijing.

  Apart from its history of providing tribute tea for Beijing, Yiwu is considered unique today because of its valuable aged Puer teas, such as Tongqing Hao and Songpin Hao, which are collected by connoisseurs in Hong Kong and Taiwan. These teas are said to be the oldest examples of Puer tea aside from the Golden Melon. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before modern transportation in inland China, Puer tea originating in Yiwu and the nearby mountains was sent by caravan to Lai Châu (now in Vietnam) or Phongsali (now in Laos), and then farther afield to Southeast Asian
ports like Hải Phòng and Bangkok.6 Finally, it was transported by boat to Hong Kong. The overland trade and transport was dominated by Han traders from Yiwu and the nearby tea mountains,7 and the overseas part was often undertaken by Cantonese traders originating in Guangdong (Prasertkul 1989: 51, 73–74; Luo Qun 2004: 244; Zou Jiaju 2005: 57; Zhang Yingpei 2006: 83). Young Puer tea thus flowed to Hong Kong and was aged and accumulated there. Cantonese people say that in Hong Kong, even children would be encouraged by their parents to drink Puer tea while having yum cha (Chan 2008: iv).

  Puer tea was also sought after to balance greasy food in Tibet, which has long been regarded as the most important buyer of Yunnan's tea. Tibetans are said to have started drinking tea, which they imported from Yunnan or Sichuan, in the eighth century (or, by one account, the third to fourth century).8 More tea was traded from southern Yunnan to Tibet during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and the tea trade flourished under the Qing (1644–1911). The Qing government began issuing tea certificates to Tibetan merchants at Yongsheng in 1661, and at Lijiang starting in 1748. After receiving these certificates, the Tibetan traders could go to Puer for further tea trading (Fang Guoyu 2001: 429; Zhou Hongjie 2004: 4).9 This trade continued during the Republican period (1912–1949), but it was often blocked by wars and political conflict. In Yiwu I heard an interesting story about the Tibetan trade from Zhang Yi, as well as from some other elderly people. In 1945, a group of Tibetans arrived and impressed the local Yiwunese with their tall figures. They bought all the tea they could find in Yiwu—even the tea stored in the henhouse, according to one exaggerated account. The Tibetans had thirsted for Puer tea for many years during the Second World War, when the caravan routes were blocked, and they traveled a long way to buy the tea even though some of their horses had died on the way to Yiwu.

  The Puer tea business in Yiwu was not always successful. It experienced several periods of decline, mainly due to political factors. During World War II and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communist Party in the 1940s, the tea trade virtually came to a halt. A few years after the foundation of the People's Republic of China (1949), the purchasing and selling of foodstuffs, including tea, was monopolized by the state, and the operation of private family business was completely stopped. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Yiwu and the nearby tea mountains produced basic tea material primarily for state-owned tea factories (Zhang Yi 2006b: 34).

  Though political struggle became the dominant theme in the Maoist era, from the 1950s to the late 1970s, and many activities were sacrificed in the name of class struggle, Yunnan's tea production didn't stop. State-owned tea factories kept producing tea—to supply the needs of Tibet, on the one hand, and to supply Hong Kong, Macao, and other countries in Southeast Asia and Europe, on the other. Maintaining a supply to Tibet was considered important for interethnic relations, while supply to Hong Kong and other countries was a way of gaining foreign currency (YTIEC 1993: 7–11, 160–165).

  When Hong Kong returned to mainland China from British rule in 1997, many Hong Kong residents, worrying about the political change, moved overseas and sold off their Puer tea stocks, which they had collected over many years. The biggest buyer was Taiwan (Deng Shihai 2004: 84). Ironically, it was thus not people from Yunnan, Beijing, Tibet, or even Hong Kong who launched the rediscovery of the origin of aged Puer tea, but a group of Taiwanese “tea madmen” (Zeng Zhixian 2001: 109).

  In October 2007, in Yiwu, I met Mr. Lü, the head of that pioneering Taiwanese group. He told me that he had brought aged Tongqing Puer tea with him when he and his group first came to Yiwu in 1994, as he was determined to obtain more of this kind of tea. However, when he expressed this desire in Jinghong (the capital of Xishuangbanna), the tour guide responded that she was unfamiliar with this place called “Yiwu” and wondered why it was necessary to visit it. Lü and his group insisted that they knew from historical accounts how important Yiwu had been for Puer tea. But at the time, the artificially fermented tea was more commonly recognized as Puer tea, so Mr. Lü and his group were told by government officials in Kunming, Simao, and Jinghong not to go to Yiwu because Yiwu didn't produce artificially fermented Puer. But Mr. Lü and his group knew that the valuable aged Puer teas, like Tongqing and Songpin, were naturally fermented from the raw tea of the Six Great Tea Mountains.

  They were deeply frustrated when they finally reached Yiwu. They found neither aged Puer tea in storage nor new caked Puer tea in production. People continued to produce basic tea material in loose form (rough processing) in order to dispatch it to national tea factories, but the technique of making round-caked Puer tea (fine processing) had been lost. Lü told me that what they saw was only a ruined and depressed Yiwu: bad transportation, few restaurants, a simple and crude guesthouse, old family houses, and village roads in disrepair. No one knew anything about aged Puer tea. Finding that the Puer tea industry had been inactive there for almost half a century, Mr. Lü and his group tried their best to focus on a few bright points: First, the tea resources were still there. Remarkably, the old and tall tea trees within the forest were still being cultivated by both ethnic minorities and Han. Second, some older people who had worked on caked Puer tea might still be alive in Yiwu. Third, aged Puer tea originating from Yiwu many years ago, which the Taiwanese brought with them, could be used as a model in reviving the industry. Although the basic tea material in loose form was recognized by Mr. Lü and his group as raw Puer tea, it was not convenient for transport, and all the valuable aged Puer tea had long been stored in pressed cake form.

  Mr. Zhao, who worked in the government office of Yiwu Township and participated in the reception for the Taiwanese in 1994, recalled his astonishment:

  We were completely surprised at suddenly having a group of Taiwanese guests, and we could not understand why they took the trouble of traveling to our rough, rural, and remote small village. Mr. Lü, the head of their group, invited us to share the aged tea he brought with him, and we later learned that it was Tongqing Hao. I thought its flavor was great, and it had a special smoothness, which I had never experienced with tea. He asked us to guess the price of this tea in the external market. I daringly estimated “¥400 or ¥500 for one round cake,” thinking to myself that this might have been too much. However, we could not believe our ears when Mr. Lü said that it was sold for ¥15,000 a cake in Taiwan!

  Finally the Yiwu government decided that the wishes of the Taiwanese guests should be satisfied as much as possible. They recognized that the Taiwanese had made a long journey in pursuit of Puer tea. They also recognized that the relationship between mainland China and Taiwan was difficult but improving, and they were excited about the value of Yiwu's Puer tea in the outside world.

  Two men in their sixties, who had been hired as workers for Tongqing Hao before 1949, were sought out and invited to be the new tea masters. Using the model of the aged tea cake brought by the Taiwanese, a process of teaching, learning, and imitating began. Zhang Yi, who at that time was working on the local chronicles, participated in the tea-processing classes and later developed a business relationship with the Taiwanese visitors. Thus developed the revitalized process of Puer tea making that was shown to the film crew eight years later, in 2002.

  TASTE PREFERENCES

  In his clean yard Zhang Yi put some loose tea material into an iron cylinder, steamed it for about ten seconds, and then poured it into a cloth bag to shape with his hands into a round cake. The caked tea was then pressed under a stone press, with someone standing on it to add weight. After being put on a wooden shelf for several hours, the tea was taken out of the cloth bag for further drying. Finally, seven pieces were wrapped together with bamboo leaves in a stack, known as “seven-son tea cake” (qi zi bing) (fig. 1.5).

  This fully manual way of processing tea is practiced in Yiwu and the Six Great Tea Mountains, all located to the east of the Mekong in Xishuangbanna. By contrast, a mechanical method is commonly used in Menghai, another district in Xishuangbanna, to the west of the Mekong Ri
ver (map I.2). There are other interesting contrasts between Yiwu and Menghai, with the river as the boundary between them.

  The authentic image of Yiwu and its Puer tea is constructed by reference to “the other,” not just by reference to the past. That is, its identity is constructed not only by looking at Yiwu itself, but by juxtaposing, competing with, and representing the other (Baumann 1992; Ohnuki-Tierney 1993).

  In terms of tea resources, both Yiwu and Menghai have tall tea trees in the forest as well as the “bush” form of terraced tea fields, though their different soil and climate lead to different tea flavors. For rough processing, they share similar procedures in tea harvesting, killing the green, rolling, and drying. A greater contrast lies in their techniques of fine processing, which have been shaped by the different ways the tea industry has developed in the past.

  When the tea business in the Six Great Tea Mountains prospered during the Qing dynasty, from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century, Menghai was less famous for Puer tea, even though it also possessed excellent tea resources. However, the situation gradually changed, and Menghai's geographical advantage became more and more prominent, since it borders Burma and is located in the lowland plains, which were more suitable for modern transportation. A turning point—which finally broke through the dominant position of the Six Great Tea Mountains in Puer tea production and trade in Xishuangbanna—occurred in 1938, when the first tea factory of Yunnan, the National Tea Factory of Menghai, was opened. This was a branch of the Central Tea Company of the Republic of China established by the national government for the purpose of improving red tea production and export. Advanced machines brought from British India and Burma began working on processing tea in the Menghai Tea Factory, marking the start of mechanical tea processing in Yunnan. But Yiwu maintained its handcrafted technique. This difference in processing techniques persists today. Different terms are used to describe production units in the two places. For Menghai, the term is “tea factory” (chachang); in Yiwu, it is “household tea unit” (chazhung). The former stands for the rapid and large-scale modern production, while the latter persists in slow and small-scale traditional production.10 After 1938, the private tea business of Yiwu was knocked back by the policy support for the national factory in Menghai; combined with the other events mentioned earlier, Yiwu's dominance gradually waned (Zhang Yingpei 2007: 39–40).