Xu's argument seemed to come back to history as the key issue. For many Yunnanese, the definition of Puer tea exists not only within the sphere of natural scientific knowledge. When natural science encounters embarrassment and cannot properly identify Puer tea with the representation of Yunnan, history—another useful tool from the sphere of social scientific knowledge—lends a hand.
TEA CARAVANS
While Simao and Xishuangbanna debated the origin of Puer tea, Yunnan launched a series of events promoting its tea as a provincial representative in outside markets. Just as Simao used the welcoming back of tribute tea as the key ritual in its name change, Yunnan used two important propaganda techniques to present itself. One was to redefine the position of Puer tea among other Chinese teas. The other was to promote the Ancient Tea-Horse Road (Cha Ma Gu Dao). The notion that older tea tastes better was used to link these two promotional techniques.
In 1989, several Yunnanese scholars conducted a ninety-day investigation, mainly on foot, around the triangle of Yunnan, Tibet, and Sichuan. They discovered that in Southwest China there had been two main transit lines to Tibet, one from Sichuan and the other from southern Yunnan. They argued that tea was the most important commodity carried along these routes by caravan, because Tibetans drink tea to help them digest greasy food, and thus they proposed that the route be named the Ancient Tea-Horse Road (Mu Jihong 1992). Mu Jihong (2003; 2004), who led the team, subsequently extended the concept of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road to include the various caravan routes connecting Yunnan and nearby Southeast Asian areas. For example, starting from Yiwu, there used to be small branch routes to Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, all with tea as their main transport good.12
The investigation of the caravan trade's history worked as a prelude to Puer tea's rise in popularity. It shed light on the geographic, economic, and political role of Yunnan as an important middle ground between China and Southeast Asia since the fourth century B.C.E. (Yang Bin 2006). As Mu summarizes:
The Ancient Tea-Horse Road is the road that disseminated civilization, and also the channel through which commodities were exchanged; along this passage, China and the outside world communicated, ethnic groups migrated, Buddhism spread eastward, and tours and expeditions were launched. We could say that it is the ancient road with the highest topography and most complicated configuration in the world. (Mu Jihong 2004: 26)
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, numerous books, magazines, newspaper columns, web pages, and audio and video series about the Ancient Tea-Horse Road have flourished. Most were produced by local Yunnanese, who emphasized that along this passage were multiple natural landscapes, from the rainforest of Xishuangbanna in the south to the high snowy mountains in the north. There were also lively towns along the routes—Puer, Dali, Lijiang—which acted as distribution places for goods carried by the caravans. Finally, multiple ethnic groups—such as Dai and Hani in Xishuangbanna and Simao, Bai in Dali, Naxi in Lijiang, and Tibetans in Diqing—resided along the routes, each of which had a unique ethnic culture and utilized Puer tea in its own ways. In these narratives, the Ancient Tea-Horse Road embodied Yunnan's rich nature and culture and proved its significant role in the tea trade (EBCMGD 2003).
Yunnan had long been shadowed by the ill repute of drug smuggling, especially in reference to the areas bordering Burma. It had also been said to be a “backward” region with undeveloped production, transportation, and economics. In jokes, Yunnan was the place that people would go to only if they had been exiled by the emperor. The Yunnanese themselves said that Yunnanese things were “earthy” (tu), rustic, or backward. Or, they exclaimed that Yunnan had excellent products, such as tobacco, tea, and tour resources, but that its people were too simpleminded to package these products in eye-catching ways.
Today, when I tell people that I am from Yunnan, their eyes grow wide and they admiringly say how they wish to visit Yunnan. The Yunnanese, too, gradually realized the value of being “earthy.” This transformed image developed as a result of the interplay between Yunnan and the outside as China's economic development was accelerating. After getting used to urban development, consumers began to seek something more exotic and rural, and the “earthy” element became part of a new fashionable consumption trend (Hillman 2003). The masters of the earth began to develop their self-presentation. As Puer tea blossomed, Yunnan successfully presented a series of cultural activities, the so-called Yunnan phenomenon (Yunnan xianxiang) (Zhu Sikun and Li Yin 2006).
In 2003 a successful stage play entitled Dynamic Yunnan (Yunnan yingxiang) featured Yang Liping, a famous Yunnanese peacock dancer, in the starring role. The play combined elements representing both the “primitive” ethnic folk of Yunnan and popular arts, and it became famous as it toured all around China (Fotoe 2006). Yingxiang () literally means “image,” and in Chinese its pronunciation is very similar to the word for “influence” or “impact” (). Through this performance, Yunnan made a dramatic entrance onto the national stage and exerted its new impact.
In December 2001, the central government gave Yunnan permission to change the name of one county in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture from Zhongdian to Shangri-la. Yunnan had successfully forestalled Sichuan and Tibet's use of the same name. The name “Shangri-la” was initially used by James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizon (1939) to depict a mythical Tibetan paradise with a beautiful landscape and religious harmony. Its exact location has long been debated, but it was imagined to be in southwestern China or the nearby Himalayas. After conducting research and exploration, Yunnan announced in 1997 that Shangri-la was located in Yunnan, and the name change was approved in 2001. As a result, tourism to the prefecture and to Yunnan in general boomed (Hillman 2003). Sichuan, another area that had hoped to claim the name Shangri-la, lagged one step behind Yunnan in achieving this validity (fig. 3.4).
At the same time, more film crews came to work in Yunnan, describing it as a haven for filmmaking.13 This praise was welcomed and encouraged by the provincial government. In 2006, ten feature films were made in Yunnan, prompting the government to remark that “the film industry is becoming one of the bright spots of Yunnan” (YRTN 2005). Among these works, some were directly relevant to the Ancient Tea-Horse Road or Puer tea. In 2004, Delamu—Tea-Horse Road Series, a documentary by Tian Zhuangzhuang, a fifth-generation Chinese director, was shown in cinemas; in 2005, a television series called Ancient Tea-Horse Road was screened by China Central Television. Both of them helped popularize the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, and many tourists came to Yunnan as a result.
Apart from new publications, plays, tours, and films, Puer tea—the old commodity of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road—became a newly fashionable drink representing Yunnan. On the one hand, narratives about the Ancient Tea-Horse Road declared that Yunnan was the original place of tea and that the demand for and transport of Puer tea had brought the Ancient Tea-Horse Road into being (Mu Jihong 1992, 2004).14 On the other hand, Yunnanese tea experts argued that the secret of Puer tea's improvement over time was accidentally discovered when natural fermentation, shaped by sunshine and rainfall, occurred along the long, hard caravan journey (Su Fanghua 2002: 50; Mu Jihong 2004: 92; Zhou Hongjie 2004: 8). With increasing awareness of the rising value of aged Puer tea in Hong Kong and Taiwan, going to Yunnan and traveling along the Ancient Tea-Horse Road became trendy in the early part of the twenty-first century.
At this time Yunnan was welcoming more visitors and also promoting more caravan expeditions and associated activities. In addition to the two promotional caravans mentioned above, another was organized in 2005 along the route toward Tibet, retracing the so-called classic Ancient Tea-Horse Road (Yunnan Daily 2006a). A fourth expedition, called “International Cultural Travel on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road,” started from Xishuangbanna in October 2006. It was destined for Nepal, where a Yunnanese photographic exhibition was staged along with tea-serving performances (Xinjing 2006). In February 2006 an initiative was launched to store Puer tea on thirty-three famous mountains all
around China (Wu Qiong 2006: 131). In July 2006 Puer tea was taken on board the Götheborg—a rebuilt Swedish East India Company sailing vessel—in Guangzhou. It was said that this was to link the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, represented by Puer tea, and the Maritime Silk Road between Asia and Europe, represented by the Götheborg (Yunnan Puer Cha 2006: 136–137; Yunnan Daily 2006b).15
Since the early 1990s, the Yunnan provincial government has aimed to develop Yunnan as “a province with powerful green economics,” “a province with rich ethnic culture,” and “a province with rich tour culture.” The Puer tea industry accorded with all three aims. Being packaged with the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, Puer tea shaped the presentation of Yunnan as an important channel connecting inland China with the wider world in both the past and the present. Furthermore, Puer tea and the Ancient Tea-Horse Road were part of a provincial promotional package that involved other factors, such as new tours, plays, and films. These factors were closely linked and influenced one another. Together they were used by the provincial government to supplant the old negative impression and rebuild a new healthy image for Yunnan.
“GREAT VALUES”: CHANGING CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION
Puer tea's improvement with age is said to be its distinguishing feature. From this, several key values were drawn out by traders, connoisseurs, consumers, researchers, mass media, and the government.
The first remarkable feature was flavor. A popular saying claimed that once you came to love Puer, you would drink no other kind of tea. I did not believe this saying until I met many people who had had this experience. Many of them told me that they used to love Iron Goddess of Mercy, an oolong tea with an enticing aroma. They admitted that they had found the flavor of Puer unpleasant when they first encountered it—either “too stimulating” (referring to raw tea) or “too earthy” or “moldy” (referring to artificially fermented tea). But as they drank more they grew to appreciate the unique flavor. The word widely used to describe the ideal flavor of raw Puer tea was huigan, a lingering sweetness after an initial bitterness or astringency, which was said to be much better than that from Iron Goddess of Mercy and other types of tea. Good artificially fermented Puer tea was popularly described as “warm” (nuan) or “smooth” (hua). More key words that were applied to aged raw Puer tea could be found in the book Puer Tea, the so-called Puer tea bible, by Taiwanese tea expert Deng Shihai. In this book, Deng (2004: 37–61) compared mature Puer tea's fragrance to that of orchid, camphor, and lotus and used many special terms to describe its flavor; most extraordinary were descriptions like “flavorless flavor” (wu wei zhi wei), “the bubbling-up of spring water from the bottom of the tongue” (she di ming quan), and “supplementing the vital breath” (bu qi). These epithets were later widely cited, and it was said that if one didn't like Puer tea, it must be because one had not yet tasted good aged Puer tea.
The second remarkable feature of Puer tea was its health value, something that almost every Puer tea drinker mentions. In interviews, several people used medical reports to show the positive effect of Puer tea. After drinking Puer tea for an extended period of time, they found that their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar was lowered. This has also been found in scientific experiments. Tea has long been acknowledged to have multiple medicinal effects, and the experiments on Puer tea tried to show that it had notable effects on losing weight, improving digestion, warming the stomach, reducing fever, lowering high blood pressure, and protecting against diseases such as cancer, constipation, coronary disease, and the hardening of the arteries (Chi Zongxian 2005; Liu Qinjin 2005; Shi Kunmu 2005; Zhou Hongjie 2007). Besides this published scientific research, Puer tea's health value was continually discussed in teahouses. For instance, in Simao teahouses I was told that a local tea expert had found Puer tea helpful in treating people with HIV/AIDS. I also heard that Puer tea was good for gout and altitude sickness. All sorts of information was promulgated to convince consumers that drinking Puer tea enhanced longevity (fig. 3.5).
The third widely promoted feature of Puer tea was its cultural value. This was reflected in the provincial effort to associate Puer tea with the Ancient Tea-Horse Road. In addition, Puer tea was linked to broader levels of culture: its glorifying story of being used as tribute to the emperor was promoted; it was praised for uniquely maintaining the pressed shape of traditional Chinese tea dating from the Tang and Song dynasties (seventh to thirteenth centuries); it was affiliated with Chinese traditional religion and praised as exemplifying the spirits of Daoism and Ch'an Buddhism because of its longevity; and it was used as metaphor for a way of life in which one must take time to become mature and should pursue a slow-paced and peaceful lifestyle to counteract the high speed of modernity. I once heard from an informant from Beijing that those who drank Puer tea were considered to have high “quality” (suzhi).16 And generally, drinking Puer tea is said to represent a new fashion and lifestyle (Li Yan and Yang Zejun 2004).
The fourth key feature of Puer tea was its financial value. Puer tea has come to be praised as “a drinkable antique.” Around 2003, many traders started doing more business in Puer tea than in green tea or oolong. It was said that green or oolong tea would lose its value if not sold in a timely manner, no matter how expensive it had originally been, but Puer tea was the opposite: the older it was, the more valuable it became (fig. 3.6). The amazing prices of Puer tea sold at auction had become widely known, and the saying that if you didn't store Puer tea today, you would it regret tomorrow spread rapidly. As a result, more and more people engaged in buying and storing Puer tea.
PUER TEA AUCTIONS
• In November 2002, at the Tea Evaluation of the Guangzhou International Trade Fair, 100 grams of three-year-old Puer tea was auctioned for ¥168,000. This broke the auction record for Tieguanyin, ¥120,000 in 2001.
• During the Chinese New Year in 2004, three grams of Puer tea stored in the Palace Museum and later collected by Lu Xun, a famous writer, were auctioned for ¥12,000. That is ¥4,000 per gram, thirty-two times the price of gold at that time.
• In October 2005, after the new caravan from Simao reached Beijing, seven pieces of Puer tea (357 grams per piece) were auctioned for ¥1.6 million.
• In September 2006, at the first Yunnan International Tea Trade Fair, one hundred grams of loose Puer tea was auctioned for ¥220,000.
• In May 2007, a piece of new Puer tea (about 400 grams) was auctioned for ¥400,000, which was so far the highest auction record for new Puer tea. (CCTV 2008)
For the reasons described above, Puer tea grew monumentally popular during the first years of the twenty-first century. This changed the pattern of tea consumption and production in Yunnan as well as in some other tea areas of China. Each of China's numerous kinds of tea has tended to establish a niche according to consumer demands, natural conditions, and food culture. Jasmine tea is more popular in Beijing and northern China; eastern China, including Jiangsu and Zhejiang (near Shanghai), has a long tradition of producing green tea, including the famous Dragon Well tea; and southeastern China, including Fujian and part of Guangdong, consumes oolong tea with great passion. On the national level, green tea has long had the highest levels of consumption in China. And before Puer tea's prevalence, oolong tea was the most popular among the middle and upper classes in urban areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. But gradually the taste, health, wealth, and cultural values of Puer tea began to exceed those of other kinds of tea. Following its revival in the mid-1990s, it took only a short time for Puer tea to become prominent in China. As a result of its rapid increase in popularity, it acquired the nickname “crazy Puer tea” (fengkuang de Puer cha) (CCTV 2007b).
In the Fangcun Tea Market in Guangzhou, the biggest tea distribution center in China, more and more dealers turned to Puer tea. According to statistics compiled by the Guangdong Tea Culture Improvement Association, in 2006, 99 percent of tea shops there sold Puer tea, and some who used to specialize in oolong tea also made Puer tea an important sideline. Tea transactions
that year totaled ¥67 billion, with Puer tea making up one-third (Puer Tea Weekly 2007d).
In northern China, the new caravans made Puer tea fashionable virtually overnight. A tea trader from Beijing, whom I met in Yiwu, recalled the scene in 2005 when the first caravan arrived in Maliandao, the biggest tea market in Beijing and all of northern China:
All the people in Maliandao were startled by the arrival of such a fantastic caravan, which they had only read about in books or seen in pictures. And what shocked them most was that a piece of Puer tea carried by the caravan could be auctioned at such a surprising price. Since then, the tea sellers in the markets began Puer tea business without exception.
In a speech, one of Simao's leaders linked the caravan to Beijing and the welcoming of Golden Melon tea “back home” (Pu-Erh 2007a: 5), noting that both presented an attractive image of Puer tea and its homeland, Yunnan. Jiao Jialiang, the manager of Long Run, one of the biggest Puer tea companies of Yunnan, called for “recovering the calling card of Yunnan that was lost in an alien land” (Ma Yihua 2006), referring to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guangdong, and areas in Southeast Asia where people appreciated Puer tea much more than the Yunnanese did. To Jiao, Yunnan had always produced good tea and served it to outsiders, but the Yunnanese themselves neither understood it nor drank it seriously. He proposed another question: “Shouldn't Puer tea be a calling card for Yunnan? This calling card has been lost by Yunnan and left in alien lands. Now the others come to us, bringing the aged models with them. We'll have to work hard to print out more of our calling cards.”
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