Imagining these possible responses prompts me to rethink why I have developed my writings within the jianghu framework. It also makes me reflect more on the anthropological perspective and methodology in exploring the authentic meanings of Puer tea as well as other consumer goods.
When I started this research, I endeavored to discover authentic facts about Puer tea, at least for the historical sections. But soon after I began my fieldwork, I found it difficult to clarify many issues. Even a question like “What is Puer tea?” had numerous answers. I was swayed by various actors and became confused. It seemed that everything everyone told me was believable as well as unbelievable. I doubted that I could prepare a book about the history of Puer tea, given that a singular and authentic historical truth about it may never be verified.
Many events involving Puer tea were intertwined with complex human negotiations, and it became hard to clearly identify what was authentic and what was not. My initial interest in Yiwu had been partly inspired by Zhang Yi, the retired township leader who pioneered the recovery of handcrafted caked Puer tea in Yiwu in the mid-1990s. Many tourists, traders, and journalists visited him to learn about the local history of Puer tea. I visited him many times, too, and he spared time to answer my questions patiently. He published his own book in 2007 about the history of Puer tea in the Six Great Tea Mountains. He inscribed the copy I bought from him on the blank page at the front with the following words: “A tea person should care very much about honesty and faith” (Charen yi chengxin wei zhong). That day he talked to me about how fake Puer tea was increasingly becoming a problem in the market. On later visits, I found that he preferred to talk about how to cultivate tea properly in a healthy ecosystem rather than about historical events. Mr. Zhang said he wished to write another book focused on tea cultivation, but he was worried that he might not be able to do so, because he was old and had not been well in recent years. I agreed that, to a large degree, the quality of the tea plant might be more important than the quality of the historical truth. And I understood that maybe he had been distracted by too many historical debates.
Through gossip, I heard that some people, both locals and outside traders, were suspicious of Mr. Zhang and his tea. They said that some of the historical issues he wrote about in his book were untrue. They said that he provided false information for his own commercial benefit. Some local villagers said it was good that he had taken a lead in boosting the production of Puer tea in Yiwu in recent years, but it was bad that he had taken a lead in pollarding forest tea trees and planting terrace tea fields in the early 1980s. Some traders had bought his earliest tea products but suspected that they had not been made from pure forest tea material, as their flavor had not improved even after almost ten years. I once visited Zhang's tea terraces and saw that he had tried his best to make some adjustments, increasing the gap between the tea trees, almost like forest tea. As for his earliest tea products, he had no way of making any adjustments, as the tea had been sold ten years earlier and stored by somebody else. The suspicions and criticism became fiercer in early 2007, when Puer tea's price reached its peak, as any judgments about older products at this moment could easily influence the value of new products. In these debates, Mr. Zhang was seen as someone who had done both good and bad for Yiwu's Puer tea.
Mr. Zhang died at the end of 2008, at the age of sixty-seven. He had suffered from heart disease for a long while, and some of his neighbors in Yiwu said the suspicions and criticism of him and his tea had made his condition even worse. After his death, many visitors wanted to pay their respects at his grave, but they were rejected by his son, who perhaps didn't want his father to be disturbed any more, whether by respectful praise or negative gossip.
Mr. Zhang's story shows how complex Puer tea's historical “truth” can be. It is difficult, and perhaps also unnecessary or even impossible, to obtain material that is 100 percent authentic either for tea or for history. Both the quality of tea and the quality of history become hard to verify. If one aspect is defined too absolutely, it could easily turn out to be incorrect. These confusions and complexities made me gradually realize the value of multiplicity rather than singular authenticity. The multiple voices about Puer tea debate and complement one another; each voice stands for a certain purpose, contains certain values, and represents certain meanings in relation to the others. Setting out the details about this debate, divergence and interaction provide alternative narratives about Puer tea. This concern has drawn my attention toward those voices emerging from the popular realm, in which multiple values coexist and forces and counterforces complicate existing notions regarding Puer tea's authenticity. It is a jianghu arena where multiple actors dispute, interact, and solve problems contextually. In this arena, Puer tea's authenticity cannot be standardized. It can be managed only via interpersonal negotiations. In this regard, I have taken Mr. Zhang's voice to be indispensable among the multiple voices in the jianghu of Puer tea, and I have also admitted that he is one of the people who have played an important role in Puer tea's history.
Thus I came to enjoy being an anthropologist, conducting participant observation, acting as an audience member watching the actors’ performances, asking questions when necessary, and avoiding judgments about the authentic truth of Puer tea. But, of course, my own understandings about Puer tea were inevitably and contextually influenced by certain informants and certain popular writings. “To immunize against huyou” is never possible, and “being loyal to one's own senses” is actually mixed up with conscious and unconscious acceptance or rejection of external influences. Although this book doesn't attempt to present absolute truth about Puer tea, many of its narratives reflect my intentions, displaying agreement or disagreement with different points of view. Does authenticity exist? From the anthropological point of view, any statement or behavior can become abstract, nonemotional, and understood in terms of constructed or packaged meanings. The boundary between the authentic and the fake is blurred, and both are influenced by politics and used for constructing certain identities. In everyday life, however, one does not need to realize that every food and every meal is political.
FILM AND ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES
Film has been used as an important methodology in the research underlying this book, and it provides alternative narratives and visual information. Specifically, the film segments listed in appendix 2 trace the social life of Puer tea from production to consumption, from harvesting in the tea fields or forest to processing by local families, trading in both rural and urban markets, promotion at various events, and finally tasting by tea drinkers. Bearing in mind the complementary relationship of video and texts helped me make decisions more clearly about when to film and when not to.
Rather than making a single complete film, I have made seven independent shorter films plus two still presentations. They complement one another, and each complements a certain book section, although the films have not been edited to parallel the book exactly. Films have their own rhetoric, their own logic of narration, and their own content beyond the text. Rather than fully dominating the narrative like textual ethnography, film, as the ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall has pointed out, “to some degree allows one to look over the shoulder of the film-maker, albeit from the position that the film-maker chooses” (Grimshaw and Papastergiadis 1995: 32). In a way, using film echoes the jianghu theme adopted in the book, showing how Puer tea is defined in multiple ways. Films extend these multiple narratives from text to video, further displaying the multiplicities in daily life and allowing the audience multiple interpretations.
In chapter 2, we saw the trader Wen's displeasure when he found that tea growers had blended terrace tea with forest tea. In order to keep his business relationship with the growers, he had to back down and ultimately accept some impure tea leaves. This was what I witnessed, filmed, and wrote. But in the corresponding section of film, “Authentic Tea,” I edited the story in another way: Wen was unhappy with the blended tea leaves, he scolded the grow
ers, and then he went to a nearby family to buy more tea material. This film segment does not show whether he bought the impure tea leaves. One major reason for this ambiguity is that I felt that the interference of my camera had influenced the unfolding of the event. Wen's decision to buy the mixed tea material was, of course, concerned with preserving a stable business relationship, and it might also have been concerned with saving face for the tea growers in front of the camera. But he might also have worried that if he bought the tea, this “inauthentic” event would be recorded. I now see that it was actually a very difficult moment for him: either buying or not buying would have been a problem. When I saw him encounter impure tea leaves on another occasion, when the camera was not present, he lost his temper and rejected the trade. I came to understand that Wen was a critical tea trader and that, whenever possible, he preferred to buy nonblended tea leaves. So, rather than editing the film of the event to show that he bought the impure tea leaves—this was only one case among many trading experiences he had in Yiwu—I chose to edit it with an unclear ending to imply an alternative version of reality, and left it open for the audience to ponder.
In another film, Spring Harvest, my initial intention was to show the procedures of harvesting and processing terrace tea and forest tea. I chose to film the Gao family in Yiwu. Completely unexpectedly, some events related to a family dispute intruded on their tea work. While picking and processing tea, Mrs. Gao and her daughter complained that the daughter-in-law was lazy and didn't help them with any work, and Mrs. Gao expressed her frustrations and anger toward her son as she stir-roasted the tea leaves in the evening. One possibility for editing this film was to ignore their family dispute and show only the picking and processing procedures. But I felt that these events couldn't really be separated from the family's tea work and livelihood. All the hardness, criticism, and emotion was stirred into the tea leaves by Mrs. Gao as she roasted them. Tea is thus far more than a drink to quench thirst. As many of my informants taught me, Puer tea would have no meaning if it were regarded as simply a broth or a liquid; instead, it must be experienced and interpreted along with multiple aspects of social life.
APPENDIX 1
Puer Tea Categories and Production Process
PUER TEA CATEGORIES
Date of Production
Old family commercial brands (Haoji). These are the earliest Puer tea products, produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by private family tea companies in what is now Xishuangbanna (including the Six Great Tea Mountains and Menghai) and Simao. Those originating in the Six Great Tea Mountains are regarded as the earliest. Most of this tea is now kept in museums or held by connoisseurs, mostly in rounded cake form. Famous brands include Tongqing Hao, Songpin Hao, Tongxing Hao, and Tongchang Hao, all of which were old family commercial brands in the Six Great Tea Mountains (figs. 1.1 and 1.2).
Puer tea imprinted with the Zhongcha brand (Yinji). Zhongcha is the brand name of the Chinese Tea Company, and for Puer tea it refers specifically to the Yunnan Provincial Branch. The Zhongcha brand mark is composed of the Chinese character cha () in the center, encircled by eight zhong () characters (figs. 1.3 and 4.2). The tea was produced from the late 1930s to the 1980s by the national tea factories of Menghai, Kunming, and Xiaguan.
Modern (Xiandai) tea produced since the 1990s, when private tea companies reemerged and the Puer tea industry boomed in Yunnan.
Processing Techniques (Especially Fermentation)
Raw Tea (sheng cha or sheng pu)
Raw Puer tea hasn't been fermented and is closer to green tea. It can be very astringent when young. Raw Puer tea is available in loose form or made into various compressed shapes.
Artificially Fermented Tea (shu cha or shu pu)
The technique of artificial fermentation was formally invented in Kunming in 1973. By subjecting raw tea leaves to a specific temperature and humidity, the fermentation of Puer tea (mainly microbial enzymatic reaction) is completed within two or three months. Artificially fermented Puer tea is also available either compressed or in loose form.
Aged Tea (lao cha)
This is raw Puer tea that has been “naturally” stored for at least five years, though clear agreement hasn't yet been reached on how many years’ storage is required. It is believed that “natural” fermentation (mostly oxidation, possibly also with some microbial enzymatic reaction) occurs during long-term storage. The older the tea, the higher its price. But “natural” is a relative concept, because some people also create a humid storage environment to accelerate fermentation, which resembles the technique used to produce artificially fermented Puer tea. Some artificially fermented Puer tea that has been stored for several years is also considered aged tea.
Outward Appearance
Loose Tea (sancha)
Puer tea in loose form (see fig. I.3).
Compressed Tea (jin cha)
Puer tea in various compressed shapes, including round, brick, mushroom, and bowl-shaped (see fig. I.4).
PRODUCTION PROCESS
Rough Processing and Maocha
The process of harvesting, sorting, “killing the green” (see below), rolling, and drying. The final product of rough processing is maocha, the dried basic tea leaves in loose form.
Harvesting/Picking
Harvesting starts in February or March. Tea leaves sprout continuously throughout the spring, summer, and autumn (usually until November), but spring tea is the best. Summer tea is regarded as inferior because the abundance of rainy days could result in a lack of aroma and increased astringency in the flavor of the tea. In China, people usually pick one bud plus two leaves from each sprout, but for Puer tea they often pick two or three extra leaves.
Sorting
Sorting involves removing rotten or fragmented tea leaves and separating the leaves into different grades. Fresh tea leaves are sorted soon after picking, and maocha is also sorted for further fine processing.
“Killing the Green” (sha qing) / Stir-Roasting (chao cha)
“Killing the green” is one way to deactivate oxidation and the action of enzymes and to suppress fermentation in tea leaves. Different methods of killing the green result in different flavors of tea. For example, steaming is popularly used on Japanese green tea, and sun-drying was used before other methods were invented. Puer tea leaves are stir-roasted without oil. Traditionally, fresh tea leaves were placed in a large, dry wok heated by charcoal or wood, and workers used gloved hands or bamboo sticks to turn the tea leaves until their color and quality changed, but in modern processing, stir-roasting is done by a machine.
Rolling
The purposes of rolling are to (1) achieve different tea leaf shapes; (2) facilitate storage, maintaining crispness and avoiding breakage; (3) allow the tea brew to be easily released in later infusing, and, with different degrees of rolling, to result in different flavors. Again, rolling was traditionally done by hand but is now done by a machine.
Drying
Drying occurs at various stages of processing. Loose tea leaves are dried after rolling, and compressed tea is dried before wrapping (and sometimes also after wrapping). In fine weather, tea is dried in the sun; in inclement weather, it is baked (by fire or in a large oven).
Fine Processing
Fine processing turns loose maocha into compressed and wrapped tea. In fine processing for raw tea, maocha is steamed, shaped by machine or by hand, pressed, dried, and wrapped. In fine processing for artificially fermented Puer tea, maocha is piled indoors under a specific temperature and humidity. A microbial enzymatic reaction, one kind of fermentation, takes place to mature the tea. This usually takes two or three months, during which the piled tea material needs to be turned over several times to ensure that it is completely fermented. Then, after drying, the same fine processing procedures used on raw Puer tea are applied: steaming, shaping, compressing, drying again, and wrapping.
Storage
All Puer tea—whether compressed and wrapped or loose maocha, raw or
artificially fermented—can be put into storage. This is increasingly regarded as an extended and essential part of Puer tea's production, and it is said that the taste of Puer tea is improved by long-term storage.
Fermentation
Puer tea is fermented by two methods. The first is oxidation. When tea comes into contact with air, oxidation happens. As stated above, killing the green suppresses the oxidation to a certain degree. The second method of fermentation is the result of a microbial enzymatic reaction, which is used for artificially fermented Puer tea. Natural fermentation occurs during long-term storage of either raw or artificially fermented Puer tea. “Natural” is a relative concept, as some artificial methods—such as creating a humid storage environment—may be further applied. In this “natural” postfermentation, both oxidation and microbial enzymatic reaction may occur, depending upon the temperature and humidity of the storage.
APPENDIX 2
Supplementary Videos
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1 I borrow the terms terrace tea and forest tea from Nick Menzies (2008).
2 According to the Mengla County Annals (EBMCA 1994: 226), terrace tea planting started in the 1960s. But in Yiwu, many tea farmers told me that larger-scale terrace tea planting commenced in the 1970s and 1980s.
3 Zhu Zizhen (1996), a scholar of tea history, argues that the transition from compressed tea to loose tea had occurred before this period. But it is likely that the emperor's command encouraged the production of loose tea. Strictly speaking, compressed tea—pressed with loose leaves—is different from molded tea made from well-pounded tea paste and popularly given as a tribute to the emperor during Northern Song (960–1127).
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