Puer Tea Read online
CULTURE, PLACE, AND NATURE STUDIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT
K. Sivaramakrishnan, Series Editor
Centered in anthropology, the Culture, Place, and Nature series encompasses new interdisciplinary social science research on environmental issues, focusing on the intersection of culture, ecology, and politics in global, national, and local contexts. Contributors to the series view environmental knowledge and issues from the multiple and often conflicting perspectives of various cultural systems.
CULTURE, PLACE, AND NATURE STUDIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT
The Kuhls of Kangra: Community-Managed Irrigation in the Western Himalaya, by Mark Baker
The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living, by Nancy Turner
Property and Politics in Sabah, Malaysia: Native Struggles over Land Rights, by Amity A. Doolittle
Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand, by Janet C. Sturgeon
From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier, by David McDermott Hughes
Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihood, and Identities in South Asia, edited by Gunnel Cederlöf and K. Sivaramakrishnan
Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856, by David Arnold
Being and Place among the Tlingit, by Thomas F. Thornton
Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand, by Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker
Nature Protests: The End of Ecology in Slovakia, by Edward Snajdr
Wild Sardinia: Indigeneity and the Global Dreamtimes of Environmentalism, by Tracey Heatherington
Tahiti beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life, by Miriam Kahn
Forests of Identity: Society, Ethnicity, and Stereotypes in the Congo River Basin, by Stephanie Rupp
Enclosed: Conservation, Cattle, and Commerce among the Q'eqchi’ Maya Lowlanders, by Liza Grandia
Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic, by Jinghong Zhang
PUER TEA
Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic
JINGHONG ZHANG
A China Program Book
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
Seattle & London
This book was supported in part by the China Studies Program, a division of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.
© 2014 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Warnock Pro, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA
www.washington.edu/uwpress
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Zhang, Jinghong.
Puer tea : ancient caravans and urban chic / Jinghong Zhang.
pages cm
(Culture, place, and nature)
“A China Program Book.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99322-5 (hb : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-295-99323-2 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Tea—China—Yunnan Sheng. 2. Tea—Social aspects—China—Yunnan Sheng. 3. Tea trade—China—Yunnan Sheng. I. Title.
GT2907.C6Z4366 2013
394.1'5095135—dc23 2013027326
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48 1984.
ISBN 978-0-295-80487-3 (electronic)
For my maternal grandma and my mum
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Transliteration, Names, and Measures
Maps
Introduction
SPRING
Chapter 1: “The Authentic Tea Mountain Yiwu”
Chapter 2: Tensions under the Bloom
SUMMER
Chapter 3: “Yunnan: The Home of Puer Tea”
Chapter 4: Heating Up and Cooling Down
AUTUMN
Chapter 5: Puer Tea with Remorse
Chapter 6: Transformed Qualities
WINTER
Chapter 7: Tea Tasting and Counter–Tea Tasting
Chapter 8: Interactive Authenticities
Conclusion: An Alternative Authenticity
Appendix 1: Puer Tea Categories and Production Process
Appendix 2: Supplementary Videos
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
FOREWORD
In this fascinating study of Puer tea and the life of rural Chinese and others in Yunnan, we can see many transformations, subtle and dramatic, at work. Jinghong Zhang hails from Yunnan and returns there repeatedly to conduct fieldwork that traces the relationship of Puer tea to the landscape, livelihoods, and tastes in newly prosperous China in the early twenty-first century. The study is informed by deep ethnography as well as by admirable plant knowledge, nimble literary imagination, and thorough acquaintance with social history, regional geography, and aesthetics. Film and photographs enhance the research and presentation, as the author enriches environmental anthropology with humanistic inquiry that is unusually adept at turning a literary trope into a tool of social analysis.
The literature on the global trade in agricultural commodities includes several anthropological studies that reveal the merit of closely analyzing how commodity chains come into existence. Some of the more recent studies focus on commodities that appeal to fashions for ethnic foods or sustain-ably grown or harvested foods, demonstrating how commodity cultures that are prevalent across global markets become opportunities or constraints for local areas and national economies. This study offers such an examination, built on the case of Puer tea from China. It is blessed by the long-term engagement of the author with the tea-growing region in Yunnan Province and her deep knowledge of the tea plant and the making and consumption of Puer tea. Like a good commodity chain researcher, she has followed the tea from fields to traders and consumers, doing research in south China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan along the way.
Zhang's study resonates with others that are beginning to focus on issues of cultural heritage in postreform China and on the ways in which the cultural history of China has been defined in recent decades. Built environments, indigenous peoples, karst landscapes, and tea are all part of the production of a new national cultural heritage in which precommunist history and its material record are being reclaimed in new ways. Zhang places these concerns at the heart of her inquiry by investigating how the consumption of Puer tea is caught up in questions of experiencing authenticity. The adventures and uncertainties brought about by this distinctive tea, a cultivated taste, are told with reference to the multidimensional metaphor evoked by the concept of jianghu. As one of the reviewers of the manuscript noted, “The popular and enduring archetype of jianghu was the wandering swordsman, an independent worldly-wise character whose exploits revealed the seamy underbelly of society as well as its noblest ideals. Villagers, traders, promoters, spin masters, collectors, and connoisseurs are all jianghu characters in the amorphous theater of Puer tea.”
Zhang not only takes up the tea and its travels but constructs a vivid account (illuminated further by the excellent use of images and film) of the spaces in which Puer tea is made, trad
ed, and consumed. She wishes that place to be understood as always emergent, a somewhat inchoate and unruly space where rival meanings jostle for supremacy and where hierarchies of value remain unstable. This instability is in part caused by the state's inability to play a defining role. Arguments are illustrated through a variety of activities—from cultivation, certification, and tasting to packaging—which the ethnography carefully unveils, a task in which it is liberally assisted by great photographs. Zhang crafts her theoretical encounters with a light touch, always finding what new light the case of Puer tea has to shed on them, never letting more arcane dimensions cloud the view. Rarely has a study of commodities and culture so felicitously combined perspectives on economy, imagination, travel, and landscape. This book will surely bring fresh interest to a variety of fields from food to commerce, heritage in land, social life of plants, and national self-fashioning in the light of cosmopolitan environmentalism.
K. Sivaramakrishnan
Yale University
March 2013
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without Andrew Walker, this research on Puer tea would still be an unfulfilled dream. I have benefited greatly from his wisdom, his pragmatic views, and his ability to come straight to the main research issue. He taught me to use specific methods at specific stages, directing me step by step to select, sort, process, and finally brew this tea monograph.
The ethnographic filmmaking of David MacDougall and Judith MacDougall has inspired me to use video as an important component of this research. The planning, filming, and editing for the video companion to this book have benefited enormously from Judith's profound insights, meticulous inspection, and continual kind support. I have learned so much from her about both study and life, from film to food. And her motherly considerations kept me warm through Canberra's winter.
Nicholas Tapp provided detailed, sincere, and prompt advice. His wide knowledge has enriched my reading and use of literature in this book. Many of his comments have kept me thinking and will be useful starting points for future research. Amrih Widodo encouraged me to think about questions from alternative perspectives and in unconstrained ways. I often felt that if I had one-third of his intelligence, the book I produced would have been three times as good. Duncan Campbell kindly assisted me in deepening my understanding of Chinese cultural consumption. Several books he recommended became favorites that I have used in the book.
I completed most of my writing for this book at the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program (RMAP) at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific. I am thankful to RMAP for providing me the environment to undertake this challenging work. I have also benefited from writing groups at the Australian National University organized by Andrew Kipnis and Craig Reynolds, and have collected many useful suggestions from the participants. Pip Deveson helped me convert the films into DVD. She displayed great patience and taught me how to solve technical problems via trial and error. Ann Maxwell Hill, Magnus Fiskesjö, C. Patterson Giersch, and three readers from the University of Washington Press provided encouraging and valuable feedback on the initial manuscript. Lorri Hagman, Tim Zimmermann, Emily Park, Jacqueline Volin, and David Peat-tie offered detailed editorial suggestions and helped me move along toward publication.
I am grateful to Mu Jihong, Zhang Yi, Zheng Bineng, and Li Jinwen, who guided me into the world of Puer tea. Eddie Tsang, Matthew Chen, Lei Bin, Peter D'Abbs, Gao Fachang, Sidney Cheung, Yu Shuenn-Der, Yang Haichao, Chen Gang, Austin Hodge, Zhu Ping, Zhang Yingpei, Mette Trier, Robin Fash-Boyle, and Søren M. Chr. Bisgaard gave me kind assistance in fieldwork and exchanged excellent insights with me. The experiences of drinking tea and talking with various tea friends have made me feel that my research is full of Puer tea's vitality.
I am lucky to have friendships with Li Chyi-Chang, Masayuki Nishida, Keri Mills, Jakkrit Sangkhamenee, Guan Jia, Li Yinan, Gu Jie, Jin Hao, Lei Junran, Sophie Mcintyre, Rachel P. Lorenzen, Natasha Fijn, Yasir Alimi, and Darja Hoenigman at the Australian National University. They have made life in Canberra more meaningful to me. Mother and Father Chuang kindly allowed me to live at their place for most of my time in Canberra.
It was from Yang Kun that I learned the value of conducting research out of my authentic interest. He contributed many brilliant ideas, some of which influenced the way I have used film. I am very sad that he could not see my final work, as he passed away in March 2010.
Most of all I owe this research to my husband, Jingfeng, who shared many pleasures and difficulties with me throughout my study, and also my parents, brother, and sister, whose belief in me makes any achievement possible. It's far beyond my textual ability to thank them.
My family and friends jokingly call me a “tea doctor” (chaboshi). In Chinese, this refers to one who works in a teahouse and serves water for guests to make tea. I would happily be called this if it meant I could express my sincere thanks to all the above people by serving them a cup of tea.
This book draws on some previously published material. Parts of chapters 1, 2, and 5 are based on a 2010 article in the Journal of Chinese Dietary Culture 6 (2). Chapter 5 also draws on a 2012 article in Collected Papers on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road (Vol. 2). Chapter 8 is a revised version of a 2010 article in the Journal of Chinese Dietary Culture 6 (1). Chapter 4 is based on a 2012 article in Harvard Asia Quarterly spring/summer XIV (1 and 2).
TRANSLITERATION, NAMES, AND MEASURES
In this book, all transcriptions of standard Chinese (Mandarin), including the Yunnan dialects, follow the standard Pinyin romanization system. I have made exceptions for commonly used names, such as Hong Kong; Cantonese terms that have been accepted in English, such as kungfu, yum cha, dim sum; and other names that have been published elsewhere using Wade-Giles or other romanization systems.
Some personal names are used with permission, such as Zhang Yingpei and Gao Fachang. For others, such as Mr. Zheng, Mr. Li, and Zongming, I have used partially real names, mainly for the convenience of reading in English. For those who were unwilling to have their real names mentioned, I have used pseudonyms. In full Chinese names, consistent with Chinese custom, the surname precedes the given name. In Chinese literature citations, full Chinese names differentiate authors who share the same surname and also the same publishing year.
References to monetary values are mostly in Chinese yuan (¥). Throughout the time of my fieldwork in 2007, US$1 was approximately equivalent to ¥7. In one case I used Singapore dollars. S$1 at that time was approximately equivalent to US$0.57 (¥4).
The area of tea cultivation is given in mu. One mu is equivalent to approximately 0.0667 hectares.
Introduction
Tea has been familiar to me since my childhood in Kunming, Yunnan, in southwest China. At my family's house there was always a tea jar. We drank tea often, though not necessarily every day or with every meal. Tea more than two years old or so had to be thrown away. As a child, I was taught to make tea whenever a guest came to visit. I would simply put some loose tea leaves in a glass and pour in hot water. The resulting brew would be a yellow-green color, and everybody recognized this as Yunnan's green tea. Once the guest had drunk some of the tea in the glass, my parents would tell me to add more water so that the brewed tea would not become too strong, as the tea leaves were still infusing. The guest might not be thirsty, but he would take frequent sips nonetheless. My parents and the guest would talk about something apart from tea. In these conversations, tea was both important and unimportant.
Like many people at that time, my parents and I were unconcerned about the difference between Yunnan's Puer tea and green tea. My understanding was that green tea was the loose tea stored in a jar that we served to guests, while Puer tea (also spelled Pu'er or Pu-erh, and pronounced in two syllables) was compressed, usually into a bowl shape (tuo cha). The latter was more often given as a gift to friends outside Yunnan than consumed at home. I once found some leftover Puer tea in a cabinet. Each cake was shaped like a small bowl, half the size of
a ping-pong ball. Out of curiosity, I took a cake and infused it. The color of the brew was similar to that of Yunnan's green tea. But the compressed small bowl unexpectedly swelled up in the hot water to more than five times its original size. The brew was so strong that I decided I didn't like it.
I didn't try Puer tea again until 2002, when I joined a film crew that was making a documentary about people involved in tea production in Simao and Xishuangbanna, two of the tea production areas in Yunnan (map I.1). The film director from Beijing continuously drank Puer tea that he had bought in Yunnan. The dry compressed tea and the brew he made were both dark red. I asked for a taste. It was quite smooth, but it had an earthy smell. Another member of the crew, who was also from Yunnan, said it was moldy. Its color, smell, and taste were all new to me. The director said he drank the tea to control his high blood pressure. We later visited Yiwu, a township in Xishuangbanna known for its Puer tea (maps I.1–2). There, local people showed us how to produce compressed cakes of the tea. This tea, in contrast to that which the director drank, had a “sunny” smell, and its yellow-green color resembled that of Yunnan's green tea.
Back in Kunming, the capital city, I soon heard more about Puer tea. Compressed into the form of a cake (bing cha or yuan cha), bowl (tuo cha), or brick (zhuan cha), it was selling exceptionally well at the time (figs. I.1–2). I learned that there were two kinds of Puer tea: the green kind was raw tea (sheng cha) and the dark kind was artificially fermented tea (shu cha) (figs. I.3–4). In addition, I was shown a third kind that was said to have been aged for over five years, sometimes for as long as several decades. This aged tea was developed from the first two kinds and was much more expensive. A popular saying was applied to Puer tea: “The longer it's stored, the better it tastes” (Yue chen yue xiang). In other words, “The older the better.” The most precious Puer tea, I was told, was that from Yunnan, which is now collected by connoisseurs in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Puer tea made from older tea plants was also valued more highly, although this information was less accessible to ordinary consumers. Connoisseurs differentiate between forest tea (da shu cha) and terrace tea (tai di cha or xiao shu cha).1 Forest tea is tea produced from tall tea trees—often over one hundred years old—sheltered by the forest canopy, initially cultivated by ethnic minorities such as the Bulang and Hani in Yunnan. Terrace tea refers to narrowly and regularly arranged tea bushes, a style of cultivation that had begun in Yunnan only in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.2 In 2007, the price of forest Puer tea was four or five times that of terrace tea, because the former was considered to come from a more ecologically healthy environment and was thought to taste much better.