1 Tea and Utensils
1.1 From Raw Tea to Consumable Tea
1.1.1 Tea Gardens in Today’s Fujian
Huizong and other authors of the Daguan Treatise favored tea from the plantations at Jianxi (Jian Creek), Beiyuan (Northern Garden), and other sites in the Fujian area. Their favorite tea was “Jian’an White Tea.” These tea lovers subscribed to a botanical theory for cultivating tea bushes—in which the yīn (negative energy) and yang (positive energy) should be balanced to produce the best tea.1 They contended that tea bushes growing on cliffs should be exposed to the sun as the yīn and cold energy of the cliff rocks would leave the tea plants undernourished, rendering the tea less flavorful. Exposure to the sun, conversely, would promote stronger growth and enhance the taste of the tea. On the other hand, tea bushes growing in a garden should receive more shade, as the yang and the sufficient energy (fu) of the soil would cause the bushes to grow too vigorously, potentially making the flavor of the tea overly intense.
We do not currently know whether Huizong and his subordinates’ theoretical conjectures accurately reflected the actual landscapes of tea gardens at the time, but it may be helpful to consider the spatial organization of modern-day tea plantations as a point of reference. A discovery of the archaeological remains of a Tang-Song tea garden, allowing biologists and geologists to conduct pollen analysis and examine ecological and climatic conditions, would be a windfall for students of tea history. But there has not been a reliable identification of a historical tea garden in this area yet. In the absence of such fortuitous discoveries, we cannot assert with certainty how these ancient tea-growers cultivated their cherished crop. While we lack direct evidence attesting to how Northern Song farmers cultivated tea bushes, the issues they encountered were unlikely not dissimilar to those faced by modern-day tea farmers. An ethnographic study of how modern-day farmers cultivate tea bushes in the Fujian area might offer insights into how Northern Song farmers may have planned their tea gardens.
The landscape of the Fujian area is very diverse (Map 1). The mountainous northwest is characterized by Mount Wuyi (indicated roughly by the red mark in Map 1). Beyond these mountains lie Shangrao, Fuzhou, Nanchang, and the renowned porcelain city of Jingdezhen in the Jiangxi region. To the northeast of Fujian is the Zhejiang region, where Hangzhou is easily reachable. To the south lied the prominent port city of Quanzhou, among other harbors, from where ships in the Northern Song set sail for Southeast Asia and more distant regions in search for exotic trade goods.2 Tea grew in almost every region in southern China. Some regions were more renowned than others for their tea plantations. The Jian’an tea (modern-day Jian’ou and Nanping counties) cultivated near Mount Wuyi was chosen for promotion by the Northern Song elites. We do not know precisely where the Northern Song tea gardens in Jian’an were. Caution is advised when considering claims of ancient lineage by contemporary plantations, which are often aimed at attracting tourism. For the purposes of our ethnographic study, we will focus on the tea gardens in Neiguidong and Daoshuikeng Canyons.
Fig. 10a and Fig. 10b show a tea garden nestled in the rocky terrain of Neiguidong Canyon. Adjacent to Neiguidong Canyon lies another canyon known as Daoshuikeng (Fig. 11a and Fig. 11b). The two canyons are divided by a long and slender rock formation that rises about 90 to 150 meters high, as measured from the canyon floor. This geological feature is one among many similar canyons within the Mount Wuyi area. We took photographs and conducted a long-range laser 3D scan of the two canyons. Fig. 11a presents an image extracted from our freely rotatable 3D-scanned model. The tea bushes in Neiguidong Canyon comprise primarily wild species (Fig. 10), dispersed all over the canyon. In stark contrast, bushes in Daoshuikeng Canyon are highly domesticated and neatly arranged in rows on the slope (Fig. 11). The many rows separated by black stripes in the aerial view of Daoshuikeng Canyon in Fig. 11a show this pattern of organized cultivation.
The landscape and climate of the canyons offer ideal conditions for the growth of tea bushes. First of all, the altitude of the two tea gardens ranges from approximately 230 to 280 meters, which, while on the lower side for the Mount Wuyi area, is quite suitable for tea growth. The humidity is very high, as moisture-laden winds from the sea sweep through the canyons. These warm winds encounter the cooler mountain air, resulting in frequent mist and light, often drizzly, rainfall. Upon our arrival in the winter of 2018, the tea gardens were shrouded in a dense mix of clouds and fog, with temperatures hovering between 5°C and 15°C in the canyon. Naturally, the summer months bring warmer temperatures. The towering rock formations, rising 90 to 150 meters high, create a long, narrow, and crooked space that effectively traps moisture and fog inside. This unique topography and microclimate shield the tea bushes from harsh direct sunlight. Tea bushes thrive in shady places that are usually cloudy and damp, with just a moderate touch of sunlight.3
Map 1
Southern Chinese regions including Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Hainan
Map by Ben Pease
Figures 10a–b
Different views of the tea garden in Neiguidong Canyon, Mount Wuyi, Fujian. The author is shown holding an umbrella in Fig. 10a
Photographs by the author’s team, taken in December 2018
Figures 11a–b
Different views of the tea garden in Daoshuikeng Canyon, Mount Wuyi, Fujian.
Fig. 11a is an aerial-view image captured from a freely rotatable 3D model of the canyon, constructed by the author’s team; Fig. 11b is a photograph taken by the author in December 2018.
Initially, the rocky surface of the ground was not sufficiently fertile for any vegetation. After millions of years of weathering, erosion, and the accumulation of decomposed plant matter, however, a dark, fertile layer of soil has formed atop the rocky substrate.4 Wild tea bushes manage to grow within this thin layer, although their roots cannot penetrate deeply into the ground. Consequently, the bushes barely exceed the height of an adult man and are considerably shorter than the tea trees found in the Yunnan area. Local tea farmers told us this is why the tea they cultivate has a rocky, mineral quality to its flavor (referred to as rocky bone and flowery fragrance).5 The moisture, rain, fertile soil, shade, and moderate sunlight constitute an ideal micro-ecological system for tea cultivation. Bacteria and fungi of many kinds can proliferate under the shade of the bushes, leading to complex layers of flavor developed in the tea they produce.6
Wild bushes grow individually and are spaced out. Farmers do not usually trim them. In the present day, their growth is impacted by the domesticated bushes grown nearby. Domesticated bushes are arranged in orderly rows for ease of maintenance and trimming. A combination of both synthetic and organic fertilizers is employed. Local farmers informed us that both human and animal excrement was brought to the canyons for use prior to the advent of chemical fertilizers.7 As the canyons themselves lie far from densely settled areas and are situated high in the mountains, large quantities of such waste was unlikely to have been delivered to these areas. Natural fertilizers include leaves that decompose into humus, aided by microorganisms in the soil. Local farmers have transformed the natural creeks and slopes into terraced fields with drainage systems. Tea bushes thrive in moist conditions, but their roots do not tolerate water-logged soil. For this reason, terraced slopes and drainage are used to help channel away excessive water (Fig. 11).
1.1.2 Tea Gardens in the Northern Song
Apart from access to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, Northern Song farmers were probably armed with the same knowledge and techniques for cultivating tea in their gardens. They likely harnessed the natural landscape and climate to their best advantage, using available techniques to optimize the health of their tea bushes. These techniques would have included managing factors like humidity, moisture, rainfall, shade and sunlight, micro-organisms, natural fertilizers, terraced slopes, and drainage. Like today’s tea gardens, those in the Northern Song were primarily situated south of the Yangzi River. In addition to the tea harvested from Fujian, there were multiple tea brands, such as the Caocha from the Zhejiang areas, Rizhu tea from Shaoxing, Hongzhou Shuangjing tea from Jiangxi, and Mengding tea from Sichuan Yazhou.8 Sichuan tea was historically esteemed and strategically important,9 but according to the authors of Song History, the quantities produced in Sichuan could not rival those from Fujian and its neighboring areas.10 We do not know the exact difference in the volume of tea produced in all regions that cultivated tea plants, but harvest yields must have been determined by natural conditions and artificial factors such as the cultivation techniques employed by local farmers. Wild tea plants in the Sichuan and Yunnan areas could reach the size of trees, whereas in the Fujian area, they remained in bush form. Regional climates, geological conditions, and micro-organic systems differed from place to place.
Moreover, cultivating tea plants on terraced slopes also impacted how farmers pruned the plants and harvested the buds and leaves, all leading to significant differences in production yields. According to historian Qi Xia’s reconstruction, one acre of tea plants could yield about 120 catties (jin; 1 jin = 1.3 pounds) of tea.11 The reality was, however, far more complicated. Farmers would need to manage the number of harvests each year. Excessive harvesting accelerates the maturity of the tea buds, which will turn leaves used for tea into useless old leaves, and buds into branches. Rare tea species likely yielded harvests in the order of a few taels (liang; 1 liang = about 1.3 ounces) a year per bush, while ordinary species yielded more. These postulated reconstructions of tea yields are merely estimations of what might have been produced during the Northern Song.
1.1.3 Cultivating, Picking, and Processing Tea
1.1.3.1 Picking Tea Buds and Leaves
The elites writing about tea in the Northern Song were unlikely to have had any direct personal experience in picking the crop. Harvesting tea leaves is backbreaking and onerous work typically conducted by rural peasants, and the tea gardens were far away from the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng in Henan. Nevertheless, they felt comfortable describing the ideal conditions for cultivating and picking tea in their treatises. The authors of the Daguan Treatise may have consulted contemporary tea texts and interview records with local tea farmers. The appropriate season, timing, and method of picking tea buds are all briefly described or constructed in the Daguan Treatise. For example, the treatise suggests that the best season to pick tea buds is the time around the day of the “Awakening of Insects” (Jingzhe), the third of the twenty-four solar terms of the traditional Chinese calendar, corresponding to around early March of the Gregorian calendar.12 Similarly, “Treatises on Food and Commodities” (“Shihuozhi”) in Song History considers March the best time to pick tea buds and April the second best time.13 The Daguan Treatise authors suggested that picking the buds was best done by using the fingernails to sever the buds from the stems, rather than rolling the buds between the fingers.14 They also emphasized that tea buds that appeared like “birds’ tongues” or “grains” (“queshe guli”) were the best; one bud with one leaf that resembled a spear and a flag (“yiqiang yiqi”) was the second best; one bud with two leaves (“yiqiang erqi”) was third best, and all other configurations were of lower quality.15 These detailed records suggest that the knowledge about the picking season and selection criteria probably came from experienced local peasants and that this technical know-how was widely shared among the Kaifeng elites.
1.1.3.2 Processing and Preserving Tea
None of the tea texts comprehensively covers the process of turning tea buds into tea cakes. They merely list the idealized and standardized processes of steaming, compressing, baking, and drying. Huang Ru’s Essential Records of Tasting Tea (Pincha yaolu), published approximately thirty years before the Daguan Treatise, mentions some of these manufacturing processes. The Daguan Treatise authors might very well have consulted this source. Huang Ru’s approach was, however, slightly different from that prescribed by the Daguan Treatise. He listed some of the results of unsatisfactory tea-processing. For example, he discussed the results of over-steaming and under-steaming the tea.16 The Daguan Treatise authors, on the other hand, focused primarily on establishing criteria as to what constituted the proper treatment of the tea buds and of processed cakes of tea that they suggested tea producers follow. Zhao Ruli elaborated on some of these manufacturing processes in detail in his tea text, compiled approximately eighty years after the Daguan Treatise. Zhao Ruli added the two steps of squeezing and grinding tea to the process of producing finished, dried tea cakes.17 Although we do not know in detail how closely the tea-making methods in Zhao’s time resembled those of Huizong’s time, we can postulate that their preference was for tea that was construed to be processed using refined techniques before it was sold to tea drinkers.
Due to the lack of textual records about techniques for processing and preserving tea, we will rely on ethnographic studies and the treatment of herbal medicine from the same period as cross-references. The Daguan Treatise mentions steaming, compressing, and baking.18 These methods aim to squeeze water from the tea buds and leaves while preserving, or even enhancing, the taste and fragrance of the tea. Where did they learn how to process raw tea? When a large amount of raw tea was harvested, it needed to be dried and preserved rapidly and properly so that it could be transported to distant regions, for example, from Fujian to Henan. Otherwise, the tea would rot. The necessary techniques may have been passed down to the Northern Song tea farmers from the ancients. But this leads us to wonder, how did the ancients first come to know about this?
The processing and preservation of tea were related to the drying and processing techniques for herbal medicine. The drying and processing techniques for medical herbs are discussed in Chapter 1 that the Fifty-two Prescriptions in the Western Han period, Lei’s Treatise in the fifth century, and the various medical texts compiled before and during the Northern Song reveal that medicine practitioners and scholars possessed sophisticated knowledge for preserving herbal medicines. The primary aim of these methods was to extract water from the herbs while retaining and reinforcing their medicinal functions (taste and fragrance). This is not at all unlike the aim of processing tea leaves. Today, we know that removing water from food helps kill bacteria and other microorganisms, and that heating denatures the enzymes that are a major cause of food spoilage.19 Northern Song tea farmers would not have known about bacteria and enzymes, but they would certainly have known from inherited wisdom and experience that steaming, compressing, and baking helped preserve tea and other herbs for longer.
We will compare the techniques used to process tea and herbal medicine to explore the relationship between the two processes despite the fact that no Northern Song tea writer explicitly mentioned the relationship between tea and herbal medicine. As introduced above, Lei Xiao and his fifth-century contemporaries developed numerous drying and processing methods and laid the theoretical and practical foundations for the technical tradition of drying and processing. Tea makers consulted and incorporated these methods into their tea-making process, just as the Daguan Treatise authors borrowed the descriptions of the drying and processing processes from the medical texts and constructed their own language in describing tea.
The “Location,” “Season,” “Picking and Choosing,” and “Identification” chapters of the Daguan Treatise could be based on the medicinal reasons for selecting the best herbs picked in certain seasons and regions. Lei Xiao and others used barbary wolfberry fruit (gouqi, LPN: Lycii fructus) as an example to illustrate the rationale behind the method. They suggested that in the spring, one should eat the leaves of the gouqi; in the summer, the seeds; and in the autumn and winter, the roots and seeds.20 They also proposed that one use the seeds of pepper from foreign regions (Hujiao, LPN: Piperis fructus) and the shells of pepper from Chinese regions (Hanjiao) as medicine.21 Medicine practitioners believed that plants from different regions had different degrees of medicinal power, that different parts of the herbs served different functions, and that the same herb functioned differently in certain seasons.22 Tea makers and drinkers shared these beliefs and incorporated them into their tea texts, which were modelled on medicinal texts.
Some parts of the herbs might be ineffectual or even toxic. Medicine practitioners had to distinguish them and select the appropriate parts before processing. For example, Lei Xiao and others suggested discarding the side branches of the Chinese arborvitae twig and leaf (baiye, LPN: Platycladi cacumen) and retaining only the leaves.23 This process is very similar to choosing only the tea buds and leaves of the tea plant. Another herb, prepared common monkshood daughter root (fuzi, LPN: Aconiti lateralis radix praeparata), was to be used with great care because the plant it is extracted from contains highly poisonous and lethal aconitine.24 Lei and others cautioned that one has to process these herbs in order to reduce the aconitine content. Although raw tea is commonly considered non-toxic, inappropriate processing may still damage its taste and fragrance and cause harmful elements to be retained. Tea makers likely considered the methods of processing medicinal herbs when processing tea leaves.
The “Steaming and Compressing,” “Processing and Producing,” “Storage and Baking,” and “Baking at External Workshops” chapters of the Daguan Treatise contain a number of processing techniques also mentioned in Lei’s Treatise, which seem to have passed down to the Northern Song. These techniques include trimming, grinding, steaming, soaking, slowly diluting after soaking, drying in the shade or the sun, baking by blowing hot air over ingredients put in a container and avoiding direct contact between the fire and the herbs, roasting by laying the ingredients in a pan with the fire directly underneath in a milder fashion, stir-frying by flipping the ingredients in a wilder fashion, frying with a more delicate motion but not flipping the ingredients too much, and cooking with water.25 Only those techniques of treating herbal medicine that are similar to the treatment of tea are listed here, while Lei Xiao and others also included methods of processing mineral and animal ingredients.
The drying and processing methods help strengthen the efficacy of the medicine, and they are similarly beneficial for both tea processing and the tea-tipping practice. In the “Processing and Producing” and “Identification” chapters, the Daguan Treatise authors specifically mentioned the negative results of inappropriate processing, such as unrefined filtering, overheating, and processing that goes on for more than one day and night.26 Proper filtering, timing, processing duration, and heat control are essential to the drying and processing of both the medicine and tea.
The cold treatments of trimming and grinding are intended to remove the unnecessary and ineffective parts of the herbs and tea, while the hot treatments leading to reactions between the herbs and other ingredients are worthy of further investigation. The steaming, baking, drying, and roasting methods remove the water in the drying and processing of raw materials, but there are different ways of heating. One could simply heat the raw materials by themselves, heat them with alcohol or other medicinal decoctions, or cook them with water, salt, or honey.27 Heating with alcohol might lead to chemical reactions, but Lei and others believed it also helped preserve the medicine and strengthen its medicinal power. We now know alcohol, honey, and salt also effectively preserve the medicine because high concentrations of alcohol, salt, or sugar extract the water molecules from the bodies of the microorganisms, inactivating or killing them. Heating also stops the action of enzymes.
For instance, Lei and others suggested that to treat baiye, one should soak it in liquified sticky rice with sugar for seven days. After taking out the baiye and diluting it, the herb needs to be steamed with alcohol, then soaked in juice squeezed from Siberian Solomon’s seal rhizome (huangjing, LPN: Polygonati rhizoma), and subsequently baked until it dries. Soaking and baking are repeated several times until the huangjing juice is dried out.28 Peony roots (shaoyao) need to be dried in the sun before their rough skins can be removed with a bamboo knife and trimmed. The roots are then placed in water with honey, steamed for four hours, and dried out under the sun before use.29 Redroot gromwell (zicao, LPN: Arnebiae radix) has to be steamed with water and wax until the water is expelled. Its head and fine roots are removed and trimmed.30 Lei and others did not specify what wax they used, but they indicated clearly that three taels of wax should be melted with water in a large vessel. The melted wax was to be heated with the zicao to be processed.31 In this way, the zicao would be coated with wax as the water came out. While medicine treated with a high concentration of alcohol and honey keeps water and bacteria away, medicine coated with wax would be preserved well because wax is insoluble in room-temperature water and does not melt in natural conditions under 40°C. Namely, when the zicao is stored at room temperature, the wax coating will prevent the zicao from being affected by humidity. No water molecules permeating the wax coating means no microorganisms will grow inside. The medicine can then be preserved for a long time.
Historical records mention a tea type called wax-surfaced tea cakes (lamiancha).32 Was the lamiancha a type of tea coated with wax like the zicao mentioned in Lei’s Treatise?33 This is likely because tea was processed in ways similar to those listed Lei’s Treatise. The addition of camphor and other aromatic substances to the tea, criticized by Cai Xiang, the Daguan Treatise authors, and other scholar-artists, but which remained popular among the general public, was probably also an inheritance from the medicinal tradition, since it was believed that the addition of camphor not only strengthened the fragrance of the tea but also helped preserve it. The intense fragrance of camphor would repel insects that could infest the tea leaves, and this processed aromatic substance made of dehydrated fragrant timber would also absorb moisture, protecting the tea.
In the Northern Song tea texts, especially in the Daguan Treatise, the discussions of processing and preservation techniques for tea reveal the consequences of over-treating or under-treating tea. These discussions parallel those of inappropriate treatments of medicine. Inappropriate treatments would change the taste, fragrance, and functions of the tea and medicine. Many drying and processing methods cited by Tang Shenwei, Chen Shiwen, and their colleagues were authorized by Northern Song governments to ensure the quality of the production and preservation of medicine.34 Such government-authorized methods were undoubtedly a significant source of improved tea-preservation knowledge among tea farmers.
These beliefs and knowledge laid the foundation for drying, processing, and preserving medicine and tea in the subsequent generations. The half-fermented wulongcha and fully fermented red tea in today’s Fujian were inventions from the Ming and Qing dynasties,35 but their technical origin, the making of green tea (unfermented tea), harked back to the Tang-Song or even earlier periods. Today’s techniques, such as withering (weidiao—losing water), killing-green (shaqing—heating to destroy enzymes), rolling (rounian), and baking, share the same principles, theories, concerns, and practices as ancient tea-making and medicine drying and processing methods.
1.1.3.3 Manpower
We can imagine that a considerable investment in manpower was needed to pick and process the raw tea in a time without modern machinery. As recorded in the “Treatises on Food and Commodities” in Compendium of Song Dynasty Government Documents (Songhuiyao jigao), tea gardens owned by the government are known to have had labor forces of over one thousand men.36 In the 1077 dispute in Sichuan Chengdu Pengzhou, a document submitted to the court states that the salary for one laborer per day was 60 wen (or qian/cash) plus a daily ration of a bag of tea.37 This document also mentions a part-time labor force hired to trim bushes, remove weeds in the winter and spring, and pick and produce tea from spring to summer.38 We can postulate that owners of tea gardens would hire a long-term force consisting of knowledgeable and skilled workers to help maintain the normal operation of the gardens, while in the busy seasons, part-time laborers, probably consisting of unskilled peasants, were hired to do the heavy-lifting and arduous tasks associated with running a tea garden.39 The skilled workers might have supervised this force of day laborers and ensured the quality of tea they picked and processed. This is how today’s large-scale gardens in Fujian work. The garden owners probably inherit the gardens, skills, and knowledge from their parents. As tea masters themselves, they maintain a long-term force by keeping several skilled workers and continually training new blood to serve as supervisors. Onerous and repetitive work, such as picking tea in the mountains and processing the tea in factories, will be assigned to seasonal laborers hired from Shangrao and Fuzhou areas in Jiangxi.40 Even today, Shangrao and Fuzhou are some of the poorest, mountainous regions in Jiangxi. Jiangxi is, as a whole, far less prosperous than the rich and well-developed regions in Zhejiang and Fujian. Today, seasonal laborers are bussed into the Mount Wuyi plantations by the garden owners. Both men and women are hired. Women are often deemed more careful workers and assigned tasks that require more patience and caution. The wages they receive during the picking season contribute a significant portion to their family’s annual income. In this way, the tea farmers in Fujian today and in the past ensure the quantity and quality of tea produced annually. Considering that the tea gardens were located historically in areas remote from metropolitan areas, the part-time employment system must have held sway throughout history.
1.1.3.4 Ownership of Tea Gardens
The owners of tea gardens in the Northern Song were socially diverse. There were gardens owned by the throne, the state, the local governments, Buddhist monasteries, and private subjects. Gardens owned by Buddhist monasteries had existed since the Tang.41 Those owned by the emperors and the government in Fujian were located in Jian’an.42 Produce from these gardens would be submitted to the royal court as tribute. When Ding Wei and Cai Xiang served as fiscal commissioners of Fujian, they were in charge of supplying tribute tea to the royal court. The annual harvest of the prestigious Large Dragon-phoenix Tea was only two jin. Each jin of this precious tea could be made into merely eight tea cakes. When Cai Xiang held office, he made ten jin of new tea in one year. Each jin was turned into ten Small Dragon Tea Cakes, offered to Taizong and Renzong.43 This rare and highly prized tea came from bushes that could only be cultivated in government-owned gardens. Privately owned gardens could be enormous, but the standard of their tea was considered inferior to those of the government-owned ones. Huang Tingjian’s family owned tea gardens in Jiangxi Hongzhou, a city near Jingdezhen and Nanchang and famous for the Hongzhou Shuangjing tea brand. His family could provide a stable supply to Huang’s tea gift repository.44 Tea entrepreneurs definitely existed in this highly profitable business and industry sector, but the government was also concerned about the ownership issues.
1.2 Tea Policies
1.2.1 The Eternal Problem of Supply and Demand
Policies regarding the tea industry were a source of problems for the Northern Song government.45 Tensions triggered by the eternal push and pull of supply and demand existed at the central and local government levels, among the merchants and farmers, and with the peasants in the tea industry. Debates raged unabated throughout the Northern Song over how best to manage the tea trade in terms not unfamiliar to us—planned or liberal economies, “the invisible hand,” monopoly, state-run, and privatized ownership were all considered.46 Numerous scholar-officials were embroiled in these debates and utilized their experience and knowledge to offer blueprints for reforming the tea economies.
Problems facing the Northern Song dynasty founders and successors were plentiful. The most pressing was how to provision their forces guarding the northern frontier.47 It was a problem that the government could not handle by itself, and the private sector was brought in to help maintain the strategic supplies. Presented to the central government decision-makers was piece-meal intelligence: soldiers in the north needed food and horses, but these were in short supply in the regions where they were stationed; southerners were often stuck with a surplus of tea that they could not consume; northerners and foreigners loved tea; tea grew only in southern China, yet when sold to the north, net profits could exceed three hundred percent; transportation costs were high; nomads had superior horses, while horse breeds in Chinese-speaking regions were inferior … Putting the tidbits of information together, the central government devised various ways to balance the supply and demand of a number of commodities and even to create demand where it previously did not exist.
To ensure adequate food and material supplies to the northern frontlines, the Northern Song central government decided to solicit the help of the merchants. Transportation to the north was exorbitant enough to discourage less resourceful people from entering this business, so the political elites decided to use the high profit from the trade of rice, salt, and tea to mobilize the merchants.48 The central government monopolized the tea supply and gave merchants willing to transport food and materials to the northern frontlines privileged access to tea markets.
At the beginning of the dynasty, state-run tea trade centers were established in the capital, Jian’an, and other regions.49 The central government ordered the local government to collect processed tea and store it at the trade centers. Merchants needed to place deposits with the capital trade center and obtain tea from local trade centers in order to sell to other regions. The local government ordered private tea farmers to pay deposits to tea gardens controlled by the state (shanchang), sell a large proportion of their yield to state-controlled gardens, and pay tea tax. The private farmers could retain a proportion of their harvest if they wished. In this way, the state used profits from tea to mobilize the merchants and ensure that adequate food and materials were taken to the northern frontier. The founders of the dynasty leveraged their enormous prestige and authority to achieve this level of control over the economy. Nevertheless, their success in mobilizing the merchants relied on the state monopoly of the tea supply. This level of control came at the expense of closely monitoring private farmers. Enforcing and monitoring the rules regarding the deposit system and the collection of taxes was cumbersome. The state needed accurate data regarding farmers liable to pay deposits and taxes, how much they should pay, and how the state could collect.
Problems began to emerge, and the state’s monopoly faced challenges. The liberal economists identified these issues—government control was weakening, the cost of enforcing the rules was increasing, the collection of tax and deposit was getting unwieldy, and the merchants were becoming resistant to the arrangement. These views held sway, and reforms were introduced: a new policy called “Jiaoyinfa” (method of submitting vouchers) was declared.50
Under this system, merchants who conveyed materials to the northern frontiers continued to do so at their own cost, but they obtained vouchers (jiaoyin) after delivery. These vouchers were redeemable when submitted to the capital. At the same time, they also obtained the right to collect tea from southern regions and sell it.51 As an additional incentive, the state also issued vouchers for aromatic substances, medicine, rhino horn, ivory (xiāng, yao, xi, xiàng), and other precious items. The more exotic the items were, the greater the profits for the merchants.
In the meantime, the merchants tried to exploit the arrangement to their advantage by increasing the price of the food and materials they sold on the northern frontier. By artificially inflating prices, they could obtain vouchers of higher financial value in the capital to obtain more tea in the southern regions. Greedy merchants who continued to raise the price of their food and materials sold to the north could redeem more and more tea from the local trade centers in the south. With less tea available in the trade centers, the government generated less income. Moreover, the merchants were allowed to deal with farmers directly.52 While the price of collecting the tea at the trade centers was relatively fixed, farmers certainly preferred dealing with the merchants instead of the state because they could sell at a higher price and attempted to avoid taxation. Tax concealment and evasion occurred in this way, which led to the reduction of tax collected by the state. The government bore the loss while tycoons or top merchants soaked up the most significant portion of the profit.
The court and the officials were unhappy now. They decided to charge more by collecting sales tax from the merchants and rent from the farmers. This led to unending squabbles over whether the state should rely on “the invisible hand” behind the scenes or intervene directly in the market. Highly reputed scholar-officials including Wang Anshi, Ouyang Xiu, Sima Guang, and Su Che expressed their opinions in support of or opposing related proposals and reforms.53 However, these unending debates did not in the least stem the losses being sustained by the state.
Table 1
Tea-related state revenue by period (compiled by Qi Xia)54
|
Year |
Profit (guan/string of cash = 1,000 wen) |
|---|---|
|
964–976 |
4,000,000 |
|
1013–1014 |
3,000,000 |
|
1021 |
1,500,000 |
|
1057–1058 |
1,094,093 |
|
After 1059 |
1,175,104 |
|
1109 (Huizong) |
Over 1,840,000 |
|
1112 (Huizong) |
Over 4,000,000 |
|
After 1131 |
2,400,000 |
|
1154 |
2,690,000 |
|
1155 |
Over 2,700,000 |
|
1174 |
4,200,000 |
In the Zhenghe period, Huizong and Cai Jing adopted a mixture of polices to reform how the industry was regulated and ensure that a revenue stream derived from the tea trade would return to the state coffers. Their policies brought rapidly growing revenues to the state and increased tea production. Table 1 placed above shows the trends in tea-related state revenue in different periods.
We can conclude from Table 1 that Huizong’s court brought in considerable revenue and rescued the state’s share in the tea market as compared to previous periods. Huizong and his subordinates instituted adequate financial initiatives to launch reforms to the industry and institutionalize tea-related market activities. Had the Northern Song government not collapsed, this would have been a startlingly glorious achievement despite the many criticisms often leveled against Huizong’s court. Their political and financial achievements brought significant advantages to the state,55 even as the liberal economists continued to attack the policies for taking profit from the private sector. Planned economists would, however, actually favor this if Huizong and his court represented truly the role of a central government. We do not need to settle once and for all the unending debate between the two camps of economists since the debate rages on today. Nevertheless, Huizong and Cai Jing’s economic theories and practices surpassed many of those highly reputed scholar-officials in significance.
1.2.2 Punishment and Rebels
Since profits from the tea industry were enormous, the industry naturally attracted its share of criminal elements and illicit goings-on. Karl Marx cites T.J. Dunning in his famous book, Capital, saying, “With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 percent, positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.”56 Net profits of selling tea in the Northern Song could easily reach well over 300 percent. The temptation for merchants, farmers, and peasants to commit illegal deals was irresistible. This was why the government instituted strict laws and orders to control the industry.
For example, as recorded in the “Treatises on Food and Commodities” in Song History, if farmers did not submit their tea to the state-run trade centers or conducted private deals with merchants (before the reforms), they would be sentenced according to the value of their deals. If farmers destroyed their tea bushes (in order to evade tax or rent), they would be fined the value of the tea the destroyed bushes would have produced. Tea gardens that produced less than the stipulated amount would be removed. If government officials illegally traded state-owned tea of a value of 1,500 wen or more, they would be sentenced to death. As this punishment was deemed too severe, it was later modified such that government officials found stealing and selling state-owned tea of a value over 3,000 wen would be sentenced to imprisonment and their faces tattooed (as a form of shaming). Anyone who bore arms to form a gang to engage in the illegal tea trade and resisted arrest would be sentenced to death. Anyone who sold inauthentic tea weighing one jin would be sentenced to one hundred strokes of the cane; selling twenty jin of inauthentic tea would result in a death sentence …57 These severe punishment codes reflected the seriousness with which the government monitored the industry and controlled the farmers, peasants, and merchants.
The penal codes targeting merchants, farmers, and peasants also revealed that many people were involved in illegal trade and tax concealment and evasion. When the government wanted to collect more tax, rent, and tea from the farms, the farmers could not keep much of their tea produce. They regarded tea as the result of their labor and devised means to circumvent government levies. They could conceal the produce, lie about the size of the tea growing area and the number of bushes in their gardens, bribe officials, replace fresh and high-quality tea with old and poor-quality teas and sell them to the state-run trade centers.58 Worse still, they could rise in rebellion as they did in Sichuan Pengzhou in 1077, where over five thousand rebels came together to fight against the oppression of the local government.59
These violent events resulted from the imbalanced distribution of interests and profits among the various parties involved in the tea trade. Since a consensus regarding the tea reforms had never been reached among the scholar-officials, objections and criticisms emerged continuously. Criticisms directly attacking the most successful case of the tea reforms during Huizong’s reign were harsh and stern. For example, Li Gang, a famous scholar-official and military commander, lamented in his Anthology of Mr. Liang Xi that:
The profit from the tea and salt industries lay in the hands of the local governments at the beginning of the dynasty. The local governments were thus rich and prosperous. From the Chongning and Daguan periods of Huizong’s reign onward, the profit lay with the central government, and thus the central government was rich and powerful. Soon the royal court appropriated all the profit and used it up on objects of pleasure, banquets, and bestowments, and all the profit under the heaven was gone!60
Li Gang blamed Huizong and his trusted subordinates, like Cai Jing, for causing the collapse of the Northern Song government. However, as discussed above, these people were also responsible for most of the successful tea reforms during Huizong’s reign. One wonders how valid such criticisms were and who was truly to blame.
1.2.3 Why Reforms?
A state needs to balance its expenditure and income. While its expenditure can be an unknown abyss, its income consists of several sources widely recognized in human history. Taxation in the form of cash, materials, or draft labor was one of these sources; monopoly and direct control of a particular industry was another. Allowing private businesses to operate and collecting taxes from them permits the existence of private stakeholders, while state monopoly allows only the state to own and operate. The interplay between the throne, the central and local governments, merchants, farmers, and peasants shaped the development of the Northern Song tea industry.
As Patricia Ebrey describes, the expenditure of the Northern Song government during Huizong’s reign was composed of tributes, military expenses (e.g. soldiers’ rations and salaries), grain supplies, the construction of palaces, the Northeast Marchmount (Genyue), Daoist temples, gardens, and libraries, rituals, the Flower and Rock Networks (huashigang), salaries for officials and clansmen, charity, and, last but not least, cultural and artistic activities.61 Any item could be a bottomless pit leading to a fiscal deficit. Huizong’s court needed to raise adequate money to launch these projects. High-profit industries such as salt and tea definitely came to their attention, but the profits had to be split between different parties. Two-thirds were retained at the local/prefectural governments, and one-third was submitted to the central government/Ministry of Revenue and the Inner Treasury (Privy Purse, private property of the emperor).62 In the “Treatises on Food and Commodities” chapters in Song History, Tuo Tuo and others alluded to the question of the increase of redundant personnel and the corresponding increase in their salaries during Huizong’s reign.63 It is known that Cai Jing favored a large force of officials to please Huizong, and the tea industry was chosen as an avenue to generate profit for the court. Tuo Tuo and others continued to upbraid Huizong’s court for spending money on the extravagant building projects, the Flower and Rock Networks, and the salaries of greedy officials, which constituted the popular historiography of denigrating Huizong and Cai’s achievements.64 Following the line of thought developed by Ebrey, we now realize that to only criticize Huizong on account of his lavish personal expenditure on cultural and artistic activities does not do justice to Huizong and his subordinates’ attempts to save the government from financial ruin.65 The reforms of the tea industry should be examined against this backdrop.
Cai Jing’s personal statements regarding the reasons for launching tea reforms are a convenient point of departure. In his remarks to Huizong in 1102, recorded in Song History, he articulated that after the Qingli period, the legal codes concerning state-run policies in the tea industry were flouted openly and the illegal trade in tea flourished unabashed. New reforms giving the merchants more freedom were therefore necessary. When the merchants competed with the state in the market, the state lost the profit. It was, therefore, essential for the state to return to the state-run policies and prohibit private deals between merchants and farmers.66
Afterwards, with Huizong’s support, Cai re-designed the official establishment controlling the local tea trade and built many more new trade centers in various regions.67 We understand that these policies would break up long-held connections among old interest holders. Merchants who had long-term collaborative relationships with certain trade center officials might have developed their own power circles to evade state control. Bribery was, therefore, easy and common. Re-designing the official establishment and building new trade centers would break up their power circles, and the state would stand to gain from it. As expected, this act aroused criticism from parties with existing interests.
Cai Jing and his colleagues’ responses to the rapidly changing tea market were very efficient. Four years after they re-designed the official establishment of the trade centers, they implemented a new official system and allowed merchants to obtain vouchers from the central and local governments and purchase tea directly from the farmers. The government made its profit from taxation and the sale of vouchers. The authors of Song History were of the opinion that the tea trade flourished after these reforms came in.68 However, the tea industry had been prosperous all the time. A more convincing interpretation of the increase in government revenues is that the state discovered more tea transactions than before. Tea transactions unknown to the government in the past were now brought to light because of close monitoring. Therefore, the state could profit more by “discovering” these “new” transactions. Responses from the central government in planned economies are usually prolonged and bureaucratic, but Cai and his colleagues managed to launch reforms rapidly and efficiently.
We can deduce from what the emperor and his subordinates implemented during Huizong’s reign that financial considerations were essential to launching tea reforms, but were not the only cause. Re-situating the state at the center of the tea market, re-instating the power of the state in the industry, re-designing the official establishment, and re-distributing the powers among the local officials were among the concerns of the central government throughout the history of the Northern Song. Attributing these phenomena to Huizong’s personal interests ignores how Huizong and his subordinates strove to save the state from an economic abyss.
1.2.4 Adding Value to Tea and Product Differentiation
As much as the tea industry provided revenues to the state, the government wanted even more. A state monopoly, sales tax, other taxes and levies on farmers and peasants, and rent on tea gardens were just the start. The government officials realized that heterogenizing tea by creating diverse categories would bring in significantly higher profits. In this way, tea could be sold in different categories at higher prices. Modern economists would term these acts as “value-adding,” “advertising,” and/or “product differentiation.” These strategies include diversifying the features of the products, adding new brand names to generic products, and assembling and packaging products in innovative ways to attract more customers and sell the products at higher prices.69 The Northern Song scholar-officials made good use of these marketing strategies.
1.2.4.1 Diversifying Features
When considered in this context, the writing and promotion of the Daguan Treatise can be seen as a cultural and economic feature added to the tea. We may recall that the state-owned gardens in Jian’an and the government took the initiative to promote their tea. Thus, the Daguan Treatise not only theorized and institutionalized tea practices, but also served as a marketing tool to promote an idealized tea culture and a model for an industry in which the state had significant stakes. Promoting appropriate utensils also added cultural and economic value to the tea industry.
1.2.4.2 Differentiation
What if the tea in the market were of a generic or homogenous nature? Raw tea was all very similar, but the government had the economic incentive to artificially differentiate the tea using different production techniques, grades, packaging, and price.70 We do not know whether there were any actual differences in terms of the taste of the tea. Nevertheless, the specification and differentiation of the quality, types, production techniques, and price of tea as an economic construct is a fascinating phenomenon.
Records in the Comprehensive Examination of Literature (Wenxian tongkao) reveal that the Northern Song government singled out some specific tea types at the beginning of the dynasty.71 At that time, tea was categorized into sancha (loose tea), piancha (tea cakes), and lamiancha (wax-surfaced tea cakes). The government purchased tea at low prices and then sold it for three to four times the amount they paid:
Table 2
Profit by tea types72
|
Tea type |
Buy (wen/jin) |
Grades |
Sell (wen/jin) |
Grades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
lamiancha |
35–190 |
16 |
47–420 |
12 |
|
piancha |
65–250 |
55 |
17–917 |
65 |
|
sancha |
16–38.5 |
59 |
15–121 |
190 |
The lamiancha referred to tea from Jian’an, the tea favored by the Daguan Treatise. Sancha and piancha, referring to how the tea was packed, could be found anywhere in the south. The grades were probably set by the government to differentiate qualities and diversify the market. The artificial differentiation would add value to the tea initially of a generic or homogenous nature.
Associating specific tea types with certain production techniques was an economic strategy to enrich the stories behind the products. Northern Song scholar-officials employed this marketing strategy just like modern tea merchants. The processing and preservation techniques probably added value. Wax-surfacing, steaming, compressing, baking, and mixing with aromatic substances were associated with the long-term preservation, better flavor, and pleasing fragrances demanded by many Northern Song tea drinkers.
1.2.4.3 Creating New Brand Names
Tea texts compiled by the Northern Song scholar-officials have mentioned various tea brands, such as Jian’an White Tea, which had the endorsement of the royal court, Ding Wei’s Large Dragon-phoenix Tea, Cai Xiang’s Small Dragon Tea Cakes, and the various tea brands mentioned in multiple tea texts.73 The scholar-officials and -artists came up with numerous labels for tea of the same type, quality, and origin. Tea of a homogeneous nature probably tasted the same, but the addition of brand names elevated the economic value of generic tea. Calling the same tea by different and more appealing names was part of innovatively packaging the tea products. Ding Wei and Cai Xiang “invented” Dragon-phoenix Tea and Small Dragon Tea, which were little more than branding the same tea grown in Jian’an. They devised new methods of categorizing the tea and decorated the packages with beautiful dragon and phoenix patterns impressed from metal molds.74
Tea, as a value-added and frequently advertised commodity and luxury, drew the attention of the conscientious reformers because it was such an important source of profit for the state. The value-adding strategies, from the perspectives of the emperors and scholar-officials, were a cultural and economic construct built upon a consensus among the cultural and political elites. The economic value behind the tea provided sufficient incentives for the scholar-officials to invest their energy and time in heterogenizing the tea and artificially creating diverse categories for the tea.
1.2.5 Exportation and Tea-Horse Trade
Since tea was a product desired by both Chinese and non-Chinese speaking peoples, the Northern Song government attempted to make it a strategic item in diplomacy and military affairs. The central government controlled tea exports to nomad-inhabited regions through a mechanism, which later became known as the famous tea-horse trade in history.75 Paul Smith and others have conducted detailed studies of the history of the tea-horse trade;76 however, one question remains: Why was tea specifically chosen for trading horses, but not other products?
Besides horses, the nomads produced their own strategically important products such as salt and foodstuffs. The Northern Song government therefore could not base its trade with the nomads on such daily commodities. The government needed a product they could entirely monopolize and control to trade for militarily strategic items, horses in this case. In Chapter 1, we know that many herbs could replace tea. Why were shashen or lotus seeds not chosen to replace tea? Decoctions made from shashen, lotus seeds, and other herbs could provide similar medicinal qualities or daily nutrition. Scurvy, resulting from Vitamin C deficiency, along with other health issues prevalent among the nomads, could potentially be prevented or alleviated through the consumption of these herbal decoctions. Furthermore, these herbs could be preserved for a long time, provided they were treated correctly. Why, then, did tea rise to prominence?
The cultural construct of tea made tea culturally attractive, while the economic construct made tea widely acceptable. These large-scale cultural and economic phenomena led to the popularity and uptake of tea among both the nomads and sedentary people. When tea was singled out from other products in the market, the economic value of tea elevated it to a militarily strategic item. Tea grew in southern China only and was easily controlled by the government. The geographic distribution of tea made it an outstanding product over which the Chinese had a total monopoly. Although shashen might have been a viable alternative to tea, its cultivation area in the Yellow River Basin faced constant military threats. Lotus seeds that grew only in the south did not hold as much cultural significance since the cultural construct of lotus seeds was not as popular as tea. After the Chinese scholar-artists began a major cultural campaign to promote tea for several hundred years, tea necessarily became an indispensable strategic item favored by the Northern Song government. By maintaining the historical popularity of tea among the nomads, the Northern Song government capitalized on the longstanding cultural and economic tradition of promoting tea, using it continuously as a trading commodity for desired goods.
Previously the Northern Song government used silver to trade, but eventually, they found that the silver-horse trade was not as cost-effective as the tea-horse trade.77 The Northern Song government later established the Tea-Horse Agency to centralize the management of trade affairs and demanded that tea gardens in the Sichuan area trade horses with the Tibetans.78 It is recorded that during Shenzong’s reign and under Wang Anshi’s reforms, the Tea-Horse Agency used tea to trade with the Tibetans and procured about 10,000 horses annually from 1074 onwards.79 Later the quota of purchasing horses reached 20,000 annually as the trade developed.80 In 1116, during Huizong’s reign, the number of horses procured reached a record high of 45,021.81 By using tea instead of silver to buy horses, the precious metal remained in China, protecting the economy and preventing currency inflation. The massive surpluses of the Sichuan tea industry were traded for valuable horses. Tea cultivated in other parts of the state would be transported north for strategic military purposes and also traded domestically for everyday consumption. The value-adding processes and cultural and economic construct of tea helped spread the reputation and popularity of tea. The Northern Song government was the stakeholder that benefited most from the trade.
1.3 Production and Distribution of Tea Utensils
1.3.1 Ceramic Vessels
Tea utensils constituted a significant aspect of the economic construct of the tea industry. The active production and wide distribution of tea utensils reflected how popular the tea-drinking cultures were and how successful the economic construct was in the Northern Song.
1.3.1.1 Types
As outlined in Chapter 1, various utensils made up part of the sophisticated Northern Song tea culture and economy. Tea bowls could be categorized into single tea bowls and bowls with pedestals or supports. Ewer spouts required special design to accommodate the tea-tipping practices. Accompanying jars and pots for holding water could be ordinary vessels. Incense burners were an integral component of tea utensil assemblage, being indispensable at tea gatherings. The openwork design of incense burners, which allowed the emission of fragrance from the burning of aromatic substances, had its origins in the openwork design of Han Period incense burners, and in the bronze vessels of earlier periods (Fig. 12).
Figure 12
Bronze incense burner from Tomb 3, Xianlielu Huanghuagang, Guangzhou, China. H. 17.6 cm. Ca. 200 BCE–100 CE.
After Ting 1996, 50, fig. 1.22. Guangzhou Museum
Most surviving Northern Song tea utensils are ceramic, ranging from stoneware to celadon or porcelain, classified based on variations in firing temperature, clay and glaze types, and degrees of water porosity.82 Glazed ceramic tea bowls give us a glimpse of the aesthetics and economic preferences of Northern Song tea lovers, with the glaze determining the color of the ceramic utensils. Ordinary people probably used unglazed stoneware or glazed porcelain bowls of cheaper quality, whereas the cultural elites preferred those with sophisticated designs, such as multi-colored or purely monochromatic bowls. Monochromatic bowls are not inherently dull or uninteresting. Instead, their color tones can be so pure and subtle that they exhibit a type of restrained beauty. Multi-colored bowls feature various patterns such as the hare’s fur pattern discussed in Chapter 1, the oil-drop pattern (youdi), the dove’s feather pattern (zheguban), and tenmoku.83 Variations in firing temperature and oxidization and reduction processes in the kilns would result in a range of glaze colors.84 The renowned tenmoku bowls stored in Japan (Fig. 5) were results of coincidental changes in the above-mentioned processes. Most of them date to the Southern Song. Although there is not enough evidence at this point, it is possible that some of them were produced in the Northern Song. Given that the tenmoku bowls were produced in kilns known as “dragon kilns” (longyao), whose earliest construction could be traced to the first millennium BCE,85 the accidental achievement of the so-called tenmoku patterns would have probably taken place at earlier times.
1.3.1.2 Regional Distribution
Almost every region in Northern Song China had kiln clusters able to produce tea bowls and ewers. In the north, there were the Cizhou (Hebei), Dingzhou (Hebei), and Yaozhou (Shaanxi, Fig. 13) kiln clusters. In central China, well-known kiln clusters such as the Ruzhou and Guan (official) clusters were situated around the capital. In the south, there were the Changsha, Longquan, and Jianyang kilns.86 Apart from highly valuable utensils and those specified in the tea texts (like the Jian ware specified in the Daguan Treatise), local tea enthusiasts would usually use utensils from nearby kilns to avoid high transportation costs.
Figure 13
Tea bowl and support. Excavated from tomb M16 (Lü Dazhang’s tomb) of the Lü family cemetery at Shaanxi Lantian, housed in the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology. The bowl and the support are separate: total h. 10.6 cm, bowl h. 5 cm, bowl d. 11 cm, support h. 7 cm. 10th–11th century. Probably produced at the Yaozhou kilns.
After Hunan Sheng Bowuguan 2020, 99, no fig. no. Image reproduction courtesy of the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology
1.3.1.3 Production
Producing ceramic vessels required a significant investment of material and labor resources. First, kilns catering to special and/or local needs were built. In northern China, the so-called “bun-shaped kilns” (mantouyao) were constructed on flat ground, while in southern China, dragon kilns built on long slopes of hills were preferred.87 Secondly, the materials needed to make the utensils—including clay for the body, glaze stones used to produce the glaze, water, and fuel—had to be amassed at the kiln site. Some kiln sites were built next to the river bank so the potters could easily draw water to mix with the clay and glaze stones before trampling and grinding them into softer forms. After wheeling and shaping the clay into desired shapes, glaze and pigments might then be applied on the surface. The utensils were then put into the kilns for firing. To bring out the desired colors on the utensils, substantial quantities of firewood and charcoal were required for heating in either oxidizing or reducing conditions. While experienced masters would supervise the entire process, they relied on ordinary workmen to take care of the routine and onerous labor, such as collecting firewood from the forest, drawing water, and carrying raw materials to the workshops. In the firing processes, which could last several days, and in the reduction processes, which could extend for weeks, the masters needed to be very attentive to the colors of the fire and other temperature indicators, which showed the approximate temperature ranges at a time before the invention of thermometers.88 During peak seasons, sleepless nights were common as a kiln might house thousands of ceramic utensils. Any errors in the process could result in an entire kiln of ruined or subpar utensils, which could bankrupt a workshop.
1.3.2 Dragon Kilns
The southern Chinese chose to build long and narrow kilns on hill slopes, creating structures that resembled dragons resting on the hillsides. In the Northern Song, such dragon kilns were very common in the Fujian Jianyang area.89 Among these, the Yulinting kiln cluster is particularly noteworthy.90 Located in the Mount Wuyi area, it was part of Chongan county during the Northern Song. Six sites of ruined kilns on six different hills were located in archaeological surveys conducted at the end of the twentieth century by the archaeological team of the Fujian Provincial Museum. Our focus here is the most prominent site that consisted of two kilns (Fig. 14 and Fig. 15). In this area of about 2,300 m2 were found the foundations of the two kilns, potters’ workshops, ponds, wells, roads, drainage ditches, and vast quantities of ceramic shards identified as remains of black-glazed Jian ware. Sources of clay and glaze stones in neighboring areas are, needless to say, abundant. Two creeks surrounded the kiln site when we first visited it in December 2018.
Figure 14
View of the remaining foundation of Yulinting Kiln 1, from north to south
Fujian Sheng Bowuguan 2000, 27, fig. 8
Figure 15
Photograph of the Yulinting kiln site covered by a modern-day building
Author’s photograph, taken in December 2018. The triangle indicates the kiln position
One can imagine that the potters of the Northern Song working in these kilns would draw water from the creeks and wells and store it in the ponds. When needed, the water would be used to filter sand from the clay and to knead and mix the clay powder. Today, the creeks are connected to Chongyang Creek, Jian Creek, and Min River, eventually reaching the sea. If, as was quite likely, these creeks were interconnected during the Northern Song and linked to Gan River (probably via some land transport), then the tea and utensils produced in Jian’an and its neighboring areas could have been shipped to Yangzi River and the Grand Canal, facilitating efficient delivery to the capital. Alternatively, shipping the utensils to Zhejiang by sea was another way to reach the Grand Canal. Firewood from the nearby mountains in the Wuyi area was plentiful, and making charcoal would have presented no challenge.
Figure 16
Image captured from a 3D model of potter Sun Jianxing’s kiln
Author’s image
Only the foundations of the two kilns remain, with all the above-ground structures having disappeared. The length of Kiln 1 is 73 meters, as measured along the slope. It has an average incline of 18°, reaching 26° at its steepest and leveling out to 13° at its flattest point. Kiln 2, measuring 113 meters in length, has an average incline of 19°, with the steepest point at 30° and the most level section at 15°. According to archaeologists’ estimates, Kiln 2 had the capacity to yield over 80,000 items with each firing. Since the above-ground structures of the two kilns have disappeared, we can take a modern kiln that imitates the dragon kiln structure as a reference. This modern kiln belongs to a potter named Sun Jianxing. It is only 10 meters long with an incline of about 17° (Fig. 16). Sun’s kiln primarily yields Jian-style stoneware, that is, the black-glazed bowls. The front part of the kiln is where the firewood is burned. The rising heat is directed into the long, slanting fire chamber covered by thick bricks, preserving the heat inside. Tiny holes are strategically placed in the fire chamber, allowing the potter to observe the fire types and gauge temperature ranges, although electric thermometers are used nowadays. Smoke generated by burning the firewood and charcoal is emitted through a chimney at the back of the chamber at the peak of the artificial hill. Nowadays, we can still identify the front, the foundations and remaining walls of the fire chamber, and the end of the Yulinting kilns (Fig. 17 and Fig. 18), which indicate that the operation principles of the Yulinting and Sun Jianxing’s kilns are similar. The Yulinting kilns are, however, much longer and twist a little at the center, similar to the twist of Kiln 1 as seen in Fig. 17. This twist was probably built to slow down rapid elevations of heat and maintain a steady heating environment in the kiln. The delicate control of how the heat was raised and channeled reflected the sophistication of the kiln construction techniques. The massive output of one firing of one of these massive kilns meant that the Yulinting kiln clusters provided a stable supply of high-quality Jian ware to the market. Some premium products might be shipped to the capital for use by the cultural and economic elites, contributing to their ambitious endeavor of constructing a new tea economy.
Figure 17
Foundation of Yulinting Kiln 1
Author’s photograph
Figure 18
End of Yulinting Kiln 1
Image captured from the author’s 3D model
Against this historical backdrop, we now understand why and how the Daguan Treatise authors gave their Fujian-centric tea standards and preferences high political and cultural status and expected tea practitioners to follow their prescriptions. They institutionalized tea-making practices and tea-drinking preferences through the dissemination of the text. By launching the reforms, Huizong and his subordinates regained control over the tea industry, monopolized the tea market, garnered a greater share of the profits of the tea trade, and managed the southern tea and utensil production industries with relative ease. No merchants could compete with the government in this market. Simultaneously, Huizong and his subordinates utilized the fame of the Jian’an tea and utensils. Through prioritizing the Jian’an White Tea, lauding the black-glazed Jian ware, grading and categorizing tea types, preserving the tea for a longer time by referencing the drying and processing techniques, and promoting the tea-tipping practice, Huizong, his subordinates, and many scholar-artists and -officials significantly enhanced the cultural and economic value of tea. It was no coincidence that tea became popular in both Chinese and non-Chinese speaking regions, with the scholar-artists and officials participating in a large-scale economic phenomenon that reified the rarity and refinement of tea and utensils.
2 Aromatic Substances
The production and distribution of aromatic substances from Northern Song-controlled and foreign areas reflected how the Chinese cultural elites economically constructed the rarity and exoticism of the aromatic substances. How the cultural elites molded the popular impressions about the aromatic substances in their texts awaits investigation. Both the burning of the aromatic substances and the specially designed incense burners used in the process were parts of this economic construct.
2.1 Geographical Sources of Aromatic Substances
Most of the aromatic substances the cultural elites preferred and indicated in their xiangpu were exotic. Many came from Southeast Asian, South Asian, Persian, and Central Asian regions. A minority were domestic, coming from the Canton (Guangdong), Guangxi, and Hainan regions. The state authorities grouped the aromatic substances with other items such as rhino horn, ivory, amber, pearls, agate, crystals, and exotic timbers.91 These exotic items stimulated the imagination of the cultural elites. The medicinal properties they were believed to possess were discussed briefly in Chapter 1. However, the aromatic substances were subject to a cultural and economic construct, making them appealing and widely sought after. If it had not been for concerted efforts by the promoters of these exotic items that would almost be of no ordinary use to the cultural elites, they would not have become a sought-after luxury.
Ding Wei’s Legends mentions several geographical sources of aromatic substances.92 Champa (Zhancheng) in Vietnam yielded tambac and qianxiang, which would be exported to Canton or Persia. Xunlu (a type of aromatic substances) and frankincense originated from the Persian region, where trees that could be made into aromatic substances were planted everywhere purportedly. The geology there was distinctive, as it is still today, with practically no topsoil and very little rain. These trees grew in rocky areas only. According to Liu Jingmin, if planted in soil, they would not yield the timber suitable for conversion into aromatic substances.93
Production theorization and categorization were also common strategies that the xiangpu authors employed in making an economic construct of the consumption of aromatic substances. As an example, Ding Wei’s Legends again describes how rare the aromatic substances from the Hainan and western Canton regions were. The indigenous people on Hainan Island made their living mainly by farming, and only in the winter did they enter the mountains to collect aromatic timbers. In the western Canton regions, the indigenous people chopped down only mature aromatic timbers and left the immature ones untouched. They were careful to preserve the ecological balance with their environmentally friendly habits.94 As a result, the aromatic substances they collected and preserved were of a very natural quality. Ding Wei further elaborated that ten thousand jin of huangshu could be refined into one hundred jin of qianxiang, while this one hundred jin of qianxiang could, in turn, be refined into merely a dozen jin of chenxiang.95 The meticulous differentiation of products was meant to add value to the aromatic substances, echoing similar steps taken with the tea brands and categories.
2.2 Trade Routes for Aromatic Substances
We can now investigate the route by which the aromatic substances travelled to the capital. The Fujian and Cantonese sea merchants shipped aromatic substances from the Hainan and Canton regions to the Hangzhou harbors.96 The sea merchants would bring not merely aromatic substances, but also other exotic items mentioned above, such as amber, agate, and ivory. Foreign merchants, such as Arabs and Persians, would have brought to Quanzhou and Hangzhou aromatic substances and other exotic products collected along the way in places like Champa and Srivijaya in Indonesia.97 Southeast Asian merchants also played a role in these transactions. Thus, the trade routes between China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Persia, and Arabia were highly developed in the Northern and Southern Song periods.98
2.3 Preservation of Aromatic Substances
While the xiangpu authors did not pay much attention to the preservation techniques of aromatic substances, the medicinal texts such as Lei’s Treatise, Materia Medica, and Imperial Pharmacy contain detailed records of how they were processed, preserved, and used.99 Here we can see again that the medicine practitioners and the xiangpu writers had different agendas. The former were concerned with the actual medicinal functions and preservation methods of the aromatic substances, while the latter were concerned with fashioning a luxury image for the aromatic substances. The scholars stressed the cultural sophistication of using aromatic substances, the exoticism associated with the fragrances, and the cultural and economic knowledge and power they could boast to their guests. To be sure, indigenous people had their own processing and preservation methods to treat the fresh aromatic timbers they collected, but there are no detailed original records showing how the indigenous people actually conducted these. Their methods were either unknown, incorporated into the methods recorded in the medicinal texts in digested form, or turned into anecdotal information that the scholar-artists could bandy about at their gatherings.
2.4 Government Control
The scholars’ notes record the profit brought in by the aromatic substances. The Southern Song scholar Zeng Zao recorded that a type of aromatic substance called baiduru was worth two-hundred thousand wen per tael when it first appeared in the capital, and Cai Jing burned two to three taels of it at a banquet.100 With two-hundred thousand wen, one could have purchased a first-class property ranging in size from twenty-five to one hundred acres, according to Qi Xia’s conversion.101 Although Zeng Zao’s note provides only an anecdotal account or may even exaggerate the price to criticize Cai Jing’s lavishness, it could still offer supplementary information on how expensive the aromatic substances were. The value of aromatic substances is also recorded in other notes from the Southern Song.102 Ambergris was the most expensive substance of all. The highest quality ambergris was worth hundreds of thousands per tael in Guangzhou, the second-best fifty to sixty thousand.103
With returns comparable to that of tea, it was only natural that aromatic substances would draw the attention of the central government. As mentioned above, the state monopolized the tea, salt, aromatic substance, and alum markets.104 The state tightly controlled the industry by imposing heavy taxes at every turn. Labor tax was probably imposed on the domestic indigenous peasants who harvested the aromatic timbers. From the foreign merchants, sales tax was definitely collected.105 The state also established offices in the capital, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Quanzhou areas to monitor transactions and prohibit private trade.106 When the Southern Song government gradually resumed control of the markets in 1130, three years after the collapse of the Northern Song government, over 86,000 jin of frankincense, classified into thirteen grades, was traded in the Quanzhou harbor. They were transported in units of gang (literally meaning “network,” here it might mean “a package”), where one gang was made up of three thousand jin on land, while ten thousand jin was one gang on water.107 According to Qi Xia’s estimates of the total revenue in three trade centers in 1154, tea made up 13 %, aromatic substances and alum 5.3 %, and salt was the highest at 75.8 %.108 The significance of the percentage of revenue taken up by tea and aromatic substances should not be ignored. Even though these statistics came from sources dating to the early Southern Song, we can imagine how important the revenue of tea and aromatic substances was to the government of the Northern Song. In the Northern Song, the punishment for illegal trading activities was severe. In the Taiping Xingguo period of Taizong’s reign, illegal transactions worth over fifteen strings of cash were punished by a tattoo on the face and banishment to offshore islands. Imprisonment awaited those involved in illegal trades valued at more than fifteen strings of cash. In 994, the punishment escalated. People caught engaging in illegal trade with a value of up to four strings of cash would be sentenced to tattooing and conscription as convict soldiers.109 The state adhered strictly to the categorization of the substances, closely monitored transactions, clearly regulated transportation and packaging, and showed great determination in exercising the penal codes.
3 Qin
To produce a qin, an artisan needs to assemble a whole array of raw materials: boards of wood, lacquer, silk strings, metal pieces, and stones.110 Many scholars have studied the mechanism and acoustic properties of the qin,111 but the acquisition and processing of raw materials for producing a qin in the Northern Song has not received much attention. As will be illustrated, many of the necessary raw materials were sourced from diverse regions across China and ultimately assembled into a qin within the metropolises of the Northern Song.
3.1 Acquisition of Raw Materials
3.1.1 Boards of Wood
First of all, qin artisans had to collect the appropriate timber and turn it into usable and durable boards. The boards form the principal structure of a qin. They give the instrument its basic shape and determine its acoustic characteristics. Selecting the appropriate timber represented the artisans’ most critical task. The timbers known and accessible to a Northern Song artisan included the Chinese parasol tree (wutong/firmiana simplex), catalpa (zi/Chinese catalpa/catalpa ovata), and cunninghamia (shan/China-fir).112 Modern-day timber scientists have analyzed these woods, and their properties are listed in Table 3.
The three types of hardwoods listed here are well-suited for crafting into boards for musical instruments that demand resonant qualities.113 They are durable, highly workable, and elastic. In other words, boards crafted from these woods can be preserved for a long time. They resist deformation and can be readily shaped. Two boards are assembled to form a qin. They need to endure changes in air pressure, humidity, and temperature to keep producing the desired tones while holding the shape of the qin. A straight and even grain is crucial for producing the desired tones, which is also a sign that the woodworking would be easier. In contrast, interlocked and knotted wood grains make woodworking more difficult and are to be avoided. These three types of timber are anti-corrosive, fragrant, and insect-repellent. The application of lacquer, which aids in preventing erosion and insect infestation, is relatively easy with these timbers too. A Northern Song qin artisan would not know about the radiation damping, impedance, soundwaves, and other scientific terms used by today’s acousticians to explain the working mechanism of the qin,114 but he would know which type of timber was easy to carve and to lacquer, resistant to corrosion, and able to resonate to produce a quality sound.
Table 3
Properties of the different types of timber115
|
Timber |
Hardness and strength |
Workability |
Durability |
Deformation and cracks |
Elasticity |
Texture and gloss |
Usual applications |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Chinese parasol tree |
Hard |
Easy |
High |
Rare |
High |
Straight grain, glossy |
Furniture, coffin boards, musical instruments |
|
Catalpa |
Medium hard |
Easy |
High |
Rare |
High |
Straight grain, glossy |
Furniture, coffin boards |
|
Cunninghamia |
Medium hard |
Easy |
High |
Easy to deform at high temperature |
High |
Straight grain, reddish-brown |
Buildings, bridges |
How and where did a qin artisan obtain the wood needed for his qin? Piecemeal forestry records from the Song period can be found in scholars’ notes. Fan Chengda’s Register of Mounting A Simurgh (Canluan lu; hereafter Simurgh Register), written in or after 1173, could be used as a reference.116 This book records Fan’s journey from Suzhou in Jiangsu to Guilin in Guangxi en route to his posting. Although his notes date to the Southern Song period, and the records about logging in the book pertain specifically to a place called Yanzhou (near Hangzhou) in today’s Zhejiang, it is probable that similar means of wood procurement were common in earlier periods and other places as well. In Fan’s description, very few indigenous people chose to cultivate crops; instead, they made their living by planting cunninghamia trees in the mountains. When the wood was transported out of the mountains, the initial price was low, but after the imposition of various taxes, its price had escalated significantly by the time it reached the county and then, Yanzhou, a larger city. Fan recorded that the officials of Yanzhou made their profit by taxing the sale of the wood, and he lamented that a piece of timber that started off costing less than one hundred wen would be sold for two thousand.117 We can postulate from Fan’s record that the wood for making the qin was not cheap. Indigenous loggers would fell the trees, shape the timber for easy transport, and sell it to merchants. Merchants at the county level would arrange for transportation and resell the timber to others. Throughout these transactions and the transportation processes, the local governments would impose taxes. By the time the wood reached a qin artisan’s workshop in metropolitan areas like Hangzhou or Kaifeng, it had inevitably become a precious and scarce commodity, no matter how plentiful it may have been in the forests.
Interesting stories about serendipitous encounters where qin artisans acquired distinctive wood were told from time to time. Cai Yong in the Eastern Han period accidentally came upon a piece of wood by rescuing it from being completely burned and used it to craft the “Scorched-tail” (Jiaowei) qin.118 Li Mian of the Tang dynasty assembled multiple pieces of wood of various types and made two qin, known as the Bainaqin (the qin of hundreds of pieces [i.e., made from assembling them]).119 In the tenth century, King Zhongyi (Qian Chu) commissioned an artisan to acquire appropriate wood. This artisan discovered that the pillars of a temple near a waterfall in Mount Tiantai in Zhejiang were made of Chinese parasol wood. He theorized that the sound of the waterfall might cause long-term changes to the properties of the pillar wood, and thus he used the yang (positive/southern) side of the pillars and made two qin out of the wood.120 The Song period scholars inherited this tradition of creating legends about qin.
The Song scholars expounded on the tradition of unearthing ancient wood or wood that had lain buried for years. As historian Yan Xiaoxing notes, an entry from Materia Medica provides such a clue.121 This is the entry of “guchen-ban” (ancient coffin boards), which was originally written by the Tang medicine practitioner Chen Cangqi in 739 in his now lost Supplements to Materia Medica (Bencao shiyi). This entry was later compiled into Tang Shiwen and others’ Materia Medica.122 Chen Cangqi thought that the boards of wood used to make the coffins from ancient tombs were good for curing certain illnesses. Among them, the cunninghamia wood was the best and could be used as the bottom board of a qin. The Northern Song scholars further developed this tradition. Shen Gua described the production of two qin made of ancient wood in the chapter “Musical Scales” (“Yuelü”) of his famous Notes by Dream Creek (Mengxi bitan) published in 1087.123 The first was Mr. Lu’s qin (Lushiqin), made of eroded wood in the early Tang period. The second one was produced by Zhang Yue, who enjoyed fame comparable to that of the Lei family qin artisans. Zhang’s qin was claimed to be made from eroded cunninghamia boards taken from coffins of ancient tombs. Zhou Mi, in his Records of Clouds and Mist Passing the Eyes (Yunyan guoyan lu), documented the transmission of the “Spring Thunder” (Chunlei) qin made by Lei Wei of the early Tang period, which was esteemed as the finest in Huizong’s qin collection.124 Zhangzong of the Jurchen Jin state later acquired it after the collapse of the Northern Song government and subsequently interred it in his tomb. Eighteen years later, in about 1226, the second to last year of Genghis Khan’s reign, it was unearthed from the ground and was added to the collection of the famous scholar-official Yelü Chucai. At that time, it was still regarded as the finest qin ever made.125
It is doubtful, however, that a qin unearthed from an ancient tomb could still produce a good sound. For example, the “Heavenly Wind, Sea Waves” (Tianfeng haitao) qin excavated from the tomb of the Ming dynasty prince Zhu Tan, cannot be played anymore because the qin was not properly dehydrated when freshly excavated in the 1970s.126 Its bottom board is cracked and deformed, rendering it beyond repair. We cannot with certainty dismiss the possibility that eroded wood and boards from coffins inside tombs or from ancient pillars might be suitable for making qin. Modern-day qin producers may prefer such wood because they believe that it would be suitably dry.127 But how can they be certain that the tomb’s humidity has not compromised the boards? As the Southern Song antique collector Zhao Xihu explained, qin unearthed from tombs usually yielded unclear sounds because they were affected by the earthly energy and humidity.128 For Song qin enthusiasts lacking adequate dehydration methods and preservation knowledge, a qin unearthed from an ancient tomb might represent more of a culturally and economically constructed fantasy than an actual playable instrument.
3.1.2 Lacquer Surface
The exterior of the qin boards was lacquered, and the application of lacquer was a complicated, onerous, and lengthy process.129 First, raw lacquer needed to be collected from lacquer trees found in central and southern China. Processing raw lacquer was hazardous due to the potential for allergic reactions upon contact. Hence, treating raw lacquer was by necessity a specialized task handled by trained laborers.130 The processed lacquer would be mixed with the ash of burnt deer antlers, paint, mica, ground pearl powder, and other precious items. The most common lacquer colors were black and red, as these were relatively easier to produce.131 The lacquer artisans needed to apply multiple even layers of lacquer to the wood, ensuring a beautiful and glossy finish. A lacquer coating would protect the wood from temperature fluctuations, humidity, and insects. In other words, the lacquer layers would help preserve the wood for an extended period, unless it was exposed to abnormal conditions such as overheating. Between applications of layers of lacquer, artisans needed to wait for the previous layer to dry before applying another layer on top. However, the lacquer prepared as described above could only remain liquid for a brief period. Therefore, the artisans had to repeatedly prepare small batches of fresh lacquer, further complicating the already time-consuming finishing process of a qin. The process relied on specialized skills and years of experience. The lacquer, and the qin it was used to create, represented significant investments of resources and labor.
Textual descriptions of how lacquer was prepared for making the qin appear in Monk Juyue’s Qin Production (Seng Juyue qinzhi), compiled into Qin Anthology. Juyue detailed the preparation and mixing of lacquer with specific materials and advocated a particular lacquer-applying process.132 The layers of lacquer not only protected the boards of the qin, but also changed the acoustic properties of the qin.
The lacquer surface, enhancing the beauty of the qin, provided visual enjoyment to its lovers. The so-called “cracks” on the lacquer surface, known by various names, were treasured by scholar-artists as indicators of the antiquity of a qin.133 The pure-color lacquer would occasionally be inlaid with glossy and colorful shells, gold inscriptions, or other visually attractive elements. These inlays enhanced the cultural and economic value of the qin.
3.1.3 Silk Strings
The silk strings of most ancient qin have usually disappeared due to erosion or damage. Therefore, it is very difficult to analyze the materiality of these silk threads, such as the number of fibers twisted to form a single string and the supplementary materials combined with the silk during the soaking and boiling processes to produce the qin strings. Today’s qin artisans would specify some of these processes. For example, they mix some Chinese herbs and glue with the silk while soaking and boiling.134 In Juyue’s writings, the specifications for the silk strings’ length, density, the type of glue used, and the fiber types were clearly detailed.135
3.1.4 Metal and Stone Components
A Northern Song artisan would use pieces of metal and stone to decorate other parts of his qin, such as the hui-markers, bridges, and pegs. These components have often been lost over time. Usually, the metal pieces were made of gold and silver, whereas the stone pieces ranged from ordinary stones to precious jade (nephrites) pieces. Gold and silver were heated, cut, and hammered in a metalsmith’s workshop according to qin artisans’ specifications. Working with jade required highly specialized techniques. First, jade had to be worked with abrasives, but not with hard metal tools. The complex jade pegs illustrated in the Xuanhe Period Catalogue of Antiquities (Xuanhe bogu tulu), compiled during Huizong’s reign,136 required expert craftsmanship over a long period. To create the thin, circular jade hui-markers, a jade cylinder would first need to be drilled out from raw jade, and thin pieces would then be sliced from this cylinder and fitted into the dented areas of the hui-markers. This entire process had to be carefully executed, as a minor error could render the whole cylinder unusable.
In his Note on Three Qin (Sanqin ji, 1062), Ouyang Xiu mentioned that he owned three qin made by renowned artisans from the early to middle Tang periods.137 Each qin featured different types of hui-markers: gold on the qin made by Zhang Yue, stone on that by Lou Ze (a contemporary of the Lei family), and jade on the one made by the Lei family. Ouyang lamented his old age. For this reason, he favored the qin with stone markers, because stones did not glitter gaudily like metal. He accorded the stone markers a high moral status for their modesty and integrity because they unobtrusively but clearly marked out the hui positions. Ouyang was not alone among scholar-artists to invest the metal and stone components of the qin with moral characteristics.138
3.2 Assembly
After gathering the materials, the artisan started to assemble them into a qin.139 The boards needed to be cut, chipped, and chiseled, and holes were drilled into them to produce the desired shape. Sunken and protruding parts needed to be planned in advance. The sizes of the various parts of a qin are specified in texts such as Shi Ruli’s Qin Cutting Methods of Biluozi (Biluozi zhuoqinfa), Book of the Qin by an anonymous writer that was incorporated into Qin Garden, and Monk Juyue’s Qin Production.140 The general length of extant qin dating to the Tang and Song periods is around 120 centimeters,141 which accords with the comfortable range of the movement of human arms.
The two boards and sides would then be attached either using glue or pins inserted between them.142 The thickness of the two boards, which had to correlate with each other, was discussed in detail in Shi Ruli’s text.143 Shi thought that the acoustic properties of the qin would be significantly altered if one board was thicker or thinner than the other or if they were both very thick or thin, but he did not think a certain thickness should be specified. Instead, he argued for an even correlation between the upper and bottom boards. The boards could be made from wood from the Chinese parasol tree or catalpa, but they needed to be cut to the desired proportions.144 This discussion has led to debates among qin lovers in subsequent generations over which kind of wood—the Chinese parasol tree, catalpa, or cunninghamia—should be used for the upper or bottom board of a qin and their corresponding acoustic properties.145 Shi Ruli’s discussion gives artisans great flexibility to develop their own techniques for creating qin. Shi also allowed for a wide degree of flexibility in the number of layers of lacquer and the thickness of the layers over certain areas.146
Aromatic woods such as rosewood (jiangzhenxiang) and sandalwood (futanmu) could be used as supplementary parts or accessories of a qin, as indicated in Juyue’s text.147 Juyue also mentioned the use of medicinal wood as an alternative when aromatic timbers were not available. While the main boards should be made of hardwood, the accessories made of these aromatic and medicinal timbers had the advantage of keeping insects away and releasing a fragrance that was believed to be beneficial to the health of the qin players and listeners. In this way, the host would have achieved results similar to burning the aromatic substances. As a matter of fact, the hardwood of the Chinese parasol tree and catalpa gives off a distinctive fragrance, even if the aroma is weaker than burning aromatic substances.
3.3 Qin-Making Workshops
After taking these preparation and production processes into consideration, a qin artisan might find it advantageous to set up his workshop in a metropolitan area, where it would be easier for him to amass the various raw materials needed for making the qin. Preparing pre-cut boards of wood, silk threads, lacquer, glue, and metal and stone components was a collaborative effort of meticulous division of labor. Even if a qin artisan knew how to assemble all of these materials to make a qin, he would still have to acquire them from nearby workshops and merchants. Mixing lacquer and twisting silk threads were complicated tasks. A qin artisan who knew well how to adjust the acoustic properties might still have to collaborate closely with these other artisans. If he, the person-in-charge, thought that the tones were not up to scratch, he might ask the lacquer artisan to apply additional layers on the instrument, the silk artisan to add more threads to a string, or the carpenter to thin out certain sections. Famous qin workshops, such as that of the Lei family, were probably organized in this manner. The qin artisan master who oversaw the whole process might supervise his disciples and artisans of other media in the joint creation of a qin. While the scholar-artists praised a certain master’s creation, such as the Leiqin, they were actually complimenting a workshop brand with the name of the master.
The well-established and skillful qin artisans would produce qin that could generate the best sounds and possess unique beauty on account of the lacquer work, inscriptions, metal and stone components, and the particular fragrance that comes from the wood. The qin artisans, similar to the makers of tea and aromatic substances, were concerned with sensory experiences and the enjoyment of the listeners and players. The artisans provided a rich source of inspiration to the scholar-artists with their magnificently crafted qin.
4 Transportation
4.1 Geography
The distribution networks of tea, aromatic substances, and raw materials for making the qin covered a wide area of East Asia. At the risk of oversimplifying the landscape and transportation conditions, the north encompassed the capital and Central Plains near the Yellow River, covering today’s Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Beijing, and a part of the Mongolian steppe. In the Yangzi River basin, the Sichuan, Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu areas were interconnected by Yangzi River and its tributaries. Reaching into the deeper south, there were the hilly areas of Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi (Map 1). Carts drawn by draft animals such as oxen, horses, and donkeys were a common sight in the Central Plains, while boats were necessary for the southern areas and the Grand Canal.148 In the hilly areas, only small carts could be used, and often human labor was necessary to transport goods. Utilizing these diverse routes and means of conveyance, scholars-artists, merchants, officials, and porters could traverse these regions.
4.2 Means of Transportation
The raw materials for making the qin came from almost every region in the state. Since the qin workshops were located in metropolitan areas, they were readily available to the scholar-artists. Exotic aromatic substances from distant territories crossed the sea routes and reached harbors such as Quanzhou and Hangzhou. They were then conveyed to the capital by cart and on boats plying the Grand Canal. Aromatic substances from the Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan areas might be shipped by boat and carried by cart to the Central Plains. The drying and processing of aromatic woods helped reduce their weight significantly. Tea and utensils were more complicated to transport. Tea from Sichuan was transported to Tibet along famously dangerous roads,149 or it could be taken by travelling scholars and officials, such as Su Shi, to the capital. As we know, tea was planted in remote, mountainous areas and needed to be carried down from the mountains by porters walking along roads too narrow for large draft animals. The Mount Wuyi area that yielded the famous Jian’an White Tea is one of the most dramatic examples of these unaccommodating road conditions (Fig. 10). After the tea was carried down from the mountains, it was then shipped by boat sailing on mountain creeks that later joined larger rivers. The tea might then continue to be carried by porters over mountains until it reached the metropolitan areas. Ceramic utensils were usually shipped by boat as they were too fragile to be transported on land. In the Northern Song times, their long journey would likely begin at the creeks near the Yulinting kiln cluster. Hundreds of bowls and ewers would have been loaded onto smaller boats that sailed on the mountain creeks before being re-packaged and reloaded onto bigger boats upon arrival at larger rivers.
What about other means of transportation used in the Central Plains and other less dangerous areas? Many scholars, such as Cong Ellen Zhang, have written about general transportation in the Song period.150 In Meng Yuanlao’s Reminiscences of the Eastern Capital (Dongjing menghua lu; hereafter Eastern Capital) and Zhou Mi’s Miscellaneous Notes from the Guixin [Street] (Guixin zazhi), we can find records of the kind of carts and draft animals used in transportation. The Eastern Capital describes a type of large cart used in the north, known as banzaiche, which was driven by two people and pulled by over twenty mules or donkeys, or five to seven oxen, capable of transporting a load up to 4,000 to 5,000 jin (about 2,000–2,500 kilograms).151 When unloaded from the boats, tea and aromatic substances would be loaded onto carts like this and transported further north. Using horses to travel and transport light goods was faster but more expensive. According to the Eastern Capital, renting a horse to ride within the capital costs less than 100 wen.152 The cost would undoubtedly be higher for travel to distant locations and for carrying additional goods.153
For transportation relying purely on human power, a rough estimate would be that a man carrying 60–80 jin of goods could walk about 20 lĭ (1 lĭ = about 0.3 miles) on mountainous roads per day. The direct distance from Mount Wuyi to Nanchang is about 1,000 lĭ. It would therefore have taken approximately 50 days on the road to complete this trip on foot. From Nanchang, the tea could be re-packaged onto larger boats for shipment via Yangzi River and the Grand Canal. Reaching Min River from Mount Wuyi and then shipping by sea might be an easier route.
4.3 Porters and Their Sensory Experiences
4.3.1 Working Conditions
Northern Song porters have not received much attention due to the lack of textual records. However, their labor was essential to transport tea, timber, and utensils out of the mountains, especially in the hilly Fujian and Jiangxi areas.154 We can speculate on their working conditions from the few textual records we have today. Fan Chengda’s Simurgh Register serves as a valuable reference.155 Fan chose to travel by boat in most of his travels within the Zhejiang area. In the Quzhou area, he could comfortably travel on a brick-paved road. In his travels in Jiangxi and Hunan, he rode on boats and in sedan chairs and complained about the muddy roads. During his travels away from Yichun and in Yongzhou in the first three months of a lunar year, he encountered heavy rainfall. The roads he and his companions walked on were paved with stones with smooth surfaces.
Sedan chair carriers had to either walk in the mud and sink into the muddy water or walk on the wet stones, which were too slippery to set their feet on.156 He criticized the local governments for not repairing the roads, which made his travels unnecessarily uncomfortable.157 His descriptions match today’s road conditions in these areas and reflect a typical scholar-official mindset—these scholar-officials wanted to travel comfortably and enjoy the sights.158 His experience was worlds apart from that of the porters walking on the same roads.
Fan’s complaints might be prompted by local officials not repairing the roads, or, even if they had repaired the roads, the road conditions were still muddy and wet. The Jiangxi and Hunan areas were noted for their humid weather. It could be very cold in the winter but not cold enough for the water to freeze. The roads might have been soaked in water and mud for years. Many reasons could have contributed to the smoothness of the paving stones. The stones were probably weathered; years of porter traffic may have smoothed them out, or the road builders intentionally selected smooth pebbles from the rivers to pave the road. Porters might have worn woven hemp or grass sandals when necessary, and occasionally they would have gone barefoot, depending on how comfortable they felt when walking on different types of surfaces. The roads were probably paved for barefoot porters, allowing them to grip the edges of the smooth stones and the space in between the stones with their toes. Fan and his companions wore shoes that trapped them on the muddy roads.
In the Northern Song, porters had to walk on various types of roads carrying heavy baskets of tea or pieces of timber out of the mountains. During our travels in the Mount Wuyi area, we found muddy roads, rocky roads, grassy roads, rough roads with sharp stones, roads with stone or brick pavements, roads made of pounded earth, or simply no road at all (walking in the wild). By their gradient, there were level roads, steep roads, and nearly vertical roads. Of course, brick-paved and pounded-earth roads were easy to walk on (which the rich Zhejiang local governments could afford), but porters’ roads were dangerous and difficult. The paving stones were arranged to give the roads traction, especially in the case of muddy roads on an incline, which were impossible to climb when wet, no matter the strength of the person. Rocky roads were hot when it was sunny and slippery in the rain. Steps chipped out of the rocks or simple indentations made in them were convenient for the porters. Muddy roads could be found everywhere in the mountainous regions of Fujian, Jiangxi, and Hunan (see Fig. 10). They tended to suck in the feet of the travelers, making it hard for them to raise their legs. Paving with pebbles would be a better option for these roads to improve conditions.
We can only imagine what accidents might have befallen the porters. Slippery roads might have meant injuries or death, especially when they had to walk along cliffsides with heavy goods on their shoulders. In the winter, they could easily have developed sores and frostbite. They may have risked cutting themselves badly on sharp rocks. Snake bites were likely a common hazard on grassy roads. These conditions inevitably contributed to the high transportation costs for tea, timber, and aromatic substances.
4.3.2 Food and Accommodation along the Roads
While wealthy merchants and scholar-artists enjoyed delicious food such as pork, mutton, hare, chicken, fish, and fruit in the capital,159 the porters probably ate only salted or dried food on the road. Dry buns with salted vegetables were probably their daily fare. If they sailed on the rivers, fish and salted food were common. Petty merchants who plied the same routes would eat better. For porters who carried tea, a portion of their daily liquid intake would be tea when allowed.160 In all likelihood, their accommodation was of the most primitive kind—in the poor porters’ lodges, on boats, under trees, or in caves out in the wild.161
4.3.3 Loss
We can imagine that incidental losses are only to be expected in challenging natural conditions. Damage to carts, extreme weather, and poor road conditions could delay the delivery of goods.162 Illnesses, injuries, accidents, and deaths of the porters and draft animals also caused unexpected delays. A porter falling from a cliff might take down a load of goods he was carrying, and bandits and thieves preyed on the porters. Water transportation was preferred where possible because accidents, damages, and injuries were less frequent. The boat captain could closely monitor his crew, reducing the likelihood of theft unless the boats were targeted by pirates. Spoilage of tea, aromatic substances, and timber by humidity and insects, in this way, was frequent if they were not processed and packaged appropriately. Thus, the “Storage and Baking” chapter in the Daguan Treatise cautions tea collectors to frequently and regularly bake their tea to remove humidity.163
4.3.4 Sensory Experiences of the Porters
The sensory experiences of the porters were drastically different from the scholar-artists living in the metropolises. Although we lack descriptions of the appearance of the porters from the Northern Song, we can postulate that the appearance of some of the tea porters would not be very different from the porter travelers of today, such as those traveling in Fujian and Sichuan in China and elsewhere in the world.164 They still walk on the roads that Fan Chengda traveled long ago. Today’s tea gardens still rely on manpower to carry the tea out of the mountains.
We can imagine what a porter would look like in the Northern Song based on comparisons between their material lives and those of the scholar-artists. A porter’s clothing was very simple and coarse. They probably went about bare-chested but with pants that barely covered their genitals in the summer. In the winter, they would probably have worn ragged hemp-woven working suits. Their skin was darker and rougher. Thick calluses covered their palms and fingers from years of handling ropes and goods, unlike the calluses that grew on qin players’ finger tips. Their hands were big, with knobby knuckles and short fingernails. Veins bulged on their hands, arms, foreheads, and temples due to prolonged heavy physical work and pressure. Excessive labor led to long-term injuries to their bones and joints, to say nothing of scars, sores, rheumatism, and arthritis that would plague them. Their muscles were strong and wiry, especially on their arms, thighs, calves, and back. Unlike today’s bodybuilders who have large and sculptured muscles, the porters’ muscles were smaller but firmer. Poor nutrition on the roads (only salted vegetables and dry buns; but tea porters could drink tea) may not have caused severe scurvy, but they were likely to lose some of their teeth and whatever remained would take on yellow strains. They were relatively short and stout. They cut their hair short, if possible, for convenience and to avoid sweat and fleas. Sweat and dust from long hours of outdoor work gave them a body odor different from that of the upper-class scholar-artists, who liked to surround themselves with all sorts of burning aromatic substances. A lack of education meant that they were mostly illiterate. They probably spoke only their own topolects, which were difficult for outsiders to understand. They thus tended to aggregate in communities of people from the same geographic origins when they travelled to larger towns. They were accustomed to using their major muscles, but unlike the scholar-artists who were trained to write with their minor muscles since their childhood, they would have lacked fine motor skills to write.
Even when their lives were closely connected with the very objects that made up the leisure activities of the scholar-artists, the porters derived very different sensory experiences. In terms of physical appearance, odor, and sound (languages), the porters often seemed to be at odds with the urban setting into which, by dint of their means of livelihood, they were thrust from time to time. The economic value they helped create, however, was significant because only they could bring the precious and rare raw materials out of the mountains. Although they might not appear in the textual records of the scholar-artists, their participation in the production and exchange networks of the tea, aromatic substances, and raw materials for making the qin should not be forgotten.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 104.
Fujian Sheng Quanzhou Haiwai Jiaotongshi Bowuguan 1987, 4–5, 64–67.
Xu Guimei and Chen Quanbin 2009; Zhu Cunfang 2012, 4–5; Zhang Xiaochun 2015.
Huang Xiaoyun et al. 2021, 94.
“Yangu huaxiang.” Personal communication with a tea farmer, December 2018.
Huang Xiaoyun et al. 2021.
Personal communication, December 2018.
SHYJG 6:135.5308 (juan 5782). Longyun ji 28.303. Qi Xia 1988, 2:747. These names, Rizhu, Hongzhou Shuangjing, and Mengding, as mentioned in these texts, appear to be specific brand names of tea, derived from the places of their origin.
Paul Smith 1991, 13–76.
SS 13:184.4510.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:746. See also Paul Smith 1991, 219.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 104. This differs from our modern understanding that the optimal time for picking tea buds is around the Pure Bright Festival in early April (Qingming).
SS 13:184.4509.
Their suggestions echo ideas stated in the Dongxi shichalu. ZLCH, vol. 1: 86.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 104.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 90.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 135–36.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 104.
Xu Chujiang et al. 1985, 11. Lu Yongxiang et al. 2004, 33–34.
Leigong paozhilun 2.81.
Leigong paozhilun 2.81.
Today’s pharmacists disagree with some of the beliefs.
Leigong paozhilun 2.75–76.
Leigong paozhilun 2.58.
Leigong paozhilun 2.23–96; 3.124–35.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 104.
Leigong paozhilun 2.23–96.
Leigong paozhilun 2.75–76.
Leigong paozhilun 2.42.
Leigong paozhilun 2.48.
Leigong paozhilun 2.48.
WXTK 1:18.174.
The term “wax-surfaced tea” literally means that the surface of these tea cakes was coated with wax. It may also imply that this type of tea could produce a wax-like foam when prepared by the tea-tipping method. This was an alternate name for a type of tea cakes originating from Fujian. See Takahashi 1994, 333; Liu Shufen 2004, 118–19.
Lu Yongxiang et al. 2004, 9–10.
There are many famous tea types and brands in Fujian, such as Dahongpao of the wulongcha type and Zhengshan xiaozhong of the red tea type.
SHYJG 6:136.5348 (juan 5785).
Jingde ji 1.11, 1.9–15.
Jingde ji 1.11, 1.9–15. See also Qi Xia 1988, 2:756.
See also Robbins 1974.
Tao Dechen 1998, 239.
Robbins 1974. James Benn 2015, 66–68, 81–84.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 83–85, 103.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 76, 79, 116. SHYJG 6:136.5327.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:749–59.
SS 13:183.4477 to 184.4511. Qi Xia 1988, 2:745–804.
See Adam Smith (1776) 1952, 194, “invisible hand” in Chapter II, “Of Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of such Goods as can be produced at Home,” in Book Four. Marx (1844) 1975; (1867) 1977. Keynes (1936) 1973. Hazlitt 1960.
SS 13:183.4479. SHYJG 6:136.5321–23 (juan 17560), 6:136.5324 (juan 5784). WXTK 1:18.174–75. MXBT 11.71.
SHYJG 6:136.5324 (juan 5784). Chaffee 2006, 31–77.
WXTK 1:18.173. Qi Xia 1988, 2:759–60.
SS 13:183.4478. WXTK 1:18.175. MXBT 11.71.
SS 13:183.4479.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:769.
Numerous tax reforms that were branded with various names gradually emerged. See WXTK 1:18.173–77; MXBT 11.71. See also the debates recorded in Wang Anshi’s essay in Linchuan Xiansheng wenji 70.743; Ouyang Xiu’s essay in Ouyang Wenzhonggong wenji 112.861–62. Qi Xia 1988, 2:775–94. Huang Chunyan 2002, 4–11.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:801, no table no.
The expenditure of Huizong’s public projects and private entertainment was huge, see Ebrey 2014, 278–83. However, he and his government would need to have considerable savings to cover these expenditures.
Marx (1867) 1977, 1:926. T.J. Dunning (1799–1873) and Karl Marx (1818–1883) were contemporaries.
SS 13:183.4478–79. See also WXTK 1:18.174–77.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:763–64.
Jingde ji 1.13.
Liangxi ji 63.1002.
Ebrey 2014, 91–92, 425.
Ebrey 2014, 89–90.
SS 13:179.4360–61.
Ebrey 2014, 507–9. WXTK 1:18.174–75.
See Ebrey 2014, 507. See also Huang Chunyan 2002, 7, 118–19.
SS 13:184.4502–3.
SS 13:184.4502–3. WXTK 1:18.176.
SS 13:184.4502–3.
Samuelson and Nordhaus (1948) 2010, 176–77, 390–91, 675.
SS 13:183.4477. WXTK 1:18.173–74.
WXTK 1:18.174.
WXTK 1:18.174.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 114–27.
See Xiong Fan’s Xuanhe Beiyuan gongcha lu in ZLCH, vol. 1: 116.
WXTK 1:18.175–77. SHYJG 4:84.3297–3332 (juan 11683–juan 11684). Cheng Guangyu 1988b. Paul Smith 1991. Jiang Tianjian 1991, 33–34.
Zhu Chongsheng 1985, 72–73; Cheng Guangyu 1988b; Jiang Tianjian 1991; Paul Smith 1991, 249–84. See also Dai Yingcong 2009, 57, 185.
SHYJG 4:84.3300, 3303 (juan 11683). Mair and Hoh 2009: 73–76.
SS 13:184.4511. WXTK 1:18.175–77. See also Cheng Guangyu 1988b; Paul Smith 1991, 28–31.
WXTK 1:18.177. Mair and Hoh 2009, 73–76; Ebrey 2014, 376. See also Paul Smith 1991, 249–84.
SHYJG 4:84.3301 (juan 11683).
SHYJG 4:84.3323 (juan 11683). Jiang Tianjian 1991, 45.
Metal utensils were rare yet did exist, such as the Tang dynasty tea-powder crusher found in the basement of the Temple of Dharma Doors. Shaanxi Sheng Kaogu Yanjiuyuan et al. 2007, 1:131, vol. 2, color pls. 72–78, 80–81.
Wood 1999, 148–57.
Wood 1999, 145–55.
We do not yet know the origins of the dragon kilns, but for some examples, see Xiong Haitang 1995, 81–95; Wang Yifeng 2010, 26–80. Wang Yifeng translated longyao to “climbing kiln.”
Xiong Haitang 1995, 21–42, 68–74.
Xiong Haitang 1995, 23–32, 38–42, 81–95.
Personal communication with the potters. See also Xiong Haitang 1995, 26, 51, especially 196–99.
Xiong Haitang 1995, 23–32, 38–42, 91–95.
Fujian Sheng Bowuguan 2000, 22, 27, 30, 45–46.
SS 13:186.4539.
Tianxiang zhuan, 36–39.
Liu Jingmin 2004, 150.
Tianxiang zhuan, 38. “Environmentally friendly” and “ecological balance” are my own terms to interpret the original phrases. While the meanings of the Chinese and English phrases do not exactly match, their connotations are highly similar.
Tianxiang zhuan, 38.
Tianxiang zhuan, 36, 38.
SS 13:186.4539. Fujian Sheng Quanzhou Haiwai Jiaotongshi Bowuguan 1987, 64–67. Wang Huifang 1987.
SS 13:186.4539.
For example, see the chenxiang entry in Leigong paozhilun 2.79. See also ZLBC 12.362–67; and THHF 10.184. SS
Gaozhai manlu, 320.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:906.
Zhufan zhi 2.29–34, 2.39–44.
Youhuan jiwen 7.61. Zhufan zhi 2.39.
Alum, which could be used to purify water, thus became a highly sought-after commodity.
SS 13:186.4538–39. Tianxiang zhuan, 36.
SS 13:186.4538–39. SHYJG 6:136.5323 (juan 17560).
SS 13:185.4537.
Qi Xia 1988, 2:911, based on SHYJG 6:147.5761–62 (juan 14989).
SS 13:186.4539.
For the studies of artisans, see Barbieri-Low 2007; Ko 2017; Kelly 2020.
Han Baoqiang 2003, 18, 90, 176; Sui Yu 2010, 29–30.
We have to note that both the Chinese names and English-translated names of the timbers do not always correspond to the same species in modern scientific nomenclature. The Chinese parasol tree should not be confused with the paulownia trees (known as paotong in Chinese). Cunninghamia is a species of cypress, not a fir.
Zhang Fugang 1990, 32; Zhao Renjie and Yu Yunshui 2003, 150; He Zhiling 2013, 61–63.
Zhang Fugang 1990, 32–34; Han Baoqiang 2003, 18, 90, 176; Sui Yu 2010, 29–30.
Zhao Renjie and Yu Yunshui 2003, 322–29, also 94–130, 135–45.
Canluan lu; see also Zhang Cong Ellen 2011, 64–68.
Canluan lu, 4.
Soushenji 13.167.
Shangshu gushi 1.4.
Dongtian qinglu ji, 225–26.
Yan Xiaoxing 2019.
ZLBC 10.398.
MXBT 1:5.36.
Huizong was also renowned for his Wanqintang (Hall of tens of thousands of qin) collection, as recorded in Yunyan guoyan lu 2.61. In other versions it is recorded as Baiqintang (Hall of hundreds of qin).
Yunyan guoyan lu 2.61. See also Zheng Minzhong 1993, 6.
Shandong Sheng Bowuguan 1972, 28. See also Zheng Minzhong 1993, 7.
Lu Changchao 2009, 10–11.
Zhao Xihu also noted the preference among qin lovers for burying their qin underground. Dongtian qinglu ji, 231.
Zheng Minzhong 1999, 35. Zhu Huipeng 2012, 128–59. He Zhiling 2013, 63.
Ma Xiao-ming et al. 2012.
Lu Rong et al. 2013, 157–58, 169–70. Terada 1999, 200–11.
Seng Juyue qinzhi, 651–52. See also Zhang Huaying 2013, 306–8.
Seng Juyue qinzhi, 650; Dongtian qinglu ji, 223.
Zhu Huipeng 2012, 128–59; He Zhiling 2013, 63.
Seng Juyue zaoxianfa, 8.
Yang Yuanzheng 2015a.
QSW 35:741.147.
Egan 1984, 36, 221–22.
Zheng Minzhong 1989, 21; 2001 (shang), 36. Li Mingzhong 2000a, 96; 2000b, 28. Lu Changchao 2009, 10–11. Sui Yu 2010, 13–40. Zhu Huipeng 2012, 128–59. Zhang Huaying 2013, 306–8. He Zhiling 2013, 63.
Biluozi zhuoqinfa in the QYYL, 111–21. Qinshu in QYYL, 64–107. Seng Juyue qinzhi, 650–51. See also Sui Yu 2010, 16.
See Sui Yu 2010, 13, Table 4; 20, Table 8. But Yang Yuanzheng thinks that there are only three qin extant that can date to between 750 and 1000 (2020, 82).
Yang Yuanzheng 2020, 72. Lu Changchao 2009, 10–11. Zhu Huipeng 2012, 128–59. He Zhiling 2013, 63.
QYYL, 111–14.
QYYL, 114–16.
Zheng Minzhong 1989, 21.
Lu Changchao 2009, 10–11. Zhu Huipeng 2012, 128–59. He Zhiling 2013, 63.
Seng Juyue qinzhi, 651.
Ihara 1991, 39–40.
Mair and Hoh 2009, 124–36. Da-Qiongpei 2017, 26–54. See also Kim 2020. Cheng Guangyu 1988b, 112–14.
Wang Fuxin 2007, 306–20; Zhang Cong Ellen 2011, 43–68, 88–100.
Guixin zazhi, xuji 1.157. Dongjing menghua lu 3.139–40. See also Mair and Hoh 2009, 147; the Russian, Mongolian, and northern Chinese used camels and ox-carts to transport tea to Kyakhta, and from there it continued on to St. Petersburg and Moscow in the nineteenth century.
Dongjing menghua lu 4.143.
See Shen Zuxiang 2002, 103–10; Wang Fuxin 2007, 232–76.
Cf. Kim 2020, 271–328, 452–82.
Canluan lu, 1–17.
Canluan lu, 11, 13–14.
Canluan lu, 11, 13–14.
Zhang Cong Ellen 2011, 7.
Dongjing menghualu 4.143–45; Ihara 1991, 188–192, 225–26.
Ihara 1991, 44–46.
Shen Zuxiang 2002, 103–10; Zhang Cong Ellen 2011, 100–110.
Guixin zazhi, xuji 1.157.
ZLCH, vol. 1: 107.
See the nineteenth to twentieth century tea laborers in Ceylon, Mair and Hoh 2009, 216 (photo in George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.); 223 (photo in The Art Archive), and the early twentieth century tea porters transporting tea on dangerous roads in Sichuan at elevations of 5,000 feet, Kim 2020, 323, fig. 7.20 (photo taken by Ernest Wilson in 1908, collection of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University). See also Dai Yingcong 2009, 185.