Kathryn Allen
3/6/18
SOS Food and Ag
Word Count: 956
Puer Tea Seminar Ticket
“According to one study, before the Han arrived, at least 5,000 mu (a unit of of measure of equivalent to 00.67 hectares) of tea lands were cultivated by the indigenous ethnic group. The new Han immigrants gradually acquired rights to the land, sometimes by buying it and sometimes through intermarriage with local Dai aristocrats. By making use of obsolete areas and clearing new areas, they developed their own tea plantations and came to rely on tea as an important part of their economy.” (p. 37)
“Most families in the area who used to make tea in their houses had moved to one of the new tea factories” (p. 73)
In the United States, we often see tea as a ‘blow off’ product – one that you throw in your grocery cart without much thought to the authenticity behind each blend. For the most part, North American culture is unconcerned with the palette associated with tea and is often found mislabeling/disregarding the traditions that go along with the many different varieties of tea from across the globe. As someone who is steeped (pun intended) in said culture, I approached Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic by Jinghong Zhang with little to no knowledge about Chinese geography, culture, and especially none regarding Puer tea. Because of this, nearly every bit of information that I read was new to me. As someone who is often happy to throw a few mint leaves in hot water and call it a tea, it was an incredibly different experience for me to actually consider the quality and authenticity of a very specific tradition. Even still, I was able to draw some incredibly relevant connections to the Puer tea industry of the Yunnan province in China and the work I have been doing during my own independent project.
The most interesting facet of my newfound knowledge about Puer tea was the information that Zhang covered in Chapter 2: Tensions Blooming. In this chapter, she talks about the growing tourism industry associated with Puer tea and the image of the city of Yiwu that has been created by the mass production of this particular kind of tea. Zhang’s main point in this portion of the book is that Puer tea production has undergone industrialization in order to keep up with the global demand for the product and that in some ways this has affected the global perception of Yiwu and the authenticity of the tea itself.
When Zhang describes the experience of many people who travel to Yiwu expecting an experience as authentic as the product that they have grown to love it was a very similar tale to that of the global textile industry. A particularly poignant example was that of the film crew that was in Yiwu filming a documentary about the production of the tea. When the crew went to film a scene on the actual processing of the tea, “they were unable to find a family on the old street that was processing tea.” (p. 73) Zhang goes on to say that “most families in the area who used to make tea in their houses had moved to one of the new tea factories, which did not fit the requirements of the film crew.” ( p. 73)
Learning about this aspect of the Puer tea trade was very relevant to what I have learned about traditional textile crafts in the past 8 weeks. The shift of the tea trade from at home processing to factories is incredibly similar to the shift from cottage industries in both India and the British Isles to full scale mills during the industrial revolution. What is particularly interesting to me about that connection is that for both cases, industrialization allowed the product to be more globally distributed – which created the global idea of the place of its origin and thus contributed to the tourism of the region. However, the globalization of each of the products also led to a demand for more which then separates the product from its original mode of creation and leads to the true ‘authenticity’ of the product being called into question.
Furthermore, the industrialization of the two industries also seems to be related to the product’s original inception by indigenous communities and then later its “discovery” by aristocratic populations that move to the area further along. Zhang states that “according to one study, before the Han arrived, at least 5,000 mu (a unit of of measure of equivalent to 00.67 hectares) of tea lands were cultivated by the indigenous ethnic group. The new Han immigrants gradually acquired rights to the land, sometimes by buying it and sometimes through intermarriage with local Dai aristocrats. By making use of obsolete areas and clearing new areas, they developed their own tea plantations and came to rely on tea as an important part of their economy.” (p. 37) This evolution of the product is incredibly similar to all of the traditional garments I have studied. In the cases of tweed, khadi cotton, and Aran wool, they were all originally created by indigenous or “lower class” groups out of necessity for survival. Later down the road, more wealthy individuals from outside groups saw the “cultural potential” in the market and led it forward to industrialization.
Learning about this aspect of the Puer tea industry has only helped to solidify previous suspicions that I had about the extinction of cottage industries and the globalization of the market. In the very way that a narrative is being marketed to a global audience, it seems that the product itself is being separated from that narrative by that exact means.