Session 24: Yuan and Ming China ①: Comments on the hybrid Yuan cultural landscape & trade, Yuan / Ming practices & innovations, Ming tea manuals

Topics

❖ Yuan/Ming trade, tea innovations, tea practices

❖ Ming tea manuals:

• Tea Guide (Chapu 茶譜, 1440) by Zhu Quan (朱權 1378-1448)
• Commentary on Tea (Chashu 茶疏, ca. 1603) by Xu Cisu (許次紓 1549-1604)

Thoughts

We have seen that tea culture has been stimulated by those interested in its medicinal qualities, stimulant and mind-clarifing qualities, for its taste and, frankly, for the opportunty it provides for the display of wealth and power through obtaining and consuming (or gifting) tea, and ownership of fine objects related to it. The major players in such stimulus are those involved in government, Buddhist institutions and literati. Further, these groups interact and overlap to some degree. Supporting these interests are the cultivators and merchants of tea, as well as the artisans and merchants of tea objects. In this vein, given where we have arrived in terms of trade and economy, I think it is apppropriate to remember the ever present relationship between economic factors and tea's high culture as articulated and practiced by the elite. While the relationship has been important from the beginning, indeed essential, by the YUan dynasty it is beginning to become difficult to maintain a discursive distance between the economics and culture of tea because trade is as important a source of stimulus for the development of culture as the Buddhist, literati and emperors once were. Tea production is supporting the widespread tea consumption and cultivation, crafting and brewing practices and meeting these needs and would be able to continue to do so even without imperial interest (although it often was there) or Buddhist sponsorship. The important crafting, brewing and perephinelia techniques developed in the Yuan and subsequent dynasties are as much a result of innovations the meed the needs of trade and commerce as they do imperial desire. Thus, in short, the "streams" of tea as a low level commercial ("kiosk") industry and tea as a beloved object of those involved in the production and consumption of high culture have, in a sense, convuled.

Given that commerce has grown much more powerful and the landscape for tea consumption is much more diverse, it is at this time also appropriate to consider the stimulus afforded to tea from peripheral (to Han culture) groups. In tea's earliest day tea knowledge, tea practices and indeed tea expertise at nearly every level flowed out from Yunnan and Sichuan—more specifically, from the ethnic groups of those areas or teamen closely associate with them. Later, the Liao tribes of central Asia placed themselves between the high culture dynasties of Tand and Song. This, however, was less significant than the pressure placed on the Song towards the end of their rule. This forced Song Chinese southward (and back into places like the Sichuan basin to the West and Hangzhou on the coast, where rich teahouse cultures then flourished). Further, Mongolian rule that follows the Song, the Yuan dynasty that is the topic of this session, has its own contributions to tea culture and left behind the legacy of a Ming landscape that had discontinuity with the Song and many ways and placed its own unique mark on tea culture. Further, these surrounding areas has an enormous impact on trade in their demand for tea, the opening or closing of trade routes. The Silk Road is important for tea trade but, when not available, southern sea routes are developed as an alternative. The consumption habits and transportation needs of central Asia and points westerward oversea are different, and encourage different solutions. Thus we should see tea advancing not just within Han culture (via its high culture leaders and sponsors) but also from the pressures and needs of surrounding countries.

While the above comments are of course about tea, it seems to me that this is something of a model of how culture, even high culture, originates and evolves. In both China and Japan "vulgar" practices in the arts are taken up and refined by an elite that then generate high art. Such crossovers (between economic groups, ethnic groups, and so on) surely are key.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Yuan and Ming notes [bSpace, PDF] *You are invited to print this out before class and use it as a base document for note-taking. Please check back, however, to see if a new version was published just before or perhaps after the session (but in time for a test).
✓ Ming innovations (Vicony Tea) [bSpace, PDF]
✓ Ming tea manuals Chashu and Chapu [bSpace, PDF]

Links to each session page

Sun, Sept 1, 2013: I am migrating this site to a new site. It takes time. During this transition, there are two ways to access a particular day's web page. You can start with the new EA109 Fall 2013 Course Guide page, our official top page. It will take you directly to the new pages and redirect to old pages when necessary. Or you can use the below chart. It will take you directly to the day's session page—the new one when it exists, the old one when it has yet to be migrated. Greenhighlight means the new page exists. Sorry for the dust and mess during construction!