TANG:
FOR TEA TOO, A GOLDEN AGE
In the Tang dynasty (618-907), tea drinking became
an art. One of China's golden ages, this was also
the golden age of tea drinking, often done with elaborate
ritual. The Chinese empire was the largest on earth.
Caravans from the Middle East came for China's beautiful
and unique silks and porcelains. They also came for
tea. In the centuries that fol-lowed, the use of tea
from China spread throughout an area stretching from
Mongolia to the Caspian Sea.
Tea from Yangxian, located in mountains straddling
the Jiangsu-Zhejiang provincial border, was praised
by Lu Yu and considered best. Late in the eighth century,
some given to a visiting official reached the emperor,
who then demanded that a quantity be sent every year.
Although tea had been presented to emperors for centuries
(one Anhui county has records of regular deliveries
in the years 312-317),with this Yangxian incident
tea is held to have joined the regular list of tribute
products expected from every locality growing it.
Picking tribute tea became a festival in early spring,
with thousands of young women gathering early in the
morning on the mountains. In some areas, local people
invited monks to burn incense and recite scriptures
before tea picking. The ritual was usually led by
the clan's seniors or a magistrate. After the proper
ceremonies, the young women picked till noon, and
the leaves were processed by men before the day ended.
For the latter, designated towns set up special wine
shops and "pleasure girl" establishments
for the occasion. But being forced during the busy
plowing time to give labor at very low pay—much of
which was lost in such pleasures—was a hardship for
the peasants. This tribute, sent ostensibly as a gift
or sign of loyalty to the emperor, amounted to a tax,
and became a heavy burden on the peasants. All emperors
down till the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 collected
such tribute. Some of it found its way abroad in state
foreign trade. The bright side is that the use of
these products by the court, imperial relatives, and
high officials, stimulated a demand for more and fostered
the internal economy. The sale of tea in China and
later the foreign tea trade brought revenue to cash-poor
rural areas. A large transport industry developed,
and one for the production of the wooden chests in
which the tea was sold. As tea drinking spread, the
desire for fine porcelain for the tea service was
a spur to the ceramics industry. In the thirteenth
century, tea drinking forced the growth of the silk
industry in the north. Tea became so popular among
all classes there that purchases of it caused severe
drain on the northern economy, much as was to happen
with Britain in the eighteenth century. Unsuccessful
at limiting-consumption to officials above a certain
rank, the court decided to produce more silk in the
north to pay for the tea.
Tea played a role in China's relations with the peoples
other frontier regions. In Tang times, tea drinking
spread rapidly among the Mongol, Tartar, Turkic, and
Tibetan nomadic peoples living on the northwestern
and western frontiers. They found that tea taken in
large quantities helped remedy ills rising from the
lack of vegetables and fruit in their diet, which
consisted mainly of meat and milk products. Tea soon
became an essential for the nomads, and often a factor
in their maintain-ing some kind of peaceful relations
with the dynastic government in order to carry on
barter trade.
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