On September 2nd, in the noon gate exhibition hall of the Palace Museum, a grand exhibition on tea culture was held - "Tea World - Special Exhibition of Tea Culture", which brought together the collections of more than 30 archaeological and cultural institutions at home and abroad, showing us the development and popularization of tea culture for thousands of years, leading the audience to understand the thickness of tea history, the depth of tea ceremony, the richness of ancient and modern tea affairs, and explain the oriental philosophical thought of advocating harmony of "the unity of heaven and man, and the unity of the world".
China is the homeland of tea. For more than a thousand years, tea has been integrated into the lives of people of all ethnic groups in the mainland and has become an important carrier for inheriting Chinese culture. The cultural factors, customs and habits of different ethnic groups also make the connotation of tea culture more rich and diverse. With tea as the medium, blending and learning from each other, tea has become a "business card" carrying the history and culture of the Chinese nation.
From the exhibition, we can see the implementation of the tea policy of the past generations
"Tribute tea" refers to the tea paid to the imperial court in ancient times, which was first seen in the Jin Dynasty and formed a system in the Tang Dynasty, and the tribute tea area increased from the original three counties such as Ankang to as many as 17 states, among which Changzhou Yangxian tea, Huzhou purple shoot tea and Yazhou Mengding tea are the most famous. In the fifth year of the Tang Dynasty (770), a tribute tea house was set up in Guzhu Mountain (located in present-day Huzhou, Zhejiang Province) to specialize in the production of Guzhu purple shoot tea for the imperial family. To a certain extent, the tribute tea system has catalyzed the development of famous products, and promoted the improvement and progress of tea cultivation, harvesting, packaging, storage and other technologies.
The picture shows the site of tea horse division in Changchun Village, Xindian Town, Mingshan District, Ya'an City, Sichuan Province
The tribute tea system in the Yuan Dynasty followed the Song system, and the tribute was still mainly based on group tea and cake tea, but the imperial tea garden was transferred to Wuyi Mountain in Fujian. Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty abolished tribute group tea and paid tribute with bud tea, changing the appearance of tribute tea since the Tang Dynasty and triggering major changes in the way tea was drunk. In addition, the Ming Dynasty also restored the tea and horse mutual market policy interrupted in the Yuan Dynasty, and established tea and horse divisions in Gansu and Sichuan. As an institution specializing in the sale of tea and horse mutual markets.
The picture shows the "Notice of the Two Courts Approving Tea Rent Exemption" during the Wanli Ming Dynasty
The tribute tea system in the Qing Dynasty has been very mature and complete, and the types of tribute tea have reached nearly 100, and through the records in the archives in different periods of the "List of the Number of Soil Objects Entered by the Governors of Each Province", it can be seen that the types and quantities of tribute tea in different periods are different. The Qing dynasty tribute tea system not only ensured that the local government provided tea for the court, but also built a political way of communication between the central and local governments, so that the tribute tea system had a more far-reaching political connotation in this period than in the previous dynasty.
The demand for horses brought about by the tea horse law in the Qing Dynasty plummeted, and from the Kangxi to Yongzheng periods, the tea horse system gradually declined, and after Qianlong, the tea horse system was gradually abolished. The political turmoil in the late Qing Dynasty also had a serious impact on tea. After the Opium War, the Qing government signed unequal treaties with various countries, causing the central government to lose control of tea purchase and production, and then lost control over tea exports, and the tea system basically disappeared.
Witness of national integration from the exhibition
In Nakoli Village, Pu'er (Ning'er) County, Simao (Pu'er) Prefecture, Yunnan, there is a stone avenue paved on the mountains - the Tea Horse Road. Crafted from hand-milled strips of stone and gravel, the horseshoe prints on the stone slabs up to two centimeters deep are the best testimony of the ancient path. The ancient tea horse road originated from the tea and horse mutual market in the ancient southwest frontier and the northwest frontier, flourished in the Tang and Song dynasties, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and was most prosperous in the middle and late stages of World War II. The ancient Sichuan-Tibet Tea Horse Road began in the Tang Dynasty, from Ya'an, a tea-producing area in Yazhou, in the east, through the arrow furnace (now Kangding), to Lhasa, Tibet, and finally to Bhutan, Nepal and India, with a total length of more than 4,000 kilometers and a history of more than 1,300 years, with profound historical accumulation and cultural heritage, and was an indispensable bridge and link between ancient Tibet and the hinterland.
Although the implementation of tea policies in previous generations has its objective laws from prosperity to decline, from tea-producing areas to tea-free places, tea has always been one of the important materials circulating on the ancient tea horse road. From no tea to tea, spread and circulate through tea roads, tea connects and blends people of all ethnic groups in the vast land. Nowadays, the economic, trade and freight attributes of the Tea Horse Road have gradually faded, but the rich historical sites and national culture along the route have emitted a more brilliant light.
The picture shows the saddle and pack frame in the Ethnological Museum of the Central University for Nationalities
The tea and horse trade, which originated and developed from the ancient tea horse road, is an economic and cultural artery stepped on by ancient ancestors. It refers to a kind of physical trade between the hinterland and the surrounding ethnic minorities, that is, exchanging tea produced in the hinterland for horses, sheep and other livestock produced in the surrounding ethnic minority areas. At the same time, tea has become a necessity for people in the surrounding ethnic minority areas, and the Central Plains has always lacked excellent horse breeds, so the tea and horse trade came into being, and has been used through the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. In the trade of tea and horses, agricultural civilization and nomadic civilization were able to communicate with each other, and the culture, customs, religion, and science and technology of different regions were blended. Tea and horse trade is not only an economic activity, but also an important link for the integration and reunification of the Chinese nation.
The introduction of tea enriched the nutritional structure of nomads. From the plateau to the grassland, tea collides and merges with ghee and milk to evolve a variety of tea drinks. In the Qing Dynasty, the popularity of milk tea in the court was the best witness. In the daily life of the Qing Palace and various banquet celebrations, most of them drink milk tea, and the ingredients of Qing Palace milk tea generally include milk, cream, tea, salt and water. Among them, the milk used for brewing tea is fresh milk produced by royal free-range cows, the tea used is mainly yellow tea, Pu'er tea, Anhua tea and pot roasted tea, etc., and the water used is the mountain spring of Yuquan Mountain on the outskirts of Beijing. The milk tea brewers in the palace are all Mongolian tea servants, and they are skilled in brewing milk tea selected from Mongolia. When boiling, the ingredients are stir-fried and boiled in a certain proportion, and the final milk tea is mellow and rich in nutrition. Qinggong milk tea has the dual nature of daily drinks and etiquette, and its supporting milk tea utensils are also quite exquisite.
Domu pot is a vessel used by Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu and other ethnic groups to hold milk tea or boil butter tea, and Domu is pronounced in Tibetan, that is, milk teapot. They have different shapes, different materials, and different functions. Since the Kangxi period, the Qing Palace has made Duomu pots made of wood, enamel, lacquerware, porcelain and other materials. The Palace Museum collects pastel eight auspicious lotus pattern Duomu pots, copper tire cloisonné enamel hooked lotus pattern Duo Mu pots, purple lacquer gold tracing lotus pattern leather tire Duo Mu pots, etc. Exquisite utensils and mellow milk tea together constitute the unique milk tea culture of the Qing Dynasty court.
The picture shows the Domu pot in the Qing Dynasty
While stopping to admire and pay attention to various exhibits, I deeply felt that whether in the court or the people, the acceptance and demand for tea drinking objectively enhanced the exchanges between various regions, ethnic groups and strata in China in history. The increasing convergence of tea drinking utensils and tea preparation methods is a manifestation of the deepening of communication. From the frontier to the fertile farming, from daily life to national canonization, tea occupies an important place and is a powerful witness of the evolution of the diversified and integrated pattern of the Chinese nation.
The exhibition has an end, and the meaning is endless. In the eyes of the "tea fairy", it was Qianlong's handbook of thousands of feet of snow; In the hearts of the Chinese people, when tasting tea, I feel that the ancient road of commerce is ten thousand heavy mountains. The Palace Tea Culture Exhibition will last until November 30. (Zhang Ziling, author of China Tibet Net, is an associate research librarian at the China Tibetology Research Center)