Tea Classics Emperor Ming Taizu & The Abolition Of 皇 Caked

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Tea Classics皇帝明太祖廢除餅茶IEmperor Ming Taizu& The Abolition ofCaked Tean the autumn of 1391, the dragonthrone issued a declaration abolishing the production of cakedtea at the imperial estate in Fujian.As recorded in the Veritable Recordsof Emperor Taizu of the Great MingDynasty, the Imperial Decree on theJianning Annual Offering of Tribute Teawas proclaimed on the sixteenth dayof the ninth lunar month of the twenty-fourth year of the Hongwu era. Thepalace order began with the simple butsevere command: “Obey.”The author of the decree was ZhuYuanzhang (1328–1398), who asfounder and first emperor of the Mingdynasty acquired the posthumous temple name of Ming Taizu, Great Progenitor of the Ming. Emperor Taizuruled imperial China from the year1368 to 1398, a regnal period knownas Hongwu, the Era of Great MartialAttainment, in honor of his fame as awarrior and military general. The statetea monopoly played an importantrole in the economic and legal reformsof Taizu’s government and exemplifiedhis efforts to restructure agriculture,trade and taxes while dealing withfraud and corruption. The effectiveness of the emperor’s policies was re53茶人: Steven D. OwyoungWe are very honored this issue to have so many renownedtea scholars brushing scrolls of insight on the Ming Dynasty.Last, but certainly not least, Steven Owyoung illuminates theroyal decree in all of China’s long history that had the greatestimpact on tea lovers, then to now. After having read so manytea classics, this article explains why there is such a mixtureof tea, teaware and brewing methods in the Ming Dynasty.This fascinating topic, revealed in such a well-researched andarticulate form, is one for posterity!flected in his commands on tea and theextent to which he was obeyed. On occasion, transgressors included his followers and family, their crimes forcinghim to choose between the rule of lawand nepotism. The emperor’s attitudetowards tea was stirred by his peasantbackground and common touch butmore often informed by his experienceand talent as a civil and military administrator. In private, Taizu’s personaltaste for tea was possibly influenced bythe religious observances of his family.Born in 1328 among the impoverished Fengyang peasantry of Anhui, Zhu Yuanzhang lost his parentsand siblings to hardship, famine andplague, saving himself by honoring hisdead father’s wish for him to join thelocal Buddhist monastery of HuangjueTemple where the boy lived as a novitiate. When the abbey’s povertyforced him to leave, he wandered thecountryside as a mendicant monk. Returning later to the friary, he learnedto read and write until the monasterywas destroyed by warfare in 1352. Atage twenty-four, he enlisted with GuoZixing (1312–1355), a Muslim general of insurgent forces rebelling againstthe Yuan Dynasty and the alien Mon-gols. Zhu Yuanzhang rose swiftly inthe military and in the eyes of GuoZixing, who proposed the marriage ofthe young soldier to Lady Ma (1332–1382), Guo’s adopted daughter. Onthe death of Guo Zixing in 1355 andthe demise of the general’s male heirs,Zhu Yuanzhang became commanderin chief of the army and took as hisconcubine Guo Zixing’s other daughter, known as Guo Huifei (active ca.1355–1370s). The following year, ZhuYuanzhang captured Nanjing, the major city from which he ruled, and campaigned for over a decade against otherwarlords for control of the south. Between 1361 and 1364, he took the titleof Duke of Wu and then that of Princeof Wu, establishing his aristocratic ifnot imperial ambitions. In 1367, Suzhou fell under siege, followed by thefall of Fujian on January 21, 1368:within two days Zhu Yuanzhang declared himself emperor and ruler of theMing Dynasty. The successive surrenders of Suzhou and Fujian brought under his control the empire’s two mostcelebrated tea regions, but it took yearsfor the emperor to issue the stunningdecrees that changed the forms of teaas imperial tribute.

Classics of TeaTribute in ancient China was thepresentation of goods from the nobility to the sovereign, a system by whichthe specialties of a province were sentas taxes to the palace. Such levies werefirst suggested in the Tribute of Yuwherein the legendary Yu the Greatdescribed the geography of the empire,its mountains and rivers, and the local products that might be sent to themythical Emperor Shun. As an herb,tea was initially a southern rarity usedfor its medicinal and culinary properties. Tea was recorded as tribute in theRecords of the Southern Realms beyondMount Hua and included in the diplomatic exchanges between the dynasticZhou and the Ba and Shu of distantSichuan. Modern archaeology has revealed that tea was received as tributefrom at least the second century BCEat capitals in the north and south. InHunan, excavations at Mawangduinear Changsha unearthed tea fromthe grave of Xizui (died ca. 168–164BCE), otherwise known as Lady Dai,the consort of the Chu nobleman Marquis of Dai (died 186 BCE). Kept ina bamboo basket, the tea was labeledand registered in the tomb’s funeraryinventory. In the north near Xi’an, archaeologists uncovered at the tomb ofEmperor Jingdi (188–141 BCE) a sacrificial pit that contained a compresseddark brown vegetal matrix, the remnants of a block of fine tea comprisedof uniform leaf buds. From the Hanthrough the Qing dynasties, tea wasused as imperial tribute for over twothousand years, most famously duringthe Northern Song when emperorswere presented with highly refinedcaked teas.Caked tea was first described bythe Tang scholar Lu Yu (733–804) in780 when he completed the Tea Sutra:“By steaming the tea leaves, poundingthem to a paste, shaping the paste intomolds, drying the cakes, tying themtogether, and sealing them, tea is thusdried and preserved.” During the SongDynasty, the processing of caked teawas even more sophisticated, requiringthe picking and selection of the smallest buds, frequent washing of leaves,steaming and pressing to express water,juices, and oils, pounding and kneading into a pasty pulp, filling decorativemolds, alternately heating and boiling the hardening cakes, drying overa low fire, curing lightly with smoke,passing over boiling water, and fanningto the luster of dark lacquer. The process took over two weeks before the finished cakes were placed in pouches ofyellow silk gauze, wrapped in bambooleaves and cushioned within linings ofmore silk, and sealed in a red lacqueredcasket with a gilt lock. By custom,forty to one hundred measures of thetea were sent north by special courierto the emperor, the precious tributearriving before the Festival of Purityand Light and the spring sacrifices tothe imperial ancestors. When EmperorTaizu declared the abolition of cakedtea, he ended a form of tea that hadflourished for over six hundred years.The first elimination of caked teaby Taizu actually occurred in 1375when he nullified the Yuan imperial teaoffice at Guzhu and ordered the halt ofits caked tea production. Mount Guzhu was a place on the southwesternshores of Lake Tai, near the town ofHuzhou in northern Zhejiang. Teahad been produced there since beforethe third century, and the local leaf wasknown in history variously as Zisun orRusset Shoot, Yangxian, or Guzhu. In770, Lu Yu recommended the tea as asuperior leaf to the local prefect, andthereafter Guzhu caked tea was sentnorth as tribute to the capital.Taizu waited seven years after hisinauguration in 1368 to act at Guzhu.In lieu of caked tea, he directed the presentation of two jin, about two and ahalf pounds, of whole-leaf tea as annual tribute to the palace. Just why Taizuended the production of caked tea atGuzhu was unknown, but traditionhad it that he preferred his tea steepedfrom dried whole leaves. Boiling orsteeping whole-leaf tea produced aninfusion, a practical and efficient andrather soldierly technique that recalledthe medicinal and culinary origins oftea as well as common custom. Steeping whole leaves required only water,fire, a pot and cups—a very direct wayof drinking tea that removed the needfor the elaborate paraphernalia requisite to the preparation of powderedcaked tea: pounder, pestle and mortar,sieve, spoon, ewer, bowl and whisk. Intime, Taizu’s legendary fondness forGuzhu was connected to the emperor’speasant background and the virtuousfrugality inherent in the simple steeping of leaf tea. Within Taizu’s family,however, tea drinking may well have55/ Emperor Ming Taizu and the Abolition of Caked Teabeen encouraged by his two wives,Lady Ma and Guo Huifei, both ofwhom were raised Muslim and taughtto eschew alcohol. As noted in the History of the Ming, Lady Ma personallyprepared Taizu’s meals and in all likelihood followed halal, the dietary lawsof Islam. Among Chinese rulers, Taizuwas notable for his support of the Muslim community, the emperor canonizing seven Muslim generals as princes,constructing mosques throughout thesouth, and writing the One HundredWord Eulogy in praise of the ProphetMohammad and Islam. According tothe lost work Secret History of ChineseMuslims by Ma Wensheng (1426–1510), Taizu’s commanders were allfollowers of the Prophet, and Taizugoverned his Muslim generals by imposing on them Islamic proscriptionsand harsh penalties, especially againstalcohol—even personally executingthe drunkard son of his closest militaryaide.After Guzhu, it was a further sixteen years before Taizu acted in 1391on the tribute of caked tea from Jianning, Fujian. Fujian was a mountainous province far to the south where thecliffs, rocky soil and good drainage enhanced the quality of its tea. The herbhad been grown in Jianning since theTang Dynasty, but it was in the tenthcentury that Fujian tea gained aristocratic cachet. In 933, during the FiveDynasties period, the farmer ZhangTinghui (tenth century) presentedhis extensive tea gardens at PhoenixMountain to the King of Min, whothen designated the gift as a royal estateand kept Zhang as its overseer. Located along the northern tributaries of theMin River, the tea gardens were knownas North Park or Beiyuan. Beiyuan andits tea mills became the primary sources of imperial tribute tea during theNorthern Song Dynasty when NorthPark tea was such the epitome of excellence that certain caked teas becamesynonymous with the specific reigns ofrulers. Indeed, in the history of tea, thepossession of North Park and its precious tribute conferred legitimacy toany claim of sovereignty, dynasty, andpower over the empire.Fujian tea was especially appreciated by Emperor Huizong (1082–1135), an aesthete of the highest order who promoted the caked teas ofBeiyuan at court. Early in his reign,

Huizong wrote his Treatise on Teafrom the Reign of Great Vision (1107)in which he buoyantly described thecaked tea of Fujian as a reflection ofthe harmonious condition of the State:大觀茶論“As for tea, it possesses the elegance of Ou and Min, endowed with the essenceof their hills and streams. Tea dispels and cleanses obstructions and leads toclarity and balance. Since the beginning of the present dynasty, the annualtribute from Jianxi has consisted of dragon rounds and phoenix cakes: the mostfamous and best tea under Heaven, the products of Heyuan, ever flourishing.Now, we have undertaken the hundred neglected tasks and all within the empire is serene, tranquil, and absent of strife, all achieved favorably withouteffort. Scholars and commoners alike are immersed in our beneficence andimbued with our transformative virtue, such that all may partake in the nobleelegance of drinking tea. Thus in recent years, the merit of picking and selecting tea, the skill of processing it, the excellence of grading it, and the wonder ofpreparing and serving tea, all have attained the utmost degree of perfection As for the rise and fall of things, each has its time But in an era complimented by peace and unchanging normalcy, when all is calm and prosperous,when daily necessities are finally satisfied and when even essentials are justcarelessly strewn about, then all scholars under Heaven incline to purity andfollow leisurely pursuits, everyone in the quest for tea: seeking its literary gemsand pretty sounding bits of golden verse, sipping from its flowers and suckingon its blossoms, weighing the value of its literature, debating the distinctions inits appraisal and judgment. In such a time, even minor scholars unabashedlycherish tea; such may be called the flourishing of sensibility and esteem Ihappened to have a day of leisure to dwell upon the subtleties and wonders oftea. For those of later generations who may not know the benefits and demeritsof tea, I have at the end of this preface set out twenty articles to be known asthe Treatise on Tea.”With youthful optimism, Emperor Huizong extolled the virtues of hisreign, describing the peace, prosperity,and concord of the empire as manifestin the simple but noble act of drinking tea. For centuries thereafter, thecaked teas of North Park remained, inthe eyes of emperors, among the mostimportant tribute sent to the imperialcapital.Nearly five hundred years later,Emperor Taizu expressed a less sanguine view of tea when he issued hisresounding decree of 1391 to the administrators at North ��. ��“聽. 茶戶採進 有司勿與. 天下產茶去處歲貢皆有定額, 而建寧茶品為上. 其所進者必碾而揉之, 壓以銀板, 大小龍團上以重勞民力. 罷造龍團. 惟採茶芽以進.其品有四 曰探春, 屯春, 次春, 紫筍.置茶戶五百, 免其徭役, 俾專事採植. 既而有司恐其後時常遣人督之. 茶戶畏其逼迫. 往往納賂. 上聞之. 故有是命.”“The officials of the tea households are ordered to cease harvesting and presenting caked tea. Of all the empire’s tea producers of annual tribute on fixed quotas, the tea of Jianning is supreme. To produce tribute tea, leaves must be crushedand kneaded into pulp and pressed into silver molds to make large and small dragon rounds, a method that greatlystrains the resources of the people. Abolish the production of dragon rounds. Pick only tea buds to present as tribute.There are four kinds: Seeking Springtime, Gathering Springtime, Staying Spring and Russet Shoots. We established fivehundred tea households, exempted them from corvée labor, and allowed them to specialize in planting and harvestingtea. Afterwards, there were officials who feared these later reforms and sent overseers to abuse the householders, whodreaded their tyranny. Everywhere bribes were taken. This was reported to the imperial court; thus, We issue this command.”56

Classics of TeaThese are some replica dragon and phoenix cakes from Zhejiang. They are made from Zisun (Purple Bamboo Shoot Tea).They are organic. However, though the producer claimed they are made just as the cakes of the Tang, Song and early Mingwould have been made, cakes from those different dynasties were no doubt different and people nowadays do not have theskills needed to make authentic cakes. They smell delicious, though. We are happily trying them out, boiled and whisked!57/ Emperor Ming Taizu and the Abolition of Caked Tea

洪武In his decree, Taizu was absoluteregarding his ban on caked tea, repeating emphatically to stop and eliminatethe making of dragon rounds. He regarded the labor-intensive process as aburden to the householders even as hepraised them highly for the quality oftheir tea. Taizu also revealed his graveconcern for the farmers whose welfarehe pursued through his early reforms,changes that organized them into astable agricultural corps and excusedthem and their families from forcedlabor, permitting all to focus exclusively on cultivating tea. Moreover, bydesignating just four bud teas, whichwere far easier to produce than cakedteas, the emperor vastly lightenedtheir workload. Then, Taizu finallyaddressed the true reasons for his decree: the maltreatment of the farmersby government officials who furtherexploited the peasants by demandingbribes from them.The corruption surrounding teaduring the Ming was once describedby the official Cao Hu (1478–1517) ina memorial sent to the throne. In theearly sixteenth century, Cao Hu servedin Guangxi prefecture, present Northeastern Jiangxi, where he resisted theprofiteering of the Grand Defender,the eunuch official sent from the palace to oversee the annual collection oftribute teas from the region. On noting discrepancies in the recording oftribute bud teas, Cao Hu wondered ifA portrait of an elderlyMing Taizu. The Hongwuemperor lived a long life ofseventy years, and seemskindly in this depiction.the palace actually received the tribute:whereas the amount of tea collected exceeded one thousand jin, the tea submitted totaled no more than twenty.In his Memorial Requesting the Reformof Tribute Tea, Cao Hu defined in detail the many problems of the imperialtribute system and its levies of tea:One: The picking and processing of tribute tea happens just at the spring tillingseason. Among the peasants, the menmust abandon the plow and the womenmust abandon weaving, leaving themwithout food or clothing for the entireyear.Two: In early spring, barley and wheatare not ripe. The peasants starve, stomachs in torment. To pick and processtea, their suffering and bitterness areunbearable.Three: The officials collecting the teaare extremely quibbling; only one inten passes inspection. The peasants areforced to bear usurious rates, and thosewho are better off buy good tea to fulfilltheir quotas.Four: Without means of meeting thequotas, peasants seeking exemptionbribe the officials.Five: The officials take advantage of thetea trade, coercing and extorting. Theentire peasantry is impoverished andproduction is squandered.As shown by Cao Hu’s memorial–written well over a hundred years afterthe death of Emperor Taizu—the conditions and corruption affecting teaendured. Imagine the ghost of Taizuevaluating Cao’s plea for reform andlearning that his decrees of 1375 and1391 went ignored and his improvements to farm life unfulfilled; moreover, he would have been apoplecticto know that eunuchs—the castratedservants he once decreed be strictlyconfined to the inner palace—not onlymoved and exercised extensive powersabroad but also exploited the peasantsand engaged in fraud against the verystate he founded.Near the end of his reign, the problems of tea overtook Taizu and dealthim a personal blow, an unexpectedtreason that affected directly the imperial family and the fate of his daughter. Of the sixteen princesses sired byTaizu, he was closest to the younger of two daughters he fathered withhis first wife and empress Lady Ma.Princess Anqing (born ca. 1366), wasmarried in 1381 to Ouyang Lun (died1397), the wayward son of a scholar. In1397, Ouyang Lun was sent as an imperial envoy to Sichuan and Shaanxi, amarch region strategically linked to thevital tea and horse trade.Historically, China was dependent on the nomadic cultures of theAsian Steppe for equine mounts,trading iron, cloth and tea for horses,58

Classics of Teaacquired for civil and military use. Inthe Ming, a standing herd of an estimated eight hundred thousand headwas available with nearly four hundredthousand arrayed in defense at theborder. Close to the frontier, Sichuanwas the greatest and preferred sourceof tea; Tibetan herdsmen had been habituated to the herb for centuries andwere especially fond of the Sichuanleaf. However, southern Shaanxi andthe Hanzhong region also producedtea, and according to the History of theMing Dynasty, a mere three million jinof tea from Shaanxi and Hanzhongbought thirty thousand horses. Highlyregulated as a monopoly by the Minggovernment, the exchange of tea forhorses was not only important to thesecurity of the state but also a large target for corruption, attracting criminalsand the attention of the throne.In the spring of 1397, Taizu sent anumber of envoys, including the highofficial Jing Qing (died 1402) and theAssistant Censor in Chief Deng Wenkeng (1360–1427), to investigate thesmuggling of tea on the Sichuan andShaanxi border. Shortly thereafter, theimperial son-in-law Ouyang Lun arrived, ostensibly to begin his own inquiries on behalf of the emperor butactually to engage in the highly lucrative but illegal trafficking of tea. Entrusted to do one thing, Ouyang Lunbetrayed Taizu to do exactly the opposite. Ouyang employed henchmenled by one Zhou Bao (died 1397) tobuy and transport tea, commandeering scores of carts from local officialsfor the purpose. Intimidated by Ouyang’s connections to the imperial family, none dared oppose him until theconvoy reached an inspection point ata river crossing where Zhou Bao struckan officer who filed a complaint. Onlearning of the incident and the identities of those involved, the imperialcensor Deng Wenkeng impeachedOuyang Lun in a report that reachedthe emperor. Taizu was furious. Anddespite his affection for his daughter,Taizu ordered Ouyang Lun punishedby death. Though unrecorded furtherby history, Princess Anqing was taintedby the scandal and likely never marriedagain.The abolition of caked tea by Taizusignified many things. Culturally andpolitically, the imperial dragon andphoenix rounds of Mount Guzhu andNorth Park were the last jewels in theimperial crown, and their possessionby Taizu was assured by his victoriesat Suzhou and Fujian. Initially aimedat purging the historic but oppressiveMongol institutions haunting Huzhouand Jianning, Taizu’s decrees of 1375and 1391 also meant to establish hisown benevolent reforms on tea in theface of the endemic corruption infecting the industry. The ban belatedly acknowledged that whole-leaf had longbeen the universal form of tea prepared and served throughout much ofthe empire and beyond. By the earlyfourteenth century, numerous commentaries described caked tea and evenits powdered form as passé and retardataire, its use confined to the deepsouth in Guangdong and Fujian andits dwindling practice as an art continued only among the conservative elite.Taizu’s own son, the tea adept ZhuQuan (1378–1448) eventually admitted in his Tea Manual of 1440 thattea “need not be made into paste forcakes” even as he wistfully described allthe old accouterments he used in preparing whisked powdered tea. Indeed,the disappearance of caked tea forcedthe development of alternative artsof tea, skillful techniques and properutensils newly devised for the steepingof the leaf.But the greater import of Emperor Taizu’s historic decrees may well liein the often forgotten fact that finetea, caked or otherwise, was and remains an extremely labor intensive andhighly regulated endeavor, a challenging pursuit worthy of the regard andconcern expressed so long ago by theTang poet Lu Tong (775–835) in theSong of Tea:“Where are the Immortal Isles of Mount Penglai?I, Master Jade Stream, wish instead to ride this pure wind backto the tea mountain where other immortals gather to oversee the land,protecting the pure, high places from wind and rain.Yet, how can I bear knowing the bitter fate of the myriad peasants toilingbeneath the tumbled tea cliffs!I have but to ask Grand Master Meng about them;whether they can ever regain some �否。59/ Emperor Ming Taizu and the Abolition of Caked Tea

明孝陵This is the impressive Mausoleum of the Hongwu emperor (明孝陵) in Nanjing. It lies at the southern foot of Purple Mountain. Construction began during the emperor’s lifetime, in 1381, and was completed in 1405, during his son’s reign. They saythat thirteen separate funeral processions left the capital so that grave robbers wouldn’t know where the emperor was reallyburied. Is he actually entombed here? There is a very impressive old stele inside commemorating the emperor, the “ShengongShengde Stele” (神功圣德碑), literally, “The Stele of Godly Merit and Saintly Virtue,” and many officials since have also added memorials as well.60

ty-fourth year of the Hongwu era. he palace order began with the simple but severe command: “Obey.” The author of the decree was Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398), who as founder and first emperor of the Ming dynasty acquired the posthumous tem - ple name of Ming Taizu, Great Pro-genitor of the Ming.

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