Preface
As a bulk cash crop, tea has always been an important source of national tax revenue in ancient China, and the government controlled the production, transportation, and trading of tea by formulating strict tea laws.
The so-called tea law refers to a series of laws and regulations on the production, production, transportation, and sale of tea formulated by the feudal rule for the purpose of collecting people from the state treasury.
For the tea laws for the transportation and trading of tea, they include tea industry policies such as tax tea, tea tea, tea introduction, shore introduction, merchant tea, official tea, and tea and horse trade.
Shicha is the implementation of tax, control, monopoly measures on tea, the tea industry managed and controlled by the government, tea is issued by the government to tea wholesalers to buy and sell tea monopoly vouchers, merchants pay taxes and pay the official distribution license.
The official designated special area for merchants to buy and sell tea is Yin'an, which is the tea that tea merchants tax and buy and sell on the shore in accordance with the national tea law, and official tea refers to the tea controlled by the state for storing Yima.
The history of tea in ancient China
The history of tea planting and tea making in China can be traced back to the Qin and Han dynasties, and in the Tang Dynasty, with the expansion of tea planting area, the increase of production, and the formation of tea drinking customs, there were tea gardens specializing in planting tea, and the government began to tax tea planting, circulation, and sales, and established a monopoly system for tea sales.
In short, the state has formed a control system for tea, so that the tax revenue from tea planting, transportation, and sales has become the state's fiscal revenue.
The tea law of the Song Dynasty was further improved and rigorous in the continuous adjustment and change, especially the tea law in the circulation link was more detailed, and the tea law formulated different management and trade methods according to the background of the times and the different tea-producing regions.
The tea-producing areas are divided into southeast, Sichuanxia, Guangnan, etc., and the sales objects are divided into domestic and foreign, and the circulation link of the cross-citation method and the sticking method are mainly aimed at the southeast region, and the tea cross-introduction and sticking coupons are issued to tea merchants to receive tea vouchers, and they are the predecessors of tea introduction.
Tea quotation first appeared in the Song Dynasty Huizong period, Chongning four years of the imperial court abolished the southeast region of the tea official buying and selling, the implementation of the tea introduction law, that is, official sales.
Order businessmen to buy quotations from Chazhou County or Jingshi Shishi Goods, buy tea directly from tea garden households, and go to the contract yard of Chazhou County to scale, inspect and seal, and distribute it according to the specified quantity, time and place. In the second year of Gaozong Jianyan of the Southern Song Dynasty, he popularized the method of tea introduction in Sichuan.
The tea introduction system was the result of frequent changes in the tea system in the Song Dynasty to adapt to the social environment and adjust the distribution of tea profits between the government and the people.
It mobilizes the intrinsic enthusiasm of tea producers and operators, is conducive to the production and circulation of tea and increases the number of people receiving tea in the state, and it embodies the management system implemented by the feudal state for the tea that has formed an important cash crop into the era of the induction system, and this system was followed and used in the later Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.
Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, it is nothing more than the household department is responsible for the introduction and printing and introduction, and the businessmen go to the ministry to receive the sales or the tea-producing counties are responsible for attracting investment and collecting taxes, and the merchants go to the local tea farms and gardeners to buy tea.
Sell tea within a specified time and in a specified quantity, set up a verification office or checkpoint along the way to check the authenticity, time, and quantity, and pass the truncation of the quote, and after selling the tea, the quote will be returned to the local or state and county, and the local and state and county will be sealed and sent to the household department, and the quote will be cleared once a year.
Since the Qing Dynasty, the first year of the lead, the second year of tax payment, according to the use of the citation, the next year's quotation quota and adjustment of local differences, where the violation of the provisions of the citation law, buying, selling, forgery, alteration, expired use of tea citation, add entrainment.
The government has a time limit for the sale of tea according to the distance of tea, and the overtime inspection and payment of tickets must also be punished for crimes.
Generally, 100 catties are introduced, and there are 400 catties and other columns, and loose tea is a small sales ration short, tea by, and protective posts.
Tea developed to the Ming Dynasty
In the Ming Dynasty, the government also divided the commercial tea in Sichuan into two types: the side introduction is for the tea used in the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai and other places for tea and horse trading, and the belly is used for the tea sold in the interior of Sichuan.
They are two types of tea with different quality and taste, their picking and production are different, the tax calculation method, the tax rate is not the same, after the Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty, Sichuan tea has a shore introduction system, stipulating the amount of business introduction in each sales area.
There were clear regulations on the ports and routes from procurement to sales, and it was forbidden to cross the shore to do business and sell goods on the way, and the government was able to tightly control the activities of tea merchants at that time.
This formed a different tea policy in Sichuan and other tea-producing areas, and the government of Longqing in the Ming Dynasty implemented a policy of suppressing tea consumption in the hinterland, which greatly reduced the supply of belly tea and severely restricted the supply of belly tea.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the salt tea ceremony implemented the ministry to introduce tea, and the prefectures and counties set up professional tea merchants, and the tea merchants led the type of citation, the amount and the bank of the introduction have clear regulations, and the subtropical temperate climate of the Sichuan Basin is suitable for the deep-rooted evergreen shrub of the tea tree, and there is a historical record of the mountain tree tea since ancient times.
Tea developed to the Qing Dynasty
In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, tea cultivation was gradually promoted, and the number of tea-producing counties gradually increased, and the sales of belly introduction also increased, and the amount of side belly introduction also increased.
In the middle of the 19th century, with the deepening of imperialist economic aggression and the outbreak of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in China, the pattern of tea sales and taxation methods have changed, and the tax items and taxes contained in tea quotations have increased.
Under the background of semi-feudal and semi-colonial in the late Qing Dynasty, the tea sales market was subject to imperialist economic aggression, and the tea outside Sichuan (tea from the southeast, Lianghu, India and other places) also squeezed the Sichuan market, making it difficult for the sales market of tea in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.
In the Qing Dynasty, "there are also those who have a concurrent ticket method, such as Sichuan since the 52nd year of Qianlong after the opening of the weir tea ticket, the name is very numerous, but the first line is in the area of more production or best-selling."
Later, the government gradually relaxed its monopoly management of the tea industry, and changed the tea law in order to promote the increased production of tea and increase taxes.
Tea is gradually replaced by tea tickets, in addition to the appearance of tickets, flying tickets and other forms, to the tea merchants issued tea tickets, with tickets on behalf of the introduction, traders can get tickets for sale where they pay taxes.
Tea developed to the Republic of China
In the first year of the Republic of China, tea-producing areas such as the southeast abolished the tea diversion system, and Sichuan also broke the belly tea diversion system, no longer demarcated the sales area for tea ticket merchants, and exempted tea tax.
Therefore, in the fourth year of the Republic of China, Sichuan resumed the introduction of tea from the belly, and stipulated that 15,000 tea tickets would be sold annually.
In the eighth year of the Republic of China, Sichuan broke the belly tea diversion system for the second time, and collected tea tax on the market from the new, but the tea tax was "reversed", and the belly tea was restored again in the fourteenth year of the Republic of China.
During the Republic of China, the repeated changes of the Sichuan tea diversion system reflected the struggle of the marketing method of Sichuan belly tea and the decline of the border belly tea system under the new political system and modern economic structure.
In 1938, the government of the Republic of China introduced the tax method of collecting business tax, and the tea ticket officially withdrew from the historical stage", with the prosperity of the modern commercial society and the diversification and diversification of the commodity economy, the single commodity of tea can no longer bear the heavy responsibility of national taxation.
The government's control and management of them has gradually faded, and they are taxed like ordinary commodities, and the old-style business management and sales model represented by tea tickets will inevitably withdraw from the stage of history.
The hinterland tea ticket is rectangular, 29 cm long and 18 cm wide, printed on jade button paper, with black pattern frames on four sides and black text printed in the middle.
Judging from the shape of the seal and the handwriting, the stamps with the same content are all stamped by the same seal, but it is a tea ticket for the thirteenth year of the Republic of China, and issued by Pingshan County.
From the analysis of the face seal, the first tea ticket should be the tax payment bill issued by the Mabian County Collection Bureau that abolished the shore introduction system, the time is 1923, and the other is the tax payment ticket issued by the Pingshan County Collection Bureau, the time is 1924, which is the tea sales ticket after the second shore breaking of the Republic of China, and there is a clause of "let it be transported to the hinterland and other provinces for sale without restrictions".
The new deal of the Republic of China, only Sichuan is still in line with the ticket system, but the tea is renamed the tea ticket, the tea policy is managed by the Sichuan Department of Finance, and the tea ticket is distributed as stated in the ticket, "in each with the ticket flower, the Department of Finance will be issued in advance when the injury is in Xincha and other cities, and it will be sent to the county collection agency and transferred to a certain case to undertake."
At this time, it is the second time that the belly tea broke the shore, in addition to the face tea tax, the rest of the tax items and taxes were collected on the spot, according to the Leshan County Chronicles of the Republic of China: The merchants who sell tea are paid by the collection bureau to get the silver and get the ticket, and then the tea is sold.
There are two collection bureau seals on the two tea tickets, the Arima side and key from Mabian are the collection bureau seals, and the Pingshan and key from Pingshan are the collection bureau seals.
Or the Mabian Pingshan Collection Bureau is printed as a certification seal, and the tea tax is collected by the county collection bureau by the key of the road, or there is a suspicion of double collection. The tea tax "shall be collected by the Bureau of Collection of Origins and shall be approved and collected by the Department of Finance".
According to reports, in the twelfth and thirteenth years of the Republic of China, the tea tax revenue in Sichuan was more than 18,000, which was much less than that in the early years of the Republic of China.
The silver standard system implemented by the Republic of China collects various taxes based on the silver price as the unit of conversion, so the tax on the tea ticket is levied on the silver price, and the tea tax amount is printed on the tea ticket "one yuan of silver per ticket".
When the first resumption of the belly tea introduction system in the fourth year of the Republic of China, the government of the Republic of China stipulated that "one per vote, one tael of silver, and an annual tax of 15,000 taels".
After 1935, when "the method of attracting merchants and recognizing the shore was still maintained", "the current silver coin was levied at one yuan and six jiao", which was said to be "the same rate as the new balance levy", which reflected the coexistence of silver taels and silver dollars in the mainland at that time, and the silver dollar replaced the silver taels. In the early years of the Republic of China, the standard weight of each silver dollar was 26.697 grams"5).
One yuan and five corners have been converted into more than one or two kuping silver a few grams, that is to say, the tax has risen invisibly in the conversion, the tea ticket is a valuable bill, according to the rules should pay stamp duty, the text of the ticket clearly states that "the stamp is issued to the real paste".
In the first year of the Republic of China (1912), the government of the Republic of China in Beijing promulgated and implemented 3 articles of the "Stamp Duty Law", which taxed 15 kinds of certificates and securities such as deeds, account books, invoices, and bills of lading.
In the second year, the revenue stamps were printed, and the stamp duty was levied, and the stamp duty rate was as large as 12/1000, and the Republic of China in Sichuan began to implement it in three years.
epilogue
It is not difficult to see that from ancient times to modern times, tea stamps have undergone many improvements, which also reflects the importance of tea in ancient times.
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