□ Zeng Garden
In the "Lecture Notes on the History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of Chen Yinke, Wei and Jin", When Mr. Chen talked about the "Pipa Xing", he talked about the rise of the tea tax in the Tang Dynasty, which was quite refreshing to read. After the Anshi Rebellion, the imperial court lost hebei's financial resources. In order to maintain the needs of the two Beijing areas, the economy depends on Jianghuai. Salt tax, Shandong, Hebei can not get, only by the southeast of the salt. The Tang dynasty only began to collect salt taxes during the Kaiyuan period, and now relies on this to make up for the lost wealth. Salt needs to be marketed everywhere, with the most convenient waterways and the most economical large ships, which can be traveled up and down from Yangzhou to Jiujiang. Tea is the same as salt. The difference is that tea is both precious and ordinary. The former is used by fewer people. The latter is common, so it is regarded as tea as salt, not only salt but also tea. Tea merchants and salt merchants have all received monopoly coupons from the government, and they are all emerging big businessmen. There is the tea merchant who "bought tea from the floating beam of the previous month" and "weighed profits and lightly separated".
The imperial court collected the salt tax during the new year, and later collected the tea tax, which seemed to be quite handy and easy. However, to collect taxes, there must first be an industry that the imperial court believes to be a daily gold coin to operate there, and then it can be set up in the main traffic route to collect taxes.
Chen Shidao, a great poet of the Song Dynasty, discussed the reasons for the rise of the tea industry in the "Tea Sutra": "The writings of Fu Cha began with Yu, and its use in the world also began from Yu, and Yu Cheng's contribution was also attributed to tea people. ShangziGong Province, Xia Yi Yi Li, Wai and Rong Yi Man Di, Bin Qi Yan Xiang, Pre-Chen Yu Qian, Shan Ze to Cheng City, Shang Jia to start a family, and also have merit in people. It's a smart one. ”
Chen Shidao felt that from the imperial court to the people, as well as the Rong Yi barbarians outside, whether it was sacrifices or the people themselves were happy to drink, in short, the industrial chain was formed. The tea farmers in the deep mountains and old forests have been lifted out of poverty, and the far-sighted tea merchants have made a fortune, all of which rely on Lu Yu's wisdom.
"Yamazawa Nariichi" is not a child's play, there must be a lot of money and even the government's industrial policy to promote, not just a best-selling book on the aesthetics of life "Tea Classic" can do. Merchants danced because of a book about taste, which is also unprecedented in economic history.
The Tang Dynasty's Fengshi Wenzhi Records records that in the Kaiyuan Dynasty, the Taishan Lingyan Temple had a demon descending master Daxing Zen Sect, who learned Zen from not sleeping, and did not eat at night, and all of them drank tea... In previous years, it was strange to return to the dynasty and return home with a big drive of famous horses.
This passage about the "Demon Master" reminds us that those who believed in Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty could not do without tea.
What makes the Tang people feel strange about "returning to the Dynasty and returning from the famous horse market tea"? On the surface, the Han people's method of dividing the race categories is "not my race, their hearts must be different", but the "heart" is difficult to analyze and identify. Anthropologists believe that primitive tribes divided themselves from outsiders by saying that outsiders were people who were not good at talking or eating well. Therefore, it is really difficult to understand that the Han people think that the Hui people who are not of my race actually love to drink tea (possibly tea).
Here's the thing: the Hui people who helped the imperial court quell the "Anshi Rebellion" gradually grew the habit of forced buying and selling. The intensifying "silk horse trade" left the imperial court in a state of disrepair. The "New Book of Tang" records: "After qianyuan, hui qigong, the years into the horse to take the rope, the horse is sick and weak and can not be used." Bai Juyi wrote a famous complaint in the poem "Yin Shan Dao": "Fifty horses are easy to get one horse, and there is no day for the horse to come."
Yuan Shu's poem with the same title reads: "Every year I buy The Road of Ma Yin Mountain, and the horse dies of the Yin Mountain. Yuan and Tianzi read female workers, and gold and silver were given out in lieu of rewards. But this matter was not over, and Bai Juyi's poem next revealed that the court's kind gold and silver were exchanged for the shock of the following year: "Who knows that the greed of the emperor will double the number of horses next year."
Silk needs to be raised silkworms to plant mulberry and artificial, while tea is only the leaves of the tree. Therefore, there is a surprise element in the demand of the people of the Central Plains for tea.
From the Tang Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, Chinese always understood the tea addiction of outsiders as "the people who love cheese and cannot drink tea are trapped and sick.". Anthropologist Zhang Jingwei disagreed, arguing in his book "A Minimalist History of China in the Museum" that "tea was indeed popular among grassland tribes in recent times, but their history of drinking tea was only more than a thousand years, and before that, the period of not drinking tea was tens of thousands of years, and they did not get sick." He believes that the Uighurs accepted the beliefs of Manichaeism and Buddhism from the western steppes, and therefore aspired to double their practice like the "sorcerer". It is precisely because the Hui people frequently ask for tea, Mr. Sun Hongsheng, who studies the economy of the Tang and Song Dynasties, believes that "the tea market in the north gradually formed and expanded, which accelerated the commercialization process of tea." ”
At the beginning, in order to cope with the Hui people, the imperial court sorted out the industrial chain of the tea industry and opened up all obstacles from remote tea mountains to tea shops. Then, merchants appeared, and they turned the tea industry into a pillar industry.
Therefore, we may as well quote a quote from Marx: "The businessman has come to this world, and he should be the starting point for the change in this world." Li Jue, a Tang dynasty man, found that change came so quickly: "Between Tian Lu and Lu, I have a penchant for YuChe." In other words, even farmers love tea and drink tea every day. This was not a gift or wise decision of the court, but a miracle made by merchants.
"Yuan and Tianzi" Tang Xianzong was grateful to the female workers, and Tang Dezong did not hesitate to let go. After Tang Dezong first collected the tea tax in 780, his empathy for the suffering of tea farmers led him to abolish the tea tax. But the lack of money is really no way to do things, coupled with the inertia of the taste of the marrow, in 793 he officially restored the tea tax. The tax rate is 10%, and the income for the year is 400,000 yuan.
The people's desire for tea and wealth is no less than that of the government. Tortoise Meng and Bai Juyi both operated tea gardens. Bai Juyi's poem "Merchants value profits and light separation" is even more intriguing in this context. Tortoise Meng "set up a small garden under Guzhu Mountain, the annual income of tea rent is ten, and the book is the fee for Ou ants." "We understand it as sucking it up by selling it."
In the ninth year of Emperor Wenzong of Tang (835), wang Ya, the chancellor and literary scholar, began to advocate the "benefit of tea".
榷, meaning canoe bridge. Later, it had the meaning of patent and monopoly. "The Pipe" once preached an imaginary economics: "He who profits come from a hole, his country is invincible." The fantasy of the "Book of Shang Jun" is more concrete: "If you make a hole, the country will have many things."
But it is difficult for people today to imagine that Wang Ya's fantasy about the monopoly of tea will swell to this extent in reality: "The tea gardens of the people in the rivers and lakes, the officials are self-made, the quantity is directly divided, and the messenger is the lord." The emperor confused him, but ordered Wang Ya to be the envoy of the tea. ”
It seems that because tea is too profitable, the imperial court can not forget the work once done in the tea industry, and now collects taxes on the shore, completely enjoying the pleasure of sharing the fat, so the imperial court resolutely went to the sea to buy the people's tea garden, but the specific measures are unimaginable. The Old Book of Tang records: "Salt and iron make Wang Yabiao ask the people of the tea mountain to transplant the roots, and the old storage will be burned and discarded, and the whole world will complain." Transplanting tea trees is difficult to survive, the loss is very large, the development of "old storage, all make burning" this kind of pure atrocities are hard to believe, no one should have thought that the literary scholar Wang Ya had such an iron-blooded wrist.
The Cambridge History of Sui and Tang Dynasties may be wrong in its description of this historical event:
The Tang government was constantly warned that its policies were leading to discontent and unrest in the southeast. In 835, a proposal to transplant tea forests into government-run gardens provoked strong opposition among tea producers, with some advising the government to enforce the plan "to stop killing people and to go back to the mountains." This proposal had to be abandoned.
The madness of "transplanting tea forests into the garden of the government office" was noticed by foreign sinologists. However, because some ordinary people warned that they would "have to give up" to rebel, this was really not the habit of the Tang emperors. In fact, the termination of the "Yu Cha" was a complete accident: Wang Ya's military campaign to suppress the eunuchs failed because the plan and execution were too absurd, and Wang Ya was beheaded.
This military operation came to be known as the "Ganlu Incident". The whole event is historically important, but it is inconvenient to unfold here. It is worth mentioning that when Wang Ya's side failed, the eunuch Qiu Shiliang led the Divine Strategist Army to arrest them one by one. "Wang Ya walked to the Yongchangli Tea Shop and forbade the soldiers to capture the left army." Tea makes Wang Ya captured alive in the tea house, which is quite interesting.
When Wang Ya was "beheaded under the willow, his head was outside the Xing'an Gate." Relatives are dead without question, children are not left behind, wives and daughters are not dead, and they are not official wives. The people and spectators complained about Wang Ya's tea, or criticized him, or threw rubble at him. It is worth noting that the "Zizhi Tongjian" writes that "the people and viewers complain about Wang Ya's tea", they are not tea farmers and tea merchants, which shows that the damage caused by Wang Ya's measures exceeds our imagination.
The literary scholar and chancellor Ling Huchu later commented on Wang Ya's behavior very pertinently: "It is really a stupid government... How could it be that the people should move tea trees and plant them in the official field, and pick tea leaves to make in the official field, and have the same children's play, which is not close to human feelings? ”
Ling Huchu abandoned the "Yu Tea" system and restored the tea tax system. But before the matter was over, Ling Huchu had a student named Li Shangyin, who wrote a poem called "Qu Jiang" in the spring of the second year of the Ganlu Incident, in which several sentences mentioned Wang Ya's death:
Dead memories of Hua Ting smelled cranes, and the old worried royal family wept copper camels.
Although the heart of the heavens and the earth is broken, if it is not more than the spring of sorrow.
Li Shangyin's attitude toward Wang Ya was purely sad, without the slightest blame, completely different from his teacher Ling Huchu, which was related to Li Shangyin's economic concept.
You can see his economic concept from Li Shangyin's popular "Jia Sheng": "The Xuanshi Office asks for meritocracy to visit and chase away the ministers, and Jia Sheng is even more ruthless. Poor night half empty front seat, do not ask the heavens to ask the ghosts and gods. ”
This poem is known to be a satire on the emperor for not doing his job and not paying attention to talent. But most readers have not carefully thought about such a question: how can the emperor who snubbed the famous talent Jia Yi be Emperor Wen of Han? No historian should think that Jia Yi's ability to govern and be wiser than Emperor Wen of Han, so what exactly is written in this poem?
The main measure of early Han politics was to rest with the people. The textbook says that the emperor advocated huang lao's thoughts and ruled in inaction. It can now be understood that this was a free economy with less government intervention, and the effect was very good—Sima Qian listed the performance of many large merchants at that time in the "Biography of Cargo Colonization".
Jia Yi's economic viewpoint is to vigorously promote "economics of subsistence": "The peasants who have beaten the people today are all based on their own work, so that the people of the world can eat their own strength, and the people who have the last skill to travel to eat will turn to the south acres, and the animals will accumulate and the people will be happy." At that time, the problem of the extravagant collusion between the giant merchants and the officials and businessmen appeared, and Jia Yi's idea was that the government should adopt high pressure to suppress local economic forces. Emperor Wendi of Han understood that it did not make sense with him, so when he had to face this political commentator who occupied the moral high ground, he adopted the method of taking care of him from left to right.
When Li Shangyin wrote this poem, he was actually a gentle supporter of Wang Ya's economic policies. Wang Ya was promoted by virtue of his literary talent, "Yongzhen, Yuanhejian, Wen Li, many drafts." But all he wanted in his position of Qing was to "seize power and hold the position", and to raid the family", "the wealth is stored in thousands, and the days are inexhaustible.". Such a person is not an exaggeration to say that he is a Tang Dynasty and a martyr.
What is the effect of the so-called tea monopoly? There is no detailed record of the Tang Dynasty, so we may wish to look at the situation in the Song Dynasty. There will always be counterfeit and inferior tea in the government's unified purchase and marketing, and the solution is nothing more than the common use of changxin compulsory collocation sales. Li Xiao of the Northern Song Dynasty said: "What is precious in the world and what is stored in the family, then what is not the person who has public tea?" Male tea is abusive and does not taste in the mouth. Wang Anshi said: "Now when the official sites come out, they are all coarse and inedible, and the food of the people is mostly smugglers." Ouyang Xiu said: "When people buy their own tea, they need real tea, and there are not many real teas, and their prices are expensive."
When the literati discuss politics, they often take a vacuous position: standing on the emperor's point of view of the problem is inevitably too deep into the drama, and the perspective of the eunuch is even more absurd. So is it right to stand against the eunuch? The opposite of eunuchs is the so-called civilian system. Li Shangyin, an unarmed weak man in the civilian bureaucracy, strangely supported Wang Ya's wanton conquests. In fact, he stands in the perspective of the people to eat melon, is the most correct posture.
Eating a cup of tea in the hands of the melon masses, the price is high, the quality is abusive, what mentality is appropriate to maintain? Wang Ya was killed, throwing rubble and hitting it too much, throwing away a piece of melon peel I think is appropriate.
Caption: Tea tax silver ingots in ancient China.