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Puer tea has been grown for centuries in the ?Six Great Tea Mountains ? of Yunnan Province, and in imperial China it was a prized commodity, traded to Tibet by horse or mule caravan via the so-called Tea Horse Road and presented as tribute to the emperor in Beijing. In the 1990s, as the tea ?s noble lineage and unique process of aging and fermentation were rediscovered, it achieved cult status both in China and internationally. The tea became a favorite among urban connoisseurs who analyzed show more it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices. In 2007, however, local events and the international economic crisis caused the Puer market to collapse.Puer Tea traces the rise, climax, and crash of this phenomenon. With ethnographic attention to the spaces in which Puer tea is harvested, processed, traded, and consumed, anthropologist Jinghong Zhang constructs a vivid account of the transformation of a cottage handicraft into a major industry-with predictable risks and unexpected consequences.Watch the associated videos at https://archive.org/details/PUERTEADVD1. show lessTags
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I had hoped for a discussion on teas. This is not. This is a college textbook of advanced Sociology, that uses " tea as a metaphor"
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If one were to imagine an ethnography of a commodity, one could do no better than to imagine Jinghong Zhang’s Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic. . . . Zhang’s book offers stories about the people who infuse Puer tea with identity, with history, with cachet (or “urban chic”). Zhang demonstrates that humans create the contexts and conditions for categorization, for custom, for show more commercialization. Something as commonplace—or as culturally foundational, depending on your perspective—as tea does not escape the layering-on of meaning (Zhang uses the term “packaging”) that makes it a worthy object of careful and deliberative study. show less
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Author Information
1 Work 45 Members
Jinghong Zhang is a lecturer at Yunnan University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Anthropology, History, Food & Cooking
- DDC/MDS
- 394.1 — Society, government, & culture Customs, etiquette & folklore General customs Eating, drinking, using drugs
- LCC
- GT2907 .C6 .Z4366 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Manners and customs (General) Manners and customs (General) Customs relative to private life
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 45
- Popularity
- 663,729
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
