Puer tea has been grown for centuries in the "Six Great Tea Mountains" of Yunnan Province. 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 it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices for it. 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 cultural 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.

Jinghong Zhang is a lecturer at Yunnan University.

"This is an engrossing study of the Puer tea industry and the many cultural spheres that surround it. It will be of keen interest to the Western tea trade as well as historians, connoisseurs, and enthusiasts. Tea publications rarely, if ever, discuss the complex relationships that quite literally bring tea to the table. Never has the anatomy of tea been dissected in such a wide ranging, thorough, and engaging way."--Steven D. Owyoung, co-translator of Korean Tea Classics

This book presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computational and Bioengineering (CBE 2020) jointly organized in virtual mode by the Department of Computer Science and the Department of BioScience & Sericulture, Sri Padmavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam (Women's University), Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India, during 4-5 December 2020. The book includes the latest research on advanced computational methodologies such as artificial intelligence, data mining and data warehousing, cloud computing, computational intelligence, soft computing, image processing, Internet of things, cognitive computing, wireless networks, social networks, big data analytics, machine learning, network security, computer networks and communications, bioinformatics, biocomputing/biometrics, computational biology, biomaterials, bioengineering, and medical and biomedical informatics.

In the Qing period (1644-1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.

Puer tea has been grown for centuries in the "Six Great Tea Mountains" of Yunnan Province. 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 it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices for it. 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 cultural 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.

Jinghong Zhang is a lecturer at Yunnan University.

"This is an engrossing study of the Puer tea industry and the many cultural spheres that surround it. It will be of keen interest to the Western tea trade as well as historians, connoisseurs, and enthusiasts. Tea publications rarely, if ever, discuss the complex relationships that quite literally bring tea to the table. Never has the anatomy of tea been dissected in such a wide ranging, thorough, and engaging way."--Steven D. Owyoung, co-translator of Korean Tea Classics

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.