Yongzheng's Bureaucratization Reform and the Founding of Pu'er Prefecture (1729)

Pu'er tea is called pu'er tea because of one key year: 1729. That year the Qing court established Pu'er Prefecture, bringing the purchase, taxation, and tribute of tea under government management, and the tea of the Pu'er region gained a single unified name. Behind it was a larger political project: gaitu guiliu, replacing native chieftains with court-appointed officials.

What Was Gaitu Guiliu?

During the Yuan and Ming, many ethnic regions in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Huguang, and elsewhere were governed by tusi (native chieftains). A tusi was a hereditary local leader given an official title by the court, but local appointments, taxes, and justice were largely left to the tusi.

Gaitu guiliu meant abolishing the hereditary tusi and sending in "rotating officials" appointed and periodically transferred by the court, bringing these regions directly into the prefecture, department, and county system. During the Yongzheng reign, Ortai, Governor-General of Yunnan and Guizhou, pushed this policy hard, and large numbers of tusi across the southwest were removed or stripped of power.

For the Pu'er region, this meant the tea mountains went from being tusi domains to prefectures and counties directly governed by the court. In practice, the Qing didn't abolish every tusi at once; rotating officials took the lead while some submissive native officials were kept on as assistants, creating a mixed form of governance.

When Was Pu'er Prefecture Established?

In 1729 (the seventh year of Yongzheng), the Qing court carved out several of the Cheli Pacification Commission's banna (districts) east of the Lancang River and established Pu'er Prefecture. This area east of the Lancang happened to include Youle, Gedeng, Yibang, Mangzhi, Manzhuan, and Mansa, which later became the Six Ancient Tea Mountains. The banna west of the Lancang remained under the Cheli Pacification Commission.

• Seat: Pu'er City, today the county seat of Ning'er Hani and Yi Autonomous County in Pu'er City.
• Jurisdiction: Ning'er County, Simao Subprefecture, Weiyuan Subprefecture, and Talang Subprefecture, with authority over the Cheli Pacification Commission.
• Extent: Roughly today's Pu'er City (Simao, Jinggu, Mojiang, Ning'er, and others) and Xishuangbanna Prefecture, extending into part of what is now northern Laos.

Pu'er Prefecture connected inward to Yuanjiang and Kunming and outward to Simao and the major tea mountains, making it the administrative and transportation hub of southern Yunnan. The Qing's Yinan Circuit was also stationed here. After the prefecture was established, the court also posted a subprefect and garrison troops on Youle Mountain; the subprefect later moved to Simao, which gradually became the center of the tea trade.

What Was the Simao General Tea Office?

Alongside the new prefecture, the government planned a "General Tea Office" in Simao as the official body for buying and managing tea. The usual account is that it took shape in the seventh year of Yongzheng and began operating the following year. Traveling merchants were forbidden to go into the mountains to buy tea directly from farmers; all tea first had to be brought to the General Tea Office, where the government bought and taxed it centrally before reselling it to merchants.

The aim was to bring tea, an important source of revenue, out of the hands of tusi and private merchants and into government control. But it also created the problems of a government monopoly: purchase prices were set by officials, which limited what tea farmers and merchants could do. Accounts of how the General Tea Office actually operated differ somewhat across sources. What's more certain is that it marked the beginning of the Qing using state power to intervene directly in the tea trade.

How the Qing Government Managed the Tea Trade

Beyond the General Tea Office, Qing management of pu'er had several other layers:

• Taxed by the tong: According to the Collected Statutes and Precedents of the Great Qing, a rule in 1735 (the 13th year of Yongzheng) set 7 round cakes as 1 tong, each tong weighing 49 liang, with tax levied per tong. Today's tradition of packaging "7 cakes to a tong" can be traced back to this, though each cake then weighed something different from today's 357 g; see Qizi Bing and the 357 g Cake.
• Tribute: After the prefecture was founded, pu'er was systematically sent to the court as tribute, with officials in Simao drawing silver to procure it; see Imperial Tribute Pu'er.
• Tea mountain regulations: Yibang still has Qing-dynasty tea steles dated 1738, 1848, 1888, and other years, engraved with official rules on the tea trade, taxes, and wages. They're physical evidence of how the Qing governed the tea mountains.

Under this system, large numbers of outside merchants and migrants came into the tea mountains, especially Han Chinese from the Shiping area of Yunnan. They settled on the mountains and opened tea houses (tea firms), driving the boom of the Six Ancient Tea Mountains in the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras. That heyday and the later decline are covered in The Rise and Fall of the Six Tea Mountains.

Pu'er Tea Wasn't Actually Grown in Pu'er's Prefectural City

There's a detail that's often overlooked: in his Record of Pu'er Tea, the Qing writer Ruan Fu specifically noted that so-called pu'er tea wasn't grown near the prefectural city of Pu'er, but within the bounds of Simao Subprefecture under the prefecture, that is, on the 6 tea mountains along the Lancang River. The prefectural city was the administrative center and the tea's collection point; tea from the various mountains was gathered, processed, and shipped on from there, so it all took the name "Pu'er." It's the same logic by which many products today are named after their trading hub.

What Became of Pu'er Prefecture?

• Mid-to-late Qing: Pu'er Prefecture remained a key town in southern Yunnan, with its jurisdiction shifting as administrative divisions changed. Around the first year of Qianlong (1736), for example, the assignment of the banna east of the river was reorganized again.
• 1913: In the early Republic, local administration was reorganized, prefectures were abolished and counties kept. Pu'er Prefecture was dissolved and its former seat became Ning'er County. Pu'er Prefecture existed for 184 years in all.
• Today: In 2007, what had been Simao City was renamed Pu'er City, and the county where the old prefectural seat stood was named Ning'er Hani and Yi Autonomous County. The name "Pu'er" returned to the map as the name of a city.

FAQ

What year was Pu'er Prefecture established? 1729 (the seventh year of Yongzheng). Its seat was in today's Ning'er county town, and it was abolished in 1913.

What does gaitu guiliu have to do with pu'er tea? It turned the tea mountains from tusi domains into prefectures and counties governed directly by the court. That let the government set up the General Tea Office to buy tea, tax it by the tong, and list pu'er as a tribute item, and the name "pu'er tea" spread along with it.

What did the Simao General Tea Office do? It was a government tea-purchasing body in Simao. Merchants were forbidden to buy tea in the mountains on their own; tea first went to the General Tea Office to be bought and taxed centrally, then resold.

Is today's Pu'er City the old Pu'er Prefecture? The areas are similar but not identical. Pu'er Prefecture also included today's Xishuangbanna. Today's Pu'er City was renamed from Simao City in 2007, and the old prefectural seat is in today's Ning'er County.