Tea, Taste and Traders: Cultural Mediators and the Reinvention of China's National Beverage

The proposed study intends to investigate the resurgence of a Chinese tea culture in mainland China. It will seek to understand how tea, which has become a symbol of Chinese culture, is traded in Zhejiang Province - an important tea production area. More specifically, the research will aim at exploring the relationship between tea's image as a cultural commodity and Chinese identity by looking at how these notions are being mediated through trade. Indeed, I hypothesise that this mediation is often operated in practice, by private actors involved in the local tea business such as teahouse owners, retailers and even producers, when they promote tea and tea culture to consumers. As they adopt strategies to market tea, businessmen draw on the beverage's historical associations with Chinese culture, thus both making its consumption a defining element of Chineseness and shaping its image as a commodity. For example, they may emphasise the Chinese nature of tea drinking, by preparing tea to their customers using sophisticated brewing methods identified as distinctively Chinese. Likewise, they might also 'teach' tea culture to their customers as they sell tea. All these strategies have an impact on imaginations of Chinese culture and tea's image as a cultural commodity. Furthermore, they are linked to the central government's attempt to redefine and promote a refined version of Chinese culture to its citizens and abroad. My project will also discuss this phenomenon, which will undoubtedly manifest itself through some of the public-private tea promotion ventures occurring in the field.

In order to collect research data, I will conduct ethnographic fieldwork with tea traders and other types of 'mediators' working in the tea business, tracing commercial networks between a producing village and the provincial capital, Hangzhou.