TEA AND " TEA-YIELDING " PLANTS 97 



the hands of five establishments, which pay to the provincial 

 government at Chengtu a fixed tax of about i cent, per catty. 

 Payment is done by purchasing permits called " Yin piao," 

 which bear the official stamp. Each permit covers a bale of 

 120 catties or two smaller ones, and costs Tls. i"20. 



Whereas at Tachienlu the tea passes directly into the 

 hands of Thibetans, at Sungpan it remains in the hands of the 

 five tea establishments. These are owned by Mohammedan 

 Chinese, who, in addition to carrying on a considerable local 

 trade, have trusted agents travelling all over north-eastern 

 Thibet bartering tea for furs, wool, musk, medicines, and 

 other Thibetan commodities. 



The tea-trade of Sungpan is an improving one, but it is 

 practically impossible to obtain reliable figures of its volume. 

 There are, of course, Chinese Official Returns stating the 

 number of " Yin piao " sold annually, but where official 

 peculation is so general such returns are notoriously untrust- 

 worthy. Piecing together information gathered diuing my 

 three visits to Sungpan, I suggest that the tea-trade averages 

 about £75,000 annually. 



From all sources the total annual value of the tea exported 

 from China to Thibet is about a quarter of a million sterHng. 

 On paper this may not appear very great, but if the sparse 

 population of Thibet and the difficult means of intercommunica- 

 tion be duly considered, it will be seen that the trade is really 

 a very considerable one. Indian teas cannot compete with 

 the Chinese product in central and northern Thibet, but 

 around Lhassa and in southern Thibet generally, they ought 

 to command a market. 



In all the larger medicine shops in Szechuan and, incident- 

 ally, elsewhere in the Empire, a product known as " P'uerh 

 tea " is on sale. It is packed in circular cakes, flat at top and 

 bottom, about 8 inches across, and covered with bamboo 

 leaves fastened by strips of palm leaves. This tea is grown in 

 the Shan states, largely in the district of I'bang, and is the 

 product of a variety of the true Tea plant {Thea sinensis, var. 

 assamica). It takes its name from P'uerh Fu, a prefecture 

 in southern Yunnan, and the trade entrepot of that region. 

 The leaves, after the necessary' preliminary processes, are 

 VOL. II.— 7 



