The Departure Point of Tea Road on Sea

By Chen Weiquan

The Time Square at Sanjiangkou, Ningbo witnessed a big fanfare on the morning of May 21st, 2009. A monument site was unveiled in commemoration of Ningbo as a departure port of the Tea Road on the Sea in ancient times. Guests from countries and regions such as Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macao attended the ceremony. The monument is composed of one main monument and four secondary monuments, a 2,000-m2 tea-leaf-shaped ship pattern, a phalanx of capstans. The memorial site occupies an area of 6,000 square meters. The principal monument stands 3 meters high and 18 meters wide, with an inscription relating history in Chinese and English.

Port and Shipbuilding

The site is at Sanjiangkou in downtown Ningbo. Sanjiangkou, in Chinese, literarily means the place where three rivers converge, though the fact is a little bit more complicated: Yao River and Fenghua River, the mother rivers of Ningbo, merge here to form Yong River. The present-day Ningbo as a city sprawls out for tens of kilometers in all directions. Over thousands of years, the city had river ports at different locations. Today, Ningbo Port is a port with many river ports and sea ports. The Jiangxia Port situated in todays Sanjiangkou was most representative of the ports in the history of Ningbo. The city was part of the territory of the Yue Kingdom and adopted the name Ningbo in the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Jiangxia Port came into being in the 9th century. Ningbo City therefore ranked with Yangzhou on the Yangtze River and Guangzhou in south China as most important foreign trade port cities. Tea, cotton and celadon were the major goods shipped out from Ningbo to overseas markets. That is why Ningbo is recognized as the departure port of the ancient Tea Road on the Sea.

A group of capstans in front of the monument points to ancient times when ships docked at the port were so many that their masts were described as a forest. Ningbo was also home to many shipbuilding businesses. The ocean-going ships were first built in the Tang Dynasty. The shipbuilding industry in Mingzhou (the ancient name of the present-day Ningbo) led the country in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). During the years of Emperor Zhenzong of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), a government shipyard was set up at todays Sanjiangkou. Ships made there were for trade and for government diplomats on their overseas missions. History records that two diplomats of the Northern Song Dynasty rode ships built in Mingzhou to visit Korea in 1978. History does not specify the tonnage of these ships. Lin Shimin, a researcher with Ningbo Cultural Relics Institute, estimates that the dead weight capacity of each of the two ships was about 1,100 tons.

On the opposite side of the river across the monument is the Ningbo Museum of Folk Lifestyles. On the site of an ancient guild house, the museum explains the shipbuilding history in ancient Ningbo. Ocean-going ships made in ancient Mingzhou set sail for Korea on the north, Japan on the east, Guangzhou on the south. Ships from Guangzhou then took two different routes. One went southeastward and the other southwestward. The monument carries a map showing the specifics of the Tea Road on the Sea.

Tea

Mingzhou became the departure port of the Tea Road on the Sea for ample reasons. Experts have looked into the ancient history of Ningbo and agreed that Ningbo has been an important tea producer and that tea exported from Ningbo also came from tea producers and suppliers in the vast inlands in central China.

A big part of the Siming Mountain sits in Ningbo, where Yuyao River, Fenghua River and Caoer River originate. The mountain has excellent geographic conditions for growing tea. For over 300 consecutive years from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) up to the Ming Dynasty, a county under the jurisdiction of Ningbo sent 130 kg of tribute tea each year to the royal houses whereas each of other counties in Ningbo could only contribute one to three kilograms each year. The Pearl Tea, a very famous brand in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), was largely produced in the Siming Mountain. Today, Dalan Town in Yuyao has a land of 1,700 hectares dedicated to tea production. Dalan is one of Chinas largest green tea producers at township level.

Rural areas around Ningbo were a major source of tea export from Ningbo to overseas markets. But there were more suppliers from neighboring provinces. A research shows that tea businesses in the last years of the Qing Dynasty in Ningbo were mostly operated by people from Anhui Province. This data points to a long tea-transport route which started in Tunxi, Anhui, went all the way down the Qiantang River, switched into the Eastern Zhejiang Canal at Xixing, Xiaoshan near Hangzhou before it reached Ningbo. Tea was also transported all the way from Jiangsu in the north, Jiangxi in the west and Hunan and Hubei in central China. Other places in Zhejiang also supplied tea to the port.

Despite the fact that Shanghai is a flourishing port city in modern times, Ningbo remains the second largest port for tea export today. Data indicates that Ningbo shipped out 40,000 tons of tea to overseas markets in 2008. A part of the amount came from tea producers which once shipped their tea to Mingzhou for export in ancient times.

Designation

In April 2006, an international forum was held to explore the topic of the Tea Road on the Sea. A proposal was made at the forum to mark Ningbo as the departure port. In April 2008, at the proposal of a Japanese scholar, the Research Center of Tea Culture in East Asia was founded by Ningbo Tea Promotion Association. The next step became natural: the monument site was unveiled in May, 2009.

According to research by experts, Ningbo owed its status as the departure port of the Tea Road on the Sea to Buddhist monks, government diplomats, and business people.

Buddhist monks from the Korean Peninsular and Japan came to China for advanced Buddhism studies. Tea was among the important things they brought back to their homelands. These monks include founding fathers of some influential Buddhist sects in Japan and Korea today. The ancient historical documents and stone steles in Ningbo and Japan relate whos who and whats what in tea-fragranced exchanges between China and Japan.

Korea and Japan sent their envoys to the Tang (618-907), Song and Ming dynasties. Mingzhou was an ideal first choice for their entry into China. It took five days and four nights to sail before the wind from Ningbo to Japan. In the Song Dynasty, a guesthouse for Korean diplomats was constructed in Ningbo. The residence is now preserved in Ningbo. Tea produced in Yuyao is mentioned in the history of Japan. Celadon made in Zhejiang is listed as national treasure in Korea. Underwater archaeological probes in ports in Southeast Asia have recovered celadon tea sets made in Yue Kilns in Zhejiang.

Traders brought tea overseas. In the old hard days, people from Ningbo traveled overseas for a living. Tea was a must in their baggage for survival on the sea and in foreign lands. Tea buyers from foreign countries frequented Ningbo. In 1893, a Russian businessman named Popov came to Ningbo after visiting many other tea production areas across China. The Russian tea trader believed tea made in Ningbo was the best. He bought tea in Ningbo and invited Liu Junzhou, the deputy director of Ningbo Tea Plant, and 12 tea technicians to operate a tea plantation in Georgia, Russia. Liu Junzhou dedicated 30 years of his life to tea farming in Georgia. He was honored by the Tsar and the Soviet Union respectively. Historians agree that tea in Georgia was introduced from Ningbo. One of the secondary monuments at the site relates the story of Liu Junzhou and his achievement in Georgia. □