Two weeks ago, at the Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, I attended a lecture by James A. Benn, an Associate Professor in the Social Sciences Department at McMaster University. Mr. Benn’s lecture was titled “Tea and Other Decoctions for ‘Nourishing Life’ in Medieval China,” and it focused on the medieval China’s thriving health remedies market, where tea and other ‘decoctions’ played a central role. Today, according to Mr. Benn, we might call decoctions ‘health drinks.’ More on this in a moment.
James Benn, Associate Professor, McMaster University
I learned among other things that tea’s widespread use in China began only in the 8th century, while before that it was drank locally in Southwest China and even there it was drank only sporadically. When it was consumed, the loose-leaf tea form of today did not exist. Rather, tea leaves were ground down to a fine powder and then compressed into cakes. Water was than added to these cakes – think of a clump of tang, or a clump of flavor powder at the bottom of a Doritos bag – and then consumed. Across the centuries the tea cakes were flavored with citrus peels, and salt, or whisked to a froth, much like a latte.
There was endless experimentation with tea form. But if anything was a sure thing, it is that tea’s rise was not a sure thing.
Through the Song Dynasty tea – green tea specifically, since fermented teas are a later invention – competed with decoctions for marketshare. Tea was marketed in various ways; as a cleanser due to its diarrhetic properties; as a replacement for alcohol, especially to the monk class who saw tea as a way to form relationships with non-monk nobles who normally bonded over alcohol; and as a mental enhancer stimulant, something that again appealed to the monk class but also to the academic classes for obvious reasons. What immediately strikes one about all of these marketing strategies, of course, is how much they resemble today’s marketing of ‘health’ and ‘energy’ drinks – body cleansing, social lubrication and work performance boosters are staples of any marketing campaign you can think of, from the health supplement isles of Whole Foods to the crack dispenser caffeine drink coolers of gas stations.
Still, despite tea’s stimulant properties and myriad marketing strategies, decoctions did well or perhaps better than tea. Like tea, they were sold in easily soluble powder forms for convenient, quick consumption. Like tea sellers, decoctioneurs claimed various health benefits, sometimes they set a decoction up as the polar opposite complement to tea – are you cleansing too quickly at the moment, take this licorice brew, it will stop you right up. By the 11th century some 26 predictions were officially recognized and regulated in medieval Chinese pharmacies. Popular concoctions even had very colorful names to help with sales. Among names like ‘Apricot Frost,’ “Mica (the mineral),’ “Bonksice Rose,’ and “Licorice,” undoubtedly my favorite has to be ‘Breaking Qi.’ I feel like “Breaking Qi’ would do very well today as a brand wherever it was sold. I’m sure it exists somewhere in China. But for you ambitious entrepreneurs, go ahead and bring that one over here. I’m sure you’d be able to compete with Beano within a few months of powerful marketing. You could, as decoction entrepreneurs in medieval China did, market your Breaking Qi decoction as a natural complement to tea.
What finally broke the stalemate is a sort of precursor to modern scientific journalism. Song Dynasty academics began to warn about the overuse of decoctions saying, and this is a quote from the lecture, ’Doctors believe that fragrant herbs are a cause of illness among the rich and powerful.’ These scholars and their doctor colleagues had perhaps noticed that decoctions were bringing on harmful effects in populations most likely to use them – the rich and powerful. Like in today’s market based healthcare systems, it seems, the demand for healthcare was greatest where incomes were the highest, a supply-driven mechanism rather than one where consumers truly consumed that which they needed.
Tea, in the end, was able to survive within the culture partly due to the fact that the warnings again it’s overuse, while they did exist, were much milder and less critical overall.
In a way then, tea’s popularity today is due in no small part due to early tea advocates’ ability to successfully brand and protect the brand of what seemed to be for a time a good but otherwise unremarkable product. Of course, the story of tea is also the story of an entire culture that eventually built up around its use and proliferation, but the one thousand year old marketing success story is one to keep in mind when designing any product, whether in China or elsewhere.
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