Materiality, Stimulants and the Puer Tea Fad

This paper shows how a necessary condition in establishing the recent Puer tea fad was the social life of taste. Contrary to explanations which emphasise market speculation, I stress the emergence and transformation of the public taste for aged Puer tea as the the key to the Puer phenomenon. It is a critical factor especially in allowing the development of a futures trade in Puer tea, a unique phenomenon that cannot be found in the tea trade in other parts of the world. In this paper, I use both historical and fieldwork data to trace the taste for Puer in different historical eras. The social life of the taste for Puer tea tells us that the way historical agents used Puer’s materiality to create its distinctive taste has been the most powerful force behind Puer’s rich social life.