Xu Xiake

In the eleventh year of Chongzhen (1638 AD), in May, Xu Xiake entered Yunnan from Guizhou, marking the final chapter of his life's travels. For him, perhaps the most memorable thing about Yunnan was the availability of excellent tea everywhere he went, "sufficient to console the traveler." In *Xu Xiake's Travel Notes*, he recorded over 80 tea-related events during his journey, nearly 60 of which took place in Yunnan. This reflects the popularity of tea drinking in Ming Dynasty Yunnan. Not long after his Yunnan travels, in the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1641 AD), Xu Xiake passed away in his hometown Jiangyin. Three years later, Qing troops crossed the pass, and the Ming-Qing dynastic change began, with warfare quickly spreading to Yunnan. From the rebellion of the local chieftain Sha Dingzhou in the second year of Shunzhi (1645 AD) to the Qing forces' pacification of Yunnan in the first year of Kangxi (1662 AD), and finally the suppression of Wu Sangui's rebellion in the twentieth year of Kangxi (1681 AD), the continuous warfare for almost 40 years had long erased the prosperity of tea culture that Xu Xiake had described. It wasn't until the Qianlong era that Pu'er tea from…