the present province of Hunan. Here, Ma Yin, a former carpenter (died
931), had made himself a king. He controlled some of the main trade
routes, set up a clean administration, bought up all merchandise which
the merchants brought, but allowed them to export only local products,
mainly tea, iron and lead. This regulation gave him a personal income of
several millions every year, and in addition fostered the exploitation
of the natural resources of this hitherto retarded area.


3 _Monopolistic trade in South China. Printing and paper money in the
north_

The prosperity of the small states of South China was largely due to the
growth of trade, especially the tea trade. The habit of drinking tea
seems to have been an ancient Tibetan custom, which spread to
south-eastern China in the third century A.D. Since then there had been
two main centres of production, Szechwan and south-eastern China. Until
the eleventh century Szechwan had remained the leading producer, and tea
had been drunk in the Tibetan fashion, mixed with flour, salt, and
ginger. It then began to be drunk without admixture. In the T'ang epoch
tea drinking spread all over China, and there sprang up a class of
wholesalers who bought the tea from the peasants, accumulated stocks,
and distributed them. From 783 date the first attempts of the state to
monopolize the tea trade and to make it a source of revenue; but it
failed in an attempt to make the cultivation a state monopoly. A tea
commissariat was accordingly set up to buy the tea from the producers
and supply it to traders in possession of a state licence. There
naturally developed then a pernicious collaboration between state
officials and the wholesalers. The latter soon eliminated the small
traders, so that they themselves secured all the profit; official