Coffee, and the Beast Palace
Caffa (qahwah)—also called qahwa or kahwa—originally meant “wine.”
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the world Hwiyeom had once lived in, when the Ming Dynasty still stood, coffee had only just reached the Middle East, and only a handful of regions drank it at all. As the ages turned and the drink passed into the Ottoman Empire, it came to be called kahve; from there it crossed into Europe and became café. Later still, Sir Henry Blount—an Englishman who had served as a diplomat in Turkey—could not forget the coffee he had drunk there, and upon his return he introduced the coffeehouse to England, calling the beverage “coffee.” That was the coffee Hwiyeom knew.
The Gyeong and the Ming were not the same nation, and the development of civilization and technology in this world differed greatly from the one he had left behind. Even so, if the broad currents of history ran parallel, then coffee ought to be obtainable in the Middle East at this very moment. That was his reasoning.
“Caffa? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of such a commodity…”
“Well, it wouldn’t be anything imported here. Even in the Western Regions it’s a niche beverage, drunk only in a few places.”
“A beverage?”
“Yes. It has a distinctive flavor, and drinking it restores vigor to a weary body—a kind of tea, really.”
At the word tea, the Provincial Governor clicked his tongue.
“It would fall under the monopoly goods, then. I can already sense your intent from the way you’ve saved that for later.”
“Hehehe.”
“If you bring it in and sell it, will it make any real money?”
Hwiyeom very nearly shouted, Yes—and it might just shove Yunnan’s bread-and-butter Pu’er tea into the dirt and turn the Central Plains into a Western soup nation. Starbucks? Luckin Coffee? Go choke down your bitter leaf tea with your sickeningly sweet night-yanggaeng. Make way for the world’s first nationwide coffee chain—Hwiyeom Coffee! Hi-ha!—but instead he only smiled shyly.
“A little?”
“Ugh. Merchants…”
“It wouldn’t be a bad deal for Your Excellency either. Caffa is perfectly suited for cultivation right here in Yunnan. If you’ll permit it, I’d like to lease farmland on a large scale and establish Caffa plantations.”
Beomin’s half-lidded eyes snapped open, suddenly bright and keen.
“So you mean not merely to middleman the trade, but to grow this Caffa in Yunnan itself?”
“Yes. That way we can hire local Yunnan people as laborers—creating employment—and Yunnan gains another ‘Yunnan tea’ to sell, enriching the province’s sources of revenue still further.”
“You truly understand mutual benefit. An admirable attitude.”
“Nothing lasts long without mutual benefit. Since ancient times, any relationship where both sides don’t profit has always ended badly.”
“Quite so, hahaha!”
Beomin laughed brightly, then cocked his head.
“But will a tea from the Western Regions truly grow well in the Central Plains? How do you know that?”
Because I’ve seen it, of course.
Someone uninterested in the subject might not know, but China was itself a coffee-producing nation, accounting for roughly three to five percent of global production—and more than ninety percent of that was Arabica grown in Yunnan Province. He could hardly say so to the Provincial Governor, however, so Hwiyeom only smiled evasively and fobbed him off with a plausible story.
“I happened to hear a merchant speak of Caffa’s places of origin. He said the climate and soil there are remarkably similar to Yunnan’s.”
“Is that so…”
Fortunately, the Provincial Governor did not press further. Instead he steered the conversation back to business.
“So you wish to lease land?”
“Yes. I had planned to contract with a suitable number of farm households among those hit by the blight this time—but is there a better approach?”
“In that case, why not make use of the official fields? The government plantations that produced Biluochun and Tieguanyin have been reduced to wasteland by the blight. Convert a portion of them into Caffa farms.”
“I have no objection—but are you certain? If the crop fails, official revenue will fall.”
“In exchange, private farm households no longer bear the risk. And if the volume of Biluochun and Tieguanyin from official fields decreases, the price of tea sold by the common people will rise accordingly.”
It was a model attitude for a Provincial Governor. Hwiyeom thought for a moment of Sichuan’s own Poseongsa and chuckled under his breath.
The mind works just as sharply—but let him roll around in this post for a few more decades, pick up some grime and start feathering his own nest, and he’ll start to feel a lot like the Sichuan Poseongsa.
“Very well. But let’s hold this contract in reserve for now. First I have to obtain Caffa seedlings.”
“Understood.”
Having roughly concluded his discussion with Beomin, Hwiyeom summoned the Western Region merchants currently staying in Yunnan Province.
When the Arab merchants heard that Hwiyeom was seeking coffee seedlings and coffee beans, they tilted their heads.
“Qahwa? Ah—now that you mention it, I have heard of it. A tea that drives away sleep, favored by certain scholars.”
“That’s the one. I’d like to import it in bulk—and if possible, seeds or seedlings as well.”
“Not difficult. The question is payment. How do you intend to settle the account? Yunnan tea?”
At the Arab merchant’s question, Hwiyeom grinned.
“Gentlemen, I come from Sichuan. And what is Sichuan the land of origin for?”
“Silk! The famous City of Silk—Sichuan!”
“The legendary city where even the roads are paved with silk!”
The El Dorado rumors about Sichuan, is it? Western fantasies about the East never change.
Hwiyeom briefly sank into a geographical meditation on whether one could even call the Middle East “the West,” then smiled again.
“How about settling payment in Sichuan brocade? We could use tea, but then the volume available for trade between us would shrink—we still have to sell tea into the Central Plains as well.”
“Acceptable.”
“You wouldn’t happen to need pepper or glass?”
“Those are goods the government offices control. Can’t do it.”
“Ah… a pity.”
“Oh—and could you also procure people for me?”
“We do not deal in slaves. The Silk Road is far too harsh to bring slaves along.”
“No, not that. Skilled craftsmen and scholars—people who aren’t being treated well in their own countries. I’ll pay handsomely for transport. I understand there are plenty of such people in the Middle East and Europe right now.”
“Hmm…”
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a time of trial for alchemists. In the Middle East—the very cradle of alchemy and chemistry—the growing influence of conservative fundamentalist doctrine after the fifteenth century had driven fields such as mathematics, chemistry, and the sciences into disfavor. In Europe, medieval Scholastic philosophy was declining and the Renaissance was taking hold; the paradigm of learning was in transition. Caught between Aristotelian orthodoxy and Galileo’s scientific revolution, alchemists were often dismissed as superstitious charlatans. Paracelsus, the Swiss physician and alchemist, had clashed with the medical establishment of his day and been forced into a life of wandering. John Dee, the English mathematician and astrologer, had been driven from his Cambridge professorship for his mystical leanings.
Hwiyeom’s aim was to draw these intellectuals from Europe and the Middle East into service for the Dang Family—as, ahem, highly valued talent.
“Very well. I shall inquire.”
“Thank you. Inshallah.”
“Hahaha—Inshallah!”
And so Hwiyeom sowed the seeds for recruiting Europe’s scholars and intellectuals, and exchanged a silk-for-Caffa trade contract as well.
Lee Jinmyeong, who had been following him about, asked,
“Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for this Caffa as well, will you return to Sichuan?”
“Mm. We do need to get back before winter… and I’m worried whether the work I’ve set in motion is proceeding properly. But there’s still something left to do.”
“What is it?”
“I’m going to pay a visit to the Jeomchang Sect and the Southern Savage Beast Palace.”
“What? Why there?”
The Jeomchang Sect was one of the Nine Sects and One Gang that symbolized the orthodox path—a holy ground of swift-sword masters famed for the Peerless-Under-Heaven sword art known as the Four-One Sword Method. Though both belonged to the orthodox camp, the Sichuan Dang Family—ranked among the Nine Great Noble Families—and the Jeomchang Sect were scarcely more than nodding acquaintances when they crossed paths at the Martial Alliance.
The Southern Savage Beast Palace was another matter entirely. It lay further southwest from Yunnan, deep in the tropical jungles, and was classified by Central Plains martial society as one of the “Beyond-the-Passes” powers. The North Sea Ice Palace, the Southern Savage Beast Palace, the Tibetan Potala Palace, and the South Sea Sun God Palace were known as the Four Great Beyond-the-Passes forces—formidable powers all.
At first I thought it meant “beyond the world”—seoe—but no, it means “beyond the passes,” the Great Wall. Central Plains arrogance never changes… which is exactly why they look down on people from Sichuan, too.
In any case, the Southern Savage Beast Palace and the Sichuan Dang Family had no points of contact whatsoever. If one insisted on a classification, the place was a lawless zone that fell somewhere between orthodoxy and heresy. Lee Jinmyeong’s reaction—why on earth go there?—was entirely reasonable.
Hwiyeom’s answer was simple.
“Do you have any idea how much money there is to be made there?”
The “Southern Savages” Hwiyeom knew were none other than Vietnam. Rubber, bauxite, phosphate rock—even oil and natural gas. If one could plant a straw in one of Southeast Asia’s richest resource nations, the profits would be endless.
Even just the rubber would be wonderful… ah, but rubber doesn’t arrive until the nineteenth century. What a waste. Vietnam is one of the top rubber producers in the world.
Bauxite, the raw material for aluminum, was likewise a white elephant given the civilization and technology of the present age. Phosphate rock, however, was another story. Sichuan produced a fair amount of phosphate as well, but the quantity and quality of Southeast Asian deposits were on an entirely different level.
If I open a phosphate trade route with Vietnam, I won’t have to cling to Sichuan’s guano reserves any longer. Right now most of the guano goes into fertilizer production—but once the Vietnam route opens, securing fuel for gunpowder manufacture will take flight.
Hwiyeom smiled.
“And I thought it might be wise to make some introductions in advance—Jeomchang and the Savage Beast Palace both.”
“Why?”
“Since time immemorial, no one likes watching someone else pull wealth out of their own storehouse. In a way, our Dang Family has cast a fishing line into their fishpond. The Beast Palace is one thing—but if we leave Jeomchang alone, they might start cozying up to Qingcheng and come after the Sichuan Dang Family.”
“What?”
The bulk of the Jeomchang Sect’s revenue came from selling the premium tea grown on the tea plantations the sect itself owned. Now that every last sale of that tea would pass through the Sichuan Dang Family, the Jeomchang Sect could hardly hide its displeasure at having its purse strings handed over to someone else.
It hasn’t been publicly announced yet, but the moment word of the monopoly rights gets out, Jeomchang will flip. Of course, the Provincial Governor arranged it, so they have no righteous pretext—and the principle of noninterference between government and martial world will keep them in check for a while. But if we leave it alone, the rot will eventually burst, and they’ll make some kind of move.
Even Elder Bak Chang-eon—who was currently burning through his old age in Hwiyeom’s place back in Sichuan—would go berserk if he received an official notice from the Poseongsa saying, “Henceforth all Sichuan brocade shall be sold only through Shaolin Temple.”
He’d probably charge off toward Mount Song shouting, “I’ll transplant silk thread into the Shaolin abbot’s skull with a wooden fish-drum!” No doubt about it.
“If we leave things as they are, a major problem will erupt later. I’ll visit Jeomchang, explore a path of coexistence, settle their grievances—and then go to the Beast Palace and talk with them as well.”
“Yes, understood.”
“If you understand, write a letter, Secretary Lee. As polite and low-profile as possible. Something like: ‘We have unintentionally caused you inconvenience, but we have matters to discuss for our mutual benefit; we would be grateful if the Sect Master would grant us an audience.’”
“Yes.”
And so the letter Lee Jinmyeong composed crossed the mountain gate of the Jeomchang Sect. Several more days passed—and then, on a certain morning:
“The Sect Master summons you.”
Hwiyeom found himself facing the Jeomchang Sect martial artists who had come out to meet him, their faces stony and unsmiling.