Academic literature on the topic 'Tea trade Economic aspects Sri Lanka'

The functioning of the tea industry forms the main source of revenue for Sri Lanka’s budget, which is now ranked as the world’s fourth largest tea producer and second largest exporter. About 20% of the world’s tea products are sourced from Sri Lanka. The key objective of this study is to analyze the financial and economic aspects in the context of studying the peculiarities of sales of tea production enterprises. The research of this question in the article is carried out in the following logical sequence: the specifics of the process of making tea products are studied; the historical aspects of the formation and development of the tea industry in Sri Lanka; identified the main directions of state policy in terms of functioning of tea production enterprises; Key aspects of the pricing and marketing policy of the tea industry have been analyzed; features of implementation of export mechanisms are indicated. The article focuses on the system of taxation by the government of the tea industry, taxes in the context of which are designed to redistribute gross domestic revenue in accordance with priority directions of state social policy. The paper notes that the Government of Sri Lanka has now implemented subsidy mechanisms for tea companies: 1) subsidy for the modernization of production facilities in the long run; 2) subsidy for the development of the tea industry to improve the efficiency of tea processing and its transformation into other varieties; 3) short-term subsidy, which insures against falling tea prices or rising raw material costs; 4) marketing subsidies in the form of tea promotion grants, discounts on import duties and grants from the Export Development Board. The study made it possible for the authors to summarize the following: in 2019, there is a gradual fragmentation of land and a shortage of skilled labor in the Sri Lankan tea industry; state policy to support the tea sector will in the long run allow for appropriate reforms and mechanisms for regulating aspects of the tea industry (adjusting exports and imports, pricing systems, subsidy programs, state land redistribution programs). Keywords: government policy, pricing, sales mechanisms, exports, income and losses, tea industry.

Abstract Tea manufacturing is an important industry for the Sri Lankan economy because it generates foreign income, which adds to gross domestic product of the country and creates employment opportunities. Tea has been exported to several countries from Sri Lanka for over a century, and Sri Lanka remains a leading tea exporter to date. Recently, the Sri Lankan government issues a policy which disadvantages the tea industry in the country. The government banned the use of glyphosate in the agricultural sector from 2015 to 2018 which directly or indirectly affects the tea industry. The policy brought a consequence where the farmers used illegal substances and other weedicides to control the weed. These consequences placed the Sri Lankan tea industry at risk since their final product is contains high amount of residual weedicide which exceeds the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL). In this paper, we use The Equilibrium Displacement Model to study the economic impact of rejections of tea consignments by Japan due to the excess use of 2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid (MCPA) in 2018. The demand of Sri Lankan bulk black tea by Japan has declined by 6.5% between 2017 and 2018. The estimated of the Sri Lankan tea industry from reduced demand for bulk black tea was Rs339 million. Keywords: tea industry, glyphosate ban, Sri Lanka Abstrak Teh adalah industri penting bagi perekonomian Sri Lanka karena menghasilkan devisa yang menambah produksi domestik bruto dan menciptakan lapangan kerja. Teh telah diekspor dari Sri Lanka selama lebih dari satu abad ke berbagai negara dan Sri Lanka tetap menjadi eksportir utama. Kebijakan pemerintah baru-baru ini yang memengaruhi sektor pertanian tidak menguntungkan bagi industri teh. Pelarangan penggunaan glifosat dari tahun 2015 hingga 2018 merupakan salah satu kebijakan yang berdampak signifikan terhadap industri teh, baik secara langsung maupun tidak langsung. Konsekuensi penggunaan formulasi pengendali gulma ilegal dan herbisida alternatif menempatkan industri teh pada keadaan yang beresiko melalui konsekuensi tidak disengaja dari kehilangan akses ke pasar ekspor teh karena insiden mengenai kelebihan Batas Maksimum Residu. Dalam tulisan ini, dampak ekonomi dari penolakan pengiriman teh dari Jepang karena penggunaan 2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid (MCPA) yang berlebihan pada tahun 2018 diselidiki dengan menggunakan Equilibrium Displacement Model pada industri teh. Permintaan ekspor Jepang untuk teh hitam curah turun 6,5% antara 2017 dan 2018. Perkiraan kerugian surplus ekonomi industri teh Sri Lanka dari penurunan permintaan teh hitam curah adalah Rs339 juta. Kata kunci: industri teh, larangan penggunaan glifosat, Sri Lanka

Essentially, equity and efficiency are integral parts of any economic activities of sustainability though the correlation and causation between those two constructs are not considered significant. This study intends to evaluate if the contract farming system is a sustainable solution to the prevailing socio-economic aspects of the labor productivity problem in the tea estate sector of Sri Lanka, where female workers are highly depressed. This study has employed the survey strategy within the instrumental case of a selected tea estate to assess equity and efficiency of women-empowered contract farming system. The analytical results for gender equity on input and performance indicators have proven that gender equity is maintained in contract farming at the sample tea estate. The efficiency analysis results revealed that the output elasticity of tea bushes is significantly lower for female farmers than male farmers. However, there is no such significant difference revealed in the output elasticity of labor between gender groups. These findings explicitly reveal that the female workers in the tea estate sector are capable of managing labor although they are dominated by males in the domesticity. It further implies that a transformation of the male-dominant culture of the tea estate community would enhance the entrepreneurial and leadership capabilities of female workers if they are provided with equal opportunities and freedom.

AbstractOrganic agriculture has the potential to provide improved livelihood opportunities, increased income and social benefits for resource-poor small-scale farmers. It has thus become a popular strategy for economic development and poverty reduction in many areas of the global south. However, there has been limited empirical research regarding the actual benefits of certified organic production, particularly when organic is combined with fair trade certification, and for small-scale farmers who are not engaged in coffee or banana production. Further research is needed to demonstrate experiences of farmers under diverse socioeconomic conditions, organizational contexts and degrees of market access. To address these gaps, two surveys of certified organic and fair trade tea producers in China and Sri Lanka were undertaken to investigate the contributions of organic crops to the household economy. In both cases, organic production required lower investment in terms of external inputs but a higher input of farmers’ labor. The price premium received by farmers for the organic tea compensated for the extra labor input and lower yield, resulting in a net profit. However, given the relatively small plots of tea gardens of each household, organic production could not fully provide for the households’ livelihood. Non-farm income dominated the total income of the households across the study cases, despite the earnings from organic farming. In both sites, market-oriented organic tea projects have created more options for paid work locally, which benefits women of reproductive age. Social benefits of organic farming were also reported. Pursuing fair trade certification on top of organic production facilitated farmer organizing, training and community development. Organic agriculture and fair trade certification offer important prospects to improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in other, less favored areas of Asia. These forms of certified production could provide economic and social benefits in instances where farm income is the main source of household income.

Bioclimatology is applied for growing tea in the West of Nghe An province, where the tea is considered as a high economic efficient plant to be priorly cultivated for reducing poverty and getting rich. Based on the bioclimatic characteristics of tea plant and regional climatic data from 1980 to 2014, the bioclimatic diagrams are built and the tea cultivability is mapped in term of annual average temperature and total precipitation, for this region with regarding its district of Con Cuong as an analytical key. The climate, including both temperature and precipitation, in Con Cuong is relatively suitable for the tea plantation. The Western Nghe An, a land of approx. 1.4 million ha, could be classified in five areas with different suitability for tea plant. The unfavorable area occupies only 1% of total region and the four favorable rests account for 99% of total, in which, the most favorable area is largest with about 746,355 ha, i.e. over 50% of whole region. The three other areas are cultivable but they are less favorable in terms of either temperature or precipitation. Growing tea in Western Nghe An, even in favorable areas, it should be taken into account of the weather disadvantages in certain moments of the year such as extreme dry, cold, hot and rainy events.ReferencesAhmed S., 2014. Tea and the taste of climate change, www.herbalgram.org, issue, 103, 44–51.Ahmed S., Stepp J.R., Orians C., Griffin T., Matyas C., 2014. Effects of extreme climate events on tea (Camellia sinensis) functional quality validate indigenous farmer knowledge and sensory preferences in tropical China. PloS one, 9(10), e109126.Bhagat R.M., Deb Baruah R., Safique S., 2010. climate and tea [camellia sinensis (l.) o. kuntze] Production with Special Reference to North Eastern India: A Review. Journal of Environmental Research And Development, 4(4), 1017–1028.Carr M., 1972. The Climatic Requirements of the Tea Plant: A Review. Experimental Agriculture, 8(01), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0014479700023449.Carr M.K.V., Stephen W., 1992. Climate, weather and the yield of tea. In: Tea Cultivation to consumtpion. K.C. Wilson and M.N. Clifford (Eds). Chapman and Hall, 87–135.Daleen Lotter, David le Maitre, 2014. Modeling the distribution of Aspalathus linearis (Rooibos tea): implications of climate change for livelihoods dependent on both cultivation and harvesting from the wild. Ecology and Evolution, 4(8), 1209–1221.Ducan J.M.A., Saikia S.D., Gupta N., Biggs E.M., 2016. Observing climate impacts on tea yield in Assam, India. Applied Geogr., 77, 64–71.Institute of Geography, 2016. Department of Climatically Geography. The precipitation and temperature data at meteorological measuring stations in the West of Nghe An Province between 1984 and 2014. Data stored at Department of Climatically Geography, Institute of Geography, Ha Noi, 46p.Gaussen H., 1954. 8 ème Congrès international de Botanique. Section 7 et 3. Paris.Hadfield W., 1976. The effect of high temperature on some aspects of the physiology and cultivation of tea bush (Camellia sinensis) in North East India. In: Light as an Ecological factor. G.C. Evans, R. Bainbridge and O. Rackham (Eds.) Blackwel Sci. Publ., London, 477–495.Hoang Luu Thu Thuy, 2012. The comprehensive assessment of natural, socio-economic and environmental conditions for environmental protection planning in Nghe An Province. Doctoral Thesis. Institude of Geography, Hanoi, 150p.Huang Shoubo, 1989. Meteorology of tea plants in China: a review. Agri. Forest Meteorol., 47, 19–30.Huang Shoubo, 1991. A study on the ecological climates of some famous tea growing areas in high mountainous regions of China. Chinese Geographical Science, 1(2), 121–128.International Center for Tropical Agriculture, 2017. Identification of suitable tea growing areas in Malawi under climate change scenarios. Ciat report, Cali, Colombia, 39p.Kabir S.E., 2001. A study on Ecophysiology of Tea (Camellia sinensis) with special reference to the influence of climatic factors on physiology of a few selected Tea clones of Darjeering. International Journal of Tea Science, 1(4), 1–9.Kandiah S., Thevadasan T., 1980. Quantification of weather parameters to predict tea yields. Tea Q., Srilanka, 49(1), 25–33.Kaye L., 2014. Climate change threatens Sri Lanka’s tea industry. Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit. Available at: www.triplepundit.com/2014/06/climate-changethreatens-sri-lanka-tea-industry. Accessed July 25, 2014.Nakayama A., Harada S., 1962. Studies on the effect on the growth of tea plant. IV. The effect of temperature on the growth of young plants in summer. Bull. Tea Res. Station, Japan, 1, 28–40.Nguyen Bao Ve, 2005. The syllabus of industrial trees. Hanoi Argricultural Publishing House, 224p.Nguyen Dai Khanh, 2003. The assessment of agricultural climatic conditions for tea’s growth in major tea regions of Vietnam. Doctoral Thesis. Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, 149p.Nguyen Khanh Van, Nguyen Thi Hien, Phan Ke Loc, Nguyen Tien Hiep, 2000. The bioclimatic diagrams of Vietnam. Vietnam National University Publishing House, Ha Noi, 126p.Nguyen Van Hong, 2017. Analyzing, assessing landscape for agriculture, forestry development and biodiversity conservation in the southwestern border districts in Nghe An province. Doctoral thesis. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 150p.Nguyen Van Tao (ed.), 2004. Completing the asexual propagation process of LDP1 and LDP2 cultivars by cuttings in order to transfer to production. State Project of production pilot, coded KC.06.DA.09.NN. Institute of Tea Research, Phu Tho, 50p.Nkomwa E.C., Joshua M.K., Ngongondo C., Monjerezi M., Chipungu F., 2014. Assessing indigenous knowledge systems and climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture: A case study of Chagaka Village, Chikhwawa, Southern Malawi. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 67–69, 164–172.Pham Hoang Ho, 2003. An Illustrated Flora of Vietnam, 2, 430–434. Youth Publishing House, 952p.Rebecca Boehm, Sean B. Cash, Bruce T. Anderson, Selena Ahmed, Timothy S. Griffin, Albert Robbat Jr., John Richard Stepp, Wenyan Han, Matt Hazel and Colin M. Orians, 2016. Association between Empirically Estimated Monsoon Dynamics and Other Weather Factors and Historical Tea Yields in China: Results from a Yield Response Model. Climate, 4, 20; doi:10.3390/cli4020020. www.mdpi.com/journal/climate.Schepp K., 2014. Strategy to adapt to climate change for Michimikuru tea farmers in Kenya. Adap CC Report. 2008. Available at: www.adapcc.org/en/kenya.htm. Accessed July 25, 2014.Sen A.R., Biswas A.K., Sanyal D.K., 1966. The Influence of Climatic Factors on the Yield of Tea in the Assam Valley, J. App. Meteo., 5(6), 789–800.Statistics Office of Nghe An Province, 2016. The annual abstracts of statistics 2015. Nghe An Publishing House, Nghe An, 453p.Tanton T.W., 1982. Environmental factors affecting yield of tea (camellia sinensis). Effect of air temperature. Expl. Agri., 18, 47–52.The People’s Committee of Nghe An Province, 2013. The Decision No. 448/QĐ-UBND dated 31/01/2013 to approve the hi-tech agriculture planning on the production of tea in Nghe An Province.The People’s Committee of Nghe An Province, 2013. The Decision No. 6290/QĐ-UBND dated 24/12/2013 to approve the adjustments and supplements for the development of Nghe An tea Industrial zone planning in 2013–2020.Walter H, Lieth, 1967. Klimadiagram - Weltatlas. Veb Gustav Fischer Verlag Jena.Wijeratne M.A., 1996. Vulnerability of Sri Lanka tea production to global climate change. Water, Air and Soil Pollution, 92(1-2), 87–94.Wijeratne M.A., Anandacoomaraswamy A., Amarathunga M., Ratnasiri J., 2007. Assessment of impact of climate change on productivity of tea (Camellia sinensis L.) plantations in Sri Lanka, 119–126.http://nghean.gov.vn, 05/06/2015. Many crops are withered in Con Cuong.http://baonghean.vn, 25/03/2013. Drought threaten rice and tea in Con Cuong. http://baonghean.vn/con-cuong-han-han-de-doa-lua-che-44581.html.

Sri Lanka has played a key role in maritime trade on a global scale since Early Historic times to the colonial period. Archaeological evidence from harbors and ports of the Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka indicate very early trade connections with China to the east, Rome and Arabia to the west, and with India to the north. Ceramics and other artifacts associated with diverse cultures discovered from excavations and surveys in the Jaffna peninsula show that Jaffna has played a prominent role in Indian Ocean trade. Early urbanism and the emergence of trade related settlements in the Jaffna peninsula with the city of Kantharodai as a focal point had begun in the 6th century BCE. International trade and commerce of the Indian Ocean region had a direct impact on the development of urbanism in Kantharodai in the Jaffna peninsula, while the ports and trade network in the hinterland provide useful insights into the nature of economic activities and urbanism in the region. Finds from several key ports in the Jaffna peninsula and particularly the port on the island of Kayts indicate international trade. The city of Kantharodai as a focus for change, the city as the focus of power and domination, and the city as an organizing principle or creator of efficient space use are aspects explored in this paper.

By the 12th century, coffee was extensively cultivated in Yemen, and qawha and cahveh, hot beverages made from roast and ground coffee beans, became popular in the Islamic world over the next 300 years. Commercial production of coffee outside Yemen started in Sri Lanka in the 1660s, Java in the 1700s, and Latin America in 1715, and this production has associations with histories of colonial expansion and slavery. Introduced to Europe in the 17th century, coffee was described by Robert Burton in the section of his 1628 Anatomy of Melancholy devoted to medicines as “an intoxicant, a euphoric, a social and physical stimulant, and a digestive aid” (quoted in Weinberg and Bealer xii). Today, more than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed each year. Coffee is also an ingredient in a series of iconic dishes such as tiramisu and, with chocolate, makes up the classic mocha mix. Coffee production is widespread in tropical and sub-tropical countries and it is the second largest traded world commodity; second only to oil and petroleum. The World Bank estimates that more than 500 million people throughout the world depend on coffee for their livelihoods, and 25 million of these are coffee farmers. Unfortunately, these farmers typically live and work in substandard conditions and receive only a small percentage of the final price that their coffee is sold for. The majority of coffee farmers are women and they face additional challenges, frequently suffering from abuse, neglect, and poverty, and unable to gain economic, social, or political power in either their family’s coffee businesses or their communities. Some farm coffee under enslaved or indentured conditions, although Fair Trade regimes are offering some lessening of inequalities. At the opposite end of the scale, a small, but growing, number of high-end producers market gourmet sustainable coffee from small-scale, environmentally-aware farming operations. For many in the West today, however, coffee is not about the facts of its production; coffee is all about consumption, and is now interwoven into our contemporary cultural and social habits. Caffeine, found in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of the coffee tree, is an addictive psychoactive substance, but has overcome resistance and disapproval around the world and is now unregulated and freely available, without licence. Our gastronomic sophistication is reflected in which coffee, brewing method, and location of consumption is chosen; our fast-paced lifestyles in the range of coffee-to-go options we have; and our capitalist orientation in the business opportunities this popularity has offered to small entrepreneurs and multinational franchise chains alike. Cafés and the meeting, mingling, discussions, and relaxing that occur there while drinking coffee, are a contemporary topic of reflection and scholarship, as are the similarities and differences between the contemporary café and its earlier incarnations, including, of course, the Enlightenment coffee house. As may be expected from a commodity which has such a place in our lives, coffee is represented in many ways in the media—including in advertising, movies, novels, poetry, songs and, of course, in culinary writing, including cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers. There are specialist journals and popular serials dedicated to expounding and exploring the fine grain detail of its production and consumption, and food historians have written multiple biographies of coffee’s place in our world. So ubiquitous, indeed, is coffee, that as a named colour, it popularly features in fashion, interior design, home wares, and other products. This issue of M/C Journal invited contributors to consider coffee from any relevant angle that makes a contribution to our understanding of coffee and its place in culture and/or the media, and the result is a valuable array of illuminating articles from a diverse range of perspectives. It is for this reason that we chose an image of coffee cherries for the front cover of this issue. Co-editor Jill Adams has worked in the coffee industry for over ten years and has a superb collection of coffee images that ranges from farmers in Papua New Guinea to artfully shot compositions of antique coffee brewing equipment. In making our choice, however, we felt that Spencer Franks’s image of ripe coffee cherries at the Skybury Coffee Plantation in Far North Queensland, Australia, encapsulates the “fruitful” nature of the response to our call for articles for this issue. While most are familiar, moreover, with the dark, glossy appearance and other sensual qualities of roasted coffee beans, fewer have any occasion to contemplate just how lovely the coffee tree is as a plant. Each author has utilised the idea of “coffee” as a powerful springboard into a fascinating range of areas, showing just how inseparable coffee is from so many parts of our daily lives—even scholarly enquiry. In our first feature article, Susie Khamis profiles and interrogates the Nespresso brand, and how it points to the growing individualisation of coffee consumption, whereby the social aspect of cafés gives way to a more self-centred consumer experience. This feature valuably contrasts the way Starbucks has marketed itself as a social hub with the Nespresso boutique experience—which as Khamis explains—is not a café, but rather a club, a trademarked, branded space, predicated on highly knowledgeable and, therefore, privileged patrons. Coffee drinking is also associated with both sobriety and hangover cures, with cigarettes, late nights, and music. Our second feature, by Jon Stewart, looks at how coffee has become interwoven into our lives and imaginations through the music that we listen to—from jazz to blues to musical theatre numbers. It examines the influence of coffee as subject for performers and songwriters in three areas: coffee and courtship rituals, the stimulating effects of caffeine, and the politics of coffee consumption, claiming that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of other drugs and ubiquitous consumer goods that are often more readily associated with popular music. Diana Noyce looks at the short-lived temperance movement in Australia, the opulent architecture of the coffee palaces built in that era, what was actually drunk in them, and their fates as the temperance movement passed into history. Emma Felton lyrically investigates how “going for a coffee” is less about coffee and more about how we connect with others in a mobile world, when flexible work hours are increasingly the norm and more people are living alone than any other period in history. Felton also introducess a theme that other writers also engage with: that the café also plays a role in the development of civil discourse and civility, and plays an important role in the development of cosmopolitan civil societies. Ireland-based Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire surveys Dublin—that tea drinking city—and both the history of coffee houses and the enduring coffee culture it possesses; a coffee culture that seems well assured through a remarkable win for Ireland in the 2008 World Barista Championships. China has also always been strongly associated with tea drinking but Adel Wang introduces readers to the emerging, and unique, café and coffee culture of that country, as well as some of the proprietors who are bringing about this cultural change. Australia, also once a significant consumer of tea, shifted to a preference for coffee over a twenty year period that began with the arrival of American Servicemen in Australia during World War II. Jill Adams looks at the rise of coffee during that time, and the efforts made by the tea industry to halt its market growth. These strong links between tea and coffee are reflected in Duncan Barnes, Danielle Fusco, and Lelia Green’s thought-provoking study of how coffee is marketed in Bangladesh, another tea drinking country. Ray Oldenberg’s influential concept of the “third place” is referred to by many authors in this collection, but Anthony McCosker and Rowan Wilken focus on this idea. By using a study of how Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, worked in his local café from 9 in the morning to noon each day, this article explores the interrelationship of café space, communication, creativity, and materialism. Donna Lee Brien brings us back to the domestic space with her article on how the popular media of cookery books and magazines portray how coffee was used in Australian cooking at mid-century, in the process, tracing how tiramisu triumphed over the trifle. By exploring the currently fashionable practice of “direct trade” between roasters and coffee growers Sophie Sunderland offers a fresh perspective on coffee production by powerfully arguing that feeling (“affect”) is central to the way in which coffee is produced, represented and consumed in Western mass culture. Sunderland thus brings the issue full circle and back to Khamis’s discussion, for there is much feeling mobilised in the marketing of Nespresso. We would like to thank all the contributors and our generous and erudite peer reviewers for their work in the process of putting together this issue. We would also like to specially thank Spencer Franks for permission to use his image of coffee cherries as our cover image. We would lastly like to thank you the general editors of M/C Journal for selecting this theme for the journal this year.References Oldenburg, Ray, ed. Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the “Great Good Places” At the Heart of Our Communities. New York: Marlowe & Company 2001.Weinberg, Bennett Alan, and Bonnie K Bealer. The World of Caffeine. New York and London: Routledge, 2001.

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). 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