Tàipíng

Taiping County lay in the mountainous south of Ningguo Prefecture, in present-day southern Anhui. Established in the Tang period, it remained a county of Ningguo under the Ming and Qing. Its valleys and wooded slopes connected local settlements with the wider Jiangnan region.

Tea was produced in this mountain country from at least the Tang period. During the Ming and Qing, merchants from Taiping and other Ningguo counties travelled beyond their home districts; some joined merchants from neighbouring Jingde in establishing a guildhall at Shengze. Such associations show how people from a mountain county participated in wider commercial networks.