Tea trees can be planted in many places in the Ming Dynasty, and the sales volume is very high, so there is no shortage of tea in the Ming Dynasty. However, in the Ming Dynasty, there was a very strict system to control tea. For example, you can't keep more tea at home, and you have to spend more than a month in prison. Others prohibit private houses from selling tea. If it leaves the customs, it is basically a capital crime. In the Ming Dynasty, tea and salt were almost placed in the same position, which is not surprising, because tea itself occupied a very high strategic position for the border ethnic minorities.
Ethnic minorities have a great demand for tea, and they often get more tea by hook or by crook. For the purpose of building the national economy, the Ming Dynasty sold official tea to ethnic minorities in order to get more money to enhance national strength. There is another reason why the Ming Dynasty controlled the private tea trade. No matter which dynasty was very short of war horses, so was the Ming dynasty, so the Ming dynasty exchanged tea for the war horses of the northern nomadic people to improve the military strength of the country.
In order to get a lot of money, many private businessmen often hoard private tea and sell it to ethnic minorities at low prices. After the needs of ethnic minorities are met, horses will naturally not be exchanged, so there will be fewer war horses in the Ming Dynasty and the country's military strength will not develop. After the Ming dynasty realized this problem, it formulated many regulations on private tea. Whether a thing is precious or not depends entirely on its own value and the demand of a specific group of people for it. Just like tea, different people have different needs in different natural environments, and people can get what they need more by analyzing this demand.