Chinese Puer tea 3/3

Final part

Chinese Puer tea 2/3

Continuation

Chinese Puer tea 1/3

Nice video

普洱茶原料降价或超普洱茶原料降价或超20%

普洱出口有所下跌普洱出口有所下跌 

“几乎整个普洱茶行业的价格都明降或暗降了。”在昨日举行的2008年中国(广州)国际茶业博览会新闻发布会 上,一名广东茶商透露,今年普洱茶原料价格有20%以上的降幅,更有数据显示云南晒青毛茶价格比去年下降50% 以上。 

普洱茶出口有所下跌普洱茶出口有所下跌 在昨日举行的新闻发布会上,广东省茶叶行业协会秘书长张黎明透露了一组数据:“2008年1~9月我国茶叶出口 22.76万吨,同比增长4.97%,只有乌龙茶和普洱茶出口有所下跌,其中乌龙茶下跌2.99%,而普洱茶却下降 33.48%。” 

一名从2004年始进入普洱茶市场、主推古树茶的商家深切体会市场的变化:在2007年,整个市场的茶叶原料被 商家争相哄抬,价格不断上涨,导致普洱茶市场价格的快速上浮;而今年原料起码跌了20%~50%,导致市场价格 也相应下调。在该名商家看来,市场经过1年的沉淀,曾经存在的水分已逐渐被挤干,回到较为踏实的原地。 

不过,行内人士认为,普洱茶市场需要一段为期不短的时日才能恢复昨日风光,主要是高峰期时部分不良炒家破 坏了市场平衡,影响市场信心;另外,负面消息的传播也极大损害了普洱茶的声誉。 

也有观点认为,目前全国茶叶总产量的75%主要依靠内销,市场首先需要调动内需,令消费者重新接受普洱茶, 并对普洱茶有更深的认识;其次要树立正确的普洱茶标准,不将其视同单一的投资品种。(记者 林琳)

Newslinks (10.11.2008)

Delightful World of Puer Tea
By Brenda Koller
Special to The Korea Times

With countless coffee houses springing up everywhere in Seoul, you may be surprised to know that, second to water, tea is the most preferred beverage for the majority of people around the world.

But how often do you think about what type of tea you are drinking, where it was grown, how it was processed and what is the best way to drink it? I pondered those questions and more during a delightful afternoon at the ``World Tea Festival 2007'' held at COEX from June 27 to July 1.

About 200 booths from eight countries including world renowned tea companies exhibited everything you might want to know about tea culture from tea products such as pots and cups, tables, utensils, books, and most importantly, hundreds of different varieties and styles of tea.

Although tea has been popular for over 5,000 years, the market for tea is increasing. According to organizers of the event, sales of tea beverages in Korea have increased by 40 percent over last year with the Korean market valued at 40 billion won. 

Studies have shown that drinking tea has many health benefits such as reducing the risk of cancer and coronary heart disease, to name just two. And with more and more people following the well-being trend, it's no wonder that tea's popularity is on the rise.

All tea originates from the plant Camellia sinensis and there are four basic types _ black, green, oolong or white. The exception to this is puer tea (also spelled puerh, pu-erh, pu erh).

Tea was first discovered in China and the history of puer tea dates back centuries to ancient tea plants that still grow today in Yunnan.

I had the pleasure of discovering puer tea at the World Tea Festival when I sat down at the Jiyumyungcha puer tea store's booth. After the first sip I was enthralled; after the second sip I was hooked. Puer tea looks and tastes similar to black tea, but has a bold aroma and taste of its own, a taste that kept me lingering at the company's booth. 

It certainly helped that one of the company's servers, Jacqueline Park, spoke English and was more than willing to explain the many intricacies of puer tea to a novice drinker.

Park explained that there are two basic kinds of puer, one of China's most popular teas: Sheng Cha, which is raw, naturally fermented puer, and Shu Cha, which is cooked and undergoes an accelerated fermentation process. 

My taste tests revealed a preference for Sheng Cha, which is less woody or earthy tasting than Shu Cha. Puer is also categorized by shape and is available in a variety of shapes such as tea bags, loose-leaf, disc and bowl-shaped, which resembles little acorn-sized bowls.

In many ways, Puer tea can be compared to fine wine as it evolves as it ages and the value often increases with age. Park said that she has tasted puer tea that is much older than herself.

Puer tea purportedly helps with digestion and intestinal activities, not to mention the calming effect it imparts while savoring its unique flavor.

My interest piqued, the quest for additional knowledge of puer tea led me to David Kilburn, chairman of the Tea Museum, who suggested I visit his shop at Lotte Department Store in Myeong-dong. There, manager Choi Eun-sil (who is also fluent in English) introduced me to the company's eight styles of puer tea. Kilburn had suggested sampling two in particular.

Jinhong puer is a blend of puer from Yunnan and cinnamon from Sri Lanka, which is based on a traditional method used by the Jinuo tribes people in China. The blend imparts a delicate cinnamon taste that pleasantly enhances the flavor of the tea.

Of particular interest at the Tea Musuem was the orange puer, which not only tastes delectable but also looks lovely. It is made by removing all the fruit from the inside of a small, bitter orange native to China. 

The tea is then pressed inside the shell and allowed to dry and mature. Choi crumbled part of the orange in with the tea before allowing it to steep. The tea was most pleasant, imparting a refreshing touch of citrus.

I'll admit, I would be hard-pressed to give up my afternoon shot of espresso, but I simply cannot imagine a day without tea. And now my tea drinking has been greatly enhanced with delicious and mysterious puer tea.

Perspectives on Storing and Aging Pu'er Teas: Buying Aged Tea -- But Why?

by WARREN PELTIER

A Brief Historical Perspective

Not so long ago, aged tea could be had for pretty cheap. But all of a sudden, a lot of people in Asia got pu'er crazy, and started buying up all kinds of aged pu'er -- any pu'er -- regardless of quality or price. Let’s take a glimpse at some of the historical highlights of all of this:

Hong Kong has a long history of Pu'er drinking. Pu'er is used here for its medicinal properties, and has long been a favorite tea for consumption during dim sum meals in Hong Kong teahouses.

People’s Republic era: Hong Kong became the “tea storehouse” for pu'er tea. It was sent from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, where some was consumed locally by Hong Kong people, and some was exported to South East Asia.

1950s: one tong of good quality pu'er bing cha cost just a little over 3 HKD. By that time Guangdong people knew that the older pu'er gets, the better it is. But at that time, even old pu'er was only 1 yuan per pound more expensive than newer pu'er. 

1986: One 30-year-old aged Hong Yin (Red Label) bing was selling in Sheung Wan-area tea stores for a little over 170 HKD; some Lao Hao bings aged to 50 or 60 years were selling for 800 HKD. At that time it was already considered very expensive. But today it would be worth in the tens of thousands of HKD.

Starting in the 80s, Hong Kong’s economy started to boom, creating wealth, and a wealthy class of people. Some of these people started collecting pu'er teas as a kind of investment speculation.

In the mid and late 90s, some of the big teahouse owners went overseas -- because of uncertainty about Hong Kong’s future. But after 1997, they came back, started to clean their storehouses, and discovered that there were many kinds of good-quality aged pu'er in their stores. They then proceeded to sell off these stores to collectors in Taiwan and overseas. And two teahouses in particular -- Gam San Lau (金山樓) and Long Moon Lau (龍門樓) (see end-note) -- had stores of Tong Qing Hao Lao Yuan Cha (同慶號老圓茶), aged to almost 100 years in their possession.

Pu'er collectors, especially from Taiwan, would go to the tea farms and factories in Yunnan, sometimes buying up whole crops of tea leaves before they could reach market -- and thus securing their own private stock of tea to be privately pressed into bings for aging.

And that is what kicked off the big pu'er mania -- where everyone who was anyone had to have 100-year-old aged pu'er in their collection. And then supplies of good pu'er, even recently produced, became scarce. Of course, the likelihood of finding 100 year aged pu'er nowadays is virtually impossible.

Value Decisions

Just assume that there were some real, verifiable 100-year-old aged pu'er available for purchase to lucky you. And best of all, that you could actually afford it without going broke. Would that particular brick or bing of pu'er be worth it? That’s the question that has to be asked with any aged tea. Is it worth it to buy this tea? First of all, you probably don’t know the whole history of that tea. Sure, you can research wrappers and factories and batch codes. But that doesn’t tell you anything about how Person A, who first bought the tea, stored it. It doesn’t tell you whether the tea happened to come in contact with any extraneous odors. It doesn’t tell you that Person B stored the tea on a shelf next to a pair of his stinky shoes. It doesn’t tell you that Person C, who then bought the tea, brought it home in a rain storm, and it got all soaked. It doesn’t tell you that Person D doctored the tea by adding extraneous scents from camphor wood to the tea, just because that person thought that the tea smelled kind of like stinky shoes and mold, and thought that it would smell better (and perhaps taste better too) if it were scented with camphor wood.

Since you don’t know the exact storage methods used during the history of that tea, and since you haven’t tasted that tea, how will you know if that tea, aged 100 years is really good or not? You can’t know. And you also won’t know if it’s worth the price you paid. It just may be too big a risk to take.

So how pu'er teas are stored is important, not just for drinking, but also for resale value, if one were to ever be insane enough to sell part of his/her pu'er collection. Of course, pu'er manufacturers know how to age and store tea. And they know how to ship it. So you don’t have to be worried so much how the tea was stored in some warehouse at the factory.

But whether a tea is aged 10 years or 100 years, how the tea was stored is an important factor that will affect the quality of the tea over time. The longer the period of aging, the more important how a tea was stored during all those years becomes. And because of this, one should keep in mind that just because a tea is old doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good. Of course, Chinese have a saying with pu'er: “the more aged, the better the tea becomes.” But that’s all relatively speaking. If the pu'er was stored improperly, or under non-ideal conditions, then it may be mediocre -- or bad -- aged tea.

In the past few years, in Mainland China, many extremely wealthy people (including many who don’t know a thing about pu'er) got into collecting pu'er as an investment. They speculate in pu'er, driving up the prices -- and driving real pu'er lovers out of the market. There are now many pu'er drinkers who are extremely negative about buying aged pu'er. And they refuse to buy any pu'er until the prices start reflecting the actual value of the tea. 

I myself refuse to buy any aged pu'er, partly because of outrageous prices, and partly because I’m not sure how that particular tea was stored; and also because there are so many fake and forged aged teas that it’s too complicated to keep up with. Now, when I buy pu'er, I visit several reputable dealers where I can sample many relatively new (aged 3 years or less) sheng pu'er bings; and compare prices. If I taste a particular sheng pu'er and I like it now, then when I take it home and store it away for say 7-10 years (or even longer), surely it will taste much better after proper storage and aging. 

Did the Pu'er Bubble Go Bust?

Pu'er prices rose dramatically in the first half of 2007, with prices of mao cha doubling. But this didn’t last long. By the end of June, prices had fallen dramatically as the following examples illustrate:

2007 Price Comparison Prices of Mao Cha

April 1, 2007

Banzhang Ancient Tea Tree: 1400 yuan/Kg

Bulang Shan Ancient Tea Tree: 600 yuan/Kg

July 1, 2007

Banzhang Ancient Tea Tree: 600 yuan/Kg

Bulang Shan Ancient Tea Tree: 300 yuan/Kg

According to market reports, in July 2007, pu'er mao cha prices remained calm, but tea farmers in Nan Nuo Shan (南糯山) and Bu Lang Shan (布朗山) were unwilling to ship their harvests because the going price was so low. And factories in Menghai stopped receiving shipments of tea; many factories reduced the production of shu pu'er. 

So overall, the market was in a bit of a turndown in 2007. No longer were consumers driving the market based on quantity: by the end of the year, they were demanding quality. And that drove prices back down. The demand just wasn’t there anymore.

Today’s Pu'er Market

At the end of June 2008, in Guangdong’s Fang Cun Tea Market, we see pu'er tea prices going down -- sometimes dramatically. A 357-gram 2008 Da Ye 0622 Sheng Bing is selling for 350 yuan per tong. With seven bings in a tong, that comes to 50 yuan per bing. Don’t take my word for it -- see for yourself at this page.

If the prices of pu'er continue to fall, that will be good for consumers. And maybe now is the time to start stocking up on pu'er. A recent trip to the Dong Pu Tea Market, in Fuzhou’s Jin An district, seems to verify suspicions. Tea vendors there say business is slow. Shu bings were selling for a mere 30 yuan. A 400-gram 2007 Meng Ku Large Tea Tree shu bing sold for 80 yuan. And that was the vendor’s asking price. I didn’t even try to bargain him down. If I had bought a tong or two, I probably could have got them for 60 or 70 yuan each. Keep in mind, Dong Pu Tea Market is a backwater tea market with only about 20 vendors. Much larger Pu'er markets, like Guangzhou or Shenzhen, or even Fuzhou’s larger Five-Mile Pavilion Tea Market, probably have stores of sheng bings at a much lower price point. Pre-2007 bings however, and the more famous brands of pu'er are still selling for a relatively high price. As the 2008 bings come onto the market, though, I suspect they will sell for relatively cheaper prices than in the past.

If you want further proof, you can check online auction sites like eachnet.com. The lowest price for a 250-gram 2000 sheng zhuan (brick) was 21.8 yuan. Shu bings are going for as low as 18 yuan. You see similar low prices on online tea vendor sites in China. And that leads to another question: with prices so low, what will the future hold for the new huge tea markets that sprouted up overnight in places like Shenzhen during the days of Pu'er Mania?

Pu'er Reality Check

What makes people go so crazy about pu'er anyway? Is it the moldy smell that people find so captivating or what? What’s all the mystique surrounding pu'er? And why would individual pu'er collectors go out of the way to buy a whole tea farm’s crop and hoard it? Why? Tea Hoarder! That’s tea insanity! And why would anyone be willing to fork over hundreds to thousands of yuan for a single bing? If you compare the quality of leaf in a bing to that of any other kind of tea (say Tieguanyin, for example), are you really getting value for money? For the most part, the pu'er leaf that is used for bings comes from the 4th to the 8th leaves on the bush (or tree). These are pretty large, coarse leaves that are used. Don’t fool yourself: those leaves aren’t big because they come from some thousand-year-old “ancient tea tree.” So why would anyone willingly spend large sums of money for teas that are made with so-called inferior quality leaves? I find it ironic that the teas I buy actually cost as much as, or even more than, the teaware I buy. It’s an expensive lifestyle.

Sensible Enjoyment

So my advice is: Wait awhile and see if cheaper prices make their way through the supply chain. And then, buy pu'er because you like the taste, not because of fame or reputation, or because of the duration of aging. Tea should be enjoyable, not an aggravation. If some of your pu'er tastes good now, then drink it now and enjoy it. Why wait to store it? But if you can wait, then store some away and see what happens. So, enjoy some now, enjoy some later. Maybe that’s the best way to buy and store pu'er.

Why YIWU : A Puer Tea Home

By Kathy Zhang (Jinghong Zhang)
Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program,
Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies, The
Australian National University

I have now visited Yiwu, the small township (xiang) in Yunnan province of China where Puer tea is produced, twice. The first occasion was in November of 2002, when I happened to be there with a film crew, but I was there for only one day. The other time was in February of 2006, when I was able to be there for a week, and I had a clearer aim in mind, since I was undertaking a preliminary visit for my planned Ph.D. project on Puer tea. Although both were short stays, I found Yiwu an interesting place and a good site for further research. 

In February I took the bus from Jinghong, the capital city of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, in Yunnan Province of southwest China. It took me about four hours travelling southeastwards to get to Yiwu, one of the towns in Mengla 

County (xian) of Xishuangbanna. 

Going on the memory of my last visit, I turned off at the middle of the main street and got to the so-called “old street”, which is more rural in appearance. Old family houses line the street, with farmland in between them and shrub tea plantations in 

the surrounding hills. There are more wild tea trees in the more distant villages of Yiwu, places which are inhabited by a variety of ethnic groups – the Han, the Dai, the Yi, the Yao, and the Bulang. 

What is special about the old street in Yiwu is the architecture, which is all in typical Han vernacular style, although Yiwu is in Xishuangbanna, a place famous for its diverse minority ethnic groups. From the mid 17th century, a group of Han immigrants from Shiping came to Yiwu. Shiping is a county in the southeast 

of Yunnan, and the people there are mostly Han. The original minority groups in Yiwu were the Yi, Bulang and Dai, who made use of wild tea trees, but it was not until after the immigration of the Han that the Yiwu tea trade became famous. 

Instead of the curious looking up and down that a sudden visitor from the outside might be expected to invite, the locals here usually give me a friendly smile and ask me into their homes to chat. And soon after entering a family’s home, I get to know its particular history. Almost every building along the old street has been famous as a trading post for Puer tea, especially during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The landlord may have changed, but stories of how the first landlord diligently and cleverly ran and boosted the tea business are still told. 

In 2002, in a clean and comfortable courtyard, I first learned from Zhang Yi, the retired township head, how a brick of Puer tea was made in the traditional way by hand. Also from him, I got to know the fame of the “Six Great Tea Mountains”, located in southeast Xishuangbanna, famed for their ancient wild tea trees. Yiwu is one of these tea mountains and is famous for having been a ‘tribute’ tea area for 163 years (1732-1904) (Zhang Yi 2006: 71), when tea was presented to the Imperial court. Owing to the political climate, the tea industry of Yiwu was halted from time to time, especially during World War II and after 1953 (Zhang Yi 2006: 76-77). Zhang Yi was the one who took the lead in reviving the hand-worked Puer brick again in Yiwu in the mid-1980s, and his success encouraged the other locals to do the same. 

Most families here are in the tea business. Unlike the situation in many counties of China where young people leave to find better opportunities outside, the rise in the demand and price of Puer tea in recent years has encouraged local youths here to stay at home and join the tea industry. After a short break during the Spring Festival, people begin the first picking of the year in late February or early March. The process is divided into several phases and different production units. One family I visited this February has relatives living in another village where the wild tea trees grow, 30 kilometers from Yiwu. Their relatives in the country undertake the task of picking the leaves and deactivating the enzymes through oxidisation. Then the tea leaves are taken by van to the town family, who press the tea leaves into tea-bricks, package, and sell it. The proceeds are then distributed equally between the two families. If business is not done through family connections, the town people usually have some instituted relationship with a certain group of village people and assign the work to them in a similar way. 

Yiwu is not the only place producing Puer tea. Other areas of Yunnan such as Simao, Menghai, Lancang, and Lincang are also famous for it and have ancient wild tea trees, too. The name of ‘Puer’ itself comes from a place in Simao, which used to be an important point of goods collection for taxation purposes. Moreover, ‘Puer’ tea does not necessarily refer to any particular category or species of tea tree. All kinds of tea can be made into Puer tea, after the particular post-fermentation process which distinguishes Puer tea is applied. But the large-leaved variety of tea 

in Yunnan is acknowledged to be the most suited to this process of post-fermentation. 

Puer tea can be further divided into two kinds, according to different methods of post-fermentation. One is ‘raw Puer’, in which post-fermentation is done via natural exposure to the air for a time, without anything else being done. The other is ‘ripe Puer’, where post-fermentation is accomplished in a shorter time by artificial means. Both raw and ripe Puer tea can be kept for a long time, unlike green tea. And the belief that the older Puer is, the better it is, is now becoming popular, which has made a lot of people buy and store Puer tea as a kind of antique. 

Something has happened to Puer tea in the past twenty years. During the 1985 Technological Exposition in Kunming, nobody showed any interest in Zhang Yi’s Puer tea. In the early 1990s, the price of Puer tea before production in Yiwu was ¥5 (US$1 = ¥8) per kilogram; then it was ¥15; then ¥25; in 2005, it reached ¥60 as the basic price, and sometimes even ¥80 or ¥100 per kilogram, with a local family’s annual income reaching ¥50,000 - pretty good for these local farmers. Mostly such income is earned from just picking or processing tea leaves, but other related industries such as tea packaging, porterage, ‘tea culture’ performances, and so on, have been boosted too. A brick of Puer tea sold at ¥50 in Yiwu will be three or five times more expensive in Kunming, Beijing, Hongkong or Taiwan. And its price will definitely increase a lot after being stored for over five years. 

In 2005, a traditional-style caravan of horses organized by some private tea companies of Yunnan started out from Puer to travel overland to Beijing, duplicating the route followed when Puer tea was carried to Beijing as a tribute during the Qing dynasty (1644- 1911). When they finally arrived in Beijing, after more than half a year’s travel, a brick of Puer tea fetched ¥1000 at auction, almost 20 times as much as those sold in the original place. And in April of 2006, another caravan carrying Puer tea was organized by the local government of Yunnan. This time, Yiwu was selected as the starting point, and the destination is hoped and expected to be Taiwan. 

These caravan routes are called the “Ancient Routes of Tea and Horses”. These routes came into being more than two thousand years ago because of the trading and transporting of tea by caravan between southwest China and southeast Asian countries, and were first named in this way by Mu Jihong and another five young scholars after a 90-day investigation on foot in 1989. There are countless ‘Tea-Horse routes’ between Yunnan and outside, and Yiwu is one of the most important starting points, since wild tea trees grow there. Some stories are being now popularized which tell how Puer tea first became naturally fermented during the long travels when it was carried by caravan. Whether these stories are truth or myth, researchers, traders, government leaders and even consumers enjoy chewing on them very much since they seem to prove that Puer tea is really some kind of treasure. Of course, apart from the caravan spectacle mentioned above, most Puer teas at present are carried by means of modern transportation. Along with further research on the ‘Ancient Routes of Tea and Horses’ and the local government’s effort to develop Yunnan as a ‘Tourism and Cultural Province’, Puer tea is getting another chance to boom. 

And Puer tea is becoming a popular and fashionable drink in big cities around China, in some ways even more popular than Longjing or Wulong, which should be drunk when fresh and can’t be kept too long. Both in Beijing and Kunming I heard sayings like: those who don’t drink Puer tea are considered as of little culture; those who drink tea but don’t drink Puer “have no deep sense of tea”. Even those who actually do not like Puer are trying to get used to it. And almost everyone will ask the tea seller one question before actually buying any: “how old is this brick of Puer?” Age usually decides prices, so this can be a hard question for a middleman trader to answer. In Yiwu I got to know that the outside traders usually specify some requests when they pre-order the packing of a piece of Puer brick. First, the weight of a piece or a tube of Puer brick (a tube includes seven pieces) should be marked exactly; second, the product should be made of good quality tea leaves but the tea origin is actually decided pretty much by the traders during the later process of packing; third, no definite date of tea production should be marked on the package, since this only needs to be known and checked during their personal meeting. 

Faced with hot competition between producers, and a variety of different tastes among consumers, it’s hard to say which place produces the best Puer tea. And although post-fermentation is the common process constituting Puer tea, varying geographical conditions and trivial differences of production can lead to diverse tastes of the tea. But for the Puer tea of Yiwu, there are some conspicuous points about its traditional production: 

1. Instead of large-scale enterprises, people adhere to small-scale family businesses which remain the primary unit of tea production;

 

2. People prefer to make raw rather than ripe Puer; 

3. Production by hand is preferred to mechanised production. 

But meanwhile, these traditions are being challenged. In February of 2006, I got to know that a new policy established by the local government is putting pressure on Yiwunese to change their traditional methods. In order to make all Puer tea products in Yiwu conform to a certain agreed standard, the policy prescribes that each unit in the Puer tea industry should be of a certain scale, mainly referring to the size of production; those businesses producing on too small a household scale should close down. As I observed, a lot of families were working hard to extend their processing spaces before the deadline, either within their present houses or by building an additional room outside not far away. But actually this policy is objected to by a lot of locals, since many of them do not have enough money for extension at the moment, or they think the extension might destroy the original architecture, which is an important signs of Yiwu’s identity. For example, Zhang Yi, the pioneer of Yiwu’s Puer tea, said that it is not really necessary for a unit to reach a big scale, as long as it reaches an adequate standard of cleanliness. 

From Zhang Yi’s viewpoint, Puer tea in Yiwu as well as in other places in Yunnan is facing some other problems. First, Yiwu has both tea trees and shrubs. The former are grown naturally on old plantations and have a stronger taste. The latter were developed by people later and are much shorter and younger than the former, but can grow much more quickly. In recent years, the former in Yiwu has an annual production of 70 tonnes; the latter 250 tonnes. However, the annual figure appearing in the market labeled Yiwu is no less than 3000 tonnes, and most are marked as ‘from trees’, which cannot easily be verified by a common consumer. Where do those surplus teas come from? It is really questionable. Secondly, the over-use of pesticide in tea shrub planting is a common problem on many tea plantations. Even if it is true that “the older the better”, what is the point of storing for ages a raw brick which might have come from a plantation where pesticides have been over-used? And how can Puer tea enter the world market successfully? Thirdly, people are so deeply involved in making profits out of Puer tea that with the proliferation of various artful processes it is becoming very difficult not only for consumers or second-hand buyers to tell the exact age of the tea, but also hard for a tea producer to distinguish if the tea leaves he gets from villages are from shrubs or trees. 

The three preferences mentioned above characterise tea production in Yiwu and will form the basis of my further research, through which the voices of the locals versus voices from outside about Puer tea can be examined. Meanwhile, the new challenges facing Yiwu should be examined to see how they will influence future production in this area. 

References 

Deng Shihai (2004) Puer Cha [Puer Tea]. Kunming. Yunnan keji chubanshe. 

Mu Jihong (1992) Dian Chuan Zang dasanjiao wenhua tan mi [Cultural Search among the Triangle of Yunnan, Tibet and Sichuan]. Kunming. Yunnan daxue chubanshe. 

Zhang Yi (2006) Zhongguo Puer cha gu liu da chashan de guoqu he xianzai [The Past and the Present of the Ancient Six Great Mountains for Chinese Puer Tea]. In Puer cha jingdian wenxuan, ed. Wang Meijin. Kunming. Yunnan meishu chubanshe. 

4th South Eat Asia Puer Trade Fair

The 4th South East Asia Puer Trade Fair will be held from 14 Nov 2008 to 23 Nov 2008 at the Mine Exhibition Centre between 11am to 10pm.

Admission is free.  

"Tea Art Inspired Harmonious Lifestyle Through Tea Brewing"

Of All the Tea in China, 'Puer' is the Hottest

Source: Dow Jones Newswires

02/10/2007

Zhuhai, Oct. 2 - In this booming economy, the latest investment fad has everything to do with the price of tea in China.

More precisely, it has to do with the price of puer.

A type of tea commonly pressed into Frisbee-shaped cakes, puer (pronounced "poo-ahr"), was long the domain of a small group of tea collectors. Earlier this year, speculators discovered the tea, driving up its value.

Puer, with a medicinal flavor and smoky aftertaste, improves with age unlike other teas that grow stale. Sellers claim it aids weight loss and lowers blood pressure.

The price of one of the hottest varieties of puer soared to nearly $35-a-cake this past April, seven times the $5-a-cake value just three years ago. Today, a cake of puer sells for nearly $16, a 60% backslide from the peak, fueling fears of a crash.

Puer's popularity reflects how China, awash in cash and slim on investment outlets, is primed for speculation of even the most ordinary -- or unexpected -- assets.

The puer boom spurred 45-year-old Yunnan native Zhang Bing to open a puer exchange in June to help traders find willing buyers and sellers. The exchange, lined with shelves of puer cakes, doubles as a meeting place for a puer club Mr. Zhang started last month.

"It's just like stocks," said Mr. Zhang, eyeing the latest puer price fluctuations on a flat-screen TV mounted by the doorway of the new exchange.

Such efforts are frowned upon by collector Bai Shuiqing, 52, who is so well-known in the industry that his autograph appears on commemorative cakes of puer. Mr. Bai says he already has the "guanxi," or connections, to sell his tea.

Mr. Bai is reluctant to talk about the value of his puer, saying he collects it for its taste, not its monetary value. Still, he estimates his 56 cakes of 100-year-old puer are worth about $640,000. He has two 150-year-old cakes whose value he declines to discuss. Last year, Mr. Bai started selling hand-selected cakes of puer marketed under his name.

At his vast tea warehouse in Hong Kong, Mr. Bai picked up a small piece of the tea, broken from its original cake, and placed it in an earthen teapot engraved with his name. He poured hot water in to rinse the leaves, discarding the first infusion, in what is called "awakening" the tea, and poured the second into a small, clear serving pot.

"Smell this," he said, beaming, and held out the steaming pitcher of clear brandy-colored liquid, a hue indicative of well-aged puer. "This is the best tea in the world."

Mr. Bai says he can divine the age of his puer by taste alone. Still, he keeps the authentication papers for aged cakes carefully sealed in plastic.

Like wine, puer is judged by vintage. At the top of the scale are 150-year-old cakes that can fetch more than $13,000. Newly minted cakes -- which taste bitter and strong compared with aged ones -- range from $13 to $25. Ideally, puer should be stored in airy, humidity-controlled rooms, away from sun and pungent odors that might penetrate the leaves.

Puer, once a gift for emperors, was long relatively unknown in mainland China. Even in Yunnan, where the tea is cultivated, locals preferred plain old green and black tea.

But puer's popularity in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Guangzhou trickled to the mainland around 2004, stirring interest among consumers. Sensing a tourism peg, the local Yunnan government in 2005 sponsored an unusual publicity campaign for the tea in a modern-day version of the caravans that once plied trade routes to Beijing.

The caravans were stocked with puer from Yunnan tea companies that co-sponsored the event. The procession made promotional stops in major cities along the route to the capital. The voyage was broadcast on TV, anchored by Zhang Guoli, a famous actor best known for his role as Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, the era from which puer dates.

Puer's popularity skyrocketed, and the elite crowd of puer connoisseurs was joined by newcomers who possess neither their expertise nor their devotion to it. A 150-year-old cake of puer went on a promotional tour of the country in March, starting from the Forbidden City in Beijing. It arrived in Yunnan province later that month in the city of Simao, which had changed its name to Puer to help promote tea sales. The tour was sponsored by the city's government, which billed it as a homecoming for the tea.

The Yunnan government recently named puer one of the region's 10 prized cultural resources. In Beijing, puer cakes were marketed as a replacement for traditional moon cakes during the recent mid-autumn festival. Puer is cropping up in restaurants, which display prized vintages like a wine list. Exclusive clubs are opening in Beijing and Guangdong, where the rich gather to drink the tea and learn about its history.

Businessmen armed with cash were elbowing for puer by the case (each case contains 84 cakes). Tea leaves are being hoarded. It used to take weeks for the first batch of puer to sell out, according to Scott Wilson, a tea seller based in Kunming. This year, by the time it arrived in town, the entire stock was sold out.

Mainland Chinese tourists, toting magazines that chart the value of name-brand puers, visited Hong Kong tea shops to buy out entire stocks of recommended tea, says Henry Yeung, managing director of Sunsing Tea House in Hong Kong.

"They don't know anything about tea," sniffs Mr. Yeung, 30. Like others in the old-school puer crowd, he says novices, clueless about how to select and store quality puer, are likely to be duped by fakes.

Counterfeiters have printed knockoffs of popular labels, prompting one maker, Menghai Tea Factory, to employ Chinese money-printing technology to make its wrappers hard to duplicate. The company also set up a hotline for tipsters and established an investigative team to track suspects.

Other factories have cut production of regular green and black tea. Farmers are mixing in lower-quality leaves to puer harvests to artificially boost production. Long-time puer drinkers such as Mr. Yeung turn up their noses at the 2007 vintage, which they say is poor quality.

The boom has set off a wave of conspiracy theories on how it began. Some distributors whisper it started after one company withheld supplies to create the illusion of demand. Others posit that greedy businessmen hired imposters to bid up prices on their stocks of puer.

Tea industry officials fret about a crash. Still, current values are more than double what they were a year ago.

Farmers could be among the hardest-hit from a bust. Industry watchers say that thanks to puer, this year marks the first time tea farmers -- many of whom are ethnic minorities living on the southern Chinese border -- have made a livable wage. The broad-leaf trees that produce puer take three years to mature, meaning farmers who have invested in tea trees are gambling that prices will stay high.

Collectors like Barry Tam aren't worried. This year, the 33-year-old who lives in Hong Kong bought a 100-year-old puer cake for about $13,000 and says he sold it six months later for double that. If the bottom should fall out of the puer market, reasons Mr. Tam, "even if I cannot sell it, I'll drink it."

景迈古茶树风波

思茅市澜沧县景迈村万亩古茶园中最大最具代表性的一株千年人工栽培型古茶树在千家寨“茶树王”官司开庭前悄然死去。2004年8月，到澜沧出差的韩雷发来了这张绿色茶林背景衬托下的凄惨照片。根据历史记载，500年前古茶园发生一次大火灾，400多年前遇一次大虫灾，20世纪中后期曾遭乱砍滥伐，历经沧桑。千百年过来，古茶园的茶树，全靠自然肥力生长。

辛存的这棵千年老茶树是景迈村乡民的茶神。年复一年，傣族和布朗族老人都要携带子女来这里祭祀膜拜，因为从古到今，他们一直靠采茶、卖茶生活。1950年，末代头人苏里亚采摘古茶鲜叶，精心制作茶叶献给毛主席。淳朴的少数民族用献茶的方式，表达他们对党对政府的信任和感谢。

近年来，情况发生了变化。2003年初，县政府与美籍台商蔡林青的101公司签订了一份合同，决定以每年收取22万元费用的条件，将景迈村万亩古茶园的使用权以保护的名义承包给蔡林青的101公司，期限为50年。合同规定，景迈村居民从古茶园采摘的茶叶必须交售给101公司。采茶的傣族妇女说，1984年土地改革后，茶树被分给各家各户，前些年各家自己揉茶制茶出售，近几年有人购置茶机办起了茶叶加工厂。景迈村勐本社村民波三府投资5、6万元购置了一大一小两台揉捻机，一台滚筒杀青机，一台百叶式烘干机，每年可收购加工出售十多吨晒青毛茶。当地政府在履行同101公司签定的合同过程中，要求古茶园附近的20多家加工厂搬迁，或者将厂子出售给101公司。大家都不明白，他们的损失该由谁负责。波三府受到威胁，不搬迁，厂房将被推土机铲平。另一茶厂厂长黄长宝说：“我们觉得不公平，每年22万的承包费我们也出得起，为什么我们不能与101公司竞标？这样即使输了我们也心服口服。”对此，澜沧县有关官员的解释是：“101公司有着其他厂所不具备的古茶保护意识和专业知识，因为古茶树很特殊，不是谁说保护就可以保护。”二十多户茶厂的工商营业执照被收缴了一年多。波三府今年9月重新拿到营业执照，经营范围已被更改为“新植茶叶收购、加工、销售。”当地茶厂收购、加工和销售古茶园茶叶将成为非法行为。茶农说，“开始，101公司的鲜叶收购价格是十元一公斤，后来降到四元一公斤。”

在101公司承包和实施保护措施一年多后，千年古茶王“仙逝”了，空剩一座“茶王亭”。

茶友还记得，二零零四年五月十六日，南风窗记者尹鸿伟发自云南思茅的报道《滇茶异象》中“‘独家’保护古茶树？”的文章。文章曾用小标题发出疑问，“看上云南千年古茶树的人越来越多，对于古树来说，这是祸是福？”记者采访时间发生在五月上旬，那时这棵景迈村万亩古茶园中的标志性大茶树还活在世间。提供千年古茶王“仙逝”照片和消息的韩雷说，“由于人工建了护栏,并在旁边建亭子,像公园一样供人游逛，生态环境的变化、破坏，最终造成‘茶王’死亡。”

蔡林青说，“古茶王出现的问题，与村长的施肥行为有关。”村长的管护行为发生在101公司承包前的2002年，到2004年5月，记者还看到茶树活着。蔡林青又说，“或许有人泼硫酸破坏，造成茶树死亡。”

10月23日，我们赶到景迈村。村民将古茶王移到村头寺庙前，死亡干枯的树干直指县环保局“经济建设与环保协调发展”的宣传标语。

村头小卖部前有几个村民说，“101公司用液态化肥辣死了古茶树。”蔡林青则说，“村长带人挖走古茶树，是为了破坏现场。”不管怎么说，古茶王不可能死而复生。

县经作中心和县森林公安分局一行六人6月18日到景迈古茶园对茶树死亡情况作实地调查，在向县人民政府的报告中写到：“1999年冬季严重霜冻后，管护农户于2002年进行过修剪，同时进行根内施肥，肥料为钙镁磷肥，数量10公斤左右，通过管护，2003年古茶树抽发出新梢。2003年冬季和2004年春季101公司对古茶树进行了铲草施肥等管护措施，施肥方法为外围打孔深施液肥和根部开沟洒施磷肥，同时进行根部培土。肥料和数量具体情况不明。”

万亩古茶园在1999年冬季严重霜冻中都挺过去了。调查组认为：不合理的管护措施将会加速茶树生势的衰退。