Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

One of the intentionally aged teas, Pu-Erh has a loyal following.


May 3rd, '14, 13:04
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by Puerlife » May 3rd, '14, 13:04

Ahah! I'm so glad I read your long post, kyarazen. Recently, I was in a shop in Penang and bought a bing of 2012 Yiwu ("old bush material") and had a long talk with the vendor. Among other things, she told me while making a face that aged pu-erh is dead, it's just nothing. What a bizarre thing to say, I thought. Maybe she just wants to sell me her young sheng. But now it makes sense--she was born in Yiwu, visits for the spring and fall harvests and has extended family that still live there and have land there.
I'm glad I posted about this book. By the time I get it I'm going to understand it pretty well! By all means, keep posting if you have time.

May 10th, '14, 00:46
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by AllanK » May 10th, '14, 00:46

I finished reading this book the other day. It was very interesting to read about the market forces of Puerh tea from an anthropologist's viewpoint. The part about how people in China were buying Puerh purely for speculation purposes was interesting. A flood of this Puerh must have hit the market cheaply when this bubble burst. I wonder if the thread about tuochatea.com and their low prices is due to this. Maybe someone had bought all these teas when the market was high and was forced to sell to someone else cheap who is now selling to us on teachat.

May 18th, '14, 20:37
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by AllanK » May 18th, '14, 20:37

One of the things she talks about in this book is the practice of bringing small leaf tea grown elsewhere in China to Yunnan to be processed as Puerh. Is this practice common and how would you know if you had small leaf tea from elsewhere in China and not Yunnan Puerh?

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May 18th, '14, 21:43
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by Teaism » May 18th, '14, 21:43

AllanK wrote:One of the things she talks about in this book is the practice of bringing small leaf tea grown elsewhere in China to Yunnan to be processed as Puerh. Is this practice common and how would you know if you had small leaf tea from elsewhere in China and not Yunnan Puerh?
Yes this may be true. I think I mentioned it in this forum before. My friend is a trader and he saw lorry loads of plantation tea from Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan. The local merchant mentioned to him that there were a few hundred truckloads of them and the price for such tea was US$2 per kilo. It was around year 2011 when he mentioned to me. Now it is documented in this book as well.

Well, for tea it is always buyers beware. Don't look at the label and stories. Look at the tea leaves and taste the tea. It is not very difficult the spot this kind of tea. The leaves are smaller, with woody hard stem. The leaves are thin and the taste is flat with harsh astringency and unpleasant bitterness. The cake doesn't give a nice pleasant and natural tea smell and the brewed tea leaves looks darker green. But these are just guide and may not be the foolproof test to identify it but a good guide.

Cheers!

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May 31st, '14, 23:43
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by debunix » May 31st, '14, 23:43

Still haven't finished all the videos, but the book was quite illuminating even without them. It really clarifies and pulls together a lot of what has been mentioned here and there, about how much of what we think of as a longstanding tradition regarding puerh is really a reimagined version of a past that might never have existed. I was particularly struck by stories of people in Yiwu drinking locally made green tea--proving that Yunnan greens aren't just a result of people trying to figure out what to do with plantation tea after the crash of 2007, and confirming that there is a tradition of drinking young sheng--and I cringed at the stories of people throwing out such tea after a couple of years because it was perceived as too old to drink.

There is often a frustrating vagueness but by the end, it makes sense, because it there really aren't a lot of solid facts on which to hang the story, and there aren't clear villains or heroes, but a lot of people trying to make a living, preserve what they can of lost traditions, and they succeeded so well in making a reputation for a style of tea that demand now far outstrips supply--hence the opportunity for the shenanigans like bringing in outside leaves to be packaged as the real thing.

BTW, I read the Kindle version: it doesn't seem like a book to reread over and over again, so no regret over not having a paper copy.

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Jun 4th, '14, 09:58
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by MEversbergII » Jun 4th, '14, 09:58

Finally started getting through some of the videos recently. That seems like quite the large house for only a few people. I never thought of lone farmers having to do as much work on their own. I guess I figured it was all hired hands, all the time.

M.

Jun 4th, '14, 11:49
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by Puerlife » Jun 4th, '14, 11:49

debunix wrote:Still haven't finished all the videos, but the book was quite illuminating even without them. It really clarifies and pulls together a lot of what has been mentioned here and there, about how much of what we think of as a longstanding tradition regarding puerh is really a reimagined version of a past that might never have existed. I was particularly struck by stories of people in Yiwu drinking locally made green tea--proving that Yunnan greens aren't just a result of people trying to figure out what to do with plantation tea after the crash of 2007, and confirming that there is a tradition of drinking young sheng--and I cringed at the stories of people throwing out such tea after a couple of years because it was perceived as too old to drink.

There is often a frustrating vagueness but by the end, it makes sense, because it there really aren't a lot of solid facts on which to hang the story, and there aren't clear villains or heroes, but a lot of people trying to make a living, preserve what they can of lost traditions, and they succeeded so well in making a reputation for a style of tea that demand now far outstrips supply--hence the opportunity for the shenanigans like bringing in outside leaves to be packaged as the real thing.

BTW, I read the Kindle version: it doesn't seem like a book to reread over and over again, so no regret over not having a paper copy.
Since Yiwu (and greater Yunnan) green tea is now being overlooked we won't have to pay a premium for it. Sure, we want puer, but maybe a green tea day now and then instead of a cheap factory pu makes sense.
I'm over halfway now and fortunately the author got the most dense of the academic blah blah out of the way in the first chapter. But on the plus side, her academic rigor gives us readers an index, extensive endnotes and a very nice little glossary with romanized Chinese, Chinese characters and the English translation.
And I just learned a new word - pollarding, the practice of cutting off the top of a tree and its branches. This makes the tea leaves easier to pick and they grow faster, increasing yield but decreasing desirability for the same reason. So instead of a tree having one thick trunk with all the branches higher up, pollarded trees have multiple branches starting very close to the ground and aren't as tall. I'm sure many of these trees are marketed as gushu by virtue of their age but they aren't as good as trees that haven't been pollarded. The trees the woman in the video is picking from are pollarded.

Jun 5th, '14, 20:59
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by AllanK » Jun 5th, '14, 20:59

Puerlife wrote:That's the title of a new pu-erh book I've just put in my Amazon shopping cart. Better yet are the free accompanying videos:
http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books ... ideos.html
Having watched these videos and read this book increases my desire to visit the Puerh tea places of China such as Kunming.

Jun 9th, '14, 14:21
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by Emmett » Jun 9th, '14, 14:21

I believe the tea producer is Zhen Si Long and not Hai Lang Hao but I could be mistaken.

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Jun 9th, '14, 21:27
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Re: Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

by kyarazen » Jun 9th, '14, 21:27

Emmett wrote:I believe the tea producer is Zhen Si Long and not Hai Lang Hao but I could be mistaken.
yup. zheng si long

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