Puer Tea

by Zhang, Jinghong. ,Project Muse.

  One day in mid-March, Zheng Da, Mr. Zheng's oldest son, came back from Jinghong with news that maocha in Laobanzhang—one of the tea mountains near Menghai, to the west of the Mekong—had sold for ¥800 per kilogram two weeks earlier. There was a rumor that this high price had been set by the local government and that it had suddenly jumped to ¥1,200 one day before Zheng Da came back to Yiwu. Others said that whereas in the past guests would always be served tea in Laobanzhang, they were now given a bottle of water, because tea had become prohibitively expensive.

  At this time, people began to realize that the increasing price was not confined to Yiwu but was common in all the tea areas of Xishuangbanna and Yunnan. In fact, it seemed that Yiwu's price was not that high at all and could rise further to catch up with prices elsewhere. Some tea farmers and outside traders also said that the surprisingly high price of Laobanzhang maocha was caused by fierce competition among Guangdong traders, who liked the strong taste of Puer tea. Influence from other tea areas, therefore, was taken as a third factor contributing to the rise in price.

  The increasing price of maocha brought worries to some and happiness to others, depending on their position. In Yiwu, almost every family was involved in the tea business, whether in rough or fine processing. The higher prices made those who were involved only in rough processing happy, since they needed only to harvest their tea trees, process the leaves into maocha, and then sell the maocha at a high price without worrying about later procedures. This boosted their enthusiasm for working in the tea fields. People joked that a tea picker coming back from the fields was “carrying a basket of money in the street” or “rolling money very hard,” referring to one of the rough processing techniques wherein tea leaves are rolled by hand.

  For those involved in fine processing, however, the increasing price of maocha brought concern. They now needed more capital to buy maocha and had to figure out how the final products would be sold; as prices rose, they feared consumers might not be able to afford them. Mr. Zheng was among those who was worried. The tea that he had produced during the last two years had sold well, but he still had some left over. And he had spent money on meeting the QS requirements: about ¥50,000 to renovate his house and another ¥20,000 to the Zheng Shan Company, of which he was a member. Now he would have to spend more money to obtain the unreasonably expensive maocha. He was waiting for the price to decline but worried that the tea material would be snapped up by others and not be available for him later.

  Unlike Mr. Zheng, another local producer, Mr. Gao, was involved in both rough and fine processing. He owned some tea fields, but he still needed to collect more maocha from other sources for his larger-scale new factory, established in partnership with a friend. The new factory had cost them ¥600,000. After having passed the QS standard successfully, it opened in late March 2007 and was proclaimed to be the best in Yiwu. But Mr. Gao and his friend had borrowed money to build the new factory and were now in debt. Because the price of maocha had increased unexpectedly, they would face even more debt.

  Many of these local tea producers adopted a neutral strategy: they began to buy both cheaper, lower-grade maocha and expensive, high-quality maocha so that they would have excellent as well as ordinary products to supply later. Their primary goal was to find stable clients to whom they could sell their tea. They were happy that Puer tea was becoming more popular, but they realized that the competition in the business was heating up. They could see that there were many outside traders who came to Yiwu to collect maocha, with whom they competed as well as collaborated.

  Most outside traders’ involvement in fine processing was limited to contracting with tea producers in Yiwu, and the unexpected rise in prices worried most of them. For many individual tea traders, and even some bigger tea companies, not knowing whether the higher-priced tea products would be accepted by the market, and therefore whether they'd earn enough to buy additional maocha, was a source of great anxiety. Only a few traders were happy about the situation, such as this one from Beijing:

  Of course I feel the price is increasing abnormally, but I am happy because it means that a large number of incapable traders will be defeated and finally thrown out of the Puer tea market if they are not able to cope with the challenging price. And I am confident about myself. This is just a shuffling of the cards, where only the fittest will survive.

  Something I heard at the end of April echoed this statement. Mr. Gao conveyed some important news: “I heard that three big companies from Kunming have come to Yiwu this spring. After deliberately raising the tea price by driving out others, they left.” So besides bad weather, short-stay tourists, and price competition between tea areas, the deliberate interference by outside companies was the fourth reason for the high price. This was never verified, but it persisted as gossip. It also made the tea price increase in Yiwu more mysterious, as an invisible hand seemed to be “shuffling the cards.”

  What was obvious was that the price of everything in Yiwu was increasing. When I went to Yiwu's only photocopy shop, I was charged five times as much as I would be in Kunming for printing and copying. I was told that “since the tea price has been elevated, we have to follow.” There was no exception for meat, vegetables, or guesthouses. In 2007, the price of pork and many foodstuffs in China rose sharply, and it was hard to determine whether the tea price followed the prices of these other commodities, or vice versa.

  In addition, the number of Puer tea investors was increasing. One afternoon in early April, Wen, the trader from Kunming, came to Mr. Zheng's house for tea. Just before the tasting, another man came in and said hello. He introduced himself as Xu, a tea trader from Guangzhou, and said that he had arrived in Yiwu that morning. It was clear that he was trying to find a local family to cooperate with in the future. Mr. Zheng warmly invited him to join in the tea tasting. Unlike many traders, who resisted sharing their background and purpose at the beginning, Xu revealed that he had traded tea in many areas of Yunnan and thus could handle various requests for his clients. He described the journey to Yunnan as arduous, almost as difficult as the caravan journeys of the past. To save money, he had taken a train from Guangzhou to Kunming and arrived in Yunnan in early March. He had traveled through Baoshan, Lincang, Simao, and Menghai before finally arriving in Yiwu (maps I.1 and I.2). However, during his journey, shocked by the continually rising price, he had not collected much maocha. He was disappointed that he had achieved nothing in the months since he had left home. Tortured by the high price of maocha and unable to understand its change, he had on several occasions almost decided to turn back and give up, but he thought about his long-term business and persisted in this hard journey. He sincerely hoped to do some business in Yiwu by cooperating with a local tea family. But since Yiwu was totally new to him, he was eager to gather local information.

  Moved by the story of Xu's hard journey, Mr. Zheng and Wen told him about Yiwu, and Mr. Zheng showed him the tea products his family had made. Looking at the Puer tea cake, Xu gave a deep sigh. He said that he was forced into the business by requests from his clients, since Puer tea was in heavy demand in Guangdong. He had a wholesale tea shop in Fangcun Tea Market in Guangzhou, the largest wholesale tea market in China. But he described himself as a small fish (xiao yu) swimming among thousands of tea traders in that market, where everyone was now involved in the Puer tea business. His favorite tea, he admitted, was actually Iron Goddess of Mercy (Tieguanyin), a famous oolong tea, which was his dominant product prior to Puer tea's prevalence. Out of politeness he continued to drink the Puer tea served by Mr. Zheng, but he showed little interest in it and seldom commented on its flavor. Comparing Iron Goddess of Mercy with Puer tea, he said the former had risen steadily in price and was a mature tea product in the market, unlike Puer tea, whose ascent was chaotic and whose prospects were questionable.

  Xu did eventually conduct business with Mr. Zheng. He collected maocha by himself or deputized Mr. Zheng to collect it for him. The fine processing was done at Mr. Zheng's house, f
or which Xu paid ¥10 per kilogram. Xu traveled continually between Yiwu, Menghai, and several other tea areas, complaining about the hard journey and tough prices. Xu's case was typical and shows that even those who did not have a real interest in Puer tea and were only “small fish” had been forced to join in the sea of the Puer tea business.

  I later met more people whose past work had nothing to do with tea but who had grown enthusiastic about Puer tea trade or collection. With limited tea resources and a greater number of buyers from more and more places, it was no wonder that the price of maocha was rising higher and higher.

  Puer tea and its increasing price dominated events in Yiwu during the spring of 2007 (fig. 2.2). People talked about tea at meetings, over dinner, and even at weddings. Many local young people decided to stay at home and help their parents with the tea business rather than move to cities, where they might earn less than they did in Yiwu. At the same time, workers from other rural areas—with diverse ethnic origins like Yi, Miao, and Han—were coming to Yiwu to enter the tea industry.

  “A BATTLE OF WITS AND BRAVERY”

  Rain eventually broke the drought in Yiwu in mid-April, but the price of Puer tea continued going up. By the end of April, when the tea leaves started sprouting more quickly, the price of maocha had reached ¥400 per kilogram. Wen decided that he would begin collecting maocha before the spring season was over. The task of identifying “authentic” maocha, which had been a challenge before, would be even harder this year as a result of the intense competition.

  Among the various traders, Wen was above average. He said he ran his individual business on a small scale, but he emphasized that he had the choicest goods. And he was confident that he would not be shuffled out of the Puer tea market because he had stable customers, especially those from Taiwan who demanded high quality. These clients had preordered and prepaid for Puer tea. They trusted Wen, and they accepted that the price he charged would fluctuate in line with market conditions. But for Wen, trust also meant pressure. As his clients were critical tea drinkers, he had to select the best tea in Yiwu if he wanted to maintain a stable relationship with them.

  Although the QS standard was established by the provincial government to ensure the clean production of Puer tea, it focused only on fine processing and left rough processing unregulated.3 The latter, however, is considered essential by critical traders, like Wen, in determining the quality of maocha and hence that of the later Puer tea products. For example, how much the tea plant was pruned, at what temperature oxidation was stopped, and how the tea leaves were rolled all have an important effect on the final flavor. In many respects, these considerations are similar to the specialty coffee standards that arose in the United States in the 1970s as consumers began to demand handcrafted, single-origin coffee with distinctive flavors (Talbot 2004). After being heavily influenced by Taiwanese connoisseur standards, Wen and other traders further developed their own practical guidelines and conveyed them to the tea farmers. These guidelines supplemented and went beyond the state's regulations. Different traders guided the growers in different ways, which resulted in a diversity of methods of rough processing tea in Yiwu. Because the tea plants belonged to local farmers, Wen and the other traders could not always be there to supervise, but they offered guidance when they visited. As a result, the final verdict on the authenticity of maocha could be made only via careful judgment before buying.

  Wen was perhaps the most selective trader I met in Yiwu, and he was skilled at differentiating among teas. First, he selected authentic maocha made from forest tea, which he processed separately from maocha made from terrace tea. Yiwu has many old tea trees, some hundreds of years old, scattered amid the forest. The oldest tree, which may have been cultivated initially by the indigenous people, is estimated to be about eight hundred years old. Since the early 1980s (or late 1970s, according to some locals), large terrace tea gardens have been planted. Terrace plants are spaced much more closely than forest trees and look more like bushes due to regular trimming, but the resulting tea retains the same botanical characteristics as forest tea (figs. 2.3–4). Historically, maocha made of terrace tea and maocha made of forest tea commanded the same price. However, since around 2004 (or 2002, according to some locals), forest tea has been traded for a much higher price due to the claim of outside traders that older plants produce tea superior in flavor. Forest tea is thought to be minimally contaminated by pesticides and fertilizer due to its growing in a healthy ecosystem under the forest canopy among other plants. Moreover, the most aged and valuable Puer tea, like Tongqing and Songpin, was made from forest tea material before terrace tea fields were established, which also contributed to a price gap between forest tea and terrace tea. In 2006, forest tea was valued at more than ¥100 per kilogram, while terrace tea commanded around ¥30 or ¥40 for the same amount. When the former reached around ¥400 in the spring of 2007, the latter was around ¥100.

  Differentiating forest tea leaves from terrace tea leaves became more challenging when the price gap widened in 2007, and it became more common for terrace tea to be passed off as forest tea. According to a rough estimate by Zhang Yi and his clients, Yiwu's annual forest tea output was less than one hundred tons, and around three hundred tons if terrace tea was included, but in the market there were 3,000 tons of purportedly “authentic Puer tea from Yiwu.” Under these conditions, it is nearly impossible for the ordinary consumer to identify authentic forest tea of Yiwu. The buyer must first carefully examine the tea's appearance. Some scrupulous buyers, such as Wen, claim that they are able to determine the origin and quality of the tea simply by sight. According to them, forest tea has larger leaves and stems, with tiny “fur” covering the back of the leaves. Others contend that terrace tea grown with fertilizer may have the same appearance, or perhaps look even better. Therefore, most careful buyers rely on flavor differentiation, infusing and tasting the tea themselves. Both good forest tea and good terrace tea have a sweet flavor followed by bitterness. But forest tea's aftertaste is said to be more intense than that of terrace tea.

  A second test of “authenticity” involves selecting maocha that was grown within the Yiwu area. Wen declared that Yiwu tea is one of his favorite types of Puer tea because of its subtle, lingering flavor.4 He processed maocha from elsewhere separately from Yiwu tea and labeled each tea by region, as his clients expected. Most tea producers and traders followed, or at least claimed to follow, this approach. Strictly speaking, they also agreed that tea material from the other nearby five tea mountains should be processed separately. But most considered these tea mountains to be “brothers” of Yiwu and tolerated the blending of maocha from all six mountains, including Yiwu. More critical traders, like Wen, strongly opposed blending Yiwu maocha with maocha from “nonbrother” regions, such as Jiangcheng (a county of Simao, north of Yiwu), Shangyong (another township of Mengla, south of Yiwu), and across the national border in Laos (east of Yiwu) (see map I.2).

  But growers in Yiwu and the nearby tea mountains could not meet the increasing demands of local tea processors for Yiwu maocha. As a result, many traders secretly bought maocha from nonbrother regions but retraded it as “authentic” Yiwu maocha. This adulteration made it even more difficult to identify true Yiwu tea.

  The third challenge for Wen was to identify the particular sub-tea mountain within Yiwu in which the maocha was grown. In many local family houses, there was a map of the Six Great Tea Mountains, showing the location of tea resources, relics, past caravan routes, and present transportation lines. The areas of Yiwu in this map were remapped in Wen's mind as distinct tea areas, characterized by trivial variations in taste determined by their distinct ecosystems. In Wen's mental map, many areas surrounding central Yiwu produced substandard tea resources. Only one western area (Gaoshan village, inhabited by Yi tea growers), one northern area (Ding village, inhabited by Yao), and one eastern area (Guafeng village, inhabited by Yao, very close to Laos) were considered adequate by him. These areas were more sparsely populated and
had more undisturbed forests. According to Wen, Han tea growers often used a superior rough processing technique, but the better ecosystem areas inhabited by Yi and Yao produced superior tea material. He believed that forest tea originating from these three areas had a unique cool flavor and a longer aftertaste than tea from other sub-mountains within Yiwu.

  Long before enough maocha was available and when the price was still unstable, Wen visited the tea-growing villages several times—talking, negotiating, and building relationships with local Yi and Yao growers. He even helped guide the growers in rough processing methods such as stir-roasting and rolling. In early March I joined Wen and several of his clients from Guangdong on a visit to the Yi village of Gaoshan. These clients had previously bought Puer tea from Wen that had been made from Gaoshan tea material, and they now wanted to see Gaoshan in person. After we visited the tall tea trees of Gaoshan, Wen took us to the house of one of his local acquaintances. There, the master, Xiao Hu, served tea, which Wen praised highly, saying that this was the maocha he would collect. Later, the family prepared lunch and invited everyone to join them. The guests were embarrassed to eat without paying, but Wen invited them to join on behalf of the master, saying that his guests should make themselves at home. Before leaving, Wen reminded Xiao Hu not to prune the tea trees5 and not to mix any terrace tea with the forest tea. He said that once a sufficient amount of maocha had been prepared, he would return to buy it at their negotiated price.

  At the end of April, when Wen decided to begin buying maocha in earnest, I followed him again to Gaoshan. On our way to the village, Wen told me that the price of the maocha would be ¥430 per kilogram, as Wen and the growers had agreed. This was a little higher than the average price of maocha in central Yiwu, but Wen said it was worthwhile because Gaoshan's maocha was better and Xiao Hu had improved his processing technique (largely as a result of his instruction, Wen hinted).