Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

Chapter 4: Heating Up and Cooling Down

106 Chapter 4 Heating Up and Cooling Down Zigong asks, “Shi and Shang, who does better?” The Master says, “Shi has done too much; Shang has done too little.” Zigong asks, “Does that mean Shi does better?” The Master says, “Too much is as bad as too little.” —The Analects, chapter 10 (Confucius 1981: 184) When I stayed in Yiwu in 2007, I received many requests from friends in Kunming to bring back some good Puer tea for them. I was happy that more friends were developing an interest in Puer tea, but I also felt uneasy and found this task to be a challenge, since one person’s food might be another’s poison. My uneasiness grew when I received a call from a close relative who rarely drank tea. He asked me to buy some Puer tea in Yiwu that would increase in value in the future. There were over fifty family brands in Yiwu at that time, and it was hard for me to predict which would increase in value. Several days later he called again, saying that he needed me to buy only a few samples of tea from Yiwu. Another friend in Menghai had collected some famous and expensive teas for him, such as Dayi, the brand of the Menghai Tea Factory (fig. 4.1), and Zhongcha, the brand of the Chinese Tea Company in Yunnan (fig. 4.2). After I returned to Kunming, my relative showed me the valuable teas that his friend had bought. They were Dayi 7542, which was said to be representative of raw Puer tea; Dayi 7572, said to be representative of artificially fermented Puer tea;1 and several pieces of Zhongcha, packaged with old paper and declared to be aged. Although these teas had cost him around¥10,000 altogether, he was keen to obtain more if possible. My relative was busy with his work, and I wondered how he had time to think about tea. He told me that the tea was not for drinking but for investment. Meanwhile, it became obvious to me that many people were developing a passion for Puer tea. I learned that several of my mother’s former col- Heating Up and Cooling Down x 107 leagues, who used to work in the engineering field, had opened tea shops in Kunming. Near my parents’ house, a grocery store on a crowded street was transformed overnight into a Puer tea shop. It seemed that Puer tea was breaking the old Chinese custom of locating tea shops in a quiet place. Even at the vegetable market near my house, I saw an old woman selling caked Puer tea from a portable stall. A local magazine said that the number of Puer tea shops in China had grown threefold from 2005 to 2006 (Puer Jianghu 2007a: 15). Even more tea shops opened in 2007. When the price of Puer tea spiked in the spring of 2007, local people in production areas such as Yiwu stir-roasted tea leaves diligently and often worked until late at night to meet the demand. In Simao and Jinghong I joined in occasional meetings in local tea shops, where regular customers from various occupations gathered, learning tasting techniques and acquiring the newest information on Puer tea. As a Jinghong journalist commented, at this moment, “the entire nation was engaged in tea” (quan min jie cha).2 People were speculating on Puer tea as they did on stocks in financial markets. In some Kunming teahouses, I saw people drinking and talking about Puer tea around a tea table while checking interest rates and share prices with a laptop. Among this group there was usually a tea expert, who directed members how to properly collect, infuse, and drink Puer tea. There was also often a stock expert, who showed them how to follow the ups and fig. 4.1 Dayi product. The character in the center of the tea cake is yi (益), which literally means “benefit” or “increase,” and it is enclosed by the character da (大), which literally means “big” or “great.” Photo by the author. fig. 4.2 Zhongcha product. The character in the center is cha (茶, tea), surrounded by eight zhong (中, China) characters. Photo by the author. 108 x Heating Up and Cooling Down downs of the market. These tea shop groups were made up of people who speculate both on Puer tea (chao cha) and on the stock...