It is no accident that China Yunnan Pu 'er cooked tea sells well in the Pearl River Delta!
It is no accident that Pu 'er cooked tea sells well in the Pearl River Delta.
Nowadays, Shengpu is very popular.
But when you open the teapot of those old tea people, it's still cooked.
In 2021, the author gave several lectures in Yunnan, and a student at the scene told me seriously that their family lives in Kunming and they have never drunk Pu 'er tea before. Many people think this is unimaginable, but it is actually reasonable. In the old days, most ordinary people in Yunnan drank Yunnan green, Yunnan red or scented tea produced in this province. As for Pu 'er tea, it was basically sold to Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.
After the founding of New China, in order to facilitate the trading of Pu 'er tea, the export right of Pu 'er tea was simply handed over to Guangdong Tea Native Branch of China Native Products and Animal Products Import and Export Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "Guangdong Company"). The author collected a batch of Pu 'er tea advertising papers in 1960s and 1970s, including Pu 'er cake tea and Pu 'er Tuocha tea, which were printed and distributed by Guangdong company.
Today's Pu 'er tea can be divided into two kinds: raw and cooked. What kind of Pu 'er was the best seller in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao? The author has a piece of Pu 'er tea advertising cardboard printed by Guangdong Company in the 1970s, which is 17.7cm long and 12.6cm wide. The introduction on the back reads:
"Yunnan Pu 'er tea is one of the famous teas in China, and it has been sold at home and abroad for a long time. This tea soup is red and bright, and has a strong taste. It can help digestion, invigorate the spleen and relieve hangover, and it is a sincere drink."
Through the phrase "the soup is red and bright", we can know that it was the red soup Pu 'er that was sold to Hong Kong and Macao at that time, not the raw Pu 'er. In 1980s, Zhou Cong, whose ancestral home is Tengchong, Yunnan, founded Nantian Trading Company in Hong Kong. Riding on the spring breeze of reform, Nantian once developed into the leading seller of Pu 'er tea business in Hong Kong. According to Mr. Zhou Yong, Zhou Yan's younger brother, at that time, Nantian sold three or four thousand tons of Pu 'er every year, almost all of which were ripe Pu 'er. As for raw tea, Hong Kong people must store it for about ten years, and then they will drink it after two winters. The reason why Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao love to drink ripe tea is related to the unique local tea culture. People in the Pearl River Delta region pay attention to enjoying "one cup and two pieces" when they go to tea houses. A cup is a good cup of tea. Two, it is two snacks. The dim sum in the Cantonese teahouse is quite oily, which is both satisfying and satisfying. People go to the teahouse, and most of them are from married with children, old and young. Therefore, the tea drunk in the teahouse must meet three characteristics: first, dissolve oil to relieve boredom, and promote digestion and appetite. Second, it is mild and sweet, suitable for all ages. Third, resistance to impact and foam is not afraid of stewing. If such conditions are listed, Pu 'er cooked tea will be competent. Tea culture, as a part of food culture, must not be viewed separately. It is no accident that Pu 'er cooked tea sells well in the Pearl River Delta. Nowadays, Shengpu is very popular, but when you open the teapot of those old tea people, it's still cooked. They don't listen to the concept of famous mountains and villages, and it is good Pu 'er to drink comfortably.
Red soup puer is difficult to make.
Tea-making drawings collected in Guangdong Provincial Museum and drawn in the early 19th century.
In the 1970s, the technology of Yunnan Pu 'er cooked tea was finally determined. So before that, what kind of Pu 'er do you drink in tea houses in the Pearl River Delta region? A: Red soup Pu 'er. Here's the anecdote, please listen to me and talk slowly. Pu 'er tea in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China has no distinction between raw and cooked. Yunnan Pu 'er tea arrived in Guangdong and Hong Kong for as little as three or two months and as much as six months. Long journey, sun and rain, temperature and humidity, often have different degrees of aging and deterioration after arrival. But it is precisely because of this that tea becomes red and mellow under the action of post-fermentation. After the launch of the market, it was quite popular with consumers in Guangdong and Hong Kong.
The change of taste of Pu 'er is actually the same as stinky tofu, stinky mandarin fish and Beijing bean juice. At first, it was only an unexpected slight deterioration of food, but later it became a delicious processing method. Of course, there will never be a high-quality red soup Pu 'er after exposure to the sun and rain. Accidental deterioration only provides an idea. Only by turning ideas into crafts and accidents into necessity can spoiled food become high-quality and delicious.
As a mature commodity, red soup Pu 'er owes its first credit to tea merchants in the Pearl River Delta region. They got inspiration and inspiration from the spoiled Pu 'er tea. Therefore, study its changing law with great concentration. Finally, the process of transforming the bitterness of Yunnan Qingmao tea into alcohol and taste was accelerated by proper heating and humidification.
However, the moistening and aging of Pu 'er tea in the Republic of China was only an indigenous method spread among tea merchants in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. A truly systematic and scientific summary and research should start with a thorny incident that Guangdong Tea Import and Export Corporation encountered in the early days of the founding of New China. In the 1950s, although Guangzhou and Hong Kong were only a stone's throw away, the communication between tea merchants in the two places was inconvenient, resulting in a large backlog of green tea in Guangzhou, but there was no Pu 'er tea to sell in tea houses in Hong Kong. Faced with this thorny situation, the original small-batch manual workshop-style moistening and aging method in the private economy era can no longer meet the strong market demand for Pu 'er tea in Hong Kong and Macao markets. This prompted Guangdong Tea Import and Export Corporation to develop the production technology of artificial accelerated post-fermentation of Pu 'er tea in 1955, so as to carry out large-scale standardized production.
For this reason, Guangdong Tea Import and Export Corporation has set up a "Three-person Technical Team", with Yuan Licheng as the team leader, Zeng Guangyu and Zhang Cheng as the team members. They widely collected, sorted out and analyzed the processing technology and tea sample quality of folk tea merchants in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao after accelerated moistening. Furthermore, the experiment of humidifying and heating fermentation was carried out in Fangcun Dachongkou processing plant. After two years of repeated experiments, it was successful in 1957.
Guangdong's unique improvement on the processing method of Pu 'er tea not only shortens the post-fermentation time of traditional natural aging of Pu 'er tea, but also opens the first post-fermentation production process of Pu 'er (cooked tea). This has promoted the rapid growth of Pu 'er tea sales and even the accelerated development of Pu 'er tea industry in China. We can drink ripe Pu 'er today, on the one hand, we inherit the grace of Yunnan tea people, and on the other hand, we want to thank the tea people in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao for their hard work and wisdom.
Pu 'er is rich in raw materials.
In 1983, Guangdong Pu 'er tea produced more than 8,000 tons. The export is nearly 4000 tons. In October, 1984, Guangdong Tea Import and Export Corporation compiled and published "Guangdong Pu 'er Tea Processing Technology Data Collection", which completed the theoretical construction of Guangdong Pu 'er tea production and processing technology. I once looked through this internal document in the hands of Gui Pufang, a predecessor of Guangdong tea industry. It is informative and rich in content, and it is an indispensable research document in the history of Pu 'er tea development. Unfortunately, nowadays, the academic circles pay insufficient attention to the history of Pu 'er tea in Guangdong, and even deliberately ignore or even obliterate it.
The characteristic of processing Pu 'er in Guangdong is flexible and eclectic. As a result, it is not necessary to use Yunnan big leaf species for the tea green of Pu 'er in Guangdong. Mr. Zhang Chenglao, a member of the "Three-person Technical Team" in the 1950s, once recalled an anecdote about Guangdong Pu 'er trading, which can quite explain the principle of Guangdong Pu 'er for tea green. Now briefly described as follows, tea lovers can be treated as oral historical materials.
This happened in the early 1960s. China had just survived three years of natural disasters and had not recovered. At that time, the limelight of international communism had begun to turn. In order to carry forward the spirit of international communism, China assisted Vietnam, which was then called Comrade Plus Brother, with precious materials such as rice, which was very scarce. As a result, the other party gave us a lot of agricultural and sideline products such as tea. Among them, there is a big leaf named "Hejiang No.2", which is sunburned and hairy, and its shape is very poor. There are more stalks than tea, accounting for more than three quarters. And the stalk is 2-3 cm long and 1-2 mm thick. However, the internal quality is extremely good, the smell of Chen Xiang is thick, the soup is red and red, and the taste is mellow and smooth. It is difficult for managers to set a price for this and take it to the export commodities fair for a trial offer. Hong Kong businessmen reacted strongly, and the bid was staggering. It was close to the teahouse that sold Hong Kong's trump card Pu 'er "1059" at that time and finally bought this tea. The reputation was so loud that a group of Pu 'er tea lovers called friends and friends to appreciate it, so the business was booming.
Once upon a time, not only Vietnamese tea green, but also Guangdong big leaf species, Hainan big leaf species and even Sichuan and Guizhou tea green were all raw materials of Guangdong Pu 'er. Such a thing, in the eyes of today's Pu 'er tea enthusiasts, is absolutely deviant. But in the hearts of Pu 'er tea lovers in those days, it was a normal thing. Did people in those days not understand tea? Don't worry, let me tell you another old story.
On November 25th, 2004, the first provincial international symposium on Pu 'er tea hosted by Yunnan Province was held in Hongta Base, Kunming. During the meeting, Mr. Lin Zhenhao from Hong Kong expressed the following opinions: Pu 'er tea has been drunk in Hong Kong, and there are not so many theories. In recent years, Yunnan tea is eager for quick success and instant benefit. When it is fermented, there is too much water. When it comes to Hong Kong, it has only soup color and no taste. In business, they temporarily gave up Yunnan and ordered a large number of Vietnamese tea greens.
These two stories, separated by 40 years, have the same idea of tea science behind them. Those who loved Pu 'er in those days didn't love a tea mountain in Yunnan, let alone a tea tree in Yunnan. They are obsessed with it, just delicious Pu 'er tea soup. The only principle of eclectic Guangdong Pu 'er is to satisfy tea lovers. Isn't this spirit of making tea worth learning from today?
My own collection of Guangyun Pu 'er tea cake is made by mixing Guangdong red soup tea and Yunnan big leaf cooked tea in the 1990s. After 20 years of aging, the soup color is bright and bright, the aroma is calm and restrained, and there is no lack of exotic and aged fragrance. The taste is thick and concise without losing freshness and pleasure. Judging from today's concept, it is not pure Pu 'er, but mixed Pu 'er, so it is natural to wait. But take tea soup as an example, Guangyun Pu 'er is indeed a very rare good tea. When drinking this kind of tea, I can always think of Liu Changqing's quatrain: your seven strings are like the voice, of a cold wind in the pines. Although I love this ancient tune, most people don't play it today.
This article was published in the fourth issue of World Expo magazine in 2024.
