TeaForum.org

In another thread there was surprise over China's low per-capita consumption of tea, so I thought this might also be a good thread to bring up tea-ration tickets (茶票 I think), which were a thing in China for many years. Sadly I don't know much about them. Here is a tea-ration ticket from 1972.

Since when tea consumption per capita by country is listed, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tea_consumption_per_capita) the UK is a whopping #3 (China inexplicably #20!) I think this was for two reasons, first the habit in China of re-steeping teas many times vs. the UK steep-on...

There was a photo of a tin of this tea in Kit Chow and Ione Kramer's 1990 book, "All the Tea in China", but the tins don't seem to have normal tea-branch type branding. Were these produced outside of China? Also, who was the audience? Pu'er tea was still illegal in the U.S. during this time, so wher...

A modern Sprouting gunpowder green tea! Now this was a surprise to see, I normally only see Temple of Heaven (Shanghai) or Camel (Zhejiang) gunpowder and the dodgy brand "Dragon's Tower" where I am not quite sure if it is a State tea or if gunpowder tea of all things has counterfeits now.

A new(ish) Butterfly brand Lapsang Souchong with QS code, and an older tin without a code. The design makes me think that this tin was introduced after the other black tea tins, but I'm not sure. ./download/file.php?id=7312 ./download/file.php?id=7311 Also a modern Lapsang Souchong tin; the Butterf...

Despite them not being amazing teas, I've been intrigued by how these state factories/brands split up over time and who produces what now. I'm guessing a lot of it happened just by regional location of the various factories? There is some cross over between them but it seems like Golden Sail became...

Three slightly different packages of Sow Mee, one from a finished Hong Kong auction at L&H, one from what seems to be the Sunflower English-language wholesale website , and a third from blogger wilson from around 2012. :) Lots of interesting things here! First, I am curious when Sunflower started se...

A lidless tea-kettle from 1948. I'm not sure if it was intended this way, but in hindsight this seems a bit like a war of attrition; "If this is the only tea-kettle available, you will have to buy!" vs. "No, we can collectively forget that kettles exist and boil water in the microwave or in pans on ...

A 1961 "Constant Comment" ad from Better Homes and Gardens. Constant Comment is interesting in that as far as I can tell it was never focused on in these magazines, as they mostly talked about spicing the tea yourself with clove-studded lemons, ginger, etc., but Constant Comment was always in the ba...

That's very interesting! Supposedly this is what French packaging looked like recently (I think this is for minis?). "Nature" is specified because of the popularity of flavored pu'er like lotus or ginseng. :) Yes, i think this is a commonly sold supermarket puerh, but not sure if it is made by Xiag...

A modern Butterfly brand baimudan tin.

In the production process of white tea, an important step is missing, and this changes how white tea acts. White tea is not fired at a high temperature (sometimes this is called a kill-green). This is a step that deactivates many enzymes that are responsible for tea oxidation. Some folks believe tha...

The quote on the French study was a good idea, though; I hear that this actually started a minor pu'er fad in France as a diet tea during that time, but I am not sure where I would look to find this discussed in popular magazines... Indeed, the classic ripe Xiaguan tuocha 7663 is known as the "Fren...

A new(ish) Butterfly brand Lapsang Souchong with QS code, and an older tin without a code. The design makes me think that this tin was introduced after the other black tea tins, but I'm not sure.

A "China Black Tea". The basic design seems the same as for the lychee congou, although the edge trim is a little different. More questions on the top stamp as well; this seems to be from after the switch to "animal by-products" branding, but maybe before the development of separate brands for each ...