Found this article while hunting for info on Guangdong-pu'er. It's in Chinese, but worth muddling through with an online translator, I think: http://www.tea-gd.com/CultrueDetail.asp ... 8669361949
From the Tibet side, it talks about a scandal caused when several hundred tons of pu'er arrived moldy in Tibet and were refused, and how the Yunnan factories stopped using wild tea in 1973 because of the unpredictable effect it had on people who drank as much tea as Tibetans do -- interesting contrast given the high demand for wild tea today.
From the Hong Kong side, it mentions the role that Vietnamese post-fermented teas had played there at the time, and the confusion in Yunnan when Hong Kong started requesting pu'er made like the pu'er they had been getting in Guangdong.
It also mentions the start of pu'er tea culture in Japan, mirroring the diet-aid role it had played in France.
Interview on the Tibet tea trade and the invention of cooked pu'er
Also for folks wondering, "OK, but where did Guangdong get this cooked tea from?" there is another good article in Chinese -- supposedly it was invented by a tea counterfeiter who had learned his trade in Macao making counterfeit Liu'an basket tea: http://sunsingtea.com/TeaNote
- Attachments
-
- 01A35BC2-0499-4C4E-976E-E8907098D65E.jpeg (693.7 KiB) Viewed 1949 times