How did pu'er end up in Hong Kong in the first place?

Puerh and other heicha
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mbanu
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Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:39 pm

This has been a puzzler for me. According to puerh.fr, pu'er first became popular in Hong Kong in the 1930s? By that time the European and American tea-trade had mostly moved further north to Shanghai, so it does not seem likely that the tea just happened to be in Hong Kong as one of many teas looking for a buyer. It is also not along the Tea Horse Road, so there is no explanation such as why pu'er was in Sichuan, in that it was being transported to its final destination. I know that during Qing times there was pu'er tribute tea sent up to Beijing, and I suppose I could imagine a private-sector market among folks whose families had been connected to the old government, but again that is not near Hong Kong.

(If I had to pick a post-fermented tea to be accidentally popular in 1930s Hong Kong, I would have picked liu bao, as this tea was being exported to British Malaya so it would make sense that it would come through Hong Kong.)

Has anyone tried to uncover the details about this?
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OCTO
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Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:15 am

mbanu wrote:
Tue Mar 30, 2021 2:39 pm
(If I had to pick a post-fermented tea to be accidentally popular in 1930s Hong Kong, I would have picked liu bao, as this tea was being exported to British Malaya so it would make sense that it would come through Hong Kong.)

Has anyone tried to uncover the details about this?
Not really so..... many of us in the region grew up drinking LiuBao as a daily staple. Have never crossed my mind to research on this.... almost every hawker centre serves LiuBao... hot or iced. It's only in recent years that more attention have been given to LiuBao for it's originality and value. Otherwise, it was a cheap option to quench one's thirst, other than plain iced water.

Cheers!!
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YeeOnTeaCo
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Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:49 am

I've linked somewhere here before to a book written by the deputy chief of Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company which talks about his friendship with my grandfather (Yao Ji). Although it doesn't really talk about how pu-erh end up in HK in the first place, it does show the period when the popularity of Pu-erh starts to take place in the region which is closer to the 70s.

http://m.ishuocha.com/show-65-32158.html. It's in Chinese but if you google translate you'll somewhat understand what it's about. I hope it helps you find the answer!
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Balthazar
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Wed Mar 31, 2021 4:55 am

I think it's gonna be hard to find a satisfying answer to this in English.

Some things I have read and heard that doesn't really answer your question:

1) Much of the (not that much) puer that came to Hong Kong early on (early twentieth century), came through trading with Vietnam and Thailand (so brought to these countries from Yunnan, and then later sold to Cantonese merchants).
2) Puer imports into Hong Kong remained low until the 50s and only really took off in the late 70s.
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lUKAV28
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Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:48 pm

I’ve found this in the book “Tea War: A history of capitalism in China and India” p.270. Maybe it helps with putting some things into perspective.

“The dream of a tea industry revolution was unexpectedly given new life during the Second World War. Over the summer and fall of 1937, Japanese forces entered the Yangzi Delta, occupying Shanghai, and chasing the Nationalist government to Chongqing in western China. Fortunately for the inland tea districts, they remained untouched. Nationalist officials viewed the export tea trade as a crucial source of support for war. They coordinated sales to the Soviet Union for money or, sometimes, direct barter for weapons. Ironically, the tea trade during the war actually outperformed the previous decades. Precisely because the Shanghai tea warehouses were sidelined by battle, officials could fill the vacuum by redirecting transportation to Hong Kong, just downstream from the original Canton system. Reformers successfully implemented policies of economic control, integrating local peasant cooperatives with national agencies for distribution. Tea sales and prices jumped by over 30 percent, in some cases breaking new records. Though the trade was finally suspended in 1942 when Japanese forces shut down Hong Kong, the four-year experiment left Wu Juenong optimistic once again about the viability of progress. He spent the remainder of the war teaching new techniques in the tea area districts (...)”
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mbanu
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Sun May 02, 2021 8:51 pm

https://www.hpcbristol.net/visual/fh01-314

An interesting photo from 1933 Hong Kong -- was "Yunnan Teahouse" a pu'er shop?
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mbanu
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Mon Sep 06, 2021 9:50 am

An interesting piece of trivia from Yixing collector K.S. Lo, in a book about his company VitaSoy, was that many Hong Kongers (including himself) tried to get to Kunming in Yunnan when it looked like Hong Kong would be occupied by the Japanese during World War II. Perhaps this event helped introduce Hong Kongers to pu'er? On the other hand, perhaps the reason they knew of Kunming as a location was because of pu'er in Hong Kong in the first place... :lol:
orange
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Wed Jun 08, 2022 4:12 pm

The answer has to do with trade embargoes imposed on the mainland during the 1950s-1970s. That's why like Balthazar said above it grew in popularity from 1950s to 1970s and took off only in the 1980s. You can search for the answer in Chinese and there are webpages http://www.puer10000.com/puerchags/119135.html that go into details. But fyi, puerh was just some cheap tea that people drink everyday because they couldn't afford the better fresh tea (kind of like liubao in SEA).
orange
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Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:22 am

The history may be very surprising. According to this Ancient Pu'er Tea Horse Trade Routes articlehttps://www.puernews.com/wh/yyls/1590338570036665434, before the Communist took power, puer went to Hong Kong via these Tea Horse Routes:
1) the Southern and Southwestern routes that went to Burma (Myanmar) then to Thailand and then to Hong Kong;
2) the Southeastern route that went to Vietnam and then to Guangdong and Hong Kong.

After the Communists took power, these routes ended and the Yunnan Province Tea Company was not allowed to export tea. Then according to this articlehttp://www.puer10000.com/puerchags/119135.html, the puer tea industry was controlled by the Guangdong Province Tea Company until the 1980s (at the least the HK puer tea business). Some highlights from the article:

1) The Guangdong Company used Yunnan tea leaves, Guangdong tea leaves, Thai tea leaves, and North Vietnam tea leaves as raw materials to make (mostly post-fermented) pu'er tea for Hong Kong. The Guangdong Company had its own way of making post-fermented puer. The amount of Yunnan tea leaves imported into Hong Kong was very small, only about 10 to 20 tons a year until 1984 when it suddenly exceeded 1000 tons, after the Hong Kong Nantian company came into the Pu'er tea business.

2) The Nantian Company had connections in Burma and it had the money and connections to become a monopoly wholesaler of Menghai Tea Factory pu'er tea products. The Nantian Company went to Chiangmai, Thailand 1in the 1960s to learn how to make post-fermented puer; then transferred the knowledge to the Menghai TF in 1979 (the Menghai TF started doing the Wodui process in 1973). Article also mentions Hong Kong traditional warehousing where fermentation also took place. Article calls both types of post-fermented puer shou puer and says that Hong Kong only had post-fermented puer until the late 1980s when some dry-stored sheng puer appeared; and, because of cost issues, only in very small quantities (3% of the total market).
Last edited by orange on Sat Jun 11, 2022 12:57 pm, edited 6 times in total.
.m.
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Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:55 am

I'm quite confused by these informations.
orange wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:22 am
the puer tea industry was controlled by the Guangdong Province Tea Company until the 1980s
Wasn't it controlled by the Yunnan Tea Branch of the CNNP (created in 1972 by merger from Yunnan China Tea Trading Co, a.k.a. Yunnan Tea Corp., est. 1944)?
As far as I know Guandong had its own CNNP branch, producing puerh, liu bao, etc, in particular the GuangYunGong cakes, in later years under the Golden Sail Brand (Jin Fan).
orange wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:22 am
...1984 ... after the Hong Kong Nantian company came into the Pu'er tea business....
The Nantian Company went to Chiangmai, Thailand to learn how to make post-fermented puer; then transferred the knowledge to the Menghai Tea Factory.
Yet Menghai TF produced their first batch of shu in 1973, if I remember correctly.
orange
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Thu Jun 09, 2022 9:38 am

.m. wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:55 am
Wasn't it controlled by the Yunnan Tea Branch of the CNNP (created in 1972 by merger from Yunnan China Tea Trading Co, a.k.a. Yunnan Tea Corp., est. 1944)?
As far as I know Guandong had its own CNNP branch, producing puerh, liu bao, etc, in particular the GuangYunGong cakes, in later years under the Golden Sail Brand (Jin Fan).
According to the article, the Yunnan Province Tea Company was not allowed to export; so they had to supply to the Guangdong Province Company which then mixed in cheap material and supplied it to Hong Kong. I read somewhere else that Yunnan also had to supply to some Shanghai branch for exporting.
.m. wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:55 am
orange wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:22 am
...1984 ... after the Hong Kong Nantian company came into the Pu'er tea business....
The Nantian Company went to Chiangmai, Thailand to learn how to make post-fermented puer; then transferred the knowledge to the Menghai Tea Factory.
Yet Menghai TF produced their first batch of shu in 1973, if I remember correctly.
According to the article, 1973 was a significant year for Yunnan's Wodui process, even though the Guangdong company had its own method called “Fashui” (probably means "spray water") which was slightly different from Yunnan's Wodui process. But the article goes on to say that Menghai TF did not get it right and often produced something called "Yunnan Qing" : fermentation was too light to avoid being too heavy.
Last edited by orange on Thu Jun 09, 2022 1:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
orange
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Thu Jun 09, 2022 9:49 am

.m. wrote:
Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:55 am
Yet Menghai TF produced their first batch of shu in 1973, if I remember correctly.
According to the article: "In the 1960s, because of political unrest in the mainland, tea could not be transported to Hong Kong. Therefore, Hong Kong people went to Chiang Mai, Thailand to get fermented tea. Zhou Cong of Nantian Company took Lu Zhuxun to Thailand to learn how to make fermented tea. That is how Zhou Cong and Lu Zhu (Mr. Zhou said that Hong Kong people called Mr. Lu as such) learned the tea-making technology of pu-er tea fermentation at that time. And that is how Mr. Zhou Cong knew how to instruct Menghai Tea Factory to improve the fermentation technology of Pu'er tea in 1979."

The Nantian (Southern Sky) Company was also the one that came up with the 8582/8592 recipe.
Last edited by pedant on Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: mod edit: fixed broken quotes
.m.
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Thu Jun 09, 2022 2:31 pm

@orange I see, that makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
Andrew S
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Fri Jun 10, 2022 4:53 am

@orange: likewise, thank you for sharing that.

It is interesting to read that article together with something like the Sun Sing articles about the Hong Kong side of the industry in the 70s and 80s.

Does anyone know if there are articles out there regarding the pre-50s history of puer in Hong Kong?

I'm also interested in the history of aged liu an, but I suppose that that is an even more specialised topic.

Andrew
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