At my local little Saigon store the other day and picked up a fist-size chunk of pu from the "China National Native Produce & Animal By-Products Import & Export Corporation, Yunnan Tea Branch" for $1.50. $1.50!!!
Sure it wasn't an animal byproduct? Toci
well now that you mention it.. it does taste a little bit like groin.
Good pooh from the sheep?
Let me guess, this is it:
The next time you might search for the bamboo baskets of Liuan(Mandarin) or Lukon(Cantonese). They're wrapped by different brands but look boat shaped and large at 500g. Liuan is called a puerh but single fermentation not two like puerh. It is also from Anhui province and not Yunnan. It is loose in the basket and not compressed. In my Chinatown they're $6. Is it black or is it puerh?
Jim
Falky foo wrote:
fist-size
By-Products
How'd you guess!!
(I highly doubt it's "aged for over 20 years" like that web site suggests though.)
Yours was also better (look closer and yu will see that this one lacks the two characrters on the side that indicate grade). How is that Liu An? For $16 its a real bargain.
Alex.
Is cooked tuocha supposed to be graded? Usually there is a grading slip. I still have a 20 year old box. Interesting it has the Zhong emblem like this one. My recent purchase doesn't. I have a commercial Liuan basket from HongKong I bought in Chinatown for $6. I have a basket from a dealer in China which was more expensive. If there is a difference it isn't worth it. The commercial basket came with the Zhong emblem. The mainland basket came asis in a box so probably was lost. The leaf in the commercial box is sort of sticky but not compressed and the mainland completely loose.
Jim
Alex Chaihorsky wrote:
compressed.
$1.50!!!
actually let me qualify my previous statement. While the box is the same for my pu, mine has a crane rather than the tea symbol and has two characters in green on the left and the right. Otherwise it's the same.
Cowboy: was the one on the picture cooked? I thought it was sheng. Foo: These two chars are grade.
Sasha.
Heretofore all my Yunnan green and white boxes are shu tuocha with the zhong emblem and no grading. Foo opens up his box and finds a Xiaguan emblem with grading. I assume it is cooked because of his description of the taste. My twenty year old box with the original tuocha and recent purchase have enough blemishes so somebody could make a killing selling the new for the old. Foo one of the green characters should match the following grades. The other green character means 'grade'.
First
Second
Special
Jim
Alex Chaihorsky wrote:
grading
commercial
different
called a
Just iun case anyone is interested - the 1st is Jia, the second is Yi and the "Special" is Te. The firts two are the "heavenly trunks" - 10 "numericals" that with 12 zodiak signs make 60-years cycle. Cowboy, when you say "zhong" which one you mean - not the "China", "middle" "center" one, right? And you id not answer my question about how good is theie Liu An... :)
Sasha.
Lest anyone get confused, those green and white boxes are Xia Guan brand "Export" boxes, they are not used inside of China, and can contain any number of different tuocha inside, shu or sheng. A friend of mine recently purchased several boxes at his local Chinatown and they contained a whole different brand, someone just used the Domestic XG box and put a cheaper Tuo inside of them. In the last few years Xia Guan has started imprinting the boxes with production info including date, production line etc but it doent really mean anything because there is nothing stopping somebody from shoving a different tuo inside of one of these boxes, proper package sealing and truth in advertising has not reached the China mainstream yet. There are also many of the old boxes still around and they do get recycled with different teas and wind up back on the Chinatown shelves. Your 20 year old box may very well contain a 5 year old tuo, how do you know that the tuo is original? What emblem is embossed into the tuo itself? These changed over the years as well.
Here are some Xia Guan Factory website links: Export box
Domestic China Box (note that the bags are by far the most common domestic package used in China) A Grade
BTW I have not seen a cooked Xia Guan Tuo Cha in a crane wrapper, they might exist but I have never seen one. Most Xia Guan cooked puers have the Zhong Cha wrapper. Older Xia Guan greens also had the Zhong Cha wrapper.
As for blemishes Jim, lets get the story straight, Please dont confuse the group just because you want to throw a dig at me. There are marks from different printing productions runs that can often be associated to specific years and products. Much like the mint marks on coins can tell you where the coin was minted, or the perforation count on older stamps. However, without the books which are all in Chinese you will be hard pressed to decipher these differences. I have several of the books and they are quite fascinating.
Mike Petro
On 23 Apr 2005 06:14:13 -0700, "Space Cowboy" wrote:
Mike Petro
I actually think that this chaos with the boxes, etc. is a good thing. Too many times I tasted a shitty wine from a glorious bottle and had to hear how wonderful it was and how expensive... Here if you like the tea - its glorious and if you do not... not. And the urge to collect, to "gather", to "invest" makes not much sense too. Which is good because this way we drink more that we collect and offer our friends more tea that we brag about our stashes. I also believe that this may keep the prices within reason.
Sasha.
It's Christmas in Chinatown if I can find anything in those green/white boxes because the round box top simply comes off. It's not easy because the two finger indentations on the lid to grab the box is made for smaller hands. Does anyone know how I can remove the bottom box from a pyramid? My old sheng tuocha hasn't been anywhere in twenty years. I'm not even curious to remove the wrapper to find out more. If I had known more I would have bought more. I did stock up on the Xiaguan green box toucha with the Millennia production run date stamped on the bottom and when SS collapes can cash in by simply switching the seemingly anachronistic Crane emblem with something newer and selling the Xiaguan wrapper to museums because the wrapper was used internally in 2000 but could only appeared in retail after 2003. I use blemish instead of carbon dating because I don't want to rile the Creationists. I guess Pu is also unacceptable. I like the posts that appear to be addressed to a mediator but I do follow the thread tree.
Jim
Jim, how do you "KNOW" that the tuocha is original? From your implications you must be "trusting" what you were told because you haven't offered any credible evidence. The truth of the matter is that it is almost impossible to tell unless there is a known printing mark. The embossed emblems also can be used to place a tuocha within a certain date range but the ranges are pretty broad. As for wrappers, Xia Guan had roughly 24 distinctly different tuocha wrappers since
1902. They actually did a commemorative display last year where they reprinted them all and included one tuocha wrapped in each and enclosed them in a picture frame type display case. It came complete with a scroll explaining the details of each different wrapper, I think I have a jpeg of it somewhere. The display was too rich for my blood, it was over $380 street price in Kunming, no telling what the US vendors would have charged for it. It sure did look cool though.Xia Guan is often imitated and forged, they were one of the first Pu'er factories to attempt anti-counterfeit measures in their packaging. They use some special printing tactics in their bags now for example. Unfortunately they have not tackled their boxes yet. I long for the day when they start sealing the boxes and shrink wrapping the cakes. They have a special shrink wrap that is perforated to allow breathing and aging. The whole Industry needs a make-over regarding packaging.
Mike Petro
Jim
Mike Petro wrote:
And the C-14 dating won't help even if they would make it sensitive enough to "feel" 10-20 years because the bacterial activity would wipe it clean. I still believe that its a good thing, though. It makes us to judge the quality of the tea buy the quality alone, not by wrappers or certificates. When you take a beautiful lady into your arms and immerse yourself in her passion and femininity, in that moment of love, desire and celestial pleasure are you really that interested in the date on her birth certificate?
Sasha.
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