Two unknown cooked pu erhs

Here is a Chinese discussion link found with Google:

You'll have to read between the lines (CNNP 2003) or if you can read Chinese click the View Original Web Page. The 2003 5 x 100g bundle on TaoBao was 138y or /8 for dollars.

Jim

Oleg wrote:

Hi Oleg,

The factory that produced the plum flower cakes is the probably same as the one that produced the pumpkin pu'er that Jim has, the Ji Xing factory, or lucky brand factory.

The one that you showed would be either the recent one, or it might be done by another factory - the tablet usually has the plum flower imprint but not the 'tea' character on the other side - that being said I'm familiar with the tablet pre-2001, having tasted some, but not after, so your picture may be one in the recent years or from another factory.

As for the squares, it is made almost by every other factory in Kunming - figuratively.

Danny

First I would like to thank rec.food.drink.tea members, especially pu erh related, for posting here since this group was one of the inspirations for my interest in pu erh! And now it's a great source of new pu erh related knowledge.

I would appreciate your help in indentifing two cooked pu erhs I have. I was looking for some info about them for quite a long time but to no effect.

First one is 100g Beeng Cha, so called "plum emdossed cake"

which seems to be the same as the one at ITC website

However ITC dosen't indicate the factory and year of production :( One can read ???????? on the wrapper which again just almost useless, just "good quality pu erh cake with plum flower" :( I was told that my cake is 8 years old which I tend to believe but can't be sure. My cake dosen't have any wrapper.

The same for the second one which is 50g Fang Cha

Again I was told that it is one year old, but no factory information. Goes in polyethlene wrapper

Thank you so much though I understand that there might be not enough information to tell anything.

Thank you, Jim and Danny!

But is Ji Xing (is it 吉幸?) a real name of the factory or just the brand? For example this two products are claimed to be of "Ji Xing" brand but claimed to be produced by "Xing Hai Tea Mountain tea Co."

Unfortunately I don't read Chinese :(

As for the second brick I suspected that this could be a kind of "no-name" thing :)

Thanks!

I can be overruled but JiXing is the brand and Xin(g)Hai or HaiXin(g) is the factory spelled both ways on TaoBao. Here is one picture from TaoBao that shows the factory name but not the brand name. CNNP is also an umbrella and only people in the know (like Danny) can identify the particular factory. There is no reason for 50g+ sizes to be missing wrappers. Only around 20g- is just the paper. You do see special casings with bamboo and baskets but that is normal. Those are the two characters for Ji Xing.

Jim

hi Oleg,

You have to take this up with Seb from Jing Teashop, haha!

Ji Xing is both a brand as well as the factory, it was created by CNNP Yunnan branch in the 80s, along with another now defunct brand called Golden Cockerel - Jin Ji...

I think I did mention on Jim's thread that Lucky Brand as well as the factory has changed hands...

Danny

But is Ji Xing (is it ???) a real name of the factory or just the brand? For example this two products are claimed to be of "Ji Xing" brand but claimed to be produced by "Xing Hai Tea Mountain tea Co."

Unfortunately I don't read Chinese :(

As for the second brick I suspected that this could be a kind of "no-name" thing :)

Thanks!

Oleg -

I fully understand your attempt to know as much as you can about that tea. However, after years of taking the wrappers seriously (I do read some Chinese) I gave up after I saw how wrappers are sold on a teamarkets in Yunnan. By hundreds! All types and of all factories. So now when I buy something from my friend Roy at ITC and he tells me that he bought that puerh himself from a factory warehouse I am almost sure that what it is (there is a possibility that they fool Roy too). However I do not really care anymore because I learned to like what I like and buy as much of it as I can as soon as I figure out that I like it and not be too hang up about the wrappers. Here in Nevada once in a while I buy great fresh Fangcha in a teashop that has no idea what they sell (they get this as a new product under the name "Mongolian Tea" In reality its ???? . Nothing Mongolian about it.

Cheers,

Sasha.

First I would like to thank rec.food.drink.tea members, especially pu erh related, for posting here since this group was one of the inspirations for my interest in pu erh! And now it's a great source of new pu erh related knowledge.

I would appreciate your help in indentifing two cooked pu erhs I have. I was looking for some info about them for quite a long time but to no effect.

First one is 100g Beeng Cha, so called "plum emdossed cake"

which seems to be the same as the one at ITC website

However ITC dosen't indicate the factory and year of production :( One can read ???????? on the wrapper which again just almost useless, just "good quality pu erh cake with plum flower" :( I was told that my cake is 8 years old which I tend to believe but can't be sure. My cake dosen't have any wrapper.

The same for the second one which is 50g Fang Cha

Again I was told that it is one year old, but no factory information. Goes in polyethlene wrapper

Thank you so much though I understand that there might be not enough information to tell anything.

Sasha speaks the truth here. Alas they do NOT have a solid code of ethics yet in China regarding "truth in advertising" and many such forgeries exist.

So your choices are to pay someone a premium who knows puerh and can travel to Kunming or Guangzhou and buy the tea first hand, or to indeed learn a little about the wrappers AND their corresponding tea.

Roy is indeed a knowledgeable vendor whose judgment I trust. Just remember that you must pay for that hand-holding.

Now, if you don't want to pay ITC's high prices then you must learn at least a little about the current factories and the wrappers they use. With a little bit of knowledge you can get these same teas directly from China at a fraction of the price.

It all boils down to your tolerance for risk. You must either arm yourself with knowledge to reduce the risk or pay someone else to mitigate those risks for you.

Mike Petro

They do indeed have a solid code of ethics in China regarding ''truth in advertising," Mike. It just doesn't happen to match yours. :-)

Ourania ZabuhuELigf.3276$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net11/21/05

Would you kindly elaborate upon it. Thanks.

Michael

I happen to agree with Ourania, despite the fact that I am extremely irritated by the way products are advertised in China. Here in the US we also have tons of false advertising its just happen to be not about tea. Just to read and hear every other minute of yet another "World leader in..."... May be we should be more upset about our own "fine print"? If you look at the issue closely you will see that really very few people are upset about quality and truth while the majority eagerly eats up snake oils and cannot wait for more. That means that the markets are OK with this at current levels and as a pure market conservative I have to accept that. That is why I stopped reading the wrappers. I buy a tea, like it and buy more, don't like it and throw it away even if it has the authorized signature of the late Chairman Mao himself. That approach works beautifully with everything I tried. You can call it anti-branding.

Sasha.

Most of us Westerners can't read Chinese. Besides CNNP I don't think it too much to expect factory and year from the seller or from elsewhere along the line. Understanding what is on the wrapper adds to the drinking ambience not the taste. Also knowing some particulars might help you find it cheaper elsewhere. Speaking of a factory named Nan Jian might be better than describing opposing dragons on their 100g tuos or funny deer on their 200g mini beengs. On Ebay they're $2.50/$4 respectively on TaoBao $.50/$1. I did some homework. I buy teas blind all the time with some educated guessing but I'm not throwing my money away on lotto. I wished I could be overwhelmed by teamarkets with more wrappers than I've ever seen. I'd stay at a hotel with a concierge and make it worth while to pack and send by China Post.

Jim

Alex Chaihorsky wrote:

Actually, I was just pointing out the cultural chauvinism implicit in Mike's comment. What to Mike/us qualifies as "ethical" may not be even be an "ethical" consideration at all in another culture, or may even be deemed unethical or patently ridiculous in terms of that culture's standard business practices.

But in any case, the labeling and advertising constraints in the U.S. are the results of legislation and most definitely not the result of ethics. Check out the label on a can of Campbell's SpaghettiOs, for example. It emphasizes how healthy that junk is for children (because vitamins are added). And Campbell's advertising for that product claims, "Now you can feel good about giving your kids what they are asking for!" because in addition to being delicious (!), it's so healthful and will help them grow. Then look at the ingredients. One small can contains over one gram of sodium! On top of it, the whole salty mess is just a glob of white flour and cheese and sugar. That's truth in labeling and truth in advertising? No. That's ethical? No. That's legal? Yes.

Or look at an ad from GM that says you can buy a car at x% over invoice, or at employee discount prices, or whatever. Naturally, the ad doesn't mention the dealer pack, the "manufacturer's fees," etc., that result in the selling price being considerably (and invariably) much higher than what was advertised: unethical, untrue, and legal.

Our hubristic assertions about U.S. consumer protection (not to mention U.S. business "ethics") are misinformed. Our notion that other cultures' "ethics" are inferior to ours is, well, a misguided assessment, at best.

snip snip snip snippity snip snip

Hi Ourania, Astute responses interleaved below. Michael

Yes, quite. But I was asking for the solid ethical standard (or foundation) in China that you had mentioned; I wasn't doubting that there is one.

Which *should* somehow correlate to or reflect the ethics of the community at large.

You've hit on something important here. I personally believe that the entire concept of advertising is unethical because it polutes the environment, whether that be our great outdoors or our peace of mind on the underground. Further, advertising is in practice a no-holds-barred attempt to get me to buy stuff, and that in itself is unethical. That's my humble opinion.

I agree so completely I'm jumping up and down.

Are you suggesting that the only source of consumer protection is from the gods? I'm not disagreeing, just asking, my hubristic assertions aside.

Sooooo......what about China? Perhaps you were just rambling, much like my additions to your post here?

BTW, I'm drinking the very worst Feng Huang Dan Cong I've ever drunk. No pretense to Dan Cong flavor, lousy leaf, overroasted, poorly made, crumby taste, no fruitiness, no magnolia aroma, just harsh rough and nasty. I might as well have Alex send me some of that river water he mentioned elsewhere. Wanna know where I got this tea? It will be my secret, and you'll never know. (You won't get any either unless you go *far* out of your way, so don't worry.)

Hope this helps, but the tea's still cruddy.

Michael

No, I didn't mention a solid ethical standard (or foundation) in China at all, Michael. All I said is that they do indeed *have* a solid code of ethics regarding "truth in advertising." How do I know? Because they have advertising. If they have advertising, they have a code of ethics regarding advertising.

Ethics -- or a system of evaluating right conduct -- is a cultural universal, even in the earliest of civilizations. And there is no existing element or behavior in any society that is exempt or excluded from its system of evaluation. If an activity or conduct is observable, there's a cultural code for determining its ethical status. That's a given. Whether we as outsiders can even perceive or grok that code (much less agree with it) is of course irrelevant.

I don't think we can make that assumption any more. Our legislative system is now so convoluted, so heavily influenced by purely financial considerations, so far removed from anything resembling an authentically democratic process, and our citizenry is so unsophisticated and uneducated and easily manipulated by blipverts, that I think it's more accurate to say that our laws reflect the power struggles among various global military-industrial lobbying factions rather than the ethics of a so-called community-at-large.

Fine. But what you're saying, then, is that our entire socio-political-economic system (aka "capitalism") is unethical, because getting you to "buy stuff" is what sustains it and vice versa. With that opinion I concur.

I'm not sure I can take that much excitement at this hour.

No, I'm saying that our only reliable source of consumer protection is our own good sense. (Whether our own good sense comes from the gods I'll leave for you to decide.)

I'm also saying it's hubristic (and naive) to believe that our comparatively infantile nation could come up with a legislated consumer-protection scheme more effective than the millennia-tested "caveat emptor."

What about China what? China is the 800-pound gorilla that can pretty much call its own shots, no?

Thanks for the heads-up, but I never go out of my way for bad tea. :-)

Thank you again, Jim and Danny! You've been very helpful!

Kunming or >Guangzhou and buy the tea first hand, or to indeed >learn a little about the wrappers AND their >corresponding tea.

I try to comb>Roy is indeed a knowledgeable vendor whose >judgment I trust. Just remember

that you must pay >for that hand-holding.

I don't question Roy's knowledge but I don't consider ITC as a possible source. I just used the link to their site since they seem to have the same pu erh as I do.

Thank you again!

Ourania Zabuhu7HGgf.906$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net11/22/05

snip

That's subtle.

Your analysis is sophisticated, to say the least. But, the discussion would be a lot more interesting if you would share what you know or think about the specific ethical standards in question, the idea of ethical standard being inherent.

We could argue, but we won't. Let me just say, Thus the asterisks I placed around the word "should."

Yes, I am saying that. You concur aright.

It's OK. I'm back under control now.

Person, that's hubris! Unfortunately good sense doesn't always get us there, but that perhaps is a discussion for another day.

No, I was asking you once again to be more specific about the ethical code regarding advertising in China, since they have advertising, hence ethical code concerning it.

Well, I wanted to run interference before any question about the vendor.

So, what's your favorite tea? Michael

Just one small addition about ethical standards.

Being diabetic (when asked in Beijing airport during SARS scare if I have any medical condition I said yes and pointed to a diabetic card issued by a California hospital, which triggered a burst of laugh. I looked at the card and saw that "diabetic" was translated there as "sugary urine". I asked how should it be translated and the doctor told me, still laughing, that it should be "sweet pee". How sad, said I that Chinese in the US are so poorly educated in their own language. They all stopped laughing abruptly and his face turned into stone. I had to stop that stupid laugh and make him lose his face. Sorry my beautiful and humongously overeducated Chinese-American friends! I hope I will die before People's Army occupy Reno.

Now about ethics. Most of supermarkets in the US have variety of pies that are marked "Sugar free". Its completely ridiculous because these are fruit pies, and there is no sugar-free fruits on this planet. It should be "No sugar added". Every time I see that I spoke to chain manager, wrote to their headquarters, called, explained.... They nod, they agree, nothing happens. Why? Sugar-free sells by tons. The knowingly sell these pies under false labels. I also saw drinks that say:Sugar - 10 gr. Carbohydrates: 0g. Ethics, - shmetics.

Sasha.

Fortunetly the grocery store I work for sells pies marked as 'no sugar added'. :) Tippins Bakery listened! Marlene