"...as Kunming was not a main tea producing region in Yunnan, Kunming Tea Factory had to purchase its maocha from other regions in Yunnan. These days there are many small factories in Yunnan have their own production machines to produced their own pu'er teas, as such it was not necessary any longer for the maocha to be sent to Kunming Tea Factory for cake-pressing - in fact there are privately owned small factories in Kunming which are buying maocha from Kunming Tea Factory. With this and other economic reasons, Kunming Tea Factory was rented out from 1994 onwards to other small factories' use, and its former employees left to begin their own little tea businesses. The factory still stands today in Kunming, but it has nothing to do with tea production anymore..." Mr Di Jianxing, Introduction to Tea Regions & the factories, Chapter 7.
The above is a rough translation of the article, but it gives you an idea what happened to Kunming Tea Factory.
I have also always thought the coloured labels a thing more associated with Menghai Tea Factory and between the periods, the CNNP, not sure that it has anything to do with Kunming Tea Factory.
There should a little slip of paper embedded in the Bing that identifies the factory. That is my experience with the ubiquitous CNNP Zhongcha wrapper. There is some new CNNP on the shelves but the Bings are $10. I'm not even curious. Everytime Danny says something about Puer it hasn't been said before.
Don't hold me too it. I'm a little gun shy about not being correct about everything I say. Since we're talking about CNNP it might just be the red Zhong green Cha seal which simply means a tea from China. I also think those two colors are recent years so from the nineties I would expect them to be different. If there are characters it should say the factory. I seem to remember I bought some CNNP by the QiZi tong and one of the bings had a slip saying Xiaguan. I think the rest were the ZhongCha red\green seal. Or I'm thinking about bings in general which indicate the factory information on the embedded slip.
Anyway I might be able to de-cypher the nei fei myself using a few notes/book I have. Its not THAT important to find out precisely where the cake was made. Just curious mainly.
I keep records of what I buy, when I buy it and from whom etc, any other info I can glean is simply a bonus. I scan the cake and print the image and some details on an A5 card and keep them all in a folder. Also helps me remember which tea is what !
Most of the vendors I buy tea from specify who made the tea or where it came from. Just with this one I lucked out - so far.
The first line: China National Native Produce Animal By-Products Import Export Corporation
The second line: Yunnan Tea Branch
That's what it says on one of my CNNP neifei. So it looks like you don't get the factory name in this case. I do get the Xiaguan factory name on my CNNP neifei with the same info above on the wrapper. I also remember the golden cha character as being representative of 90's puer from what I remember being sold on TaoBao.
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