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China is the hometown of tea, and Yunnan is the center of tea origin in China. Wild tea trees have been found in many parts of the province. There is a 3,000-year-old "wild tea tree king" in zhenyuan county, Simao, and a "tea tree king" cultivated for more than 800 years in Nannuo Mountain, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture. These surviving tea kings are strong evidence that Yunnan tea has a long history of development.

Yunnan has a unique natural geographical environment, which is suitable for the growth of tea trees. Tea proverb says: "Mountain clouds are famous teas". Yunnan Province is located in the plateau, but the latitude is low, the climate is warm and humid, the rainfall is abundant, "it is foggy in the morning and evening on sunny days, and it is foggy all day on rainy days". The soil is rich in organic matter, which is especially suitable for the growth of tea trees. It is beneficial to keep the tea leaves fresh and tender for a long time, carry out photosynthesis, increase the accumulation of nutrients, and increase the contents of effective components such as protein, amino acids, vitamins, caffeine, polyphenols and aromatic oil in tea. After long-term hard cultivation by people of all ethnic groups, Yunnan Daye tea has become an excellent tea variety renowned at home and abroad. Various teas made from its fresh leaves, such as Dianhong, Dianlv, Pu 'er tea, Tuocha, and Qizi cake tea, have gorgeous colors, rich fragrance, mellow and attractive, and are deeply loved by people.

Pu 'er tea and wolfberry cake tea are both green tea. Pu 'er tea is a tribute of past dynasties, with mellow and refreshing taste and rich aroma. In the past, people used to take Pu 'er tea as the general name of Yunnan tea, that is, the tea produced in Yunnan was called "Pu 'er tea". The Pu 'er tea we are talking about here is a kind of tea made by a special tea-making process.

Pu 'er tea is produced in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southern Yunnan Province and counties along the Lancang River. Pu 'er tea has two kinds: loose tea and tight tea. Loose tea is thick and reddish brown. Compacted tea is made of loose tea, and its shape is straight and even, hence its name. For example, the rectangular one is called "brick tea", the square one is called "square tea" and the round one is called "cake tea". Due to the special technology, tea polyphenols, caffeine and other substances beneficial to human health are fully oxidized, so Pu 'er tea has a unique quality, red and yellow soup, rich aroma, mellow and sweet taste, which makes people have a fragrant aftertaste after drinking, mild tea and good pharmacological effects.

Pu 'er tea has a long history of production and marketing. Pu 'er is a county in the south of Yunnan Province, which is an important commercial market town and tea processing distribution center. Tea produced in Xishuangbanna and along the Lancang River is mostly transported and sold by Pu 'er, hence the name Pu 'er. In the Ming Dynasty, Pu 'er tea was included in books as a proper term. In the early Qing Dynasty, the book Yu Hai Zhi Heng in Yunnan recorded: "The name of popular tea is more important than the world. What Yunnan thinks is that there are hundreds of thousands of people who go into the mountains to make tea. Tea customers buy it and transport it everywhere, and every time they earn a point. " Pu 'er tea is also described in China's classic Dream of Red Mansions. As a result, Pu 'er tea is famous far and wide.

In recent years, Yunnan tea enterprises have famous China teas such as Pu 'er tea, but they are losing the market in the trade competition with other regions and countries.

"Now the benefits of local tea enterprises in Yunnan are not good and the situation is very worrying." In April 2004, Zou Jiaju, president of Yunnan Tea Association, said, "But there is a very strange phenomenon. Once the ordinary Pu 'er tea in our hands is bought by businessmen in Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong, its price and reputation will soon double. "

Buying tea is like buying jade.

Outside tea merchants have entered Simao in large numbers and participated in tea activities in various ways. People have different opinions. A tea merchant in Simao said, "They like to get fame and gain profits too much. Many Pu 'er tea they sell outside are often shoddy, change the production date, and even use tea books to raise prices and deceive consumers. "

Zou Jiaju said: "The utilitarian consciousness of Pu 'er tea books in Taiwan Province Province is too strong. Publishers make up all kinds of history, often in the name of introducing and taking care of Pu 'er tea, but the purpose is to sell it at a high price.

Someone brought Zou Jiaju a Pu 'er tea atlas from the Canton Fair in the spring of 2004. The Fenghuang Tuocha in the picture shows that it was produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Coincidentally, he recently saw that the book Pu 'er Tea Spectrum published in Taiwan Province Province in 2000 also indicated that the early Fenghuang Tuocha was produced in the 1970s, and the later Fenghuang Tuocha was produced in the 1980s.

Zou Jiaju said: "These maps are too outrageous. Nanjian Fenghuang Tuocha was made in the 1990s. I heard that in Shanghai, Guangzhou and many other places, the phoenix on the Phoenix Tuocha pattern is expensive with both eyelids. Interesting, there is an article about printing problems. "

"The atlas of Yunnan Pu 'er tea sold in Fangcun, Guangzhou has too many fallacies, which will make it easier for people who fish in troubled waters to kill customers." Zou Jiaju said, "Most of the so-called aged Pu 'er tea sold in the market now is not true. Pu' er tea consumers, especially Pu' er tea operators, can't buy tea only by attractive labels in their ears and eyes, but also make full use of their sense of smell and taste, and use their brains and knowledge to evaluate years and history. "

Zhou, a professor at Yunnan Agricultural University, said: "These problems can be said to be an important part of Pu 'er tea's' commercial culture', and the appearance of this culture has promoted the development of Pu 'er tea in a short time. However, the negative impact will be a huge loss of Yunnan tea. The biggest sorrow is that Yunnan tea people don't understand Yunnan tea, but follow foreign' celebrities', blindly worship and use each other for excessive hype, so that Pu 'er tea has lost its true colors and entered the mysterious cultural industry. "

Professor Zhou believes that Pu 'er tea, with Hong Kong and Taiwan as the mainstream market, has become a metaphysical system to look at packaging, age, obsolescence, fame and place. It takes a lot of time to really talk about science, objectivity and truth. "These problems need to attract the attention of the tea industry and the Yunnan provincial government." He said, "We who are engaged in tea teaching often can't explain why many people regard foreigners who study Qigong or do small business as' tea kings' instead of learning some scientific knowledge."

Zou Jiaju has a friend who loves to drink Pu 'er tea. A few days ago, he drank a pot of 50-year-old Pu 'er brick tea in a teahouse in Kunming and spent more than 2,000 yuan. Zou asked him how he tasted, but he didn't know how to answer. Zou told this friend that he must have been cheated. A female tour guide who graduated from the Foreign Languages Department of Yunnan University told him excitedly that not long ago, she took an Indian to that teahouse to buy tea, and the price of three tubes of tea was more than 3,000 yuan. The Indian left, and the shopkeeper took the initiative to follow up and gave her a rebate of 1000 yuan.

"Now for many people who don't understand Pu 'er tea, the bizarre change in its price can be compared with buying and selling jade. "Zou Jiaju said with emotion," Everything can be faked, but the years can't be faked, and the fragrance and taste lost in Pu 'er tea in the vicissitudes of life can't be faked. "

Who will integrate Pu 'er tea?

However, some people are optimistic about various speculations about the price of Pu 'er tea.

"The difference between the internal and external prices of tea often lies in the marketing method, and the quality of Pu 'er tea itself is not bad. What is lacking most now is marketing. "Xia Bing, deputy director of the Tea Industry Development Office in Simao City, said," If the market can accept it, it means that Pu 'er tea has such value, but people didn't pay attention to it before; If the market does not accept it, it is useless to work hard and brag again. "

Xia Bing thinks: "Now all the tea enterprises in Simao are unprofitable, and they have no power to compete with others. Originally, many experts such as Shanghai and Hubei have found that Pu 'er tea has a good health care function and extracted effective components from it, but it has not been scientifically recognized by the state authorities. " Therefore, he said with regret: "The tea culture and taste of Pu 'er tea have not been marketized. It is obviously not enough to strive for higher economic benefits and expand the high-end market on a large scale."

At present, the local tea enterprises in Simao are basically still in the position of selling tea raw materials, and many even have problems in survival, let alone making high profits. The tea benefit of Simao is already the best in Yunnan Province, and it is conceivable that the tea industry in Yunnan Province is in a downturn. As the local government of Simao, with an annual fiscal deficit of nearly 654.38 billion yuan, it simply has no ability to "build itself and develop Pu 'er tea".

"I think introducing foreign capital is the best way, including introducing some advanced management and marketing methods, not only Pu 'er tea, but also the whole tea industry in Yunnan needs such integration and change. "Xia Bing said," I have no objection to outside tea merchants coming all the way to Simao to invest, adopt or contract to operate tea gardens, whether in name or money, because they are trying to publicize the benefits of Pu 'er tea and Yunnan tea in order to make money outside. As long as our government's management and service work keep up, it will bring good influence and effect to Yunnan tea and become an opportunity for our development. "

Xia Bing also said: "I have always told many people that if our tea industry is to develop, we must be mentally prepared to let others get rich first;" If we think too much about the gains and losses from the beginning and bargain in advance, it will be difficult to attract the best partners with our current tea situation. "

"Now if someone can integrate Yunnan Pu 'er tea from planting, processing and sales, that is, monopolize the Yunnan Pu 'er tea market, it will form a huge interest space." A tea official in Simao said.

At the beginning of April, 2004, a Beijing enterprise found Simao City on its own, saying that after investigation and study, it was considered that Simao Pu 'er tea was of great development value, and they hoped to cooperate. The specific way is: the government does the work, so that all the tea enterprises in Simao are sold to companies in Beijing through contracts, and then they conduct unified marketing. The company also said: "If all goes well, the next step will be to invest heavily in Simao and establish a special production base."

"We should welcome more such collaborators and even competitors." Xia Bing said.

China has 23% of the world's tea varieties, but its share of world production is only 6%. Yunnan Province, which mainly produces big leaf tea, currently produces about 6.5438+0.6 million tons of tea every year, making it the third largest tea-producing province in China. However, Yunnan tea culture is at a low level in China, far behind the coastal areas. Professor Zhang said: "Although Yunnan is a big tea-producing province with a long history of drinking tea, there are few well-known tea brands in China, and of course there are no well-known tea brands in China."

At present, China's tea production and processing areas, including Yunnan Province, are extremely scattered, and tea-making technology is rarely updated and improved. Most of the tea exported from China is in bulk, not in internationally recognized carefully packaged containers.

Who pays more attention to Yunnan tea industry?

In the early 1980s, Guo Honglian, president of the Hong Kong-Kowloon Tea Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, told Zou Jiaju at the Canton Fair: In the process of drinking Pu 'er tea for a long time, Hong Kong people found that Pu 'er tea made of raw materials from Vietnam, Thailand and even Chinese mainland could be produced in the market, but it should not be stored for a long time; Pu 'er tea produced by Yunnan big leaf species is radiation-resistant and bubble-resistant. If properly processed, the bitter taste will be removed in the long-term natural aging process, and it will become the best in Pu 'er tea.

Zou Jiaju said: "In those years, there were so many Pu 'er tea stalls in Guangdong, Sichuan and Guizhou, but my side was always crowded with tea merchants from Hong Kong and Macao. Yunnan Pu 'er tea is spreading and developing, and it is unique among many competitors. It is closely related to the rich ancient tea trees and cultivated tea trees in Yunnan Pu 'er tea producing area. "

In contrast, Yunnan people who produce Pu 'er tea at present seem to be less familiar with Pu 'er tea than foreigners. "This is ridiculous and irritating." Zhou, a professor at Yunnan Agricultural University, said: "Pu 'er tea in history is actually a general term for all kinds of Yunnan teas, and it is sun-dried green tea made of Yunnan big leaf tea. Modern Pu 'er tea is made by drying green tea and fermenting it. Some people don't understand the history of tea, confuse the two, and come up with Pu 'er black tea, Pu 'er green tea, Pu 'er ... and so on, which makes people laugh. "

A few years ago, in order to pursue economic interests, many places in Yunnan unilaterally emphasized high yield and transformed low-yield tea gardens, resulting in the disappearance of ancient tea gardens in a large area. Luo, director of the National Tea Quality Testing Center, said: "It is not a good thing to concentrate on 10,000 mu of fine tea gardens. The ecological environment is gone, pests and diseases are frequent, and a large number of pesticides have to be used, which makes the pesticide residues in tea exceed the standard, which seriously affects sales and exports. "

In the mid-1970s, Yunnan pressed tea sold to Tibet went wrong. Tibetans reported dizziness, abdominal pain and diarrhea after drinking. The State Ethnic Affairs Commission specially sent people down to investigate and found that the output of tea was limited at that time, and the documents of Yunnan Tea Company stipulated that a part of wild tea (originally called cluster tea) could be purchased and put into the side-selling tea. I don't know if there is a problem with the matching ratio, or if the sales area is wrong, or if I don't pick it carefully, I mistakenly picked other plants similar to wild tea. In short, Yunnan pressed tea has since withdrawn from the Tibetan market in large quantities.

Cai Xin, a professor of tea science at Yunnan University, said: "Our ancestors have accumulated rich experience in the process of long-term contact with wild tea trees. They know which trees are edible and which are not. It is a problem to say blindly and generally that it is good to eat wild tea. Menghai Bada tea tree is also a Dali species, but it cannot be eaten. It is also harmful to use too many Irrawaddy species (also known as Yunnan and Burma species) in tea blending.

At present, compared with the positive attention of the outside world to Yunnan tea, some situations in Yunnan Province are puzzling. Simao, which calls itself "the world's tea town and Pu 'er tea capital", did not set up a special government management agency until August 2003, and did not start work until June+10 in 5438. Among all the leaders in Simao City, tea work has always been "in charge of leadership, not in charge of leadership".