The Evolution of Pu-erh Tea: A Detailed Explanation of the Three Important Stages in Its Development

Pu'er tea is inherently imbued with rich cultural and artistic connotations, on the ancient tea-horse road, in the deep mountains and vast forests, amidst the exotic charm of minority nationalities...

Time gave the Puer tea culture more forms of expression. Numberless practitioners of Puer tea have used words to evoke Puer's past history, and driven the carriages of modern Puer tea's new culture.

Entering the 21st century in the early 2000s, with the continuous promotion of reform and opening up, the modern commercialization atmosphere of Pu'er tea is increasingly thickened. In this short 30 years, large companies have repeatedly undergone restructuring and reorganization to gradually form today's tea market situation.

Now Pu'er tea market has returned to its normal, and it is developing towards a good direction. Its position and value are cherished by the people. The rise of Pu'er tea promoted the development of the tea industry, bringing new marketing ideas to the tea industry, making various tea brands rise and causing diversified waves in tea circulation methods. Tea festivals are held everywhere because of it; Pu'er tea has driven the resurgence of tea culture and fringe cultures, becoming a pioneer of "fine art," even driving the emergence of perfumery and other fine arts.

But Pu'er tea rising is not accidental, today we will take you to understand the three stages of Pu'er tea culture.

The Birth of Pu-erh Tea and its Miracle

The essence of Pu-erh tea is agricultural products, and due to different historical periods' needs, Pu-erh tea has developed into diverse forms of product culture. Before liberation, Pu-erh tea also had a glorious border trade in Tibet and Sichuan; after liberation, it was long-term valued as a specialty tea for export, as well as being used as a way to promote border stability and unity, the government paid great attention to it and even treated it like a strategic material, considering Pu-erh tea brewing techniques as national secrets.

After 2003, Pu'er tea as a "special tea" fighter played its unique features to an even more incredible degree in China - transforming into a financial product, a cultural product with mystical overtones, and a health supplement that could cure all ailments. This has stimulated many people's nerves, thinking it is too unbelievable. In fact, if one is interested in Chinese history, they will understand that tea leaves have long been strategic commodities in ancient China, not only being used to trade for horses but also generating enormous financial revenue for the government and generating constant foreign exchange earnings.

Yunnan Nationalities Museum has collected the top-level ancient tea "Tianyun" as its first-grade tea.

2,"The more things change, the more they remain the same" - limitation and transcendence

What is called the rise and fall of Xiao He, Pu'er tea's resurgence in modern times undoubtedly relies on the core product value proposition of "the older, the more fragrant," with the notion that the longer you store it, the better and more valuable it becomes deeply ingrained. As a result, after buying pu'er tea, people are reluctant to drink it and instead keep it as a treasure in their homes or hide it away in warehouses. This leads to large quantities of pu'er tea being produced but not consumed in a timely manner, causing a backlog in channels or consumer inventory. Eventually, this results in severe channel congestion after the pu'er tea "passing-the-parcel" game comes to an end, bringing disaster to the industry and ushering in long-term inventory clearing movement for the pu'er tea industry. Pu'er tea production declines sharply, and investors withdraw their capital, revealing a severely insufficient effective demand for pu'er tea.

In this context, by negating the theory of "yuechen yexiang", Pu'er tea's product value appeared as follows:

(1) Adhere to condition of being stronger with age, and the aged tea products mainly target on special market.

(2) The emergence of pu-erh tea from the new storehouse. This is different from the pu-erh tea that was previously popular, and the main purpose of collecting this kind of tea is not for resale purposes but to enjoy the taste of tea in the future.

(The) biggest weakness of opening the market for instant tea drink is undoubtedly the characteristic of Pu'er tea that "the older it is, the more fragrant it becomes", because newly produced raw Pu'er tea has a taste inferior to green tea and oolong tea etc. main stream tea leaves, so it needs to be put away for several years to show off the characteristics of Pu'er tea, thus consumers of new production raw Pu'er tea are not accepted and market consumption speed is too slow.

Here is the translation: 3, Living symbolic products

Pu-erh tea's value is not only in its unique aging process, but also in its growing ecological and health benefits. Ecological value can be seen in the trend of traditional pu-erh tea being ignored in favor of aged tree teas and mountain teas, which have become increasingly popular among tea enthusiasts. This reflects the increasing attention given to pu-erh's superior natural environment. In today's food safety concerns, ecologically-grown pu-erh tea is an important selling point.

Pu-erh tea is the most inclusive and comprehensive category of Chinese teas, with the richest connotation, which also has the most vitality and value system in continuous perfection and expansion. It can be expected that Pu'er tea will become a composite life experience product, integrating refreshing thirst, health, taste, collection, tourism, etc., deeply influencing people's lives from all sides, thereby becoming a life symbolized product.