Have you drunk Pu'er tea? Its deep brown brew gives off a slightly musty flavor as it touches the tongue. It's enough to make those drinking it for the first time wrinkle their brows and ask, "Has this tea gone bad?"
It's true, Pu'er was in days past known in Taiwan as "the smelly, musty tea." And the ignorant have been known to toss it out as having gone bad. But in recent years, opinion about it in Taiwan, Hongkong and mainland China have converged. Pu'er's charms have suddenly been revealed and reveled in. From a musty, smelly tea to an organic antique, it has made quite a splash in Taiwan's and Hongkong's tea pots.
How's that?
Chou Yu, an expert on Pu'er tea who owns the Wisteria Tea House, says Pu'er's unique "stale" flavor made it originally unpopular in Taiwan. When a Pu'er "cake" has just been made, it can be considered a "green cake," he explains, because it has not yet been fermented. At this stage, the tea is, in Chinese medical terms, extremely "cold." It can cut at the stomach and harm one's health and is unsuitable for drinking every day. But because Pu'er tea cakes naturally undergo "after-fermentation," the tea keeps for a long time, turning by itself from "cold" to "warm" as its flavor mellows from bitter and tongue numbing to smooth and moldy. While a fondness for it may be an acquired taste, the connoisseurs can't get enough of the properly aged stuff.
It's a time-consuming process. The rrle of thumb is, "It tastes bad before 20 years, and it's only top grade after 40."
But in earlier years, the Pu'er produced in Yunnan was not aged enough, its taste wasn't smooth, and its grade wasn't high. Most people didn't know that Pu'er, unlike the teas grown in Taiwan, doesn't like to be sealed up and should from time to time be brought out and aired. Otherwise, in a hot and humid climate, it easily molds and rots, making it quite literally a "stinky, moldy tea." No wonder there was a lack of interest.
Six years ago, when travel to the mainland to visit relatives was first allowed, Taiwan tourists and businessmen began coming through Hongkong in droves, and the Hong kongese love of Pu'er tea left its mark on the visitors. Gradually, Taiwanese tea drinkers got wise to the ways of Pu'er, learning in recent years to distinguish between the normal "old" flavor, the "stored" flavor of leaves that could use some airing out, and the "moldy" flavor of truly rotten leaves.
And because Taiwan abounds in tea leaves and has inherited the tea-drinking traditions of Southern Fukien, interest in tea here runs wide and deep. The Taiwanese connoisseur is quite sniffy about his cup of tea. As the growing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has caused the local stuff to fall from favor, Pu'er tea, by satisfying a yearning for the new, has suddenly become all the rage.
During one long stretch, Hongkong's supply of Pu'er teas from Yunnan was cut off. Meanwhile, as an industrial-commercial society emerged in Hong Kong, the once-thriving tea houses which stocked all varieties of tea closed up shop one after another. Tea in Hong Kong was in a sorry state.
And so, while Pu'er tea is the Hongkongese favorite, the city's residents are not very particular about how they drink it. Many mix it with chrysanthemum tea, and so what is often ordered there while eating dimsum is Pu'er-chrysanthemum tea.