A Bud N One Leaf

Puerh tea was not popular in China untill the 80th of last century.  Historically, it was mainly supplied to the Chinese ethnic minorities living in Northwestern borders, and exported to Southeastern Asia.  Even local Yunnan people prefer green tea or black tea than the Puerh they produced.

The situation changed in mid 90th of last century, while hot money from Hongkong and Taiwan rushed into the domestic Puerh market.  Local people began to realize how much money these people spent on puerh, and how much they made by selling them.  Coupled with the gimmick of "the older the better value" (Puerh tea does enhance through years of good keeping, albeit "age" alone is not the guarantee of quality and value, other factors like standard of raw materials, year of harvesting, processing knon-how, etc all jointly decides the final value of Puerh), local people sensed a "fool-proof", get rich faster opportunity.  More money and even more people flocked into the market. 

In April this year, the price of Puerh reaches a new height, branded Puerh for the high-end market raised 50-80% in value compared with last year's November price, as raw materials price raised due to late harvest this year.  Only after one month, the price of high-end Puerh dropped drastically to around half of its April price. 

"A young and attractive office lady sits on her desk, typing in her computer.  Her boss came, dumped a thick stack of document on her des.  The overburdened lady turned scarlet in face, and her smooth long hair stood up like being hit by a thunder bolt.  Right at the moment, an arm holding a bottle of RTD tea comes into sight, the lady takes over and gulps down the bottle of tea.  The environment flashes to an ice world, with the lady shakes off ices from her head, and returns to her cool self." this is a scene from a TV commercial advertises a "Suntory" brand RTD ice mint tea. 

Lucky I don't have a boss dumping document on me, yet another incident made me feel that I strongly need some thing to keep my hair on:  Recently I had to transfer my blog to another service provider as I was not able to view my blog.  Yet shortly after the laborious moving, the same tragedy happened, again I was not able to view my blog at the new site.

Before I settle for a third site, and start the IT toil again, I need some break, and need some thing really cool.

Here is my mint green tea recipe, which is much cooler and more refreshing than the RTD bottled ones.

Ingredients:   
800 ml chilled green tea
6 ml lime juice
6 ml mint syrup
ice cube
half-cut fresh limes

Mix the chilled green tea with lime juice and mint syrup, pour the mixture into tall glasses, input some ice cube, and squeeze fresh lime juice in the cup.

Pic.1. White Tea: White Silvery Needle

The name White Tea now refers to two different concepts.

One refers to a tea classification: white tea is the least processed tea, the tea is originated from Fujian, China. It is slightly oxidized during withering, the dry tea is coated with white hairs, that is how the name white tea is called. There are two outstanding white tea: white peony (made from a bud and one leaf, and a bud and two leaves), and white slivery needle (made from buds only, see picture). Due to the strict requirement on tea species, plucking, and external environment during processing, the amount of white tea produced is lesser as compared with green tea.

Researches found white tea contains natural antioxidants and other nutrients. The tea taste delicately sweet, and slowly gain the attention of more consumers. Even India and Sri Lanka now produce such white tea, but on a very marginal quantity.

Another white tea refers to a particular green tea, it's full name is Anji White Tea. According to tea classification ( processing methods), it is not the white tea mentioned above, but belong to green tea group. It's made from a low chlorophyll tea species (called white tea bush), undergoing the normal green tea processing steps, the dry tea has a lighter green color as compared with green tea from normal tea bush.

Pic.2. Green Tea: Anji White Tea