From the initial "stinky pu tea" that was only used as a cauldron seam, to the fire all over Taiwan, with the investment of Taiwanese businessmen to soak Guangdong Guan, and then to the Taiwanese tea people to Yiwu, when it comes to the revival of Pu'er tea in the past 20 years, Taiwanese people are an unavoidable topic.
And when it comes to the first batch of Pu'er tea that entered Taiwan Province, I believe that few tea friends will know, today's article, Xiao Cha Hu will come to understand, the Fulu Shouxi square brick produced by Nanbao Tea Factory that year.
Nanbao Tea Factory from scratch
Nanbao Tea Factory, which is an unknown Yunnan tea factory, is located in dehong Dai Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, although there are ancient tea trees scattered sporadically, compared with the traditional three major production areas, it is not considered the main tea producing area.
In the 1980s, under the background of military reform, the military management function of the Dehong Prefecture Military Subdistrict gradually weakened, and in order to properly solve the employment problem of the families of the military personnel, the deputy commander of the military region decided to build a factory on the original site of the military sub-district to promote income generation.
The commander thought about it, and finally decided to make tea in this ethnic minority settlement with a long history of tea drinking, and to make tight-pressed tea that could generate income for export or support the frontier.
To this end, the Dehong Prefecture Military Sub-district contacted the Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company (hereinafter referred to as the Provincial Tea Department), which is fully responsible for the production of tea in Yunnan, and built a small tea factory with more than 20 employees, and named it "Nanbao Tea Factory".
However, when it comes to the production and export of pressed tea, the provincial tea department is also a little embarrassed, it turns out that Yunnan had the ability to produce tight pu'er tea, only Menghai Tea Factory, Xiaguan Tea Factory and Kunming Tea Factory, the three state-owned tea factories.
Among them, there are also divisions of labor, Menghai Tea Factory mainly makes cake tea, Xiaguan Tea Factory mainly makes Tuo tea, Kunming Tea Factory mainly makes brick tea, and Pu'er Tea Factory mainly produces loose tea, which is also the reason why there are few marks with an ending of 4 today.
In that era when Pu'er ripe tea was basically used as an export and rarely known in China, the employees of Nanbao Tea Factory naturally knew nothing about pu'er tea production and did not know what kind of concept fermentation was.
Tea friends who are familiar with wodui fermentation know that this is a physical work, but also a technical work, for this reason, the provincial tea department has sent people from Kunming to Dehong for many times to guide how to control temperature and humidity, how to turn over the pile.
Under the guidance of technical personnel, the staff of Nanbao Tea Factory learned from yangdi, and slowly learned the technical processes such as piling, sprinkling, stewing, turning over, and planing ditches.
Wait until the feeling is almost over, the technical staff to return to Kunming with peace of mind, who knows after this batch of cooked tea was shipped to the warehouse for inspection, only to find that only "six mature", helplessly had to run back to personally guide.
In terms of tightly pressed shape, Nanbao Tea Factory was more casual when it was first produced, and the button shape, plum blossom shape and even biscuit shape were all pounded out, but they could not be on the table.
Later, there were still employees who took inspiration from the local popular carved "Fulu Jubilee" square stone bricks and produced a batch of "Fulu Jubilee" tea, which set the tone in shape.
So in 1988, Nanbao Tea Factory finally produced the first batch of more mature square brick tea, each weighing 500 grams, four pieces in a group, respectively, pressed with the words "Fu", "Lu", "Shou" and "Fu".
Compared with the "regular army" produced by Menghai Tea Factory and other production, the "Fulu Shouxi" bricks of Nanbao Tea Factory are outsourced to trademarks and factories, and the packaging is also simple thick paper and hemp rope.
Just when Nanbao Tea Factory was worried about the sales of this batch of tea, an unexpected opportunity came.
The response was excellent
After sending the Buddha to the west, the provincial tea department heard about the difficulties, and specially let the packaging department redesign the shape of this batch of tea, and adopted a square set of boxes, the front of the packaging was gilded, and the image design of the main auspicious was the main auspicious.
At that time, just in time for the Canton Fair, the Provincial Tea Department sent someone to bring some "Fulu Jubilee" to participate in the exhibition to test the waters, but I did not expect that some Taiwan businessmen just looked at this "Fulu Jubilee" four-character color head and bought some to sell in the Taiwan market.
However, due to the fact that there was no trade between the mainland and Taiwan at that time, if there were Chinese Simplified and mainland production information on the packaging of imported tea, it would be severely punished, so the original packaging had to be dismantled and replaced by wordless and unmarked outsourcing paper.
The first batch of "Fulu Jubilee" with the export number "F901" was actually smuggled through a small amount of goods from fishing boats, or a box of 200 Hong Kong dollars as a reward for travel agency tourists, which belonged to the category of smuggling.
Although the road is difficult and the number of transports can not be much at a time, fortunately, the taste of tea is soft and the appetite of the Taiwanese people is very good, so this trade dark line can be maintained all the way, and finally the total amount is as high as more than 600 tons.
In 1990, the first batch of "Fulu Jubilee" F901 entered Taiwan, the back of the tea bricks was pressed with The iconic "Xiashan Tiger" pattern of Ji Xing, and the last few batches were also pressed with "Eight Middle Tea", but the outer box was all "Ji Xing" trademark.
After learning that this batch of tea sold well, Nanbao Tea Factory and the Provincial Tea Division were overjoyed, and the production enthusiasm was higher, and then this batch of tea packaging was also changed from kraft paper or chicken skin paper single-piece packaging to more exquisite cellophane packaging.
This was the "F902" square box with the export mark "F902", which was already a very high-end gift box tea at that time, and the provincial tea division was priced at 38 Hong Kong dollars a kilogram, more than double the price of 7542.
At its peak, the annual output of Nanbao Tea Factory reached more than 100 tons. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and in 1996, the provincial tea department ushered in the reform of the departmental contracting system, and the original production plan of Nanbao Tea Factory was greatly reduced.
Seeing that the tea factory could not operate normally, the Dehong Prefecture Military Sub-district had to transfer the tea factory to the local agency of Dehong Prefecture, and the tea factory was relocated to the closed leather shoe factory across the river, and renamed it "Dehong Prefecture Special Tea Factory".
After the renaming of the special tea factory has produced "mini cake", 1997 Hong Kong handover commemorative bricks and other tea products, the market response is mediocre, insisted on a few years later, in 2004 closed, became a private tea factory, and the former Nanbao Tea Factory parted ways.
After 1996, Pu'er tea has also entered the market economy, and many "Fulu Shouxi" brick teas have emerged on the market, and the "P901" and "P902" produced in the early days have long been extinct, and it is difficult to find the real thing on the market.