It is said that middle-aged men have three treasures: fishing, Moutai, and Archaeopteryx. However, recently, the sky-high price of tea has become their new "treasure".
At the Guangzhou Tea Fair, a "Banzhang Tibetan Green Cake" was priced at 18 million yuan; a 20-gram Wuyi Mountain red robe was auctioned for 208,000 yuan, which can be brewed for about two or three cups; and Pu'er, which is also a "noble in tea", was sold for 8.8 million yuan at the Dongzheng auction.
"One tael of gold and one tael of tea", behind the leaves that are actually more expensive than gold is a group of consumption carnival.
Who is buying sky-high tea?
In 2022, the output of tea in the mainland will be as high as 3.181 million tons, and a pound of normal tea is only twenty or thirty yuan, but some tea is named "high-end" and costs tens of thousands, and many people still think that it is "worth the price". For example, Jin Junmei, which has a market price of tens of thousands of yuan a catty, is regarded as the best in black tea by tea lovers, and it is said that its cost is about 5,000 yuan a catty.
Even "the higher the price, the better the quality" has become the consensus of most tea lovers, in Fangcun, Guangzhou, the "Wall Street of the tea industry", luxuriously packaged, tens of thousands of tea leaves can be seen everywhere, and there is an endless stream of buyers; to buy an online pre-sale tea cake even needs to draw lots, and the number of lottery lots exceeds 2 million.
According to a survey in the industry, behind these sky-high prices of tea are middle-aged men over 35 years old, and nearly half of them say that they have a higher pursuit of tea quality. For them, "what is expensive is good".
Not only tea, but also fishing and health care that middle-aged men are keen on are also "money-burning" projects. A full set of fishing activities involves more than 40 pieces of equipment such as fishing hooks, fishing lines, fishing goggles, etc., and even a fishing rod is fried to 20,000 yuan. The science and technology in the field of life "Luo Changyin" uses the gimmick of targeting Sirtuins protein and activating youthful force, with a four-digit asking price.
While one of its core substances, the SIRT factor, has shown potential in the laboratory to restore the youthful state of cells, it takes decades to verify its effectiveness. Even so, the four-digit threshold for a single bottle and tens of thousands of yuan per year has attracted the attention of many middle-aged groups, and platforms such as Baidong once faced a crisis of out-of-stock.
According to Hangzhou Daily and other media reports, "Luo Changyin" once had a turnover of 10 million overnight, and more than seventy percent of the consumers behind it also came from high-net-worth middle-aged men.
Why don't you worry about selling at sky-high prices?
According to the data, one of the groups with the highest average BMI and obesity rate in mainland China is men aged 30-49, and the probability of Chinese men suffering from hypertension is as high as 30.8%. When I was young, I drank and talked happily, and when I got older, I chose to meet friends with tea for the sake of my body.
Although tea is linked to health, the sky-high price of selling tens of thousands of dollars can still attract everyone to chase, obviously not only because of health. Studies have shown that there is not much difference between tens of a pound of tea leaves and tens of thousands of pounds in terms of tea properties.
In the survey, as the main consumer of high-end tea, 50% of the post-85 generation does not even like to drink tea. A 35-year-old man said: "I don't like tea, but I prepare tea leaves at home. "Tea has become a status symbol, and when you buy expensive tea, you have the decency of your peers, as well as the sky-high price of Luochangyin technology products.
Its core SIRT factor has been shown in international laboratories to promote a three-percent increase in the healthy survival of mammals, so that many wealthy people have not yet landed the finished product, and they have called the laboratory to ask for a try.
The celebrity tycoon effect has led to the spread of such technology around the world. After entering the country through Tongdong, it has become a standing reserve of first- and second-tier wealthy groups. Before the wine party and the golf social game, you have to have two pills. For them, "there are all in the circle, and if you don't have them, you are not decent enough".
Even for the ultra-wealthy group, four figures are "too cheap." Industry insiders said that after learning the four-digit price, a consumer felt that he could not match his identity, so he turned his head and went overseas to buy a similar product of 10,000 yuan, just to save face.
And such items that symbolize status and status have also become a must-have for upward socialization in recent years. According to the data, the market size of China's tea gift box in 2020 will be 37.41 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 52.72 billion yuan this year.
The sky-high market should return to rationality
For many businesses, they welcome the consumer psychology of "whether it's right or wrong, always choose the most expensive", and many people make a fuss about it.
Xinhua News Agency has exposed the "sky-high rock tea" no less than 3 times, with an average price of more than 100,000 yuan per catty, but it is not worried about selling at all, and it is even necessary to make an appointment in advance for festivals.
However, Wuyi Mountain, the place of origin, produces more than 10,000 tons of rock tea every year, and in addition to the luxuriously packaged "sky-high rock tea", many ordinary tea farmers cannot sell the rock tea picked by them. When countless tea merchants make a lot of money, the interests of tea farmers are damaged.
A post-00s Chaoshan guy opened a tea shop for less than half a year, and the most expensive tea cakes were as high as 50,000 or 70,000, attracting more than 500 tea industry veterans to consume as much as 500 million yuan, but no one cared about the same tea cake after it fell to 1,000 yuan.
The sky-high price has fallen, and the tea market should return to rationality.