From the Manshu to Tribute Tea: A History of Pu'er

The history of pu'er is like a long mountain road. It starts in the forests and villages of southern Yunnan, passes through Tang-dynasty frontier records, Ming-dynasty "Pu tea," and the Qing-dynasty Pu'er Prefecture and tribute tea, then on into the Republican-era heritage tea houses and state-run tea factories, all the way to today's mountain-origin teas and World Heritage Site. Along the way the tea changed form several times, but its foundations have stayed the same: Yunnan large-leaf leaf, sun-drying, compression, and long keeping.

How Old Is Pu'er?

It depends on where you start counting:

• From the practice of growing and drinking tea: The ancestors of southern Yunnan's Blang, Wa, De'ang, and other peoples are thought to be related to the ancient "Pu people," who grew tea in the mountain forests before any written record; the exact date can no longer be determined. For the old tea forests of Jingmai Mountain, it's generally believed that people settled there and began growing tea under the forest around the 10th century.
• From the written record: The earliest reliable writing on tea production in Yunnan is Fan Chuo's Manshu (Book of the Southern Barbarians) from the Tang dynasty, completed around 863, about 1,160 years ago.
• From the name "Pu'er" for tea: Xie Zhaozhe's Dianlüe from the late Ming dynasty mentions "Pu tea," about 400 years ago; only after the Qing court set up Pu'er Prefecture in 1729 did the fame of "pu'er tea" truly spread everywhere, about 300 years ago.

So the safest way to put it is: the people of Yunnan have grown and drunk tea for a very long time; the written record goes back more than 1,100 years; and tea under the name pu'er goes back roughly 300–400 years. For the origins of tea, read on in The Pu People and the Origins of Tea Growing in Yunnan.

The Tang Dynasty: The Earliest Record

Volume 7 of the Manshu says, in essence, that tea comes from the mountains within the borders of Yinsheng City and is gathered haphazardly with no method of picking or processing, and that the Mengshe people brew it with Sichuan pepper, ginger, and cinnamon and drink it. Yinsheng City was the seat of the Yinsheng military governorship set up by the Nanzhao kingdom, generally believed to be around today's Jingdong, with its territory extending south into what are now the tea regions of Pu'er and Xishuangbanna. The passage reveals a few things: tea was already a product of the local mountains, though harvesting was still casual; and the Mengshe tribe, to which the Nanzhao royal family belonged, cooked their tea with Sichuan pepper, ginger, and cinnamon. Details are in The Tang-Dynasty Manshu and "the Mountains of Yinsheng".

The Song and Yuan Dynasties: Scattered Glimpses

The Song dynasty's tea-for-horses trade centered on Sichuan and the northwest and used Sichuan tea; when the Southern Song bought horses from the Dali Kingdom in Guangxi, the main goods traded were salt and brocade. Yunnan tea rarely appears in Song writings; Li Shi's Xu Bowu Zhi from the Southern Song leaves one line, "tea comes from the mountains of Yinsheng," largely repeating the Tang account. In the Yuan dynasty, Li Jing's Yunnan Zhilüe writes that the Jinchi Baiyi held a market every 5 days, trading felt, cloth, tea, and salt. See Yunnan Tea in the Song, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties.

The Ming Dynasty: The Name "Pu Tea"

When the Wanli-era Yunnan Gazetteer (Yunnan Tongzhi) recorded the road to Burma, it noted that "Pu'er (普耳) in Cheli produces tea." 普耳 is an older way of writing Pu'er, which at the time belonged to the Cheli Pacification Commission. In the late Ming dynasty, Xie Zhaozhe wrote in the Dianlüe: "What officials and commoners alike use is all Pu tea, steamed and made into balls." In other words, everyone in Yunnan, from officials to ordinary people, drank Pu tea every day, and it was compressed tea, steamed soft and pressed into balls. This is the earliest known written record of the name "Pu tea."

The Qing Dynasty: Pu'er Prefecture, Tribute Tea, and the Six Tea Mountains

• 1729 (7th year of Yongzheng): Ortai, Viceroy of Yunnan and Guizhou, pushed the policy of replacing native chieftains with court-appointed officials. The court carved out the territory of the Cheli Pacification Commission east of the Lancang River and established Pu'er Prefecture, with its seat at today's Ning'er; at the same time it planned a Simao general tea office to buy up tea centrally, and from then on pu'er was systematically sent as tribute. See The Yongzheng Reforms and the Founding of Pu'er Prefecture.
• Tribute tea: According to the tribute tea records Ruan Fu consulted, 1,000 taels of silver were allocated each year to make round tea balls in 5 sizes, plus bottled bud tea, bud-tip tea, and boxed tea paste, 8 types in all, sent all the way to Beijing. See Pu'er Tribute Tea.
• The six tea mountains: In 1799, Tan Cui's Dianhai Yuheng Zhi listed six mountains: Youle, Gedeng, Yibang, Mangzhi, Manzhuan, and Mansa. Around 1825, Ruan Fu wrote his Record of Pu'er Tea (Pu'er Cha Ji), opening with the statement that pu'er was famous throughout the land and especially prized in the capital. See The Six Ancient Tea Mountains and Yiwu and Ruan Fu's Record of Pu'er Tea.
• 1913: As local administration was reorganized in the early Republic, Pu'er Prefecture was abolished and its former seat became Ning'er County.

From the Republic to Today

• Republican-era heritage tea houses: Private tea houses in the Yiwu area were named with the word "hao," and teas made by Tongqing, Songpin, Fuyuanchang, and others later came to be called Hao-grade teas; see Yiwu's Heritage Tea Houses. In the same period, the tea industry in Menghai (then called Fohai) took off. Between 1938 and 1940, Fan Hejun and others set up an experimental tea factory in Fohai, the predecessor of the Menghai Tea Factory; see Fohai in the Republican Era.
• State-run tea factories: From the 1950s on, pu'er was produced by state-run factories, with wrappers printed with "Zhongcha" (CNNP); by the color of the printed characters they are classed as Red Mark, Green Mark, Yellow Mark, and other Yin-grade teas. In the early 1970s, the name "qizi bing" ("seven-sons cake") was used for exports, and four-digit recipe numbers followed; see Hao-Grade, Yin-Grade, and Qizi Bing.
• The arrival of ripe tea: The common account is that in 1973 the Kunming Tea Factory and the Menghai Tea Factory began producing ripe tea through artificial wet piling; some sources hold that experiments with accelerated post-fermentation were already happening in the 1960s. The background to these 2 accounts is in The Birth of Ripe Pu'er.
• Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the collecting boom: Hong Kong teahouses have long served pu'er with dim sum; in 1995, Teng Shih-hai published Pu'er Tea, sparking a collecting craze across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
• Booms, busts, and the ancient-tree craze: Between 1999 and 2007, prices rose about 10-fold and then crashed; see The 2007 Pu'er Market Bubble. Afterward, attention shifted to mountain origins and ancient trees.
• Standards and World Heritage: In 2008, the national standard GB/T 22111-2008 Product of Geographical Indication: Pu'er Tea was issued, taking effect on December 1 of that year; in 2023, the Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of Jingmai Mountain was inscribed on the World Heritage List, the first world cultural heritage site dedicated to tea.

FAQ

Can you give a quick summary of pu'er's history? The Tang-dynasty Manshu already records tea from the Yinsheng area of Yunnan; the name "Pu tea" appears in the Ming dynasty; after Pu'er Prefecture was set up in 1729 it became tribute tea, continuing until the end of the Qing; the Republican era had the Yiwu heritage tea houses and the Fohai tea industry; from the 1950s, state-run factories produced it, and ripe tea appeared in the 1970s; in 2008 a national standard was established.

When did pu'er become tribute tea? The founding of Pu'er Prefecture in 1729 (7th year of Yongzheng) is generally taken as the starting point; after that it was sent as tribute every year until the end of the Qing, for about 180 years.

What year did ripe tea appear? The common account is that in 1973 the Kunming Tea Factory and the Menghai Tea Factory began producing it through artificial wet piling; other sources hold that experiments were already underway in the 1960s.