(I) Health benefits

Both Puer Tea and renowned dark teas are often described as “half tea, half medicine,” each possessing unique medicinal and health benefits. They have a special effect in warming and nurturing the stomach, with pharmacological and nutritional roles. Drinking them quenches thirst, eliminates greasiness, and can lower blood lipids while removing free radicals. Thus, they exhibit antioxidant properties and can delay cellular aging.

Their contributions to human society or beneficial functions for the human body, or their compatibility with humans, are similar.

Puer tea and Golden Flower (Eurotium cristatum) tea, made from large-leafed Yunnan tea plants, contain higher levels of substances like tea polyphenols, alkaloids, and amino acids compared to teas made from smaller-leafed varieties. Consequently, their health benefits such as quenching thirst, aiding digestion, refreshing the mind, promoting clear thinking, eliminating phlegm, reducing irritability, dispelling miasma, facilitating bowel movements, and lowering lipids are even more pronounced.

(II) Tea Ecology and Culture

From ancient times to the present, Puer tea and other types of dark teas have been relatively well-known. Apart from differences in geographical names and tea plant varieties, during their development, there has been a clash and contradiction between traditional processing techniques and innovations that affect their quality characteristics.

There is also disparity in the development of these teas. For example, under national standards, Puer tea is divided into raw Puer and ripe Puer, which makes its form and quality characteristics significantly different from other dark teas.

The various classifications of Puer tea, dark tea, Compressed tea, reprocessed tea, post-Fermented tea, and Golden Flower tea only describe one aspect of these tea's quality characteristics. However, these classifications and names struggle to fully encompass all the excellent quality features of these historically famous teas and lack the representation of the dynamic development of their processing techniques and quality characteristics.

These teas are like the multi-ethnic brothers of China, walking together through history. As times change, they develop and progress while learning from and integrating with each other, entering a new era of ecological civilization together.

Excerpted from “Pu'er” Magazine

“Comparative Analysis of Pu'er Tea and Several Renowned Dark Teas”

Authors | Wu Xingli & Lan Zengquan

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