Teapot by Chu Kexin2

There is another teapot by Chu Kexin made under the name of Chu Kaichang, probably made in the 1950s. There have been numerous examples of such a teapot design made by him. Some were sighted in magazines while others appeared in various blog in China. Alan's Museum collected one early teapot by Chu Kaichang. There is no question of autencity as the Yixing clay used to make this teapot is clearly a type of clay mined in the early 1950s (the original purplish colour of Yixing clay). This clay has since been out of production for decades.

Chu Kaichang's early teapot

One such teapot recently appeared in an article published in a blog in China. The writer gave an account of how he witnessed his grandfather brewing tea with this teapot. He is now in his 50s and remembered at a young age that this teapot was without the cover. He made matter worse by breaking also the handle. He even boiled the teapot using some kind of disinfectant which he deeply regretted. Although he was not sure of the maker, he said that the teapot had been around in his house for many years. He showed a photo of the teapot clearly with the seal of Chu Kaichang at the back of the pot. He remarked that he liked the engravings on the teapot.

 

Chu Kaichang
 

 

Chu Kexin's teapot

Chu Kexin's original name was Chu Kaichang. He changed his name midway in his career to Chu Kexin meaning anybody honorable could be his teacher. This could also mean that he was willing to learn from anyone who has a good heart. Below is a photo of a teapot made in the early year that had the seal of Chu Kaichang.

Early teapot by Chu Kaichang



Chu Kaichang's seal

Seals of Chu Kexin

The Shiwan kiln in Guangdong

There is a famous kiln in Guangdong where clay figurines are made and sold all over the world. It is called the Shiwan 石湾 kiln and the figurines are called the Shiwan figurines. The sculptors use many legendary figures in Chinese history as their subjects and created many world renown pieces. Ancient historical figures such as Zhugeliang, Liubei and Zhangfei of the Three kingdom era, the Eight Immortals, the Ghost Catcher, etc have always been the themes of the sculptors' creation and imagination.

Alans Museum also collected many Shiwan pieces depicting the heroes of the Cultural Revolution Era.

A peasant fighter

A comrade who served in the war

Leifeng, a soldier

Dr Bethune, a Canadian doctor

Luxun, the scholar

A soldier carrying explosives

The eight immortals

Teapots by Fan Zaoda

In 2012, a set of 4 Yixing teapots was auctioned in China for 230000 Yuan. These teapots were the results of a collaboration of 3 parties, a famous potter by the name of Fan Zoada 范早大, a famous painter by the name Tangyun 唐云 and a famous engraver 沈觉初. The teapots were made in the shape of a cylinder, that of a well. The teapots were decorated with paintings of Mei, Lan, Zue and Zu, the four seasons plants and flowers known in the circle of oriental art as the Four Gentlemen (四君子). The price tag is indeed the highest for this potter. The reason could be due to the fame of the painter whose paintings are highly sough after by art collectors in the auction market. (See below for the news regarding this sale).

Set of 4 teapots by Fan Zaoda auctioned for 230000 Yuans
 

Alans Museum has another teapot by Fan Zaoda made in the 1980s when the potter is relatively unknown in Yixing. It makes sense to collect teapots by makers when they are still relatively unknown and have the potential to become famous potters one day.

Early teapot by Fan Zaoda

2012年9月9日下午3：00，荣宝斋(微博)(上海)首届四季拍卖古董珍玩专场在上海四季大酒店举槌。范早大制唐云绘沈觉初刻四君子图紫砂壶以7.8万起拍，最终以23万的价格成交。此拍品之前估价为RMB 88,000-98,000 -，尺寸为长18.5cm×4。
　　

范早大制唐云绘沈觉初刻四君子图紫砂壶一组
说明：四把壶身分别为唐云绘梅兰竹菊四君子图，沈觉初刻，范早大制作。壶底印为“范早大”。
器型端庄古朴，线条流畅，刻工精到，为近现代名家连手佳制。附唐云题字拓片一本。

More brands of puerh

These are popular 500g puerh bricks produced in the 1980s and1990s. These tea bricks are ready for brewing and the fragrance of the tea is characteristic of aged puerh.

Puerh 500g bricks
 

Other new brands that come to the market as shown here.

State of Dehong factory

Tonxin Hao and Rui Rong Hao

Puerh square bricks

This is a type of square puerh bricks produced in the 1990s. The tea cakes are no more in production as the company is no longer around. In those days, companies went bust quite easily due to financial difficulties and stiff competition.The tea weighs 250g and compressed in the shape of a square tile.

Square puerh bricks

There is a market for this brand of puerh tea in Singapore but the supply was stopped due to the close down of the factory.

Giant puerh tea cake

Have you seen a giant puerh tea cake?

Here is one such giant tea cake weighing a whopping 3 kg. It was made in May, 2004 and the leaves were harvested from puerh trees, not from tea plantation. The production is limited to 1008 pieces. It was a Menghai production.

Giant puerh cake weighing 3kg.

Early puerh tea marchant in Singapore

One of the pioneers in bringing puerh tea to the Singapore market. The business in Singapore was run by two brothers and their father was based in Hong Kong. Although they sold other tea, they were the major importer of the black tea such as puerh, liubao and liu ann. They supplied a lot of these tea to restaurants here. I had the opportunity to know the younger brother quite well and got myself acquainted with this excellent tea. I also had the opportunity to collect a lot of these tea at affordable prices. The company is located in the China town area in Singapore.

The tea cakes shown here have the wrappers that bear the shop's logo. The tea cakes are Guangyun tea cakes from the early 1980s. The merchant was trying to sell the tea with its own label and trade mark, a common practice here to establish itself in the tea market.

Wrapper logo of the tea merchant

 

300g puerh bricks

Puerh bricks usually come in 250g per bricks, 256 bricks per box. Some may be 500g while 1kg bricks also appeare in the market. But, have you seen puerh bricks of 300g.

This particular batch of puerh tea is of exceptionally quality. Originally it was sold at $18 per piece in a tea shop here. There was a customer who kept coming back to buy this bricks. The price went from $18 to $28, $38 and even 68 per piece and that customer kept coming back for more, eventually the stock ran out. This happened in the early 1990s. Here are some puerh bricks bought before the price went escalating.



Puerh bricks of exceptional quality

Last few batches of puerh from state run factory

Due to stiff competition from the private sectors, the state run puerh tea factory (China National Native Produce Import & Export Company Yunnan Tea Branch ) stopped its operation in October 2004. Below are some of the puerh bricks produced by the factory in March 2004, just a few months before the factory stopped the production of puerh tea. There after, the production of puerh tea is in private owned enterprises.

This tea was produced according to the traditional method using raw (green) puerh tea leaves. The wrappers indicated that the tea was from Yiwu old trees (wild) and the year of production was March 2004. By next year the tea would be ten years old and on its path to develop puerh characteristics. What a joy to collect puerh tea of this nature.

Raw wild puerh tea bricks of 2004

Hundreds of such tea bricks packed in a cupboard

The reverse of the wrapper showing the date of production

Ruirong brand 2001 wild puerh tea cake

Ruirong brand is a quite a well known brand of puerh tea among tea drinkers. Here is a Ruiyrong brand puerh ta cake produced in 2001. It is a raw (green) puerh tea cake made from puerh tea leaves harvested from wild puerh tea trees in the Yiwu region of Yunnan. When the tea cakes were brought to the Singapore market in 2002, they were all snapped up by puerh tea collectors here. Tea collectors were attracted by this tea due to the fact that the tea leaves were from old trees (wild trees). Hence, not many of such tea cakes are in circulation in puerh tea shops here. They are all in collectors' house.

Here is a sample of the Ruirong brand puerh tea a cake from 2001.

Green (wild) puerh tea cake of 2001

Phoenix brand toucha

Phoenix brand toucha was a popular puerh toucha in the old days until the company went bust. A famous puerh tea author described how to differentiate between old and not so old phoenis toucha by looking at the eye-lids of the phoenix on the wrappers. It is said the toucha with wrapper that showed a Phoenix with double eye-lids is older than the one that showed a phoenix with single eye-lids. The company was later restructured and the production of the phoenix toucha was resumed.

Here are some old phoenix toucha in their original packaging.

Old phoenix toucha

Tea in a basket

Liu Ann tea, another type of black tea which ages with time, is a national tea of Anhui. The tea is unique in a way as the tea is loaded into a small bamboo basket and covered with dried bamboo leaves. Six baskets of Liu Ann tea are bundled together in a row and sold to customers. It can also be sold as individual basket of Liu Ann tea. This tea has a fragrance resembling that of fragrance rice, very pleasant to drink and enjoy its fruity taste. The ones produced in the 50s and 60s are very costly and they came with a piece of red paper with calligraphy of the name of the tea.

Here is a sample of Liu Ann tea in its original packaging. It was produced during the early 1980s.

Liu Ann tea in its original packaging

Comrade Lei Feng 雷锋同志

Lei Feng (18 December 1940  – 15 August 1962) was a soldier of the People's Liberation Army of China. It was said that he died while steering his horse driven carriage to avoid a crowd and crashing into a lamp post. After his death, Lei was characterised as a selfless and modest person who was devoted to the Communist Party, Chairman Mao Zedong, and the people of China. In 1963, he became the subject of a nationwide, posthumous propaganda campaign "Follow the examples of Comrade Lei Feng" (向雷锋同志学习).

There is a figurine depicting Lei Feng steering the carriage in a difficult position. The figurine was made during the Cultural Revolution. It was a sought after item of Cultural Revolution due to its design and artistic style that captured the character of a brave and dedicated soldier who lived in a time of turmoil.

Comrade Lei Feng 雷锋同志

Yichang brand mushroom tea

Yichang brand is a famous brand of puerh tea produced in Chang Thye Tea Factory. The word Yichang combines the word Yi from Yiwu (a famous tea producing region in Yunnan) and Chang  from Chang Thye (the factory). It is well known brand among tea collectors and there are also fakes in the market that imitate the genuine tea.

Here are some Yichang mushroom puerh tea produced in the early 90s. The tea has a pleasant fragrance. With time, the tea will age to develop its fullest potential.

Yichang puerh mushroom tea

Tibetan Mushroom Puerh Tea

People who live in the Tibet region of China cannot survive without the regular supply of puerh tea from the southern province of Yunnan. They have a very unusual way of brewing the puerh tea. They mix the tea with milk, butter and other dairy products and boil everything together into a thick drink. If you are not used to this type of tea brewing, the smell of it can surely put you off. But the Tibetans do need this tea drink as the region seriously lack vegetables and stuff that will provide them a balance a diet as they do eat a lot of meat. Just imagine, if your diet consists mainly of heavy stuff (like meat and cheese), you need fruits and vegetables to balance your diet. This is the reason why in the past, the Chinese used the tea from Yunnan to exchange for horses from Tibet. There is also the legend of the ancient tea horse road 茶马古道.

From around a thousand years ago, the Ancient Tea Route was a trade link from Yunnan, one of the first tea-producing regions: to Bengal and India via Burma; to Tibet; and to central China via Sichuan Province. In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt. Both people and horses carried heavy loads, the tea porters sometimes carrying over 60–90 kg, which was often more than their own body weight in tea.

It is believed that it was through this trading network that tea (typically tea bricks) first spread across China and Asia from its origins in Pu'er county, near Simao Prefecture in Yunnan.

The route earned the name Tea-Horse Road because of the common trade of Tibetan ponies for Chinese tea, a practice dating back at least to the Song dynasty, when the sturdy horses were important for China to fight warring nomads in the north. (Source:Wikidpedia)

In the 1980s, Menghai factory resumed production of the traditional puerh tea meant for the Tibetans in the shape of mushrooms. The famous brand is the 'Baoyen' brand which is shown here.

Tibetan puerh tea.

 

 

 



 



Four happiness puerh

This is known as the four happiness puerh tea. It came in a 4-piece package put in a box. The four happiness in Chinese characters "Fuk, Loke, Sou and Shi" which means Prosperity Fortune, Longevity and Happiness. Each piece weighs 250gm and the total package weighs a kg.

4 happiness puerh tea

7562 puerh tea bricks

This small little puerh tea in the form of a square tile weighs only 100g. It is made in 1992 in the Menghai factory.

This is no ordinary puerh tea as the ingredients used to make this tea came from the type of tea leaves used to make the famous 7562 tea bricks. If you don't know, 7562 was the tea produced in the year in Menghai factory when the Cultural Revolution ended (around 1967 to 1968), which means more than 40 years ago. 7562 pueh tea bricks were made from grade 2 broad leaves using the green puerh method but with improved production formula. The tea brewed from 7562 puerh bricks  was known to be excellent in taste and fragrance.

According to Deng SH, a renown puerh tea expert from Malaysia (now based in Taiwan), Menghai factory had mass produced this tiny puerh tiles in 1992 using the production method and formula of 7562 puerh bricks. He commented that this puerh tiles are made from green puerh tea leaves. Hence, this puerh tiles are worth keeping. In time to come, this tea is going to develop into puerh tea of excellent quality.

Puerh tea that follows 7562 style of production

Above are some puerh tea tiles made in 1992.

Puerh bricks mature with years of storage

Two more puerh tea bricks of good quality which were made following the ripe puerh method. After many years of storage, the taste and fragrance had matured. It is a delight to serve the tea hot.

Ripe puerh made in the 90s

Ripe puerh made in the 80s

If you cannot wait 30 or  more years for green puerh to develop to its fullest potential, why not keep some ripe puerh which needs about 4 to 5 years to develop the distinctive puerh taste and fragrance. Of course green puerh tea that is matured naturally is of a different class, but no one on earth can wait so long to taste the tea. Old green puerh tea, on the other hand, is too costly and generally beyond the reach of ordinary tea drinkers. One has to strike a balance when appreciating puerh tea for its excellent taste and fragrance. For example, you can buy some quality puerh (not to new) and enjoy the tea now while store piling some green tea for future consumption.

Big Green Toucha

Yifong is a tea factory in Yunnan that uses clean technology and equipment to manufacture puerh tea. The tea manufactured from the factory is of a high standard and quality.

Below are some big touchas that weigh a whopping 400g. The compressed touchas are made from high quality puerh tea leaves and made according to the green puerh method. The year of manufacture is 2003. A total of 4 touchas are bundled in dried leaves and sold to customers.

Green touchas made in 2003

Toucha of the 80s

Xiaguan is famous for the production of toucha, puerh tea compressed in the shape of a bowl. The tea from Xiakuan is well received by tea drinkers due to its high quality. The toucha comes in 100 g weight size and seven of them are bundled into a wrapper and sold to customers.

Here are some 100g toucha made in the early 80s with the wrapper on them.

Xiaguan toucha of the 80s

 

 

 

Guangdong Puerh (Guang Yun Puerh Tea)

In the 1950s, Yunnan district had to send a fair bit of puerh tea to Guangdong (southern province of China) for processing into puerh tea for the world market. The reason is that Guangdong is sea port where merchant ships all over the world came here to load and unload their cargo. If the tea was processed here, I would be easier for the tea producers to export their tea. This gave rise to the so-called GuangYun Gong Ping (Yunna puerh tea from Guangdong). This practise went on for decades until the late 1980s or early 1990s. Now the province of Yunnan no longer supplies puerh tea to Guangdong for processing. GuangYun puerh tea has now become antiques.

Here is a piece of GuangYun puerh tea made in the 1970s with it wrapper intact.

Yunnan tea processed in Guangdong

 

Green Puerh 7542

There is a method used by Menghai factory to identify the puerh tea produced. It has a 4 digit number represented certain key information about the tea, such as the factory it vame from, the year of production, the production method, the quality of tea leaves used the type of puerh tea whether green or ripe.

7542 is the code for puerh tea made in Menghai factory using green puerh tea. It is the most popular tea produced by the factory in large quantity to quench the thirst of people all around the world. The most famous of this particular brand is the 88 green tea purchased by a certain Mr Chan from Hong Kong. It was said that he bought over 200000 pieces of this green tea for a very low price. Over the years of storage, the taste and fragrance of the tea improved, and so was the price. Now if you possess one 7542 made in the 80s, you can probably be laughing all the way to the bank. It is quite valuable.

Here are some 7542s made in 2003.

7542 green puerh made in 2003

Green puerh of 1995

Menghai factory produces large quantity of both ripe and green puerh tea for the world market. It comes with many shapes and sizes but the most popular shapes are the round disc shape and the rectangular brick shape. The factory was privatised in 2004 and the private sectors take over the production of puerh tea for the world market.

Here are some puerh bricks produced prior to the privatization of the Menghai factory. The raw puerh tea bricks were made in 1995 and wrapped in a bundle of 4 pieces.

Green puerh bricks made in 1995

Old Panjang 2

Another old panjang puerh tea made from green tea leaves harvested in the old panjang district of Yunnan. It is in the shape of round disc and the tea literally translated as tea biscuits.

Panjang green puerh tea from this comapany

Old Comrade (老同志) tea

This brand of puerh tea was started by the ex-manager of the Menghai tea factory in Yunnan. After he retired from the factory with many years experience in the manufacturing of puerh tea, he left the Menghai factory and set up his company to made and sell puerh tea. It was said that he knew everything about the puerh tea business due to the many years he spent at the factory. He was a production worker at the factory and eventually became the factory manager to oversee the tea production.

First batch of tea 老同志 without wrapper

Above is the 老同志 tea produced in his factory. Notice this tea does not have a proper wrapper to promote the name of 老同志 (old comrade) as this were the very first batches of tea produced in the factory and he had not even designed the wrapper for the tea yet. So the tea bricks were wrapped in plain brown paper with the brand name (老同志) written on the outside.The tea was launched in the market without any promotion being carried out. There was a little bamboo sticker inside the tea bearing the name of this retired ex-manager of Menghai tea factory.

The factory also produces green puerh tea. Below is the picture of 老同志 puerh green tea made in 2003. The tea has become collectors favourite tea.

老同志 green puerh manufactured in 2003