Puer tea is mellowed by aging, the period by which it is transported and stored.
The largest, tallest tea trees in the world grow in the mountains of Yunnan. This region also produces black, green, Oolong and other kinds of tea.
The leaves for “Puer” tea are divided into three sizes and the largest contain more of the health benefits attributed to “Puer” tea.
For centuries, the process of making tea from picking, to washing, to boiling, mixing, pressing, clustering, baking, and packing has been improved to enhance the flavor of the tea.
Chinese Puer tea – Part 2/3
Dao Linyin, the governor of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous region in China says, “Puer tea contains many vitamins. Very few Puer drinkers get high blood pressure.”
Standards for selecting the thickest broad leaves for “Puer” tea means only about 30% of the tea leaves that are picked pass inspection to be processed into the final product. This selection process is important because the wrong leaves will have a negative impact on the fermentation process.
The fermentation step in the process of producing “Puer” tea takes 110 days.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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My weekend cup of Numi Organic Pu’erh teareaches back into China and Tibet’s history almost two thousand years. The journey this tea takes starts in China’s Southwest Yunnan province along the border of Laos and Vietnam.
There are several varieties of tea — white, black, scented and green to name a few.
The mountainous region of southwest China in Yunnan Province produces a special tea called “Puer”.
The custom with “Puer” is to pick new tea and drink old tea. This refers to a practice unique for “Puer” tea of aging the tea in storage to obtain the unique flavor.
In addition, modern science has recognized “Puer” for its health benefits beyond black tea.
Chinese Puer tea – Part 1/3
In 225 A.D., when China was divided into the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu, and Wu, the prime minister of Shu led a military expedition to Yunnan.
Historical records say that many of the Shu troops came down with eye diseases. After they drank the boiled tea, it is believed that the troops were cured.
The leaves came from a tea tree in Yunnan. Over time, tea drinking for health benefits became a tradition in other areas of China including Tibet.
There is an old saying in Tibet. “Better three days without food than a day without tea.” Historical records show that Tibetans started drinking tea during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD) in 641.
Tibet does not grow tea trees, so the famous Tea Horse Road from Tibet to Yunnan was opened. Over the centuries, tens of thousands of horses were traded with China for tea.
In the early 19th century, Emperor Daoguang named “Puer” tea as a “Divine Tribute to the Kingdom of Heaven”.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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The CIA Factbook [where I found the data used in this post] says China’s GDP [Purchasing Power Parity or PPP] was more than $10 trillion and its real GDP growth rate was 10.3% in 2010, foreign exchange and gold reserves were about $2.9 trillion and its external debt was $529 billion. The current account balance was a positive $305.4 billion (2010 est.) Public debt was 16.3% of GDP (2010 est.).
India’s GDP [PPP] was $4 trillion with a growth rate of 10.4%, reserves were $287.1 billion and its external debt was $316.9 billion. The current account balance was a negative – $51.78 billion. Public debt was 50.6%.
Brazil’s GDP [PPP] was about $2.2 trillion with a growth rate of 7.5%, reserves were $288.6 billion and its external debt was $396.2 billion. The current account balance was listed as a negative – $47.36 billion. Public debt was 54.7%.
Russia’s GDP [PPP] was a bit more than $2.2 trillion with a growth rate of 4%, reserves were $479.4 billion and its external debt was $538.6 billion. The current account balance was a $71.13 billion. Public debt was 9%.
South Africa’s GDP [PPP] was $524 billion with a growth rate of 2.8%, reserves were $43.84 billion, and its external debt was $109.4 billion. The current account balance was a negative – $9.987 billion. Public debt was 33.4%.
Summary for the BRICS
The BRICS combined GDP [PPP] for 2010 was $18.9 trillion, overall growth of GDP was 7%, foreign exchange and gold reserves were about $3.99 trillion and its external debt was almost $1.9 trillion so the BRICS had more than twice the reserves than it did external debt. The current account balance was a positive $168.263 billion
The WEST
The Economic Health [or should I say Illness] of the United States
Meanwhile the United States GDP [PPP] was more than $14.6 trillion with a GDP growth rate of 2.8%, reserves were $132.4 billion and its external debt was $14.71 trillion, which means debt is more than 111 (one-hundred-and-eleven) times that of reserves. The current account balance was a negative – $470.2 billion and public debt was 62.9% of GDP.
The Economic Health [or should I say Illness] of Canada
Canada’s GDP [PPP] for 2010 was $1.33 trillion with a GDP real growth rate of 3.1%, reserves of foreign exchange and gold were $57.15 billion, and its external debt was $1.181 trillion in June 2011. The current account balance was a negative – $48.5 billion (2010 est.) and public debt was 84% of GDP (2010 est.)
The Economic Health [or should I say Illness] of the European Union
Member states of the EU (year of entry) — Austria (1995), Belgium (1952), Bulgaria (2007), Cyprus (2004), Czech Republic (2004), Denmark (1973), Estonia (2004), Finland (1995), France (1952), Germany (1952), Greece (1981), Hungry (2004), Ireland (1973), Italy (1952), Latvia (2004), Lithuania (2004), Luxembourg (1952), Malta (2004), Netherlands (1952), Poland (2004), Portugal (1986), Romania (2007), Slovakia (2004), Slovenia (2004), Spain (1986), Sweden (1995), United Kingdom (1973)
The CIA reported that in 2010, the European Union had a GDP [PPP] of $14.82 trillion with a GDP growth rate of 1.8%, there is no listing for foreign exchange and gold reserves. However, the current account balance was a negative -$11.07 trillion with external debt of $16.08 trillion as of June 2011. Public debt is listed for each member country but not for the European Union. For example: Germany’s public debt was 83.4% of GDP, the United Kingdom was 76.1% and Greece was 142.7%. Source: CIA Factbook
Summary for the WEST
The WEST’s GDP [PPP] was $30.75 trillion, the average GDP growth rate was 2.56%, external debt was $31.971 trillion and the current account balance was a negative – $11.525 trillion.
As of 2011, the five countries that make up the BRICS were among the fastest growing emerging markets.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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When you read something disparaging or criticizing another individual or a country such as China or one of its BRICS partners, you may see something like the question Troy Parfitt recently asked in a comment on this blog: “What about China’s debt problem?” The immediate thought after reading Parfitt’s entire comment might be that China has a debt problem that will slow or stop its economic progress leading to a crises.
In fact, few readers dropping by for the average thirty seconds to read a blog post will take the time to find out the facts to see if the claims of critics are as bad as they sound.
The result is that individuals motivated by cultural biases that resort to using confirmation bias in what they write will often leave behind a negative image of the subject they have criticized.
A cultural bias is the phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one’s own culture, and confirmation bias is a method used to support this.
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias, my side bias or verification bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way.
Another example of country’s economic health may be found in the spending and saving habits of its households. Canada’s household savings rate in 2008 was 3.8%, the United States was 2.7%, the EU total was 5.8%, the Russian Federation was 12.6% in 2005, Germany’s household saving rate was 11.2%, Greece was a minus -7.3% in 2006, and the United Kingdom was a minus – 4.5%. Source: Global Finance magazine
On page 45, Table 1, the GDP per Capita and National Saving Rate (annual average) for China was 54.4% up from 35.6% in 1980-1990. Wow! More than fifty-four percent saved (annual average) out of what a family earns!
On page 43, Figure 6, there was a chart comparing the saving rates of China with the United States. In 1980, the US saving rate was about 12.4% but by 2008, it was down to almost 5%. By comparison, China’s household saving rate was closer to 15% in 1980 and climbed from there to about 30% by 2008. After the 2008 global financial crises rolled across the globe from New York, the household saving rate in China jumped allmost 20%. Talk about saving for a rainy day!
If a financial crises is coming to China, that household saving rate tells us that the average Chinese family is getting ready to survive it.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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It may be no secret that China’s economic health will have an impact on the rest of the BRICS countries in addition to America and Europe. India and China need the resources of Brazil, Russia and South Africa and those three countries prosper due to the business from India and China.
For a better understanding of the BRICS, I turned to Investopedia for a definition, which said, “The BRIC thesis posits that China and India will become the world’s dominant suppliers of manufactured goods and services, respectively, while Brazil and Russia will become similarly dominant as suppliers of raw materials.
“It is important to note that the Goldman Sachs thesis isn’t that these countries are a political alliance (like the European Union) or a formal trading association – but they have the potential to form a powerful economic bloc…”
Due to lower labor and production costs, many companies also see the BRICS as a source of foreign expansion opportunities.
In addition, what was once only an acronym has become something else.
Although the BRIC acronym came into existence in 2001 when there was no real political organization among the four original countries, on June 16, 2009, due to the 2008 global financial crises, the leaders of the four BRIC countries held their first summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and issued a joint declaration. Since then, they met in Brasilia in 2010 and again in Sanya, China in 2011.
In 2010, South Africa launched efforts to join the BRIC group, and the process of its formal admission began in August. Later in 2010, the BRIC countries expanded to include South Africa, becoming the BRICS.
The next meeting of the BRICS is scheduled in New Delhi, India, March 2012.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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