On our journey to the Xishuangbanna mountains for autumn tea, we decided to make a stop in Menghai, a town renowned for its shu (ripe, fermented, black, or cooked) pu-erh tea.

Menghai is home to several tea markets, with numerous shops scattered organically throughout the town center. Both large and small companies offer shu cha in a variety of forms—loose leaves, pressed cakes—and across a wide range of quality levels.

It’s rare to find a tea boss who is a local; most come from provinces like Guangdong, Hunan, Sichuan, and others. These are individuals who arrive with investment capital and a business mindset—essentially filling a gap that local people historically lacked both in resources and in experience running a tea business. This dynamic is rapidly evolving, as evident in the shifting prices of mao cha.
We methodically visit each shop, sampling their shu pu-erh. On the first day, we struggle to find anything truly drinkable, and that’s before even discussing prices. Unsurprisingly, most shops are stocked with fresh shu from Ba Gong Li—literally “8 kilometers,” the name of the production area just 8 km from Menghai, where fermentation, processing, pressing, and wrapping all take place. Because the tea is so fresh, it is laden with “dui wei,” the distinctive and often unpleasant fermentation odor.

To choose the right tea, you need the skill to smell and taste which ones will eventually lose the undesirable “dui wei” odor through proper dry storage. This unwelcome fermentation scent often heavily influences the flavor of many teas and may not dissipate for several years. Kunming’s dry storage is recognized as an effective method to accelerate this mellowing process.
One key reason for the decline in shu pu-erh quality over the past few years is the surge in demand.
Specifically, between 2015 and 2017, soaring mao cha prices led many tea merchants and companies to shift their focus toward shu cha. This increased demand placed significant strain on shu processing facilities. Unable to expand capacity quickly but eager to satisfy customers—and maximize profits—producers began accelerating the fermentation process for each batch, sacrificing quality for speed.

Why is shu pu-erh produced in greater quantities than sheng? The simple answer: it’s cheaper. Because shu pu-erh’s flavor is largely shaped by fermentation, the quality and origin of the raw tea leaves—whether from different tree types or regions—matter less within certain price ranges. Most shu pu-erh is made from inexpensive bush tea leaves. Another factor is that shu pu-erh sells faster than sheng because it is intended for immediate consumption—provided the processing is done correctly. Unlike sheng, which requires long-term aging to become drinkable, shu pu-erh can be enjoyed right away without the need for extended storage. Therefore, shu pu-erh is more appealing for a quick-profit business model due to its faster production cycle and immediate marketability.
That said, different blends of the same fermentation can yield varying flavors, as different tea leaves react uniquely to the fermentation process. Likewise, the same tea leaves can produce distinct profiles depending on fermentation variables such as duration, temperature, moisture, tossing methods, and intervals.
The key point is that very high-quality shu pu-erh made from arbor trees—whether today or in recent years—naturally commands a premium price. Although some arbor shu pu-erh exists, often sourced from estate teas that don’t sell well as sheng pu-erh, it’s generally possible to get superior shu pu made from bush tea.
This is partly because there’s a broader range of bush tea blends available to better suit individual tastes, and partly because shu pu-erh masters have far more experience fermenting bush tea leaves, as most orders center around this type.

Another observation in Menghai is the scarcity of authentic aged shu pu-erh teas. One major reason is that most of the genuine old stocks have already been sold. However, countless counterfeit or dubious products remain widely available.

The other is , they get mold after few years because of excessive humidity.

One tea boss told us he stores his teas on the 7th floor to avoid high humidity. Whether or not this method is effective, we can’t say—but his teas still exhibited pronounced wet notes. In already fermented teas, it’s difficult to accurately estimate age within a few years, despite the various dates printed on the packaging. This practice is common, even in Kunming. For example, we’ve seen some tea sellers from Hunan buying 2016 shu pu-erh but rewrapping it with 2006 labels, emphasizing that the packaging and print design must appear aged to appeal to buyers.

Of course, such an extreme discrepancy in age is often detectable—especially if you’re familiar with old shu pu-erh—but factors like varied storage conditions, fermentation techniques, and the types of tea leaves used make accurately determining age much more complicated. This uncertainty creates ample room for speculation among local tea traders. In fact, the Chinese puerh tea business is fundamentally built on age, origin, and tea tree type—the latter being the true determinant of flavor.
Many uninformed buyers may purchase a shu pu-erh Lao Ban Zhan gu shu for as little as 30 CNY for a large 357g cake, believing they’ve found a fantastic deal.
By the second day, I was already fatigued from drinking so many wet, earthy teas, which only strengthened my belief that focusing on small private producers making limited-batch shu pu-erh was the right choice. Poor quality often reveals itself in subtle ways that a typical consumer might not notice. Take shu pu-erh in orange or mandarin packaging, for example—recently very popular and good sellers. It’s a clever marketing idea, but one that has actually been around for ages.

Price – Taste

You can stuff almost anything inside these fruits because the original flavor of the tea is largely masked by the strong orange aroma. This means cheap raw material combined with claims of costly labor—which can vary greatly—results in high profit margins. To ensure quality, we first brew the tea without the fruit, breaking apart the leaves and steeping them multiple times to confirm there’s no unwanted “garbage” mixed in.

On the third day, we finally selected a few teas for our shop—teas that are either ready to drink now or will improve significantly in a few months as the sharp, young shu pu-erh aroma gradually mellows.