This year, we decided to connect with our Pa Sha farmer to sample his autumn harvest.

Before that, we spent some time in Menghai, exploring various shops and tasting not only shu pu-erh but also this year’s sheng.
Prices, naturally, varied widely along with the flavors, but there was a common thread among them. Beyond the typical “gu hua” autumn aroma with hints of “mei li” (plum), a noticeable “shui wei” (watery taste) was also present. This trait is usually linked to summer harvests, but due to an exceptionally rainy year, the spring and autumn leaves were similarly affected.

Please understand, this is not a defect or a seriously unpleasant flavor. Rather, it simply lowers the tea’s ranking—and therefore its price—because the flavor is not as rich as usual. Coupled with the naturally weaker profile of autumn leaves, it means you might need to add a bit more tea to your teapot or gaiwan to achieve the desired strength.
Over the past few years, the local tea economy has undergone significant changes as many tea farmers have become more business-savvy. Places like Lao Ban Zhan or Bing Dao showcase just how profitable the tea trade can be. In the span of 5 to 8 years, small wooden huts and humble transportation such as horses or cheap motorbikes have been replaced by luxury villas and expensive SUVs. The ironic part is when you, as a foreigner, arrive by bus choosing the cheapest option, locals will still say, “You foreigners are rich! You can buy our tea no problem!”
We tend to avoid those areas, but unfortunately, this pu-erh boom is spreading like a virus across Yunnan. Every year at least one new village or region is promoted, inevitably followed by sharp price increases.

Yet, there are still many  genuine hard working farmers who are not affected by this pu-erh tea boom.

The poor weather in 2017 was a valid factor but also a convenient excuse for farmers to raise prices. Despite prices suddenly jumping 3 to 5 times higher than the previous year—and despite a drop in quality—buyers still emerged.
The booming and heavily promoted tea culture, combined with the growth of tea tourism (of which foreigners make up less than 1%), has created a market where some farmers are no longer willing to sell their tea at wholesale prices. Many now host sales in their homes, equipped with elegant wooden tea tables, high-tech water filters, and guest accommodations—embracing a business model they previously lacked but quickly learned.
A long-standing factor contributing to quality decline is the mixing of gu shu (old tea tree) leaves with either small arbor leaves in better cases, or, more commonly, with bush tea.

During this trip, we also visited our farmer in Nan Nuo Shan, who shared a story about a tea businessman from Hubei installing high-tech night vision cameras throughout the garden and processing area to ensure he received exactly what he paid for. She felt upset and even angry about this level of surveillance. I couldn’t help but respond, “You can only blame yourselves for this.”
There have been cases where a farmer, carrying a full basket of expensive tea leaves down from the garden with a customer, would ask to step “behind the bushes” (to use the restroom). In reality, a second basket was waiting there for a quick swap. The customer, however, noticed because the original basket’s strap was broken.

Many tea bosses also blend teas, primarily driven by pricing strategies. Whether they openly admit it or not is up to you to discern. Another reason for blending leaves from different locations and trees—such as arbor, bush, or from regions like Bada and Pa Sha—is to create a broader spectrum of flavors. This allows sellers to offer a greater variety of teas on their shelves and cover a wider price range, much like the coffee market.
This practice sometimes results in what are labeled as “fake” teas. In reality, they are still genuine teas; it’s simply the labeling that is misleading. For example, we recently acquired a well-made 357g sheng pu-erh from Bu Lang Shan, wrapped in Lao Ban Zhan packaging per a previous customer’s request. Though the locations and taste profiles are similar, the price difference is significant.

We arrive at the farmer’s humble home, motorbike parked at the front gate. Across the way, his neighbor owns an SUV and a well-maintained house—so it seems only a matter of time before he “wakes up” to the business potential. A few large tea trees stand proudly at the front, with many smaller ones at the back, giving a clear indication of what to expect. As we later learned, his family tends only 62 trees.
His Mandarin is quite poor, which makes communication difficult even for my wife, a native speaker. Surprisingly, I—an outsider with somewhat “better” Mandarin—manage to hold the conversation and negotiate the price. Since we both use a limited vocabulary and speak with broken accents, we actually understand each other quite well.
We sampled a blend of old tea tree leaves from the autumn harvest and enjoyed the flavor. The 2017 Pa Sha Qiao Mu—autumn edition—despite the rainy season, shows little of the previously mentioned “shui wei” (watery taste) and is surprisingly rich, almost comparable to a spring harvest.

The mao cha has been used for our product Yunnan Craft – 佛