The latest investment craze sucking in yuan from China’s eager speculators: Pu’er tea. Like a fine wine,
the earthy-tasting fermented brew, often sold in circular cakes, gains flavor-and value-with age.
The price of the tea has gone from $2.56 to $3.85 a kilogram a year ago to seven times that range now.
For the vintage stuff, prices can easily run as high as $300 per kg—and a 60-year-old 100-gram batch fetched
$38,000 at auction earlier this year in Guangdong province.
The buyers and sellers in this hot market tend to be those in the tea industry and business types already
speculating in stocks, real estate, or Chinese art. And as with other investing sectors in China today, it’s a
market that can fluctuate wildly. Prices fell by more than half recently after Yunnan farmers jacked up
production and the market was flooded by some low-quality Pu’er passed off as a better vintage.
“The price has kept going up and down like the stock market,” says An Min, a Yunnan native and founder
of Beijing-based Pu’er Tea International Group. Now she and others are becoming concerned about the
speculation that has prices see-sawing. The market frenzy, they say, encourages unscrupulous dealers who try
to sell inferior young teas as high-quality, aged Pu’er. In an interview with the official English language
newspaper, Zheng Bingli, chairman of Yunnan Pu’er Tea Ltd., warned that “such illicit behavior will seriously
harm the growth of the Pu’er tea industry.”
【題組】47. Which description about Pu’er tea is true?
(A) It’s sold by kilograms.
(B) It has high quality when it is fresh.
(C) It has a grass-like smell.
(D) Some people trade it to make money.
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