Lot of compressed tea is not puerh - actually most of the strongly
compressed (iron-pressed) tea is produced for northern markets - Mongolia,
Central Asia. Central Asia was a part of USSR so they called it (and still
do) "Russian market" - in reality until very recently Russia proper saw
almost no Chinese tea because India during post-Stalin years had much better
relations with Kremlin than Chinese who basically became almost an enemy.
Quite a bit of it was always produced for Tibet and some of it is puerh, but
most of it is nothing but just very hard-compressed black (and green) tea.
Which is understandable, because puerh never (even in China, let alone Tibet
or Mongolia) was an everyday tea. And everyday tea was pressed non-fermented
varieties of lower quality leaf.

In the dictionaries Tong Zhi is still a "comrade". It cannot be different
also because CPC is still unchallenged ruling party and Tong Zhi is an
official word for addressing a party member. But on the streets (and may
that has a political tongue-in-cheek too) Tong Zhi is "***", I know that
because I started to learn Chinese back home in 1970-ies and every page of
my textbook had at least 10 instances of the bloody term. So, even knowing
that, I were using it all the times during my7 recent China business trips
(you know how these things that you learned many years ago get stuck in your
head!) and every time it was a burst of laughter or just people
smiling/hissing/hushing...- but never outside of an official meeting with
party boys it was understood the "old way".

Sasha.





"Space Cowboy" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>I thought I remember puer links describing Russian investment in
> Chinese puer factories in the sixties or about. I know we had a recent
> discussion where compress black tea for Russian market wasn't puerh.
> "Old comrade" pops up often enough on TaoBao through the translation
> software. I don't have any current notes on what factories or product
> that could be.
>
> Jim
>
> Alex Chaihorsky wrote:
>> > Tea: Haiwan Factory Lao Tong Zhi '04
>> > Source: Yunnan Sourcing LLC
>> > Leaf Description: beautiful higher grade well-compressed leaf. Very
>> > aromatic.
>> >..................
>>
>> If one's Chinese friends ever discover that one lived in a socialist
>> country
>> they always forewarn one never to use the Chinese equivalent of the very
>> common word "comrade" - Tong Zhi, in its original meaning, because
>> nowadays
>> it is used almost exclusively to describe gays. I saw that cake - these
>> are
>> the right characters... So I wonder - since this is a new cake - what
>> does
>> it name mean - an Old Comrade or an Old Fairy?
>>
>> Alex.
>