Attempting to decipher puerh wrappers…

All right…just a brief account of something I found amusing…I recently picked up some puerh in Chicago’s Chinatown. Well, the other day I sat down to try and decipher the wrappers–to get a handle on the when and where of them, at least.

First observation: This is harder than I initally thought it would be.

Before I continue, let me say this: if you’re making any similar attempts of your own, get thee posthaste to this wonderful resource on Mike Petro’s amazing puerh site:

http://www.pu-erh.net/cheatsheet.php

It’s chock-full of the Chinese characters that any silly, ignorant, first-time puerh buyer like me needs to try to puzzle out the pretty little wrappers arrayed in front of me.

So I sat with sheets from Mr. Petro’s site and pored over the wrappers, occasionally saying, “Hey, this has something to do with the factory!” or “I sure have that ‘tea’ character down pat at this point…”

I figured out bits and pieces–grade on one, I think, and the “seven sons” designation on the other. Also, “Yunnan,” and, umm, “tuo cha.”

Advanced, aren’t I?

Anyway, the exercise was very fun, if a bit of a wash. I’m still far too new at all of this to know much what was in front of me.

My plan? To take a six-pack of good longnecks and the mystery puerh to a friend of mine who works as a Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese interpreter. Hopefully, she’ll be able to give me information on the characters, which I can then take to the brilliant people on some of the mailing lists I belong to. I know they’ll be able to tell me loads about my mystery puerh (and, I’m sure, it’s rather poor quality, eep!) if I can provide ‘em with some wrapper info.

So, in short–get that Puerh Cheat Sheet from the link above, find some mystery puerh, and have a blast trying to make heads-or-tails of it. I wish you lots of fun and a bit of luck!