We Chinese like tea, there are many different kinds of tea in China: camomile tea, oolong tea, jasmine tea, scented tea and pu-erh tea.

The more fresh the better, so far as the tea is concerned. While pu-erh tea is an exception, the older the better. Indeed, tea connoisseurs and speculators are willing to pay high prices for older pu-erh, upwards of thousands of dollars per cake.

While there are many counterfeit pu-erhs on the market and real aged pu-erh is difficult to find and identify, it is still possible to find pu-erh that is 10 to 50 years old, as well as a few from the late Qing dynasty.

Yunnan province produces the vast majority of pu-erh tea. I bought seven cakes at the last Yunnan journey, they are 5 years old cakes.

Journey are very easy today, you can go to any place by train or airplane. But in ancient, journey is great difficult, businessman created some trade links to transporting goods and materials. There are two important links: The Southern Silk Route and Ancient Tea-Horse Route.

The Ancient Tea Route was a network of mule caravan paths winding through the mountains of Yunnan Province in Southwest China.

From around a thousand years ago, the Ancient Tea Route was a trade link from Yunnan to India via Burma; to Tibet; and to central China via Sichuan Province. In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt.

It is believed that it was through this trading network that tea spread across China and Asia from its origins in pu-erh county, near Simao Prefecture in Yunnan.