As we approach the end of 2017, now is the time to turn to the dark side of collecting and storing puerh tea and ask for your aid, dear friends. During this holiday season I cannot help but think of all the neglected, harassed and abused puerh tea in the world. A problem of this proportion surely merits the full-time attention of dedicated volunteers, and I am here to be just that: a volunteer on behalf of the silently suffering puerh teas at the mercy of abusive owners.





The real nature of this problem is hardly exposed at all to date. In fact, most discussions are so careful to avoid offending others that abusers go free amongst most well-meaning puerh tea forums. People are quick to jump on anyone viewed as too “aggressive” or “direct.” In this type of passive tea audience, puerh tea suffers abuses of all kinds every single day. Let us look at some of abuses going on right now.

Neglect





A puerh tea is a living thing, and it has feelings . How would you feel left to dry and suffer in a too-cold and too-dry environment? Or overheated and literally composting, unable to breathe, in conditions too hot, too stifling and without air or water? Everywhere teas are left to slowly die in cardboard boxes and paper bags. All of these things are happening on a daily basis around the world by abusers out of sheer neglect.





Harassment





Verbal abuse toward puerh tea is all too common. Factory teas are insulted constantly by comparison to so-called “boutique teas.” Profiling is rife amongst harassers. The very nature of factory teas is insulted with words like “chopped,” “funky, “charred” or “smoky” even when puerh tea cannot possibly smoke! I have even heard factory tea called “too highly compressed” of all things, when everyone knows most puerh teas when treated appropriately and with respect in the storage workplace turn out just fine, and even become valuable teas fifty years on.





Boutique teas are also subject to inappropriate and humiliating harassment every single day. Common aggressive insults like “blended,”or “single estate” insult the very hometowns these teas come from. The worst insults relate to a puerh’s color, a quality it perhaps cannot help, with derogatory terms like “purple tea,” and “oolonged.” Can you imagine a human being referred to as “oolonged?” Well then, imagine how the tea feels.





Groping





This almost unmentionable behavior is when people handle puerh teas with rough, dirty hands, tearing off the wrapper and assaulting the tea. Naked teas are humiliated every day in tea social circles where they are mercilessly unwrapped, passed around, wo/manhandled, and sniffed by everyone in a tea group. This is called social groping and group abuse. Can you believe these people do all these things just to show off, or to take a photograph? Gropers showcase naked puerh for no better reason than to get little heart “likes” on places like Facebook and Instagram. They pick at the leaves and stick their noses in and pick at the beeng hole. They call it "tea porn."





Puerh tea exposed just

for the sake of a photo.

Teas that need airing and rescue might for a brief moment benefit from unwrapping, such as to change out a dirty wrapper. But these people are not changing a dirty wrapper. They put that same wrapper right back on. Then they wedge the tea into a tight, dark space with other teas, packed in like refugees in an enclosed truck bed.





Physical abuse





Now this is the worst of all and I can only begin to imagine all the scenarios. Right off the top, I bravely try to picture things like physically damaging living tea with a sharp knife and destroying the integrity of the leaves. Or brewing the tea in too-cold water where the flavors cannot and will not emerge and leave themselves in the mouth for very long afterwards, a practice so “objectively” bad it deserves a full treatise on its own. How can we treat puerh tea this way? Yet abusers do exactly this.





Humping emoji commonly

used on sexy puerh tea chat.

Then we have people conducting experiments upon tea, set to destroy it with mold or kill it on purpose or scent it with chicken curry by leaving it in the kitchen. They keep tea under or even IN their beds! They actually have pets like cats and dogs and mice and ferrets that leave odors and hairs everywhere, even fleas to get into the tea left in open areas for animal waste to prey upon. Filthy, filthy people and the things they do to their teas.





A Call to Action





I get harassed by folks who say I go on and on in my blog posts, but I am a big girl with a huge degree so I am willing to do something. We need to expose puerh neglect and abusers. More importantly, we need to rescue neglected, abandoned and abused puerh teas.





To this end we will organize lists of Adoptable Teas. If you know of any teas that need rescue and adoption, use the Contact Form near the top of this blog, or contact TeaDB.org with your tax-free, deductible donation and anonymous information. Send us these teas and we will make sure they get rehabilitation and find new “forever” homes.





#MyTeaToo The take-away here is we need to remember puerh tea has feelings too. I hope you spread the word far and wide, hashtag





Adoptable Teas





Currently None.







