Cha Bing
Worker with freshly compressed pu’er tea discus ( cha bing ). Anning, Yunnan
Cha bing ( Chinese: 茶餅 ) refers to the kind compressed tea that takes the form of a discus. The term has been translated as “tea cake” or “cake tea”. These translations can be quite confusing as to whether they refer to other things, such as a dessert with tea, or tealeaves for making pastries, etc. In this site, we try to use the term tea discus, which is a more precise translation of the concept of the Chinese term.
Cha bing is an old form of delivering tealeaves to the consumer, particularly popular between the 6th to the 14th century. Considering the logistics and packaging capabilities of the time, it was very appropriate.
There are other forms of compressed tealeaves besides cha bing, such as bricks, tuo ( mushroom shape ), and stuffing into bamboos, oranges etc.
Nowadays, the term is sometimes expressed as bing cha ( Chinese: 餅茶 ). We think that the old term is more accurate conceptually and choose to stay with it.
The term cha bing is used in these articles and discussions:
- “Raw” Puer or “Cooked” Puer?
- Bulang Shengcha Pu’er
- Defending Against Cancer
- Dianhong Golden, Yunnan’s Black Tea
- From Crude Provision to Treasure: Origin of Dark Tea
- From Shengcha to Shu Cha, a Microbial Change
- Fuding Semi-black: White Tea with a Twist
- Green Tea: Production
- Iced tea? Second thoughts
- Is Pu’er Cha Bing an Investment Tool?
- Laos Shengcha
- Leo Kwan: How Tea Has Chosen Me
- Naming of a Tea
- Post-fermented Tea (dark tea)
- Pu’er: Myth of Origin & Reality of Blending
- Puer, a Post-fermented Tea
- Song Cultivar Huangzhi Xiang Dancong
- TCM & Your Physiology
- Tea Compression: Making of a Cha Bing
- Tea List Gallery: Pu’er and other Dark Teas
- Tea List Gallery: White & Other Lightly Oxidized Teas
- To blanch or not to blanch? That is the question
- What are Compressed Teas?
- Why does China export all those cheap teas?
