At the tea auctions in Hong Kong and Beijing, specific vintages of Pu-erh tea now command prices that rival those of grand cru wines or antique porcelain. Among these, a few cakes hold a status as legendary as the "88 Qing Bing" (”88 Green Cake”). To the uninitiated, it is a compressed disc of dried leaves, unassuming in its wrapper. To collectors, it is a tea that defines the taste of clean, dry-aged Pu-erh. A single cake, which once sold for just a dollar, now fetches $10,000-25,000.
The story of the “88 Qing” is the biography of a man named Chen Guo Yi (陳國義), also known as Vesper Chan – a former oil merchant who, driven by environmental guilt and a search for redemption, walked away from a lucrative career to pursue a passion that nearly ruined him. Today, Mr. Chen is celebrated as a visionary, the man who predicted the boom of dry-aged Sheng Pu-erh decades before the market caught up. This is the story of how a man’s stubborn belief in quality almost destroyed him but changed the world of pu-erh tea.
Leaving the Oil Fields
Chen Guo Yi was a man of the industrial boom. For many years, he worked in the petrochemical sector, trading oil and plastics during Hong Kong's economic ascent. It was a very profitable business. However, by the late 1980s, Chen began to feel a dissonance between his wealth and its source.
During extensive business trips to the United States, Europe, and Japan, he observed a troubling pattern. Even in the most developed and wealthy nations, industrial progress came at an environmental cost. In places like the Netherlands and Japan, he saw waterways choked with industrial waste and cities grappling with pollution.
Mr.Chen became burdened by a heavy conscience, realizing that his wealth was built on a mechanism that was slowly poisoning the planet. He yearned for a path that could sustain him without the destruction of the environment, a trade that healed rather than harmed. So, he began searching for an answer.
After long deliberation, he chose tea. Tea, he reasoned, is the antithesis of oil. Tea requires clean air and water to thrive. It does not kill – it nurtures. It brings people together and improves health. Determined to reinvent himself, Chen spent the next five years as a student of tea. He traveled across Taiwan and China, visiting tea masters, mountains, and monasteries, learning the terroir of Oolong and the fermentation of Pu-erh. He spent two additional years mastering the art of brewing. In 1988, he left the oil trade and opened "Best Tea House" (茶藝樂園 – Cháyì Lèyuán) in Hong Kong. It was situated in a spacious, old building in Central Hong Kong. “Best Tea House” was a sanctuary dedicated to the appreciation of fine tea. Chen Guo Yi thought that he had left the high-risk world of trading behind, but he was wrong. He was about to make his greatest discovery and the riskiest trade of his life.
The Unwanted 7542
In 1993, a representative from the state-owned Menghai Tea Factory walked into Chen’s shop with a sample. It was a Raw Pu-erh cake, recipe 7542.
Chen tasted the tea. This tea was vibrant. It had the aroma of high mountains, wild forests, and a powerful Cha Qi (茶氣 – Cha Qi) – “tea energy”. He found he could steep it a dozen times, and the flavor still held – a stark contrast to the wet-stored teas that turned watery after just a few infusions.
At that time, the Hong Kong market was dominated by Shu, aka Ripe Pu-erh (熟普洱), which is artificially fermented to produce a dark, smooth, earthy tea. If locals drank Sheng, aka Raw Pu-erh (生普洱), it was usually only after it had been stored in humid, damp basements for decades, until it turned dark and the taste became mellow. The sample on Chen’s table was young, vibrant, and aggressively green.
“Why is it so green?” Chen asked.
The representative explained that it was standard Menghai tea, produced between 1989 and 1991, but it was dead stock. The factory had a massive surplus, over 90 tons, that they couldn’t sell. The Hong Kong market had rejected it because it was too bitter and “fresh”, so the tea was sitting in Yunnan.
Chen asked the price.
The price was the clincher. The factory offered it to him for 7 yuan (less than a dollar) per cake. At the time, even common green tea cost nearly forty times that amount by weight. Seeing the opportunity in value, Chen decided to take the entire lot available to him: 30 tons.
He named the batch the “88 Qing Bing.” The number 88 commemorated the founding year of his shop (1988), and a lucky homophone for "getting very rich" in Cantonese; “Qing” (青) means green, or fresh.
Chen had the tea and the name for it. The problem was that he had no customers for this tea.
Debt, SARS, and Deliverance
The local tea community thought he was crazy. Customers would come into his shop, try the "88 Qing," and spit it out, complaining it was too sharp or "grassy."
The reality of owning 30 tons of unpopular tea set in. Chen had to rent external storage space, and the costs began to balloon. What started as a seemingly manageable $600-a-month expense spiraled over the years. By the early 2000s, he had spent over $50,000 on warehousing fees alone.
To move the stock, Chen was forced to pivot, marketing the tea to a younger generation who hadn't yet developed a preference for wet-storage flavors, and he taught them a new way to brew – "flash brewing" – instead of the long steeps used at the time for ripe Pu-erh. He advocated flash-fast infusions to preserve the tea's fragrance and minimize bitterness.
Slowly, he built a following. But in 2003, disaster struck.
The SARS epidemic hit Hong Kong. The city was paralyzed. Retail collapsed. For “Best Tea House”, the impact was catastrophic. For an entire year, Chen would see perhaps one or two customers a day. He had recently expanded to a new shop in a tourist district, locking himself into a high rent just as the tourists vanished.
Desperate to keep his staff paid, Chen mortgaged his home. Then he mortgaged his second property. He cut his own salary to zero. By 2004, he was $375,000 in debt. The former oil tycoon was on the brink of ruin. Exhausted, he began to wonder why his sincere dedication to "good tea" had led him to this precipice.
Then, the phone rang.
One day, the phone rang. It was a stranger asking about the "Green 88". "How many do you have?" the voice asked. "As many as you want", Chen replied, his heart pounding.
The market price for the tea had risen to about $70 per cake, but Chen needed cash immediately. "I'll sell them for $19", he said. It was a fraction of what the tea was worth, but he needed liquidity immediately. The stranger bought 50 cakes. A week later, another call, from another person, inquiring about the same tea. Chen sold that batch at $25 per cake. Then the original buyer called back. Chen raised the price to $31. The buyer withdrew.
But the dam had broken. A serious collector from Taiwan had heard rumors of this pristine, dry-stored tea. He contacted Chen and, in a whirlwind month of negotiations, bought out a massive portion of the stock.
In about thirty days, Chen generated enough revenue to pay off his massive debt. The gamble he had taken in 1993, the inventory that had drained his finances for a decade, had saved him. The “88 Qing Bing” had not just matured in flavor; it had matured into a financial lifeline.
The sale saved him from bankruptcy, but the irony was bitter. Within a couple of years, as the market woke up to the quality of dry-aged Pu-erh, the price of the “88 Qing” skyrocketed. Today, those same cakes trade for tens of thousands of dollars each. Chen had survived, but he had sold his "golden goose" just before it laid its biggest egg.
Mr. Chen Guo Yi, holding "88 Qing Bing" Pu-erh
Legacy
Today, Chen Guo Yi’s legacy is being the pioneer of “Dry Storage”.
Before Chen, the standard practice in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Malaysia was “Wet Storage”. Merchants would store Pu-erh in humid basements to accelerate fermentation. When Chen entered the industry, he visited these traditional warehouses and was appalled. He saw tea stored in roofless shacks, open to rain and other elements, or in sealed rooms that smelled of ammonia and rot. It was not uncommon to find storage facilities where workers sprayed the tea and the walls with water to accelerate fermentation. One time, the smell of rot was so strong it reminded him of a city sewer.
To Chen, it was an abomination. The common practice was dirty and destroyed the natural character of the leaf. When he bought the "88 Qing", he made a decision that defied local wisdom. Chen refused to subject his “88 Qing” to such treatment. He believed that tea should be kept clean and stored his 30 tons in a well-ventilated warehouse – dry, clean, and free of artificial moisture.
At the time, this was considered amateurish. The conventional wisdom was that Pu-erh needed humidity to age. Chen proved them wrong. His dry storage (干仓 – Gan Cang) allowed the tea to age at a more stable pace. His “88 Qing” aged slower, but it retained a complexity, clarity, and fruitiness that wet-stored teas long lost. By sticking to his principles, even when it nearly bankrupted him, Chen Guo Yi changed the palate of the entire industry.