MarshalN wrote:
> Space Cowboy wrote:
> > This was the green Xiaguan(left) tuocha I could buy locally till early
> > 2005. Now no green tuocha since. Luckily I stocked up for < buck
> > each. Before I got dangerous in Chinese I sent one to Sasha and he
> > said the production date on the bottom of the box(center) was Jan 2000.
> > My box shows the yi character for the month. This box shows the jiu
> > character but the year is the ling character. Everybody scoffed and
> > said probably a forgery because Xiaguan didn't print production
> > information on their boxes. I came across this picture on a Japanese
> > website with the certification(right) from 1999:
> >
> > http://i14.tinypic.com/34eqb86.jpg
> >
> > Jim
>
> So this is a picture of your tea? Or someone else's?
>
> Do you have a picture of the tea itself, and not just the box?

It's a picture from the Internet. Everything is the same except for
the yue. The tuocha has lots of white bud and remaining green area on
top fading to dark purple on the side ( I remember one of the first
ones I tried looked much more green than this). It has the embossed G
character. The wrapper has two lengthy columns of different Chinese
characters down each side. You will probably know but what does the
field "36 ge yue" indicate?

Jim