Image provided by the linked NYT article at the bottom of this summary.
Menghai County is a rural town in Southwest China who gained a substantial portion of its revenue from its popular Pu’er tea brand. While the tea has obtained a significant amount of fame amongst Chinese natives in the past decade, its recent decline in demand left the small county frenzied and unsure of what they’ll do next for profit. “Most of us are ruined,” said Fu Wei, 43, one of the few tea traders to survive the implosion of the Pu’er market. “A lot of people behaved like idiots.”
