Compressed tea

Some tea bricks were also mixed with binding agents such as flour, blood, or manure to better preserve their form so they could withstand physical use as currency.

[1] Newly formed tea bricks were then left to cure, dry, and age prior to being sold or traded.

This amalgam is steamed, weighed, and compressed into hard bricks, which are packed up in coarse matting in subunits of four.

These rectangular parcels weigh between twenty-two and twenty-six pounds—the quality of the tea makes a slight difference to the weight—and are carried to Kangting by coolies.

Tea which is going to be consumed reasonably soon is done up in a loose case of matting, but the gams, which are bound for remote destinations, perhaps even for Lhasa, are sewn up in yakhides.

[4][5][6] Pressed tea made into the shape of yeopjeon, the coins with holes, was called doncha (돈차; lit.

[7][8][9] Borim-cha (보림차; 寶林茶) or Borim-baengmo-cha (보림백모차; 寶林白茅茶), named after its birthplace, the Borim temple in Jangheung, South Jeolla Province, is a popular tteokcha variety.

[10] Tea bricks are used as a form of food in parts of Central Asia and Tibet in the past as much as in modern times.

Some cities of the Fukui prefecture in Japan have food similar to tsampa, where concentrated tea is mixed with grain flour.

In parts of Mongolia and central Asia, a mixture of ground tea bricks, grain flours and boiling water is eaten directly.

Tea bricks were in fact the preferred form of currency over metallic coins for the nomads of Mongolia and Siberia.

The tea could not only be used as money and eaten as food in times of hunger but also brewed as allegedly beneficial medicine for treating coughs and colds.