Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXPENDITURE (90%); MEDIA PLANNING & BUYING (90%); INTERNET AUCTIONS (90%); INTERNET & WWW (90%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (90%); DRINKING PLACES (90%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (90%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING SERVICES (78%); NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING (78%); TELEVISION ADVERTISING (78%); BROADCAST ADVERTISING (78%); RADIO ADVERTISING (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (69%); STOCK EXCHANGES (63%)
COMPANY: GOOGLE INC (55%)
TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (55%); GGEA (LSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (55%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (55%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (55%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (69%) UNITED STATES (92%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); EUROPE (79%); ENGLAND (69%)
LOAD-DATE: April 23, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Martin Banbury, an entrepreneur, set up MediaEquals.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

841 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 22, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Pack Light or Pack Extra Cash
BYLINE: By MARTHA C. WHITE
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 912 words
Five of the six major airlines in the United States plan to start charging coach passengers as much as $25 next month to check a second bag, the latest move in their quest to offset high fuel prices.

But while the airlines, and even some industry specialists, say they expect the fees will primarily affect leisure travelers, business travelers beg to differ.

''For people traveling with samples or trade show materials, they're going to find their costs are substantially higher,'' an airline industry analyst, Robert Mann, said. ''It's really not limited to leisure travelers.''

Pete Mitchell, director of business-to-business sales for the luggage manufacturer Samsonite, said he often traveled with one-of-a-kind items he is reluctant to send via a shipping service. ''We'll bring them prototypes and production samples,'' Mr. Mitchell said. ''Sometimes we'll bring things that are handmade. These are things that we can't just send out another one if we lose it.''

Because many of the samples are quite sizable, Mr. Mitchell said it is not feasible to try to carry them in his own luggage. ''I just don't have any other choice. You've got to be able to let the client touch it. I have to bring them with me even if it costs $25.''

Jerry Bower, an entrepreneur who recently started a company, Wine Galaxy, that offers wine-of-the-month memberships for corporations to give to employees or clients, said he, too, often travels with more than one bag. ''I have to travel quite a bit in order to build relationships,'' he said. ''I do carry a lot of different literature and presentation pieces, and sometimes wine samples.''

The new fee of $25 for a second bag is being levied by Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways. The low-fare carrier AirTran has announced that it will charge $10 for a second checked bag. Airlines have long levied fees for checking a third bag. Some carriers have recently increased those as well, and the fees on the major carriers now run as high as $100.

As the airlines struggle to stay in the black, charges for amenities formerly included in the ticket price are on the rise. Depending on the carrier, travelers now can wind up paying extra for everything from food to curbside check-in to bulkhead seats that offer extra legroom.

As for the extra-bag fee, even those who say they pack lightly for their trips foresee problems caused by price-sensitive fliers overfilling their carry-on bags and using large amounts of scarce overhead-bin space.

''The thing that scares me about this is that it's just going to encourage people to lug more stuff onto the plane,'' Mr. Mitchell said. ''For those of us that have only one bag, if I don't board early, there's no place for my bag.''

Professionals in the travel industry who cater to business travelers say they are seeking ways to reduce the financial and logistical inconveniences.

Paul Lang, manager of travel services at Bayer North America, said the company's corporate travel policy reimburses employees for laundry services. So even those on extended trips do not have to pack a lot of clothes.

Sue Fern, president of the conference-planning business Event Pro-SSSS, is urging the associations whose conferences she manages to switch from bulky handouts to CDs or small flash drives. Because association members generally have to pay their own way to and from these events, this will keep them from being saddled with an extra baggage fee on their return trips, she said.

''We're seeing a bigger trend toward electronic transfer of information,'' said Paul Kiewiet, management consultant and immediate past chairman of the Promotional Products Association International. ''At P.P.A.I.'s expo in Las Vegas, we had several days of education and we went totally paperless.''

Mr. Kiewiet said he also expected that people who give business gifts, awards or knickknacks with logos would turn to pocket- or purse-size items. ''From a promotional products standpoint, I think we're seeing a resurgence in the smaller items such as writing instruments, journals or business card holders,'' he said.

Dana Slockbower, director of marketing for Rymax Marketing Services Inc., a company that manages corporate gift and reward programs, said her clients had been asking for physically smaller gifts so travelers would not have to pay extra to send them home. ''We're definitely seeing requests for smaller gifts like iPods or watches,'' she said.

Some business travelers say they would express their displeasure with the new regulation by opting for carriers that do not charge a separate fee for checking a second bag. They concede, however, that this may become impossible as more airlines, reeling from the escalating cost of fuel, might look toward imposing similar fees in the future.

''I will switch to another carrier that doesn't charge the fee,'' Mr. Bower of Wine Galaxy said. He conceded, though, that this might become more difficult as more airlines follow suit.

He recently booked a business trip with AirTran to avoid paying the extra baggage charge. On April 11, however, AirTran announced that it, too, would start charging passengers to check a second bag. Although Mr. Bower's trip is scheduled for a few days before the start of the new fee, he says next time he may just have to carry on two bags.

''I'll check one, and carry on a duffel bag plus my laptop. Unfortunately, they're forcing people to do that.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AIRLINES (90%); AIR FARES (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); LEISURE TRAVEL (76%); LUGGAGE MFG (74%); AVIATION SECTOR PERFORMANCE (73%); INDUSTRY ANALYSTS (72%); WINE (64%)
COMPANY: U S AIRWAYS GROUP INC (58%); AIRTRAN HOLDINGS INC (52%)
TICKER: LCC (NYSE) (58%); AAI (NYSE) (52%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS481111 SCHEDULED PASSENGER AIR TRANSPORTATION (58%); SIC4512 AIR TRANSPORTATION, SCHEDULED (58%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (57%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (73%)
LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways are charging $25 for a second piece of luggage. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK GRAHAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

842 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 22, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

City Says the Kingsbridge Armory Will Become a Shopping Center
BYLINE: By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 912 words
For years, the Kingsbridge Armory, a blocklong red brick castle with soaring turrets that dominates the West Bronx's low-rise streetscape, has been a neighborhood embarrassment.

The nine-story Romanesque building on Kingsbridge Road at Jerome Avenue has been mostly vacant for more than a decade, a blemish on the working-class Kingsbridge Heights area not because of its appearance, but because it was not being used.

But on Monday, the Bloomberg administration announced the latest in a series of city plans to use the landmark building, and says it has chosen a developer. The project includes a $310 million shopping center anchored by a large department store, as many as 35 smaller shops, a movie theater and restaurants.

The project, called the Shops at the Armory, will most likely also house various community organizations, including a small business incubator, city officials said.

''It is a beautiful building, and once the plan comes together, we think it will revitalize not only the immediate area, but the entire northwest Bronx,'' said Fernando Tirado, district manager of the local community board.

Even before the recent economic downturn, poverty in the area was high. A study by the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance, a neighborhood and labor group, found that one-third of the families in the area live below the poverty line, and that 18 percent of adults are unemployed.

''We have real needs here, and this building is an asset in the community that has not been used,'' said Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter, a resident of the area for 25 years who supports the plan.

Most people in the neighborhood said on Monday that while the idea of potential shopping was a bonus, they were more focused on jobs.

''They have to provide jobs that pay, not low-paying jobs that continue the cycle of poverty,'' said Father Joseph Girone of St. Nicholas of Tolentine Roman Catholic Church, which is a few blocks from the armory.

The Bloomberg administration's selection of the Related Companies to oversee the development was reported on Monday by The New York Post, and confirmed in an official announcement. Related is also building Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market, a large retail complex on the site of the old Bronx Terminal Market, and recently completed a third shopping complex at the Hub, also in the Bronx.

Seth Pinsky, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, said that Related was chosen for the armory project because of its design proposal.

''The physical layout was superior -- you will walk into the armory and get a sense of the volume of the drill hall,'' Mr. Pinsky said, referring to the 180,000 square feet of open space used for training troops.

While the city chose Related based on its experience and the amount it was willing to invest in the project, a task force of local residents and others compared proposals without knowing who the developers were, and also came up with Related, officials said.

City officials said that despite a history of armory redevelopment plans falling through -- unsuccessful plans for the 575,000-square-foot building include a police academy, a sports complex, and several public schools -- they believe they have it right this time.

''The key to the success this time around was that from the very beginning of the process we've involved the local community,'' Mr. Pinsky said.

The armory was built by the city between 1912 and 1917. Like many others built around the turn of the century, it was used to store arms and ammunition and to train troops.

In 1917, the National Guard's Eighth Coastal Artillery Regiment moved from its own armory on 94th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan to the Kingsbridge Armory to gain space.

In 1974, the armory, noted for its Romanesque arches, vaulted ceilings, decorative brick and terra cotta and twin battlement towers -- was designated a city landmark. A moat once ran across the front of the building.

The drill hall, which has a metal and glass roof, remains among the largest in the world.

In the early 1990s, part of the building was used as a homeless shelter for women. Over the years, the building has been home to boat shows, dog shows and concerts, including one in 1971 by the Beach Boys.

By 1994, however, the armory had a leaky roof and was in general disrepair. Eventually, its National Guard units left as well, deciding to train in two modern annexes behind the building. The state ceded title to the armory to the city in 1996.

The main armory building has been unused since about 2000.

In the late '90s, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, working with Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, devised a plan that included three schools, an indoor sports complex, a community center and retail space. Then in 2000, the Giuliani administration proposed a $110 million sports, entertainment and retail center, which was opposed by the neighborhood and eventually withdrawn. In the meantime, the city spent $30 million to replace the roof.

Despite the high poverty rate in Kingsbridge Heights, Related and the city said a shopping development could work at the armory because Bronx residents had limited shopping options.

The retailers have not yet been chosen. Negotiations are continuing, which call for Related to buy the building, retain the exterior and rebuild the interior. The plan requires approval by the City Council, which officials said probably would not be granted until next year.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RETAILERS (90%); ECONOMIC DECLINE (78%); CITY GOVERNMENT (75%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (75%); SMALL BUSINESS (74%); POOR POPULATION (71%); POVERTY RATES (71%); CITIES (70%); RESTAURANTS (69%); SMALL BUSINESS ASSISTANCE (68%); ECONOMIC NEWS (66%); RELIGION (61%); CHRISTIANS & CHRISTIANITY (53%); CATHOLICS & CATHOLICISM (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The drill hall at the Kingsbridge Armory is one of the largest in the world. Troops were trained there for many decades. Soon, shoppers will battle for bargains.

The Kingsbridge Armory in the West Bronx was built between 1912 and 1917. In 1974 it was designated a city landmark. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHELLE V. AGINS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

843 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 21, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

A Volatile Election Campaign All in One Place
BYLINE: By BRIAN STELTER
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 920 words
Months before the first primary votes were cast, every news organization worth its salt asked itself: how will our election coverage stand out?

Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for Time magazine and a recent transplant from television, posed the question a slightly different way: ''What can we do that other people aren't doing?''

His answer, novel and not widely duplicated: ''Put it all on one page.''

Applying that insight last October, Time, part of Time Warner, introduced The Page (http://thepage.time.com), Mr. Halperin's concise collection of up-to-the-minute political news. Amid a glut of online election coverage, the simply designed site has managed to break through the clutter, attracting a total of 1.1 million visitors last month.

More important, perhaps, it has attracted the campaign strategists, pollsters and journalists who drive -- or are driven by -- the political agenda.

On The Page, Mr. Halperin and his colleagues traffic mainly in small scoops -- Hillary Clinton is appearing on ''Saturday Night Live''; What will John McCain's new commercial say? -- and the hourly rhythms of the campaign. They post the audio of the daily campaign conference calls, the pool reports from speeches and rallies, and the schedules of the candidates and their spouses.

And it emanates from the offices of a weekly newsmagazine. The Page does not look like a stereotypical blog, even though it runs on blogging software, and it doesn't look like a typical newspaper or magazine either.

''Constantly updated reportage about the campaign?'' Mr. Halperin remarked. ''Reported digest? I don't know what to call it. We struggle with that.''

Comparisons are drawn to the Drudge Report, the popular aggregator of politics and pop culture. Indeed, The Page may be the mainstream media's closest thing to Drudge, with 24-hour updates and the no-frills design. Unlike Drudge, though, it comes with the imprimatur and credibility of an 85-year-old newsmagazine.

In his small office overlooking 51st Street in Manhattan, Mr. Halperin is propped up against the wall in a sturdy blue fold-up seat, an artifact of the 2004 Republican convention at Madison Square Garden.

At that convention, Mr. Halperin was trailed by a reporter from The New Yorker, who later called him ''the leading purveyor of inside dope'' for the political chattering classes. Mr. Halperin pioneered the phrase ''Gang of 500'' to describe these people, and wrote The Note, a successful blog for ABC, expressly for them.

In this campaign cycle, as voters supplant the conventional wisdom of pollsters and bloggers, and other outsiders continue to supplement the ''gang,'' Mr. Halperin wants The Page to be as accessible as possible -- and that means dropping the riddles and inside jokes that occasionally befuddled readers of The Note.

Still, he shares advice for the campaigns and dashes off cable-news-ready talking points. Last week, he listed all ''the bad things that haven't happened'' to Barack Obama since his controversial ''bitter'' remark at a San Francisco fund-raiser.

The Note had started appearing online in 2002, well before NBC's daily digest, First Read, or the news site Politico or The Huffington Post. Facing a profusion of news aggregators, it is harder than ever for one site to stand out. But members of the ''gang'' say that Mr. Halperin has managed to do it.

''Four years ago, Mark defined the political zeitgeist and set the agenda with The Note,'' Howard Wolfson, communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, said in an e-mail message. ''Now he has done it all over again from scratch with The Page. It's absolutely essential.''

Richard Stengel, who said he was a longtime reader of The Note, said Mr. Halperin was the first prospective hire he called after becoming managing editor of Time in the summer of 2006. Mr. Stengel had an eye on the coming elections, and he wanted a develop a political product ''that people couldn't live without every day.''

Around the same time, Mr. Halperin was growing tired of his political director role at ABC (''too many meetings'') and, appropriately for a man who sees his career as a series of campaign cycles, was thinking about how to cover the 2008 election. He made the move to Time last May. Having recently finished writing an election book, ''The Way to Win'' along with John F. Harris, Mr. Halperin had come to a more entrepreneurial form of journalism, using multiple platforms.

He now calls it ''the six-way threat,'' incorporating Internet postings, long-form writing, television appearances, online video segments, radio spots and public speaking. When Mr. Halperin tapes his daily online PageCast or walks the two blocks to the Fox News Channel's studios for a television segment, he underscores Time magazine's prominence and also builds his own brand.

Mr. Halperin and two staff members in New York manage the site during the day. Overnight, staff members in London and Hong Kong help keep the site fresh. Mr. Halperin maintains that the round-the-clock and weekend updates are an important advantage of the site.

''I'm surprised that other people haven't done it,'' he said.

Two weeks ago, Time added a version of The Page edited by Mr. Halperin to the print magazine.

''In some sense,'' Mr. Stengel said, ''The Page in the magazine is the best of what Mark has been doing online all week long,'' adding that some of the magazine's other online franchises would appear in print in the future.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ELECTIONS (90%); CAMPAIGNS & ELECTIONS (90%); POLITICS (90%); PRIMARY ELECTIONS (90%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (89%); POLLS & SURVEYS (78%); PLATFORMS & ISSUES (78%); JOURNALISM (78%); POLITICAL PARTY CONVENTIONS (73%); LATE NIGHT TELEVISION (72%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (64%)
PERSON: JOHN MCCAIN (55%); HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (92%) NEW YORK, USA (92%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: April 21, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Using a Manhattan street as a set, Mark Halperin delivered a daily PageCast last week. Left, Mr. Halperin's Web site, The Page, parsed a variety of campaign quotes, ripostes and narrative comments. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

844 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 21, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

A Tea From the Jungle Enriches a Placid Village
BYLINE: By THOMAS FULLER
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; PU'ER JOURNAL; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 1193 words
DATELINE: PU'ER, China
The sky is nearly cloudless, the breeze is bracing, and the tea plantation where Yao Kunxue worksresembles a giant green amphitheater absorbing the last rays of a setting sun.

The tea itself? No thanks, he says. He grows it -- what he calls industrial tea -- but he does not drink it.

The rolling hills of China's southern Yunnan Province are the birthplace of tea, anthropologists say, the first area where humans figured out that eating tea leaves or brewing a cup could be pleasant. Today tea farmers preside over large plantations, but they want their tea the way their forebears consumed it: brewed from wild leaves,and preferably from ancient trees in the jungle.

''It has a fragrant smell,'' Mr. Yao said of his favorite, harvested from trees at least a century old. ''And when you swallow there's a sweet aftertaste.''

From relative obscurity a few decades ago, tea from Yunnan, especially Pu'er, has become a fashionable, must-have variety in the tea shops of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Surging demand for Pu'er -- often advertised as wild tea even if it is from the plantations -- has made farmers here rich and encouraged entrepreneurs to carve out more plantations from jungle-covered hillsides.

Ninety percent of the 23,000 tons of Pu'er tea produced last year was grown on plantations, officials say. Local residents seem more than happy to send it to distant locales. They complain about its hard edges -- too bitter -- and the chemicals that are regularly sprayed on the plants to repel bugs, viruses and fungus.

''The pesticides come through in the taste,'' Mr. Yao said.

Here, tea has never been something bought at the market; it grows in the backyard, like blueberries in the woods of Maine.

Domesticated tea plants are trimmed into hedges to make harvesting easier. In the wild, they grow to resemble the old and gnarled olive trees of the Mediterranean but with bigger and more abundant leaves.

Peng Zhe, deputy secretary general of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, a tea-growing district here, compares the wild tea to fine vintages of Bordeaux or Burgundy.

''To appreciate Pu'er tea is similar to enjoying wine,'' said Mr. Peng, who also leads the local tea promotion board. ''You need to understand the different areas where tea grows. The fragrance is different from one mountain to the next.''

Jungle tea, as some here call the harvest from wild tea trees in more remote areas, has been picked by villagers for centuries, and in imperial times it was sent to the emperor. But only recently have the profits started rolling in for the wild-tea pickers, who have divided forests of tea trees along ancestral lines and are increasingly selling to larger concerns.

''Twenty years ago no one had the idea that tea could become so valuable,'' said Chen Jinqiang, an official in Xishuangbanna.

A compressed disc of Pu'er tea that sold for 3 yuan, or about 40 cents, two decades ago now can easily go for 200 yuan, about $25, today, Mr. Chen said.

''People here always had enough to eat,'' he said. ''Now they have a lot of cash.''

In Manmai, a hilltop village a few dozen miles from China's border with Myanmar, the wealth from the Pu'er tea boom is trickling down. The village headman, Zha Pagu, has never traveled more than 30 miles from his house during his 60-plus years (he said he could not remember his exact age), but his home now has a solar water heater, and his neighbors are upgrading their wood and thatch homes with modern building materials like tiles and concrete.

Until recently the village was accessible only by foot. A dirt road that winds up the mountain is now under construction, but the village remains relatively isolated.

Zha Ge, 19, a tea picker who like the other villagers is Lahu, a small ethnic minority here, said he had never met a foreigner before. But he understands the value of outsiders' keen interest in his tea trees. Picking tea has generated enough cash to buy a 20-inch television, a motorcycle and a copy of his favorite foreign film, ''First Blood,'' the first in the Rambo series.

In March and April, the peak tea-plucking season, Mr. Zha Ge can make up to $1,000 a month, far more than what the factory workers in eastern Chinese cities make stitching blue jeans and assembling iPods.

Unlike those workers, who live in smog-choked cities with blackened, polluted waterways, the tea pickers here work among trees that overlook a pristine mountain range that would not look out of place in a Chinese scroll painting. In October, when the tea trees flower, the air is filled with the sweet aroma of tea blossoms. ''It smells just like honey,'' Mr. Zha Ge said.

Teenage girls are the most sought-after tea pickers -- their fingers move more quickly, local residents say -- and they can harvest as much as 110 pounds of tea leaves a day.

Yet for many families in the remote reaches of Yunnan, tea-picking remains outside the realm of commerce. It is so tightly intertwined with their daily lives that it is a routine household chore, like putting the laundry out to dry.

Yue Ye, 38, the mother of two teenagers in Chui Hao, a village inhabited by members of the Dai ethnic group, says children begin drinking tea when they are 3 to 5 years old. Families consume it first thing in the morning, after lunch, after dinner and late in the evening.

They pick the tea from ancient trees atop a hill near the village. ''The people who planted them are long dead,'' Ms. Yue said.

She cooks the leaves in a wok, ''massages'' them by hand and leaves them in the sun for a day.

Tea from Pu'er was popular around the region in ancient times: historians describe ''horse tea trails'' that radiated from Pu'er, the main trading center for the tea, into northern and eastern China, Tibet and beyond.

The recent surge in popularity is attributed to newly affluent, health-conscious Chinese who believe that Pu'er tea lowers cholesterol, cures hangovers, helps fortify teeth and trims away fat.

Shops in Beijing or Shanghai advertise that their Pu'er tea has been aged for several decades, which is said to give the tea a more mellow taste. But as with many things in China it is hard to tell the real from the counterfeit.

Mr. Chen, the government official, said he would be very wary of claims that tea has been aged more than 10 years. ''Most of it is fake, I think,'' he said.

Nopporn Phasaphong, a tea trader in Bangkok whose family has been in the business for three generations and who travels regularly to Pu'er, says she, too, is skeptical about the authenticity of much of what is labeled jungle tea from Pu'er. Very little genuine jungle tea is on the market, she says. ''Everyone who sells it will tell you it comes from old trees,'' she said. ''But it's like buying rubies. You have to know something about it.''

Mr. Yao says he can taste the difference between teas grown on plantations and those from wild trees. But in what may be a metaphor for freewheeling China today, he acknowledges that nonconnoisseurs often get hoodwinked.

''If you don't know Pu'er tea,'' he said, ''people will cheat you.''