I also read about it just right now. Especially on how the Chinese use to prepare that kind of tea. They wash it for a few seconds with the first gush of hot water, and pour that first brew away, then drinking the second, third…brewed with fresh water.
we call that: 洗茶 wash tea.
Pu'er tea exists because the compressed tea is convenient for international transportation. Before the 20th century, most Chinese people did not like this kind of tea. Since the 5th century AD, the nomads on the Mongolian Plateau mainly consumed Pu'er tea. They smashed the tea bricks with a hammer and boiled it with milk. They usually used horses and other products to exchange tea as a vitamin supplement.
Pu'er tea belongs to big leaf trees. We (the Han people in the plain area, more than 93% of the Chinese population) prefer black tea and green tea with small leaf shrubs as raw materials, as well as some semi fermented tea. The price of Hi-End products is very scary (10000usd/100g). For us, Pu'er tea or other tea bricks are cheap foreign trade products. This view did not change until decades ago.
Not only Yunnan, but also central China also produces tea bricks similar to Pu'er. In a small town more than 2 hours drive from Wuhan, I once saw a quite expensive old tea brick, which was customized from China shortly after Twinings was founded. At that time, the British had not introduced tea to India. That factory is still producing. Twinings Company customized 2000 tea bricks from this factory for the 200th anniversary celebration in 1981.