A Tea Addict's Journal

Saturday September 9, 2006

September 9, 2006 · 7 Comments

I was bored this afternoon, so I went to a local teahouse (well, sort of local). It’s located across the street from the Guozijian, the old Imperial University. I found it by chance last year when I visited Beijing while touring the Guozijian and the Confucius Temple (under renovation — most likely for 2008).

The street this teahouse is on is very nice

And while walking down the street, I found this rather interesting banner:

Which roughly translates to “Develop democracy: Respect and protect the voters’ right to a demoratic election!”

Uh huh

Anyway, it’s a short walk from the corner of the street to the teahouse in question

I picked a nice seat to sit down. In fact, this is where my girlfriend and her sister and I sat last time we were here, except this time it’s just me.

Views from the seat:

And the all important tea setup

Not a bad place to relax and spend an afternoon.

The manager of the store (or the owner?) came to me, as I was the only visitor at the time, and asked what tea I’d like. Almost immediately, she asked if I were Korean. Do I really look that non-Chinese? Nobody in Beijing seems to recognize me as Chinese. What’s going on? Is my Han blood tainted? I know my Mandarin is not perfect, and certainly doesn’t sound local, but plenty of Cantonese speakers have worse Mandarin, but somehow I don’t think they’re ever mistaken for a foreigner. Sigh. Add Korean to the list of foreigners I’m mistaken for (the others are Japanese, Brazilian, Malaysian…)

I wanted to have their Dahongpao, and funny enough, it was the one tea that they do not have in stock. Bummer. So instead of the Dahongpao, I went for their “10 year old Yiwu” instead.

This is the Yiwu in question

Does it look like 10 years old to you? Not sure? How about this?

(1st brew)

(3rd brew)

Wet leaves

Somehow, I have my doubts about their 10 year claim. Looks more like 5-7 to me. It’s possible that the dry weather in Beijing has something to do with the lack of aging. But 10 years? Hmmm. The tea still retained some smokey flavour, which surprised me. It was generally pleasant, the best infusion was around 5, as usual, and it went for more than 10 infusions before really dropping off. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d buy it if I were tasting this for a purchase. At the end, when I was done with the tea, I sniffed it, and I think I could sense a hint of jasmine in there — I think there is some smell from the incense they use that seeped into the cake in question. They burn the incense quite near where they put the tea, so it’s entirely possible that the incense smoke made its way into the cake. This may also explain the lingering smoky flavour.

Another cake was also claimed to be 10 years. I really questioned the manager about that, and she relented — she admitted it was more like 7 or so. I still think that looks high, but I did not drink it, so whatever. The price of the tea was not cheap — 80 kuai (about 10 USD) plus 15 kuai for water and sundry (2 USD), so all in all, a 12 USD afternoon. I spent about an hour and half there. It’s really a nice little place, and somewhere good to bring a guest to drink some tea. The teas themselves are not as great. Then again, you don’t go to these places for fantastic tea, and you definitely don’t expect it to be a bargain.

They do, however, have some nice teaware. A problem with places like Maliandao is that the teaware for sale is generally of fairly low quality — mass produced stuff that’s destined for volume sale, rather than individual sale. This place had some nice new gaiwan and pots, at prices that are not exorbitant either. I definitely saw some gaiwan that I never saw on Maliandao (including one that my cousin might want). At 100 kuai each, they’re quite all right.

By the time I left, there were lots of people in the teahouse — almost entirely full. Most of them are foreigners, many knowing nothing about teas. Apparently, according to their website (the right hand link should be to the teahouse proper, but it’s broken) they were featured in the Time magazine last year. They also offer tea classes. I don’t know how good they are, but if I were to choose between this and Hong Kong, I’d do it in Hong Kong.

This is why one needs to travel — you never realize how good you have it until you go somewhere else. Hong Kong is indeed a tea capital πŸ™‚

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7 responses so far ↓

  • Phyllo // September 9, 2006 at 4:52 pm | Reply

    It even looks like a 3-ish years old to me visually.  Where did I read an article that said most pu’er in the mainland are not as aged as the sellers claimed them to be???  Anyway, a group of tea professionals went to guangzhou and tasted (allegedly) aged pu’er, and they said most of the teas they tasted were not as aged as they were supposed to be.  And this was in steamy Guangzhou we are talking about, where tea should age faster from the humidity.  Maybe you were the one who pointed me to this article, Marshaln.

    We definitely need a teahouse like that here in LA.  At least for me and bbb  πŸ™‚  I wonder if it’s feasible to open one here?

    Nice post, thanks!  It’s like being there myself.

  • MarshalN // September 10, 2006 at 12:26 am | Reply

    Yeah, it could be 3 years, but it might be 5-7 because, my god, it’s really dry here.

    They also had a “30 years” puerh that looks like cooked to me. The manager insists it’s raw. I didn’t feel like disputing.

  • MarshalN // September 10, 2006 at 5:22 am | Reply

    By the way, I think if you can find the staff for it, a teashouse like this might just be a hit.

    It’s well appointed. Quite nice. When my sister comes to Beijing next week, if we have time, I will take her here.

  • cloudstea // September 10, 2006 at 9:39 am | Reply

    Marshaln, I like your post as well.  It is so interesting and vivid that as if I were drinking the same tea with you at the scene. Great post.

    As a local Hong Kong citizen, I am happy and appreciate that you will choose to take tea classes in Hong Kong. 

    Hong Kong, Welcome you.

    It is also encouraging when I read this, “Hong Kong is indeed a tea capital”.  Without doubt, if you choose a right tea shop, you will find a lot of good stuff.  What you have to worry is just whether you have got enough money. 

    However, as I said in my recent post, “Puerh Tea is new to the Western world.  To be honest, in fact, it is also new to 95% of Chinese people. Even in the place of Puerh Tea storage origin – Hong Kong, aged puerh tea is new to 95% of the Hong Kong population.”

    Therefore, what I can say is knowing Puerh Tea is not difficult.  However, learning Puerh Tea and becoming a Puerh Tea master is very arduous.

  • MarshalN // September 10, 2006 at 10:09 am | Reply

    Hey, I’m from Hong Kong too, I guess it’s not totally clear from my posts πŸ™‚

    So I know HK quite well, in fact, I technically still live there

  • cloudstea // September 10, 2006 at 10:35 am | Reply

    Oh! I thought you were from Beijing.

    Nice to meet you.

  • MarshalN // September 10, 2006 at 11:03 am | Reply

    πŸ™‚

    No, I’m from Hong Kong, I’m just going to be in Beijing for a while. If you look further (two pages down) you’ll see that I was in Hong Kong for a few weeks before coming here

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