A Tea Addict's Journal

Even though at times it does sound a bit like Taiwan has lots of good tea, good tea culture, etc etc…. the reality is that most people still don’t give much of a damn about tea here.

Today I went to a place called Cafe Lumiere, a little shop in a lovely old building that houses a theatre and is named after a famous Taiwanese movie. It’s your typical Western style coffeeshop kind of thing… cakes, etc. They served tea, mostly of the Earl Grey variety. What passed for tea was basically big teapots with round teabags — Republic of Tea, perhaps? The thing I had was a “Yorkshire tea”, which tasted like a weak version of English Breakfast. However, it had the typical problem of “drinking the last guy’s tea”. What I mean is… the teapots they used weren’t cleaned sufficiently thoroughly so that all the herbal teas that have been made in it has left a mark. So I ended up drinking Butterscotch Hibiscus Vanilla Cherry Black Chamomile…. a potpurri of flavours and smells that have been left behind by many a drinkers before me. At one point the lid of the pot smelled like detergent. Yum….

For dinner we went to Ding Tai Fung, a famous restaurant in Taiwan (best know for their xiaolongbaos). The generic tea they served was a really watered down stale green jasmine. Mind you, that’s just for the purpose of washing down your food as quickly as possible so that you will move out of the place for the next person (the waitresses had femmebot like efficiency) but you’d think watered down, low grade oolong is at least achievable instead of nasty stale green jasmine….

Tea is still very much just a beverage to be consumed in the course of the day while doing other things. Even here, where tea culture is perhaps more alive than any other place in Greater China, most people are quite happy with just a cup made simply, or even badly. Sometimes I think it is easy to forget that when reading about the latest thing, the strangest preparation methods, or arguments over the tiniest details.

I was in a cab today and the cabbie started chatting. It got on the topic of tea, because I was picking some up for somebody. He then asked, “how do you learn what’s a good tea and what’s not?”

It was a tough question. How did I learn about tea?

I did take one introductory course (5 lessons) way back when. That was when I didn’t know white tea from green. It was useful, and I think something like that is good for everybody who wants to learn more about tea and get the basics down. Just make sure the place offering such lessons isn’t providing misleading information that basically means only their tea is good — this is actually quite common among “lessons” that are taught from teahouses.

But beyond that… it was just drinking, drinking, drinking, and talking about tea with other people. I find books to be generally useful, but specifically useless — none of those words translate into anything physical. They’re good for general information, but not at all when it comes to tasting and judging tea. With tea, somebody (myself included) talking about it doesn’t even come close to the experience of drinking and feeling the tea. What is huigan, anyway, if you have no idea what it is and have only read about it? What’s the difference between a “rough” and a “smooth” tea? What’s a “wetstore taste”? Mustiness? But dry stored tea can still be a bit musty. What’s that Taiwanese finish that I sometimes talk about? And let’s not even get started with flavours. I have no idea how a “plum” taste is different than an “apricot” one, and I definitely don’t know the difference between male and female urine, but since somebody has used “male urine” as a description for a tea before on a certain blog, I suppose they must have their unique flavour profiles. Not that I want to find out.

I ended up answering “just drink a lot” to the cabbie’s question. He was obviously dissatisfied with the answer, and kept asking. I don’t know what he was trying to fish for, and it was actually getting slightly creepy. Thankfully, the ride was short and I arrived at my destination. Whew.

I had some tea with Tiffany, YP, and a few others today.  We were talking about buying puerh, buying other teas… and such.  A few topics came up

1) How puerh used to be so cheap nobody wanted it.  Even just a few years ago, a really good grade cake would only cost about $5 USD (all prices here will be USD) or so when it first comes out.  It was pretty much unthinkable for a new, raw puerh cake to cost more than about $10.  Back in the day when YP bought her first 88 Qing (now quoting about $1200 or thereabouts, depends on when, where, and what) it cost her about $10, which was considered a high price already.  A Red Label maybe 15 years ago was something like $500 (now entering the $10000 territory).  Most green cakes back then were only about $1-3.  She said the first time she looked for the 88 Qing, she went to some wholesaler to try to get some.  Asking them, they were like “what? why do you want this stuff?  This stuff is so green!”.  She wanted a cake?  “No, you need to at least buy a jian!”.  Those were the days.  But even now, she agrees with me on this one point — no good reason to pay big money for aged cakes, because for the most part it’s not worth that much given the alternatives.  Of course, she’s in a position of somebody who has a bunch of old cakes to drink, but even then… food for thought.

2)  How the conflation of “tea masters” and “tea sellers” is a dangerous thing and buyers need to be cautious.  This is something I’ve although thought about recently — how many boutique shops are opened by supposed “tea maters” out there who really don’t necessarily know anything more than anybody.  There’s no certification for such status, and there’s definitely no requirement for somebody to open a tea shop.  Many so called “masters” come from other trades; their former employment having nothing to do with tea.  Most of them did not learn their trade from some other “master” either — they acquired the knowledge (whatever there is) through drinking, reading, thinking — just like all of us.  Starting a shop doesn’t make you a master.  Sourcing good tea does not make you a master.  It does, however, make you a tea salesman.

YP and another tea friend present related to me how over time, they have heard 100% contradictory things from the same “tea master” who shall remain nameless.  At first, they’ll tell you one thing, and you, as student, will go buy tea (expensive tea from the same master, of course) according to that.  Then…. a few years down the road, suddenly the tune changed, and now they tell you another thing.  If you were around the first time, you’ll notice that it’s totally different and contradictory from the first.  They simply cannot both be true.  Yet… this sort of thing happens all the time (I’ve seen the same thing happen myself).  Why?  Because at these times, they’re not acting with the “tea master” hat on — they’re wearing the “tea salesman” hat.  When the two roles collide, the tea salesman almost always wins.  Another thing you will notice over time is that many “tea master” disagree with each other on some very fundamental points, especially when it comes to puerh.  This isn’t terribly obvious to those who don’t know Chinese and don’t have access to these people either in person or through print, but the fact that such fundamental disagreements exist means only one thing — nobody really knows the true answer and are all fishing in the dark.  Beware of “tea master”.

3) Which leads me to the third point — puerh production has changed significantly over time.  The few experienced people present agreed on one thing — puerh production has changed about once every decade — the leaves, the mix, the way they press the cakes…. everything’s different, and there are distinctly different tastes that come out of the cakes.  Theories of what made a good tea in the 80s might not apply to the 90s, and what made a good tea in the 90s will not apply to the 2000s.  As YP said today when I first walked in… “I can say I know something about 70s or 80s tea, but I don’t know much about 90s tea, and I definitely don’t know much of anything about teas made in the past five years”.  She’s not being too humble either — I think it’s more because nobody has had enough time to tell yet.

And at the end of the day…. tea is still a matter of taste.  Some people just won’t like a certain taste, no matter how refined it is, supposedly.  Two buck chuck has won blind competitions for wine.  I’ve tasted aged baozhongs costing $50/jin that are far better than stuff costing $250/jin, regardless of the price.  Do I have a screwed up tongue?  Perhaps.  But then… maybe it’s just because I am the only person who knows what I like and dislike, and whatever other people tell me… I will listen, I will certainly learn.  Everytime talking to somebody about tea is a learning experience, even if that person knows nothing about tea.  But I am the only one who knows what I prefer in my cup, “expertise” be damned.

I’d imagine the same to be true for everybody.  I know somebody who likes her tea be Twinings Earl Grey teabag dunked into a cup for about 15 seconds, add milk.  That’s it.  I liken it to sewer water.  But somebody thinks it’s great, so… who’s to say who’s right?  Just hope the Twinings Earl Grey teabag wasn’t sold for $250 and masqueraded as the Best Tea On Earth.