A Tea Addict's Journal

A local find

April 24, 2007 · 1 Comment

Today on my way to the library, I noticed this little shop that is literally right next door.  It’s a 30 seconds walk from my house to this place, but since I haven’t been in Shanghai that long, and since I just usually walk right past it… I never paid attention.

This is the kind of store through which most of the t eas in China are sold.  He posts the prices of the main attractions on the board to the left of his store.  On it it reads:

Yuqian (Before rain) Fried Green — 14 yuan/jin (500g)
Jasmine — 15 yuan/jin
New Longjing — 30 yuan/jin
Oolong tea — 42 yuan/jin
Huangshan Fried Green — 7 yuan/jin
Huangshan Maofeng — 38 yuan/jin
Huangshan Silver Hooks — 18 yuan/jin
Yunnan Maofeng — 25 yuan/jin
New Maofeng — 18 yuan/jin

As should be obvious… the prices are very pedestrian.  This is apparently last year’s prices, with this year’s being slightly higher.  Nevertheless, it’s… cheap.

I went up to the counter (you can’t really walk in — too small) and looked at the teas on display.  It’s typical of stores that sell green tea to have them on little white dishes with a price tag next to the tea.  You can see for yourself what they all look like, and the different looks that go with the different prices can be quite instructive.  Somehow in Beijing they don’t do this.

I picked out a Yunnan green to try.  I bought 50g of it for 5 kuai.  I think I overpaid, and if I had gotten the same thing at a tea market, it’ll probably be 2 kuai or some such.  But heck…

The Yunnan green actually smells and looks a lot like some of the maocha I’ve had recently, but the leaves here are a bit smaller.  I will really need to try it out to see exactly what this Yunnan green is made of… and to try to age it and see what turns out from this green.  It will be interesting.

Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts · Teas
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Grandpa style of tea making

April 23, 2007 · 4 Comments

I drank tea the grandpa way today.  That’s because my grandfather drinks his tea this way.  Essentially, it is the simplest way a Chinese person makes tea — throw leaves in mug, add water, drink.  Add tea leaves when the tea gets watery.  Repeat.

This is also how most people in China drink their tea throughout the day.  Whether a cab driver, an office worker, or a house guest — tea is served simply, in a cup and with no other teaware.  Most of the time even a pot is not used.  Drinking the tea using your teeth as a leaf-filter is a skill that everybody learns quite early on.

Since I have no gaiwan with me yet, not having bought one here, I brewed tea this way today.  Even though it sounds simple, there are some things one must watch out, or risk getting a nasty tea.

One must first watch what kind of tea is being brewed… and add the leaves accordingly.  It is always a temptation to add too much leaves, especially when it’s a rolled oolong, such as a tieguanyin or a Taiwan tea.  They expand greatly, and while they look like not a lot of tea when dried… it gets big, very fast.  Since the tea sits in the cup while drinking and is therefore brewed all the time it sits there, too much leaves yields a very bitter cup very quickly.  Therefore, low amount of leaves is essential.

Water temperature… it depends.  If green, not too hot is fine, but if you’re adding water to existing tea, then it must be hotter to compensate.  For all other types of tea, I think the hotter the better.  It won’t keep warm very long in this sort of arrangement.

Also… I like to keep some tea remaining in the cup and refill before I drink it all.  This keeps the flavour stronger brew after brew.  Otherwise… after one or two cups the leaves will lose all their flavour.

Then it’s just a matter of taste… how strong you want your tea, how long before you add new leaves, etc… a cup will last a day.  After a while, it just becomes flavoured water, but if the tea is good, the flavour goes pretty far.  I’ve seen people using very big (1L) water bottles with about 2g of green tea leaves in them.  I’ve also seen people using maybe a 350ml bottle with 1/3 full of leaves… it’s all about personal tastes.

I drank a Dahongpao today doing this, and even after many infusions, the tea remains sweet.  I added leaves once, but not a whole lot.  It was just easy drinking… and much less work than gongfu.

Definitely a different style, but nonetheless, enjoyable.

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Very very dry storage

April 22, 2007 · Leave a Comment

After doing dim sum with a friend and his colleague today, and hanging out with them a little afterwards, I went to L’s place to see him and drink some tea together.

As usual, we went through quite a few teas today, only we also went through the pictures he took of his trip to Yunnan.  Looked like a lot of fun, and I wish I had the time to go.

Among the teas we had were:

97 Fengqing Tuocha
07 spring Nannuo maocha (two of them)
90s “orange label”

The two Nannuo maocha, which they got this time to Yunnan, were quite interesting.  One was supposedly from hundred year old trees, while the other one was from ancient trees of even older origins.  By the way things looked, the ancient trees one did look better.  The taste of the teas, when compared with each other, had the 100 years old tree ones being slightly floral and vegetal, while the ancient trees one tasted a little less potent and present up front, but I think had a bit more character in the end.  Both had a Nannuo taste to it, which I personally am not too fond of.  Yet, to distinguish the two between one of good and the other of excellent quality was really quite difficult.  I don’t think I could tell you, independently of one another, which one was better.  Maybe if I had drank them even more carefully, it would’ve been a little more obvious, but the bottom line is it’s very difficult to tell.

It’s not difficult if it’s between plantation and old tree tea.  I think the different grades they have between old tree teas, however…. is quite difficult.

The 97 Fengqing Tuo is best described as mediocre.  It’s presenting some of those Fengqing flavours at this point, and you can tell it’s a bit aged, but neither was it aged long enough to deliver a really sweet brew (and lose the astringency), and it was not really interesting enough as it is.  All in all, a very mediocre tea.

The 90s Orange Label is a little more interesting, because the owner of the tea, who is a friend of L’s, think it quite good.  It’s obviously a dry stored tea, although as soon as one drinks it, it calls into question the authenticity of the age of the tea.  If it were stored in Shanghai most of the time, then I would say this is definitely not something from the mid-90s (as they seem to think it is).  In fact, I think it could be the case that this is one of those teas produced after 2000 using older wrappers.  It just doesn’t taste quite right, with no sweetness and lacking in all forms of aftertaste.  It’s not great now, and I don’t imagine it will turn better given that it already has had a supposed 10 years of aging.  If it doesn’t, then of course the merchant is lying….

The problem with this tea, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Fengqing, is that both are very rough and quite bitter.  I think, especially in the Orange Label case, that if it really were real, the bitterness should at least be starting to give way to sweetness, and the astringency should be subsiding as well.  Instead, I got so thirsty at the end I could physicall feel uncomfortable with the tea.  I think that’s where I stopped… The point though, is that teas bought in such markets and also sold (to merchants) in such markets is just quite crazy and can be quite bad.. sigh, we might have to enture a permanent rise in tea prices…..

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Shopping in Shanghai

April 21, 2007 · 6 Comments

I walked to Tianshan Tea City from my place today, looking for some cheap teaware to use in Shanghai.  It’s a 20 minute walk if I don’t walk too fast, and I can make it there in 15 if I walk really briskly.  It’s a bad combination, I know.  Luckily, the place is not big enough to hold a lot of interest for repeated visits.  It’s two floors plus some ground floor open stores.  In total I think there are about 80 stores of various kinds.  Interestingly enough, there are more puerh stores here than last time, and that was only two months ago.

I had set out to look for some cheap teaware to use in Shanghai, since I didn’t want to bring more stuff than I was already carrying.  However, I got sidetracked into a Keemun store.  They sell basically only Keemun, with some other teas as well (some unknown green, plus some Taiwan oolong — a mixed bag).  I was attracted by the Keemun, because she had all the grades, and they were clearly marked.

I ended up tasting two, a Haoya (she said it was B when I asked), and a tea she called the “Li Cha”, which is a new style Keemun which is not broken up — it’s instead using whole buds.  Keemun, as most of you know, is the sort of classic Hongcha (red tea).  It’s got a distinctive flavour, and the leaves are usually quite fine and cut up… is it broken orange pekoe?  Anyway, the Li Cha is not like that.  Instead, it’s buddy, looking a little like a red version of biluochun.  I think I’ve seen stuff like this before called by different names, but didn’t know it’s from the same region as your classic Keemun.

The Haoya is quite nice, although slightly rough on the tongue.  The Li Cha is better, but it lacks that Keemun flavour I was looking for.  I want something that I can use as a sort of benchmark to judge other Keemuns by, and I figured this is a good place to stay (I must confess I know little about Keemuns in general).  I sat there for a while longer, tried their green tea, and had a cooked tuo that she bought for 200 RMB (way overpriced — she wasn’t selling the tea, just drinking).  I then bought some of the Haoya and left.  She offered me a 30% discount without me prompting it, which was nice.

I wandered around the market for a little longer, looking for a gaiwan and a few cups.  The gaiwans are quite nice — I think BBB is right in saying that the teaware here is nicer.  The nice gaiwans, of course, weren’t the cheapest, but they were tempting.  I had to leave to go to another place, so I never finished shopping for teaware… having just bought one tea tray and no cups/gaiwans to use it for.  I’ll either come back here or go to Jiuxing, the other tea market which is a bit farther away.  Maybe I’ll go next weekend or, if I have time, sometime during the week.

On my way out, I noticed another store that specializes in Keemuns.  I should go check that place out.

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No tea today

April 20, 2007 · Leave a Comment

But fret not, I’m fixing the problem by making some loose puerh in a cup.  On my way home here I was feeling the onset of a slightly dull headache, which, if unchecked, will turn into a rather unhappy headache in a few hours.  By about 4 or 5am, it will be bad enough to wake me up.  Very bad.  I’m not going to let the lack of caffeine disrupt my sleep (it’s happened before).

The dry tea of this puerh has been stored in my tea cupboard for a few months now without me distrubing it.  I noticed just now, when I took it out of my bag, that it has acquired a bit of that young puerh smell.  The smell of other teas around it must have infected it.  Tasting it, however, doesn’t show any of that note — it’s strictly the nose.  The tea has mellowed out a little since I bought it though, no doubt due to the airing and so dissipating some of the wet storage smell.

The train ride was uneventful, but it was a real eye-opener, being able to see the landscape change from a rather bleak and dry north to the more plentiful, greener, and wetter south.  As the train moved from Shandong province to Jiangsu, the landscape gradually became softer and greener.  There’s a reason why the cultural capital of China has always been in the Jiangnan area, which is the Yangtze River delta.  Production is just obviously higher, even to somebody who’s passing by the countryside in a train.

I’m also in green tea country, but I’m sure you’ll hear more of it in the next few weeks.

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Random shopping

April 19, 2007 · 3 Comments

I went to Maliandao today to pick up some stuff for L in Shanghai. Meanwhile I went and did a little shopping for some teaware — to bring to Shanghai to use. It’s one of those alcohol lamp + glass kettle combos. While I complained about the smell, in Shanghai I know I can open the windows wide with good ventilation — where I stay there’s such a spot. I also have a water dispenser that dishes out already-hot water, so the boiling times will be minimal.

Interestingly enough, going to the store that sells such things with L’s business partner has toned the price tag down by a few notches. I got it for the below-wholesale price of 50 RMB for the whole thing (wholesale is 52). I was expecting to pay around 60. I remember paying around 80 when I bought my set here after arriving in Beijing. In fact, for almost everything I can now confidently say that I have a pretty decent idea of how much things should be, having spent a good amount of time in Maliandao and also have quite a few people who now at least have seen me once or twice (thus making them think I work in Maliandao). Initial quotes for a lot of young puerh have dropped from those 200+ range into the 100 range, or even lower. One guy voluntarily halved the price of the cake he was trying to sell me, without much prompting on my end, and quoting me what I believe to be honestly a wholesale price. It’s amazing what a little time can do for you.

I also got to taste some teas. One was a maocha from Yiwu, fresh this year, that are from those plantations — those same plantations that everybody loves to hate. Taste is sweet, mellow, but weak… easy going down now, and infinitely drinkable, but lacking the strength (in terms of feeling the tea AFTER you swallow) and the depth that one finds in better Yiwus. In fact, it is a great drink-it-now tea. If you brew it like a green tea, it’s very nice, not bitter at all, and can hook anybody onto young puerh (if you can even call this young puerh). It’s just not what you necessarily want in a tea for aging. It also has the advantage of being quite cheap.

Another tea I drank was purchased in Yunnan when Xiaomei and L went there a few weeks ago. It says “Yiwu Gushu Cha” (Yiwu Old Tree Tea), but I think it has been poorly made — green tea pressed into bing. It has all the right characteristics of a green tea, and not really of a puerh. It was especially obvious when she told me this is from 2004… the tea doesn’t taste right. It’s always a delicate situation when somebody has a tea that you think is horrid, but don’t know what to say. I could only say that there was some huigan. After being largely silent for a while, I think she figured out that I didn’t quite like it, and even offered it up herself that “This tea is really fragrant — I wonder if this is green tea”. Whew, the awkwardness was broken. Otherwise I had to suffer more infusions of this rather bitter and unpleasant tea….

While there, a customer came in looking to buy a whole jian (or several) of the “Weizuiyan” cooked puerh from Menghai, produced last year and now fetching about 3x the original price when I first heard about it. He sat for a while, deliberating, but eventually walking. He has heard that prices for some puerh has dropped, which is actually true for Xiaguan — prices have toned down a bit, apparently, in Kunming. Menghai, however, still rides high…

But can this last? Will the drop in price for one factory cause a cascade? Will it be the warning sign of the risks of puerh investment? I wonder. There are obviously those, like him, who are trying to buy teas for cheap, hoping that prices have gone down a bit to a more acceptable level. But can it not keep dropping? After all, I think much of the newer stuff have simply lost connection with their inherent value. Menghai cooked puerh is not so much better than everybody else’s that they deserve to be three or four times as expensive, and raw puerh of this sort are quite undrinkable, relatively speaking. A lovely Wuyi tea or dancong can be had for less. Longjing is the exception to the rule… where prices are always high, but that’s because there’s the demand for it, and a good, top shelf longjing is really quite good.

Oh well, the ride continues…. but tomorrow, I’m off to Shanghai!

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Banzhang fall and spring

April 18, 2007 · 5 Comments

I have in my hands two maocha from Banzhang, one from fall of last year, and one fresh picked from the mountains this year. I thought it will be interesting to drink them side by side

When I opened up the bags and took them out, I was slightly surprised by the colour difference between the two. The darker, redder one is the fall 2006, while the spring is the greener one on the right. The colour difference is only a shade or two, but it’s noticeable.

It’s even more obvious when they are wet

The Fall 2006 on the left tastes like a Banzhang I normally know… somewhat bitter, with a characters strong taste but turns a little sweet in the finish. It’s a penetrating tea, and quite thick and nice. There’s a hint of smoke in there too, but not too strong. The Spring 2007, on the other hand, was surprisingly floral. It reminded me of one of those light dancongs out there — there’s a definite connection, with hints of grass and some high floral notes that I only usually expect in a very light oolong. I suspect this tea, inadverdently or not, was oxidized a bit before kill green. It sometimes happen deliberately, but can also be the case of just the tea farmers needing some time to reach their home and light the fire to do the kill green. Either way… it was an interesting contrast. The two teas don’t really share a lot of common notes, except in the finish… a bitter turning sweet, your classic huigan. Even then, the affinity is pretty remote.

The liquor is not as different visually as the leaves:

The Fall is only slightly darker in colour throughout the session, with the spring taking on a more vegetal green hue.

The wet leaves:

Should be pretty obvious which pile is which

Leaves sizes are different, with fall being obviously bigger and the spring more tender. There’s a sort of thinness in the spring tea, for some reason. I don’t know if it’s overpicking, or if it’s just young buds/leaves being smaller/thinner in general. I suspect it could be a bit of both.

Banzhang is still not really my cup of tea, especially given the prices, but I can see how in 5-6 years this tea might turn into something more to my taste. Right now… I’ll go for a Yiwu for sure, which is only selling at one third the price of a Banzhang anyway. Prices are just sky high.

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Links

April 18, 2007 · 4 Comments

My girlfriend bought me Xanga premium a little while ago (you might’ve noticed the disappearance of the ads). With premium I also have the option of adding a custom module. I never got around to it, but here it is now, on your left, with links to other places on the web. There’s also a link to my photo album. I decided not to keep it on Xanga itself, so to have more flexibility in how I manage my pictures.

Drinking two Banzhangs right now. Will talk about it later 🙂

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Zhengshan

April 17, 2007 · 4 Comments

More traditionally stored broken bits today

This one is, curiously, called Zhengshan by the teashop that sold it to me. It’s pretty cheap. It’s obviously traditionally stored, in Hong Kong, and broken up a while ago. I don’t really understand the name Zhengshan. Zhengshan, in the context of puerh, means that it is of a certain mountain proper. So, a Yiwu Zhengshan (anybody who’s shopped around should’ve seen this phrase at some point) means “Yiwu Mountain Proper”. It’s an advertising slogan, basically, for anybody selling tea that purports to be from one region. It’s an assurance that the tea is, indeed, coming from the proper mountain that is being named, and not some surrounding regions or mixed with stuff, etc

Just on its own, however, Zhengshan doesn’t really seem to make much sense. I didn’t ask the owner what he meant. Maybe there’s something obvious I’m not getting. I don’t know.

I don’t know where this tea came from. I think this is some standard factory issue from the 90s. It’s quite compressed. The tea brews a nice red liquor:

Mind you, this is a bit lighter than usual because I changed cups. I bought a new cup a few days ago at Maliandao

It’s one of those flat, big cups. The thing is almost two inches in diameter. It will make the tea look lighter in colour than it would with a more normal cup. For example, a few infusions later I took a shot of the fairness cup:

Much darker. Pouring out, however, the tea still looks red.

The tea is very smooth, with a silky texture and a slightly creamy taste. It’s got a hint of bitterness still, more obvious when drunk cool. Camphor is the most prominent aroma. It does hit the back of your mouth a bit, but it’s not a very good tea that hits you with a strong but subtle impact. Instead, it’s a mellow and relaxing drink, doesn’t really excite you, but delivers the goods as it should. After a few days of some pretty green puerh, it’s a nice change of pace. I can really only take so much young stuff before feeling the effects on my body. Drinking this sort of thing is easy on the body, and not too demanding in brewing technique. You can just focus on drinking.

I should’ve bought more of it when I was in Hong Kong. It’s very different from the Guangyungong bits. This tea is obviously younger. It’s got more strength and punch than the GYG, which is now very mellow and sweet. There is another sample of even younger stuff, but I find that to be a little too young to taste good now. It’s some Jiangcheng brick, about 10 years old. They all have the advantage of being very cheap though.

It’s still brewing. I just pulled out some leaves to take a shot of it. It’s very tight still — I had to stab this piece to break it into twos when I took it out. Whatever this Zhengshan is, it’s pretty decent.

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The East is Red, China, and… Tea

April 16, 2007 · 5 Comments

I just bought my train ticket for Shanghai for Friday at the Beijing Station. As I was leaving, while passing right in front of the McDonald’s across the street from the station, the clock struck nine, and the bells of the station started chiming The East is Red. It was surreal, as I never expected that in this day and age, this tune would be played anywhere near so public as the Beijing Station. But there it was, the bells ringing probably the same thing it did forty years ago during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Here I was, standing in front of the McDonald’s, with a ticket in hand that puts me on the newest train in China, and listening to the bells chime The East is Red. I was only maybe two kilometers away from the Tiananmen Square, where forty years ago hundreds of thousands of university students rallied to see Mao, loudspeakers blaring with this very tune I was hearing. I helped teach a course on the Cultural Revolution last year, but I have no personal experience of it — only through books and tales from my family. I am sure if I were in front of Beijing Station (which I definitely wouldn’t be — because I would be busy doing Red stuff) I would be able to hear the massive chants of the rallies down Chang’an Avenue. In a way, I felt connected with those people there, back then, if only ever so slightly. It was a strange feeling.

It is obvious that China is no longer the same. The very fact that I was standing in front of a McDonald’s was proof positive of it. The fact that we can talk about all these different kinds of teas, of all the different factories, and most of all, the incredible rise in tea prices in Yunnan the past few years, signifying, among other things, the great amount of wealth generated in the past three decades. A mere twenty years ago all tea factories were state owned, production standardized, and innovation was pretty much nil. There were some new cakes, made at the behest of merchants from Hong Kong or other places, like the 8582, but by and large, it was a stale business. Liberalization, at least in the economic sector, changed all of that. Menghai, Xiaguan… all those big factories are now private companies, run by shareholders or other investors. The whole tea distribution system is private, market based, thus giving us the dizzying price rises, and also the accompanying speculative fervour.

How to identify good teas in this sea of innovation and change is a constant concern among tea lovers all around. We’ve all paid our tuition before and bought tea that was horrid (only we didn’t realize it then). With puerh, it has gotten to the point where the market is taking away the enjoyment of the tea itself. On a place like Sanzui, discussions recently have all centered around “What are the prices now for xxx?” and “When is the crash coming?”. Nobody talks about tea anymore, it’s all about the price.

Are we better off than before? I’d like to think we are. After all, given all the choices out there, we’re bound to find good stuff. It made the job more difficult, but in some ways, it’s also more rewarding. We buy puerh on the hopes that some of it will turn out good. Hope, I think, is powerful. It’s probably more powerful than anything else in human nature. Hell, after all, is a place with no hope, and nobody wants to be in hell.

I drank a new maocha today, given to me by L’s business partner, Xiaomei. They picked this themselves from the trees, and watched it being fried and dried. They went to Yunnan this spring to study teas there. They made no cakes, but bought a whole bunch of maocha to try for themselves and also to give as gifts. I got a little bit of this Nannuo, along with some Banzhang. I’m sure when I go down to Shanghai and see L, I will see his Yiwu teas too, which they also picked. They go and spend all this time not only because they’re interested in tea, but also because this is their enterprise, and they are willing to invest the time and money to try to improve themselves so they can do the job better. I was thinking today, while drinking this maocha — if there is a crash in puerh, if there is a panic exit from the market, if the unwinding is not orderly but disorderly… are they ready for it? With hope comes disappointments, and disappointments are hard to swallow sometimes.

Every little cake we buy is a piece of that hope… expectations that the tea will age into greatness. Every time we drink the tea again, we want some sort of validation of our hope… that we got it right, that it is, indeed, moving towards something good. Maybe that’s why puerh is so captivating, because we are invested in it, and because of its uncertainty. But that’s what makes life exciting.

Some pictures of the tea today… a young little thing, green to the core, grassy, notes of green beans, not too thick, but surprisingly smooth. Good qi, as I got dizzy after a while, and decent huigan. Not a bad tea at all. A little too green… I was a little suspicious, and you can see how green the tea is in the pictures (natural light today). I don’t know anymore what’s good and what’s not.

I rambled on and on today, sorry.

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