Flying back to the US tomorrow…. so not much time or opportunity to drink tea today, or yesterday, or tomorrow…
Drinking some loose maocha in a cup works well on the train though. In fact, I think that’s my favourite these days when traveling on some sort of mode of transportation that takes more than an hour or two.
I guess you won’t hear from me until I get back to Boston and in some semblence of consciousness.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: travel
I had tea with L today. Also present was a Taiwanese gentleman who apparently is quite an important man in the Taiwan tea business. We had a long discussion on various topics around tea, from puerh to green. The guy definitely has experience, and you can tell he knows what he’s talking about. Much of it is just him lecturing, since we all know so little about tea production.
One thing that definitely comes across is that knowing about how tea is made is essential for a higher level understanding of why a tea tastes the way it does. Being able to say “this tea is astringent because so and so did this during production” is very important. For all types of tea, there’s a different set of rules, but there are also common things that are true for all teas. It is obvious that knowledge from one kind of tea will transfer, at least somewhat, into others. This man, for example, gathered a lot of data and knowledge from individual farmers and tried his best to improve Taiwanese oolong. Everything from the wind direction, to the specific hour of the picking, to the location of the slope, soil type, etc etc are all important things to consider, and the way one processes a tea will change depending on any one of those factors. Whether a tea is good or bad depends greatly on whether or not one is able to grasp all of these variables and make the tea come alive, a term that he stressed throughout the day.
What’s also important is that I’ve actually never heard of this man before, and I doubt few outside the trade has. There must be many such low profile tea makers out there who are just really knowledgeable. The people who know tea best are the makers, and all pursuit in tea, ultimately, goes back to the production process. I wonder if it’s ever possible to learn so much, without being a producer myself. But it’s a nice thought and certainly one goal to aspire to.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: friends, musings, Taiwan oolong
Moving a good amount of tea is hard work. Last night I packed up my tea cakes as best I could, by first tying them into tongs of varying sizes, then double wrapping them in food bags that are more or less like saran-wraps, I then hauled the tea over to the post office here with my girlfriend helping me. The thing about China Post is that all packages must be inspected before they are sealed — they want to know what’s going into them boxes here in China. At the post office closest to me, the guy who does the packaging said he can’t ship tea like this — too much tea is considered commercial goods, and have to go through the central international post office. Thankfully, that’s not too far away, and we went there — only to discover that there’s no restriction on tea export (as I have guessed). It’ll be insane to tax goods going out of your country, after all.
Most of the time packaging is also sold through the post office. There are almost no stores that will sell you paper boxes here — people reuse old ones, mostly, and if you’re shipping stuff, you buy it from the post office (since you have to bring stuff over for them to inspect anyway, it’s almost pointless to pre-pack anything). Unfortunately, most of the boxes there are not the right sized, so I couldn’t put all my tongs in one or two box, as I have hoped. Instead, I put about two tongs of tea in each box, buffered by other things including my loose teas, canisters, teaware, etc etc…. all in all, it took about 5 boxes to send all my tea related stuff over to Hong Kong. Most of the stuff will then stay in Hong Kong, at least for the near foreseeable future — I think my puerh will age better there than anywhere else, and since I’ll be moving around a lot… it’s better to stick them in one place.
Meanwhile, I am traveling to Shanghai tomorrow, with only one tea that I didn’t pack up — a maocha I bought on one of my very first trip to Maliandao this year. The rest… I’ll have to find my good friends who own more tea than I do to supply me for a few days while I’m there 🙂
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: storage, travel
I arrived in Beijing on September 1st 2006. I came here to do research, but I also happened to have come here to study tea on the side. Now, almost 10 months later, I’m about to leave here. This certainly marks an end to one stage of my graduate student career, but also definitely marks the end of one stage of my tea education.
I went to Maliandao today, although the trip was cut short by heavy rain — I didn’t go as early as I had hoped. I went to Xiaomei’s store, to pick up some Benshan that I wanted her to get for me. 500g of benshan costs 40 RMB… so that’s about 5 USD. Selling benshan as tieguanyin can obviously make you big bucks.
While there, I tried a tea that was very odd. It’s a maocha of some sort, a year old, supposedly. Yet, there’s something in that maocha that tastes old. If it weren’t for the obvious and harsh bitterness of the tea, I might even believe that it is an older tea, dry stored. The guy who brought it there said it’s a maocha deliberately made to taste old, and if pressed into cake, it is indeed not too easy to tell and can masquerade as something aged in a dry environment. The leaves are, actually, mostly yellow leaves, of the large and rough kind, and the taste is that of a rougher, harsher, more bitter variety. But it was very odd… probably one of the oddest young puerh I’ve ever tried.
We also had a 3 year old Yiwu that was smooth and mellow, although lacking in any sort of real punch. I think this will develop into a high fragrance kind of Yiwu. Decent potential, and not too expensive. Alas, I’m not in the market for more tea at this point.
I then walked around the market a bit, noting how there are still so many stores I’ve never really been to, or looked at. Yet, I don’t have time anymore, not on this trip anyway. Maybe next time, when I return to Beijing (whenever that is) I will get to go to them, but they may very well not be around by then. As I’m writing this, I just packed up all my puerh cakes, readying them for shipping to Hong Kong tomorrow. I should probably take a picture of how I packaged them, but that’s for tomorrow.
I must say I feel a little sad leaving Maliandao. I’ll be back, of course, and I have learned a lot just wandering the different markets there. I think I have progressed from somebody who only knew a few things about younger puerh to somebody who can at least make some sense of a young tea I’ve never tried before. I am still woefully unknowledgable when it comes to some other kinds of tea. I am hoping that when I go to Taiwan in August, it will remedy my deficiency in Taiwan oolong just as Maliandao has helped me understand young puerh.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: Chinese oolong, shopping
10 hours train ride and 5 nuclear power plants later, I’m home in Beijing.
One of the first things I did was, of course, to check out my teas. They’re fine… and smells good, unlike last time when I came back when the tea was obviously starved of moisture. This time, the humidity in the cupboard is higher, and I can smell the sweet scent of young puerh. Good… the bowl of water is still there… very low levels, but not entirely dry yet. It means that the tea is done soaking up the moisture and the cupboard’s moisture level is more maintenance than anything else. I don’t know the exact humidity, but I’d guess it’s not too low.
On another note — I am thinking of asking for the reactions to the samples I sent out after the weekend. Most of you have gotten it now, except a few of you with exceptionally lethargic postal service. If you could make time this weekend to try the teas, I’d appreciate it.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: travel
Is there anybody who hasn’t gotten their sample yet? I think most of you have.
Let me know if you’ve had a chance to taste them.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: young puerh
I admire the Ebay vendors who ship teas out from China on a daily basis. It’s not fun.
After spending 3 hours at the post office, first trying to send the stuff as letters before being forced to send them as packages, which meant filling out about 5 things per mailing plus being charged for the privilege of sending a “package”, the teas are off and should arrive in a week to 10 days.
All in all, 22 packs were sent to various places, with Americans predominating. I hope you all enjoy the teas, and do let me know what you think. Now I’m going to go and drink some of my own 🙂
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: travel
Aside from drinking that Wangzhi maocha, blogged below, I also went to the tea market and divided up the teas into little bags:
One of them I called sample A, the other sample 1. Sorry for the silly naming scheme, but I don’t want my numbering/naming scheme to affect your drinking order in any way. It’s a choice that is entirely up to you. There should be enough tea in there for a comfortable two serving, I hope.
I will go and send them out tomorrow. They inspect everything here at China Post… so I hope they won’t give me to much trouble.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: young puerh
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
Tagged: green tea, shopping
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.
Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged: travel, young puerh
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