A Tea Addict's Journal

One of the most confusing things about buying tea is that there is virtually no naming scheme and standards.  I can go buy some green tea from a wholesaler and resell that as “jade green spring”, which sounds awfully like biluochun “green snail spring”, and perhaps lead you to think that it might have something to do with biluochun, even though my tea could be some cheap Sichuan green of no notable character.  Tieguanyin from Fujian and tieguanyin from Taiwan are entirely different beasts — the ones in Fujian are generally named for the varietal of tea plant from which the tea came, while in Taiwan tieguanyin also includes specific sets of production procedures.  Likewise, Longjing is a famous tea, and is supposed to be from the Hangzhou area, but somehow, Taiwan has Longjing too, and no, Taiwan’s Longjing does not taste anything like the mainland version, at least the good stuff.  And then you have things like “Zhejiang Longjing”.  And let’s not even get into puerh naming conventions….

It seems like what really needs to happen, at least with Chinese tea, is a strict regulatory regime that makes it possible to tell something about a product when it comes to its name.  When I see the word “longjing” I should know that it is coming from a defined area, with a defined characteristic, and maybe even certain defined manufacturing procedures.  This is like how appellation d’origine contrôlée is done in France, and it works pretty well.  When you see Epoisses de Bourgogne, you know what you’re getting.  It’s going to stink, it’s going to be creamy, and it’s the same every time.  If you put that name on, and you didn’t make it there or follow the proper rules, then you are going to get sued.

This is of course part of the problem — the lack of a robust legal system that can handle problems such as infringement on these names, and the lack of an authority established to deal with such issues.  I remember reading about a Chinese town that wanted to copyright their namesake alcoholic beverage, because other people from a different town started making it, and it was being bastardized and worse, its reputation was damaged because the other product was not as good.  For people whose hometown has a product which has a name-recognition value, it is in their best interest to have a system that will protect such a product.

It is, of course, also in the interest of the government to do so, because goods that can command the trust of the consumer is going to be able to command a higher price.  The lack of appellation control means that when I see “Yiwu” printed on the label of a puerh tea, I actually have no idea what’s in it.  It could be indeed the best leaves from Yiwu, it could be really bad leaves from Yiwu, it could be leaves from other places in Yunnan, or worse, it could be from places that are outside Yunnan.  There’s no way to tell, and the only way I can even guess is to drink and see what I think of it.  Nine out of ten times, however, Yiwu and other famous places like it will have tea that isn’t really produced from materials made from that area, just like “Anxi tieguanyin” is often not Anxi tieguanyin at all.  Really experienced drinkers will know the difference, but for the vast majority of consumers, no such possibility exist.

One of the inherent problems with tea is that it is often made by small farmers, and sold to larger distributors/consolidators/wholesalers who blend, process, and resell the tea to the consuming public.  The leaves themselves are anonymous, and farmers are usually only selling bags of tea they carried to the factory with no distinctive marker of any kind at all.  When you look at the raw leaves, you really can’t tell very well whether it’s from Yiwu or not.

The Taiwanese have come up with a rather interesting method of dealing with this problem, namely, regular tea competitions among farmers.  Farmers are asked to submit batches of tea for these competitions, and the teas are then graded, winners announced, and the teas are then resealed in government authorized packaging with the grades accorded to the tea.  The point of these competitions were twofold — to encourage better tea, of course, but also to grade and sell them in a way that guarantees some level of quality.  For an entry into the competition, the farmer has to submit a certain amount of tea (13.2kg for Lugu) and the judging panel basically takes a random sample out of this batch to evaluate the tea.  The whole batch eventually gets sold, and because of the labeling and the grading, they are usually sold at prices much higher than they would otherwise command without such certification.

Now, doing so would be hard for all levels of tea, and in all fairness, there’s probably no good reason why this needs to be done for the large scale, commercial, and mass-consumed tea that slosh around the market every day.  At the same time, some basic form of appellation control that at least gives a modicum of origin assurance would be nice.  Just like how for wine there’s AOC, Vin de Pays, Vin de Table, etc, one could imagine such stratification for different kinds of tea.  Some farmers might go for the highest rating and aim to produce high quality, but possibly lower yield, tea, while many will be content to make tea for the mass market.  Some will do both, and it is up to government authorities to build an infrastructure to support this kind of choice.  What we have right now, however, is nothing, and nothing is damaging the entire market.

Western buyers are not alone in this either, as Chinese buyers are just as confused as everybody else.  Most experienced tea people know that when you buy Dahongpao, oftentimes the tea in the bag is not really Dahongpao.  On top of the varietals you have all kinds of other things, such as Monkey Picked, etc, that are often used by shops to denote their own blends or processes.  If there’s an appellation control, at the very least they can tell you it is “roasted in house using x leaves” or something along those lines.  As it is, we have none of that luxury.  For the Western buyers who have to deal with names like Snow Monkey, Leopard Monkey, Naked Monkey, or whatever else, the situation is only worse.

One of the topics that came up a week ago in class was the gendered consumption of tea, and the perception in different places of tea’s proper role.  It’s an interesting subject that I notice sometimes in my own drinking as well.

In Japan, for example, the tea ceremony now is almost entirely practiced by women, with some men involved.  For the most part, it’s seen as a girly thing to do, along with ikebana and other womanly arts.  When I visited Japan and had tea in any setting, I have never had a man prepare tea for me.  This was obviously not the case a few hundred years ago, when tea was reserved for samurai.  Anybody else practicing it was seen as intruding on an exclusive territory, and women were certainly not welcomed at least until the Tokugawa period.  Something happened in the next three hundred years so that now, we have the complete opposite of what used to be.

I think a similar thing can be observed in China, although with a twist.  If you go to public places, you’re more likely to find women in shops and stores to be preparing tea for you.  However, among tea fanatics I’ve met in China, almost all were male.  I’d say only about 10% of the true tea enthusiast in China are female.

What’s more interesting is that among Westerners I know, a similar ratio exists.  There are, relatively speaking, fewer serious tea drinkers who are female than those who are male.  Yet, in common perception, tea is seen as a drink that is more feminine, whereas coffee takes the masculine role.  Whenever I go out to a restaurant with my wife and we both order something at the end of the meal, I sometimes get the coffee and she gets the tea, even though our preferences are the exact opposite.  Waiters who don’t know often would assume that I am the coffee drinker, usually based purely on my gender.

I can’t quite explain why it is that the tea enthusiasts I know tend to be all male.  I’m pretty indiscriminate in meeting people who are fans of tea, but the ratio of tea drinkers seem to hold up even if I account for people who I only know by reputation or online presence.  I also wonder if the general perception that tea is “weak” or “feminine” has any real impact on its consumption and acceptance in the general public.  I would imagine it must, but how that actually takes place is very complex and difficult to pin down.  At any rate, it’s an observation that I’ve long held, and until now anyway, it still seems to hold up quite well.

I used to write a lot of “tea reviews”, if you can call it that.  For maybe two years, this blog was mostly one review or another.  Sometimes it’s an oolong, others a puerh, but generally, this blog was a daily report of what I was drinking that day.

In the past year or two, that has changed.  I no longer talk about specific teas so much.  I find it meaningless, at least for myself, because most of the time, the teas I drink are not interesting enough for me to talk about them.  Other problems and issues, such as techniques, names, varietals, or teaware seem much more interesting.  That, I think, has been largely what I have discussed for the past year or two.

These days, since I’ve been teaching a course on tea history and been translating some of the older texts on tea that are still unavailable in English, I’ve been thinking more about problems of history and how tea, as we know it, evolved over time.  Reading some things from the Ming (1368-1644) today, it is remarkable to see that some of the places, such as Longjing, were already named as great tea producing areas.  However, the Longjing that the author talked about is distinctly small scale — only a handful of tea was produced every year, and mostly the wealthy and influential get to drink it.

In many ways, that’s not unlike how tea still is today in China.  The good stuff — the really good stuff, go to the top.  Ordinary people, even if you have the money, often can’t buy such things, for they are of such limited quantity that they simply do not provide for the whole market.  This is why, again and again, I say that places like Lao Banzhang do not produce teas to satisfy the general market, and that almost all Lao Banzhang old tree teas out there are fake.  They just don’t make enough every year, and there is always an eager line of customers waiting for such things.

The same can be said of the best of the best Longjing, or Tieguanyin, or any number of widely sought after teas.  This leads to the second thing that struck me — that fake teas already existed way back when.  Of course, this is only natural, for there is money to be made in such a business, and lots of it too, if you’re any good.  Fake tea and teaware are the bane of our existence today, but they have always been part of the problem for the tea fanatic.  There is simply no way around it.

What is new, I think, is the speedy spread of information in our digital age, and to go along with that, the ease with which to spread misinformation about certain teas or teaware, or to hype up products that simply do not match their description.  A friend remarked to me recently that in the online tea world, what passes as fact is usually snippets of information that most people seem to agree upon, even though “most people” includes many who are simply echoing what they have heard elsewhere.  This is not an indictment of the general population of tea drinkers who post online.  After all, when most of the sources available online about teas come from vendors, there is simply no way for the consumer to know what is marketing and what is good information.

There is good information out there.  I had my students do a project where they had to use only online sources to find information on the six classifications of tea.  The quality of their work was higher than I expected, and they mostly relied on vendor sites for the exact reason I stated — there just isn’t anything else out there, at least not in English.  In Chinese or Japanese, you can often find hobby sites that are devoted to good information on topics such as tea or teaware.  Even there you usually find plenty of disagreements, and are quickly overrun with vendors of various types who try to push their wares.  Ultimately, tea is still a commodity, and whenever you talk about it, you will attract those who want to sell it.

What troubles me is when somebody says “XXX is a trusted vendor”.  Trusted for what?  Few vendors “know it all”.  Some are more knowledgeable in certain areas, others only repeat what their supplier tell them.  Most, at least among the online vendors, have had probably less than 10 years of experience in the tea world, sometimes much less.  Their information is probably coming from whoever is supplying them with tea or wares.  Many don’t know Chinese or Japanese, or at best, know bits and pieces, not really enough to carry on a meaningful conversation about the nuances of various kinds of tea they are dealing with.  I get a lot of questions along the lines of “where should I buy my zhuni pot?”  I have met yixing collectors who have been at it for four decades, and still tells me they occasionally buy fakes because they are hard to tell.  If someone with that much experience can’t tell, then I must say I don’t really trust any sources online for such a thing, at least not among those who deal with such things in English that I’ve seen.

Of course, I am lucky in that I am native in Chinese and have access to people and places that allow me to bypass the online channels.  The other thing I often hear is “well, unlike you, I can’t find those on my own”.  I completely agree, and even in my case, many things are hard to find on my own, because I am not in Asia and don’t have the time to go very often.  I too buy from online sources, but I generally am very cautious, some might say too cautious, in my approach.  I don’t buy anything expensive, I don’t touch anything claiming to be old, and I don’t buy in bulk before trying the tea.  Even if it is tea from a person whom I’ve dealt with before and know I can trust, the tea can still be no good for reasons having nothing to do with the vendor.  It could simply be that I am not interested in that particular type of tea.  It could be the season, or the region, or a number of other things.  Buying things sight unseen in the tea world is really asking for trouble.

The Longjing story comes back as a good illustration of this problem — if the top grade Longjing is all locked up by the wealthy and powerful locals, why would anybody bother to sell it at a lesser price to foreigners?  The same can be said of a lot of things, be it tea or teaware.  I sometimes see pots on sale that do not look credibly old for the claim that is made, or for prices that are far too cheap, as a certain eBay vendor is well known to do.  Why would anybody do that?  There’s only one good explanation, and that is that the items in question are fakes.

I suppose what I want to say here is that a certain amount of skepticism is good, even if it is throwing cold water on a nice hobby.  I love tea as much as anyone, but I don’t think we have enough of skepticism around in this world of tea vendors.