A Tea Addict's Journal

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Blending

October 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I’m taking another break from the aged oolongs (yes, there are actually a few more) because I ran out of containers for the bags I’m opening. Since I want to keep them away from moisture (and it’s very moist here in Taiwan, at all times of the year, basically) I need to get new containers before I will continue. That shouldn’t take too long.

So I went back to vanquishing leftover samples.

I have some leftover from the Sanzui guy who sold cakes through the forum, a Jingmai and a Bangwei. Neither sample was quite big enough for one sitting, so I figured… why not, I’ll mix them.

Blending is an art, and I’m not claiming to know anything about it. The purpose of blending is to cover up faults of a tea and enhance each other’s strengths. It is supposed to give a tea more complexity and make it better. This isn’t just true for puerh. I know oolongs are blended, especially if they’re roasted teas. Sometimes it’s also a matter of cost, but “mouthfeel” is something they often shoot for when blending. Whereas a single-region tea can be “simple” or perhaps even “boring” in mouthfeel, having a few regions mixed together can create a more balanced or perhaps fuller experience.

I have no idea what works and what doesn’t. I know a few people who will do things like putting some old, wet stored puerh in the pot and add a little bit of very young tea in with it, which gives the tea more liveliness while mostly retaining the aged character of the tea. It enlivens an otherwise rather flat, if aged, tea. Young tea is blended for “layering” effect, so that when the tea enters the mouth it will not only stimulate just one region of the mouth, but rather envelopes it in one way or another. One might be particularly good in the aftertaste department but is flat on the aroma, while another is sweet and tasty but lacking in a good finish; those would work well together (hypothetically, anyway).

I figured the Jingmai and Bangwei teas sort of worked like this. The Jingmai is better up front, with an aromatic opening but lacking in longevity in terms of its ability to linger in the mouth. The Bangwei is better in that department, but can be boring with a low level of aromatics.

The mixture is about 1 Jingmai to 2 Bangwei. You can hardly tell what’s what when it’s dry

Or for that matter… when it’s wet

The tea did seem to come out a little fuller — and the first few cups filled the mouth with its aroma, a mixture of Jingmai’s distinctive taste and a more bitter edge that the Bangwei has. However, I can’t say for sure that this is not just placebo. The tea did, however, have a clearer progression during the subsequent infusions. I realized afterwards that what I should’ve done (and will do next time I try something like this) is to have three gaiwans — one of tea A, one of tea B, and one of tea AB, and see what differences I can detect. I feel like a self-experimenting guinea pig sometimes.

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A failure

October 12, 2007 · 11 Comments

This tea looked pretty

I bought it today at a shop near where I was running an errand. It’s one of those grandpa shops — looks awful inside, and has lots (I mean lots) of random stuff accumulated over time. I figured they might have some old stock of oolongs — and they do. There are two, and I bought a bit of both. The shop owner said this tea is 30 years, and it sells at a moderately high price. I didn’t buy the 30 years claim, but the tea is oh so beautiful. It’s a rich, dark red, shiny, oily… looks great. The tight rolling perhaps indicates a later date than the “30 years” claim. That’s not a real concern.

It yielded a dark liquor as well

It’s thick, it’s aromatic, it’s got a good finish. The problem is… the tea is sour 🙁

It’s not deadly, because the sourness comes on later, and isn’t the all-powering, all-covering sort of sour. Instead, it’s just somewhat sour, and the sourness happens when the tea (liquid) has had a little time to cool down. When piping hot, just out of the gaiwan, the tea is not sour at all. After a sip or two, it starts showing up. When cooled down further, the sourness is more apparent. I am not sure the reason why that would be the case, but …. it’s what I found.

It’s a shame, because otherwise the tea exhibits good aged qualities, but I don’t think it is nearly as aged as 30 years. The tea itself was pretty high grade, and tastes that way with enough complexity. Sourness could be due to a few things, but it generally has to do with moisture, or so I was told. This is perhaps fixable with some proper treatment in the roaster, because the sourness does go away after a while. If I brew the tea lightly, it might not even show up at all. In fact, that’s I think how I’m going to drink the rest of this — brewed light, maybe even in a cup with water added, and see how it turns out. In a gaiwan with a heavy hand, it’s not pleasant enough, certainly not for the price.

This is what the tea looks like when wet…. still beautiful

Compare it to yesterday’s cheap baozhong

You can see there’s a difference in the hue of the leaves, and obviously, baozhongs are not tightly rolled like this tea today. Still… in terms of aged oolong, this one has failed.

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Benchmark teas

October 11, 2007 · 3 Comments

Quality, in my opinion anyway, is all relative. Nobody is insane if everybody is insane. Likewise, no tea is bad if all tea is bad (or good). Good and bad, I think, are entirely relative terms — and so in order to assign “good” and “bad”, one needs a scale.

There are some teas that I have that I drink for the purpose of setting standards. They are usually not great tea, merely ok, most likely cheap, predictable, and easily obtainable. Tea is especially difficult this way, because other than big Western tea makers (say, Twinings) it is hard to get a consistent product. A longjing from shop X this year that sells for $5 for 50g might be good, but the one two months down the road, when they sold out of the first batch and restocked, can be quite different. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience before. Sometimes certain teas also have some oddities – a funny aftertaste, a strange mouthfeel, etc. If drunk often enough, one might not notice, but if one tries many different varieties of the same tea, then it will become obvious that it is the “usual” that is odd, and not all the other ones.

So what I usually try to look for in a “benchmark” kind of tea that helps me set basic standards is basically an average tea… something that isn’t offensive, isn’t too great, and will allow me to judge other teas by.

The tea I drank today I got for this purpose, or at least when I got it I hoped I could use it for this purpose. It’s the roasted baozhong that I got. It is probably aged a year or two, but basically without aging. I can still taste the firing, and the tea is, generally speaking, not great, but fair and does the job. It doesn’t have off flavours, most importantly it isn’t sour, it is relatively smooth, has that Taiwanese oolong aftertaste, but still has a nice yun and can be enjoyed on its own terms. Good for benchmarking purposes.

The reason I drank this today is because I intend to try out the few aged Taiwanese oolongs I’ve collected since I got here, and I want something cheap and basic and relatively unaged to compare it against. If, say, a purported 15 years old Dongding outperforms this roasted baozhong only slightly (if at all), but costs a few times more… then that Dongding, unless it has some truly interesting quality, is not worth the trouble. I know some of the stuff I’ve gotten are not terribly good, but you have to have multiple points in order to construct a scale, and I am starting with the first one today.

I’m still deciding on what to drink tomorrow. There are at least four options… hmmm

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Long live the Republic

October 10, 2007 · 4 Comments

Today is Double Ten — 10th day of the 10th month, which is the National Day for the Republic of China. Do not confuse this with October 1st, which is the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Confusing, perhaps, especially if you haven’t figured out the rather convoluted history of China’s past century, but an important distinction this is.

On 10th October, 1911, a bunch of young officers in Wuchang (a part of contemporary Wuhan in central China) started an uprising that eventually caused a domino effect that brought about the fall of the Qing dynasty, and with it, 2000 years of imperial rule in China. Although the name Republic of China is now under considerable debate in Taiwan, there’s no realistic way of dropping it any time soon, since it is essentially the most important defense against an invasion from the PRC, oddly enough. Should the government here ever decide to, for example, change the name to the Republic of Taiwan, missiles will fly over the Taiwan strait and all hell will break loose. Yet, this year at the celebrations, the president, who hails from the party that favours eventual independence, didn’t even mention Republic of China a single time. It’s a political mess that nobody knows how to solve.

The division of the country which happened when the Kuomingtang forces fled the mainland and retreated to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the communists in 1949 meant that there were two governments that claimed China as its own. This issue has persisted to this day, and is the reason why, say, wrappers with “Yunnan” printed on them couldn’t be shipped to Taiwan with the tea cakes they came with, or why yixing pots with “Yixing, China” stamped on the bottom had to be smuggled in using fishing boats during the 60s and 70s. While things are a bit more open now, flying from Taiwan to Shanghai, which should only be an hour direct, still takes you through a detour to Hong Kong, Macau, or Okinawa, and shipping stuff across the little Taiwan strait is still never a guaranteed thing.

Still, the division probably kept tea culture alive in a way that it wouldn’t have otherwise. While China went through the turbulent 60s and 70s, Taiwan was making quite a name in the tea trade with its high mountain oolong and developments of new techniques and processes to make tea. After China opened up in the late 70s, many Taiwanese tea makers eventually made their way across and provided expertise in tea making, capital, and marketing. Tenfu, probably the biggest privately owned retailer of tea in China, is run by a Taiwanese businessman, and they’re hardly alone. I was told that many farms in Fujian are Taiwanese owned, or at least have some Taiwanese involvement. Many well known Yixing pot dealers are Taiwanese. In the mid-90s, it was largely because of Taiwanese interest in puerh that drove it to what it is today. Whether that’s good or bad is up for individual assessment, but one cannot deny that it has been an important and close relationship between the two sides in terms of tea production and changes in the market. The fact that both sides share the same language and heritage (while some might argue this part) has made this all possible.

How this will eventually be resolved, nobody knows, but until then, let’s drink a cup in celebration, and hope for the eventual and most importantly peaceful resolution of a 60 years old problem.

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Beer substitute

October 9, 2007 · 3 Comments

It’s baseball season here, and the fans are all eagerly watching every game by the hometown team, the New York Yankees. As you can imagine, their (yet again) early postseason exit has been met with some grief.

I’m not joking when I say hometown team being the Yankees. See, Wang Chien-ming, one of the Yankees’ starting pitcher, is a Taiwanese, so they have adopted the Yankees as a sort of hometeam. The Yankees are covered here with zeal, and the game commentators have the obvious Yankees bias that one cannot miss. Every game they play is newsworthy. In fact, I suspect the coverage of the Yankees here is probably even better than in New York itself. Games are played live in the morning (night in New York) and replayed at prime time the same night. When I come home, sometimes I turn on the TV while getting ready to brew tea, and more often than not, I stumble upon the baseball game on the tube and stay there. That, and the news shows are the only things really worth watching in Taiwan.

As I watched the Yankees get kicked out of this year’s postseason with glee, I was brewing the 2006 fall Bangwei tea that I got last year in Beijing. I’ve mentioned this tea a few times before, so I won’t bother again. It’s a solid tea and I wonder why I didn’t get more of it, since it was only something like $12 a cake for what is obviously a good old tree tea. Now you can’t even get maocha at these prices. Sigh. I should’ve bought a tong, or three.

Drinking tea while watching baseball though made me think that I probably wasn’t the only person in Taipei doing the same thing today. In fact, I’m quite sure there are others out there who were probably drinking some tea, perhaps some Taiwanese oolong, with a few friends while watching the game together in agony as the Yankees simply couldn’t hit and Wang pitched a disastrous inning before getting chased off the mound. In the US, it would’ve probably been some nasty macrobrew. Here, it’s a brew, but not that kind. This isn’t to say beer isn’t consumed — I’m sure it’s consumed in large amounts, but I think alternatives are entirely acceptable too.

I remember YP telling me she used to drink Red Label with her husband while watching the World Cup on TV. This was in 1990, I think, when that wasn’t such a ridiculous proposition. Then, the tea got more expensive and it seemed unwise to drink something like that while just watching a game, so she switched to a Yellow Label. Obviously, that’s a little too rich now as well. I’m sure she’s moved on to some 80s tea. While what I was drinking tonight was much, much more humble… I couldn’t help but feel the same. If only….

Oh well, at least I have two cakes of this.

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So…brewing parameters

October 4, 2007 · 6 Comments

This was meant for yesterday, but it’s good for any day.

Many blogs out there post their brewing parameters. I did once upon a time, and once in a long while, I still do. Generally though, I don’t. But I feel like I should explain how I actually brew my tea… in case it’s not always obvious.

I generally use a high amount of dry leaves, relatively speaking. I think for a young puerh, these days my gaiwan is about 1/3 full of dry leaves. For Wuyi, it’s 3/4, and for high roasted or aged oolongs, about 1/2. It of course depends on the day, and what I feel like, but those are generally the parameters. Infusions are kept extremely short… maybe a few seconds, and it barely lengthens — until I notice it can use a bit more time, which varies for the tea. Water temperature is generally very hot. I never use a timer, and generally don’t use a scale (although sometimes I do use one to prevent me from misjudging compressed tea and how much I’m actually drinking).

I find this works for me. Bitterness disappears in this way. I tried an experiment yesterday with the Baisui Chawang from Yangqing Hao. I used a smaller amount of leaf and longer infusion times, more typical, I think, of how many others brew their young puerh. I find it to be rougher, more bitter, and I didn’t get that incredibly interesting note early in the first few infusions. Instead, the tea is very non-interesting, at least compared to the last time I tried it. Perhaps I should’ve used cooler water, which would’ve helped with the bitterness and the roughness, but lower temperature would further dampen the complexity factor.

I’m not saying mine’s the best way. There are certainly merits to the other, but I do think that for me, this works well. I’ve recommended this to a few people, and I think, for example, that Hobbes found brewing one of the samples I sent him this way brought out much better results than otherwise. I think it brings out the nuances of different teas more clearly, and also their complexity better than otherwise. Using very few leaves and low temperatures can make almost anything taste decently good, but it is impossible to tell which one’s the better tea and which one’s worse when made that way.

There are, of course, teas that I don’t brew this way. I brew my greens (the few times I drink them, anyway) very light. I also tend to brew my light oolongs with a light hand. But since I don’t drink much of those anyway…. it almost doesn’t matter these days.

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Why do we bother with puerh?

September 26, 2007 · 4 Comments

I drank some loose, wet stored puerh that I bought on the cheap in Hong Kong. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

What I increasingly realized, at least for myself, is that I really am not all that interested in aged puerh right now — aged puerh that are aged by other people and sold at very high prices. I am certainly not disputing that a Red Label or some such are really good tea. I am, however, not convinced that it’s worth that much money for me, other than perhaps in small doses of an ounce or so.

I’ve had a number of aged cakes ranging from stuff from the 90s to stuff from the 20s. I do think that if it’s a good tea, it can be incredibly good. What I think is not true, however, is that everything aged is good. One of the teas I had this past weekend was a late 80s, somewhat wet stored 7542. It’s probably about $300, which isn’t all too expensive, all things considered, but it really wasn’t that good. I mean, sure, it’s better than the loose puerh I just drank…. but it’s also many times the price of this tea. At $300 per 350g, I can buy Wuyi yancha of extremely quality and which I will enjoy much more than this mediocre 7542. A better 7542 from a few years before, and which was stored better, was double the price. Sure, it’s nice…. but is it really worth $600?

I think I am hardly alone in thinking this. My friend YP, who’s been drinking and storing tea for more than 15 years now, said back in the day, you drank Red Label all the time. It was (relatively) expensive, but still affordable. You whip it out once in a while. Then she saw how the prices skyrocket, and thought…. maybe I should save this up, and started drinking Yellow Labels. Now, even that’s getting a bit pricey for her, and she still has, I believe, a few tongs of it up her sleeve.

One of the things Aaron Fisher said during our meeting was that good tea come to you — you don’t always have to look for it. I agree with that part — some of the best teas I’ve had are from other people. I think he’s had the same experience. In the current market conditions…. who really buys whole cakes of this stuff? Mainland nouveaux riche, obviously, but anybody else? Those are the people driving the prices up these days — Chinese who recently got fabulously wealthy, combined with an urge to discover some sort of “traditional” culture, however invented that may be, and a desire to display that wealth, as well as their high taste, in a conspicuous but not obnoxious fashion…. and tea is a perfect combination of all those things. Whether or not they succeed in that, especially the non-obnoxious factor, is another matter. What is obvious though is that demand for this stuff is still going up.

So combined with an ever expanding market for such old things is a relatively small and shrinking supply. Shrinking, because these teas from 90s and earlier are only going to get consumed over time through drinking or attrition, and because they aren’t going to be produced any longer. If one can afford it, buying some might be a wise investment. For the pure drinking like me though…. I’m really not sure if it’s worth all that fuss. Perhaps if I were not a poor grad student, it might seem less of an issue, but even then, I don’t think many (I’m not saying all – I’ll gladly buy some of YP’s Zhongcha traditional character!) of these aged teas are really worth their salt. They’re in demand not always because of their taste… but because of market conditions. That’s a very different thing. Nor, do I think, is it a good argument that “if you don’t buy it now, it’ll be 20% more in a year!”. I am drinking tea, not money, and if the tea itself isn’t worth current year prices to me, it doesn’t matter how much it will appreciate — it’s still not worth it, unless, of course, I plan to sell it again.

But there are many other vehicles of investment that are both safer and probably better. Tea is actually not a great investment tool, monetarily speaking. It’s very illiquid, runs a high risk of damage/destruction, and also has an unknown potential for growth. While prices of older teas are high because of their limited supply, the reverse is true for stuff that were made after maybe 2002/2003 or so. Supply has skyrocketed, and nowadays there are many people with literally tonnes of tea sitting in some warehouse, aging, hoping it will give returns similar to those old teas…. but I think the vast majority of it won’t, simply because there’s a lot of it now, and the quality of those teas are not going to justify the high returns.

So why do we even bother? Why not just buy these teas 10 years from now when you know which one’s good and which one isn’t, and in the meantime, park the money somewhere else? It’s a compelling argument, really, but I think, for me at least, part of the fun is to figure out what works, what doesn’t work, what tea will be good, and what tea won’t be. Watching them grow old, trying them over time…. and knowing that should you score something really good now, the price of it could, indeed, be quite expensive… it’s not so much the economic returns, but rather the elation at having spotted a treasure when it was young. I think that is why I bother with all this work, of going to places looking for good tea, of trying to find the right bargains. I guess hobbies, by definition, are not entirely rational.

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Teashop archetypes

September 15, 2007 · 6 Comments

A collection of archetypes of tea stores in Greater China, not exhaustive:

The Grand Old Store — stores that have been around for years, maybe decades. Often run by old men wearing wifebeaters. They often look quite glum (the store, that is), with old decor and a counter that is quite worn, maybe with an old cash register (the mechanical kind) to boot. They deal mostly in wholesale business, and so often have an attitude when a youngish person walks in poking around looking at things. They honestly couldn’t care less if you buy your 150g of tea or not, but they will, however, brew stuff for you to try if you ask. Not the easiest to walk into and shop, but can be quite rewarding, because they could be cheap, and they are often cultural experiences in their own right.

The 7-elevens — stores that are just around the corner from some residential area, serving primarily the locals. They generally don’t have very good tea, and prices are not necessarily cheap, because they’re the final link in the tea food chain before the consumers (who are often not very knowledgable and just want some tea) buy them. You’re not likely to find good stuff here, although sometimes for things like puerh it could be possible to find bargains in such places. Not likely to hold much interest for the visitor who doesn’t live in the area.

The art galleries — stores that are more or less selling culture, not tea. Often well decorated, with pretty salesgirls clad in qipao and that kind of thing (substitute qipao for kimono when in Japan). Prices are high. Tea can be good, but that’s actually no guarantee because the owners who open these things often claim to be experts, but I’ve found some to be less than expert sometimes. They are often a joy to drink tea in, but not always a joy to buy tea from. They will tell you a pretty story, with fancy settings, etc, and entice you to pay premium bucks for something that you can buy next door for half the price. A few places in Yongkang in Taipei, for example, fall into this category.

The one-man-show — stores where the owner lives in it, practically (or sometimes, literally). Sometimes these expand into bigger shops, maybe even with a branch or two, as the Best Tea House eventually did, or they just stay small and stay slim, as many others do. Tea selection and prices depend highly on the owner’s preferences, and it seems success in this sort of venture require a good bit of luck and definitely some skill. Prices are often not low at these places, but selections can also be very good, as I think it does take some dedication to tea and the tea business to actually do this kind of thing with a passion (and spend so much time on it). I went to a store like this today, and got some interesting things. Not too cheap, but could be very good. I find these are often the most enjoyable to visit, because you can really get into a conversation with the owner about the teas they sell, etc, and spend hours chatting over some good tea. Many shops in Maliandao are also of this type, although there, knowledge of tea varies very considerably.

The retailer pretending to be wholesaler — this is mostly a mainland phenomenon, I think, where you have bona-fide tea markets where dozens, or even hundreds, of tea shops gather together. They all say they’re wholesalers, but often they’re just retailers pretending to be wholesaler, trying to get you to think you’re paying a better price than you actually are. Some are genuinely doing wholesale while also retailing, as my friend L’s store is, but many are very dependent on the retail business. They overlap with the one-man-show sometimes, but not all the time, as some of these are started by non-resident owners who are just in the business of tea without the interest, and staffed by (often) country girls who are just here for a job in the city.

The fake teahouses — these are places where they’re either a restaurant, a cafe, or some other such thing, but calling themselves a teahouse to make themselves seem higher class, more cultured, etc. Tea selection can be iffy, but can have some gems sometimes. Prices are universally high, of course, especially if you sit down and drink stuff. They are more into selling food and snacks, and tea is just part of the menu.

The real teahouses — these are places that do focus on tea as their primary business. If you are generous, you would include places like Chunshui Tang where they mostly sell bubble tea. If not, then it limits the range to only places like Wisteria in Taipei (there are others like it, but it is the most famous). You go there to drink tea, maybe with a few friends, but you don’t go to eat, or snack, or just hang out. Drinking tea is your purpose there. Selection can be ok to great, and decor often is pleasant. Difference between this and the art galleries is mainly on the focus — whether it seems to do more sit-in drinking or more take-out.

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Infidelity

September 11, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I am not terribly faithful when it comes to drinking tea. You, the observers, can probably tell that I drink a different thing every day. For me, that’s part of the fun — to try new things, to experiment with something different every day. I know some people do it with food, others with movies, etc. Tea, however, has that added advantage that no two sessions are ever exactly the same, at least for me.

I went back to the aged shuixian I have today, and it tasted quite different than last time. It’s less heavy — more airy and aromatic. It opened with an incredible sweetness, but then faded a bit to a dull, slightly boring tea. When I overbrewed it near the end though, the sweetness came back (which means I probably brewing a touch too fast in the middle). There was also something creamy about it at the end. I don’t know what that is.

It’s not a terribly exciting tea, but there’s always a sense of something new… some sort of discovery when one makes a cup. Maybe this is why I don’t use a timer (I tried putting those times down in my blog a few times…. and realized it’s really not for me to do it). It’s more fun that way. I can probably make more consistent cups if I always use a scale (which is mostly used these days to make sure I don’t overstuff my pots with young puerh). I think when one worries too much about the details… how hot exactly the water is, how long exactly the water’s been in the cup… one loses focus on the more important things, which is to relax and enjoy a cup of tea, preferably with friends, but even when alone, there’s much joy to be had.

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Where everybody knows your name

August 25, 2007 · 2 Comments

I went book shopping today… except the bookstore was closed :(. I was bummed, since it’s a marvelous academic bookstore tucked away on the 10th floor of an apartment building.

The second stop was to find another tea shop around the bookstore, so I went back to the Yongkang area, since it wasn’t too far. I took Corax’s recommendation and went to Off-Chaism. I could’ve picked from the other places on the list, but figured I’ll work my way down.

The store is unassuming — you can’t really tell what they do from the outside. I walked in and nobody was there. We chatted a little, I mentioned Corax (who they remember fondly) and then we were off to drinking…

While trying various teas, mostly Wuyi yancha at first, people kept coming in and out. It’s obvious that most of them are regulars. One guy came in and started a scathing critique of a show of teaware being exhibited at the National History Museum, which I was not aware of and will now definitely go look. Another man came in, obviously a regular, but just sat down and didn’t say a word. In fact, for the most part he didn’t say much of anything until the first man left. Apparently they have a history… which I discovered when he finally started speaking. Then, a couple came in, and were there to pick up some stuff they had ordered. Some people emerged from downstairs who seemed to have been doing yoga or something while I was drinking tea upstairs. Couple A left, and couple B walked in, them from another city in Taiwan but have been living in Taipei for a while. etc etc…

You get the idea. This reminds me of the line in the opening song “where everybody knows your name” for the tv show Cheers. This place is, indeed, a place for the group of people who discovered it to go and hang out, to meet people they know, and to generally have a good time. A few people bought things, but others just went for the sake of going — in between errands, stopping by for an hour for a cup of tea or some such. In some ways, I was an anamoly — somebody who sits there for hours drinking various things. There were a few tourists who happened to drop by, but by and large they left pretty quickly. I was the odd man out.

It’s the same reason why I keep going back to the Best Tea House or Xiaomei’s shop in Maliandao. I rarely buy things there. In fact, I’ve almost never bought anything at Xiaomei’s, and I rarely buy things from the BTH. I go mostly to chat with people, some I know, some I don’t, but always a good time and an interesting discussion. Teahouses have always served this sort of function, and as my friend Joe’s paper shows… Taipei teahouses have an interesting history that made them what they are today.

I probably won’t have enough time here to really get to know a few places really well, but this place, I will probably go back again.

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