A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘shopping’

Fussing about teaware

June 19, 2009 · 4 Comments

Pardon the ranting.  Skip reading if you wish.

I keep seeing these topics posted on various forums about “is XYZ teaware safe to use?”, “does Yixing contain lead?”, and it’s really starting to bother me.

I understand we are all worried about the safety of our food, drink, and whatever else we put in our mouth.  Everyone is rightly concerned about it.  I also understand that with a new object that one has not dealt with before, it is entirely legitimate to ask these questions.  However, inevitably there will be people who will say “yes, they do contain XYZ and you shouldn’t use it at all or you will suffer the consequences” or something along those lines.  That’s what bothers me.

Let’s say we’re talking about yixing pots. Lots of people have asked in various places if they might contain nasty chemicals, lead, other heavy metals, dyes, etc that might be unsafe for consumption.  That in itself is a very legitimate thing to ask.  After all, you are drinking the tea, and since tea is mildly acidic it does make it more possible that some stuff might be leaching out of the pot, if there is anything there to begin with.

Then people will start suggesting that maybe you should try those lead test kits to see if the yixing pot has lead in it, or to only buy from reputable dealers, or to not buy low priced pots as they are likely to be bad for you, etc….

Let’s go through these one by one.

1) I’m not particularly sure exactly how effective each of these lead test kits work, but from the directions I’ve seen for testing ceramics or pottery, what you’re supposed to do is to soak the piece in vinegar, and then test the vinegar to see if any lead has leached out.  Now, I’ve never tested the pH for tea, but I am pretty sure whatever it is, it is a lot higher (i.e. not nearly as acidic) as vinegar.  I suppose you can do the same as use tea to soak the piece and then test the tea, but even then, the only way to really simulate drinking tea is to test the tea you’re going to drink yourself.  I’d venture to guess that lead leaching is undetectable with any of these test kits in almost all cases.  I’ve always suggested people to try this with black raku ware, which is known to have lead, as a control.  So far, I still don’t know anybody who has responded to that when they say “oh my, these things will kill you with lead poisoning!”

2) As for reputable dealers – I am 100% sure that none of the people who sell pots online or offline have bothered to test the pots for lead in the method prescribed above.  I remember a certain tea vendor who sells through his blog “testing” some of his yixing pots with these test kits, but only by rubbing the kit on the surface of the pot.  That’s not how you do it, and whatever negative result is moot.  So, reputable dealer really have no idea what’s in their pot if you are talking potentially harmful chemicals.  If you don’t believe me, try asking.  The usual answer you’d get is probably “I only source my pots from trusted sources”, which basically means “trust me”.

3) Lower priced pots are indeed more likely to be made with fake yixing clay, have shoe polish on them, etc, but as I’ve always said, a high priced item is not guaranteed to be good at all.  You can have a fake yixing pot made with bad and harmful clay that is selling for $1000.  Do not judge items on the price they’re selling for.  It makes no sense to assume that price alone has anything to do with anything other than a merchant’s profit margin.

The point of all this is not that you should not buy anything.  Rather, the point I’m trying to make is that most likely there is simply no good reason to worry at all.  The harmful combination of 30g of fat on 120g of sugar in that piece of cheesecake you just ate is probably far worse than whatever trace amount of lead you got in the tea.  Or, for that matter, the old lead pipes in your apartment building in New York city that still haven’t been changed.  Or…. the list goes on.

If you think what you’re using is not safe, then stop using it.  If you think it’s fine, then don’t worry about it.  Worrying about a bowl or a pot that had tea in it for a few minutes at most is really not a good way to spend your time.  And those people who keep harping on how China seems to be the only country that produces unsafe goods (nevermind that most goods, safe or unsafe, all seem to be produced in China these days) should just keep their fear-mongering to themselves.

Thanks for listening to my ranting.

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Logic problem

June 14, 2009 · 8 Comments

Everybody have seen this before

All dogs have four legs
My cat has four legs
Therefore, my cat is a dog

I think we can all spot the problem here — my cat could be a dog, but since not only dogs have four legs, it does not have to be.  In fact, my cat is not a dog because of traits unrelated to the four legs.

Now, let’s try this

All good tea has X
This tea has X
Therefore, this tea is good.

Or

All old teapots has Y
This teapot has Y
Therefore, this teapot is old

Now, these statements can all be true — they are potentially true.  However, as we’ve seen in the first problem, they do not have to be true.  Quite the contrary, in fact.

A real life example that is widely used is this

All old tree puerh leaves have thick veins
This tea has thick veins
Therefore, this is an old tree puerh leaf

At one point I subscribed to this theory, or at least strongly entertained the possibility of it, but upon further reflection and observation, I have found this to be untrue.  I have seen teas that are obviously from large plantations (big factory stuff) that exhibit thick veins, therefore disproving this theory that thick veins prove a tree’s age.

It is pretty easy to fall into the trap of following along one of these flawed deductive reasoning, usually from a reputable seller or vendor or “expert” and then just taking the statement at face value and not thinking through the logical implications of the deductive process.  While it certainly may have been true that only old tree leaves have thick veins, there is no guarantee that this was the case without extensive evidence that all other kinds of tea tree leaves have no thick veins.

Another one

All old teapots are tea-stained
This teapot is tea-stained
Therefore this teapot is old.

Obviously it doesn’t have to be true again.

Now, with other supporting evidence, these statements could be true.  If we assume that zhuni is now extinct and has been for decades, for example (a point that is hotly debated everywhere), then we can probably say

All zhuni pots are made from clay that is extinct
This teapot is a zhuni pot
Therefore this teapot is made from clay that is extinct

Ok, that works, but if you change it to

All zhuni clay is decades old
This teapot is made with zhuni
Therefore this teapot is decades old

Well, somebody may point out that a potter may have harvested a lot of zhuni clay before it went into extinction, and is in fact still producing new pots using this old clay.  So, even though your clay is decades old, the pot is brand new.  In theory, this is possible.  In practice, how anybody can store (securely, I might add) tonnes of clay that seems inexhaustible is questionable.  Either way, the above statements do not convey the entire argument that will have to go into debating whether a pot is new or old.  Using one small trait as its definining characteristic is not exactly reliable if you don’t know all the other relevant facts.

This kind of reasoning works better in the other direction, actually.  Let say somebody devised a new way of pressing puerh cakes that embosses a mark on the cake itself

All embossed cakes are new
This cake is embossed
Therefore this cake is new

That would work since we know that the embossing process is new.  The first line should actually read

All embossed cakes can only be new

Then there’s no doubt as to what’s going on.

The problem with processes doesn’t work the other way though.

All old cakes were stone pressed
This cake is stone pressed
Therefore this cake is old.

Just because people used to do things a certain way doesn’t mean that somebody living now cannot recreate the same process, in this case pressing tea with stone moulds.  In fact, we know this is happening everywhere as tea makers revived the stone-pressed cake since the 1990s.

I guess the point of this post is — beware of these logic deductions based on one or two traits of whatever good that is being sold.  We all know that the job of the vendor is to sell you things.  It’s very easy to fall into the trap (as I did with the thick veins thing) of just assuming this to be true and then not realizing that it, in fact, is not.

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Cost effectiveness

April 24, 2009 · 9 Comments

I thought it might be interesting to list what I think are the best ways to improve the cup you drink, day in, day out, arranged in order of cost effectiveness

1) Skills — skills are free, unless you’re paying for lessons (which you shouldn’t). The thing that can most improve your tea in your cup everyday is how you make them, and that, unfortunately, only comes with lots of practice. Taking golf lessons with Tiger Woods won’t make you a better golfer, so similarly, taking tea lessons with some “tea master” won’t necessarily make your tea any better either. It’s all about practice, learning, investigation, understanding, and thinking. With enough time and effort, you can be your own tea master.

2) Water — how exactly you can improve your water depends on your circumstances and what teas you make, but in general, improvements to water is much cheaper than trying to improve the other things. As the only other ingredient in tea (aside from the leaves of course), it makes a huge difference in what comes out from the other end of your pot

3) Tea — yes, the leaves. I think this part is pretty obvious. Remember — good tea is rarely cheap, but cheap tea can be good, and most importantly, expensive teas are not guaranteed to be good at all.

4) Wares — kettles, pots, pans, dishes, cups, whatever. This is by far the least cost effective way to improve your cup. The benefits (if any) they offer are usually marginal, and not that obvious if you’re newer to tea. It also clouds other things and can mask problems in your brewing technique, etc, and so it’s better to get the basics down before trying to upgrade the wares. They are also expensive and unpredictable. To continue the golf analogy – using the best clubs won’t make you a good player. It can help a good player, but if you’re not good enough to use that help, it’s just wasted money

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Retail therapy

April 2, 2009 · 1 Comment

I’m a bit stressed out these days, having to finish my dissertation and all, so I bought stuff to relieve stress. This is the latest shipment from Puerh Shop. Jim, the proprietor of the store, generously threw in a few extra packs of samples. I haven’t had any puerh newer than 07. This should be interesting.

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Public opinion on Teavana

February 7, 2009 · 2 Comments

It was an interesting experience to see that my post about Teavana has attracted the attention of those who either work for the company, or are in some ways closely related to it. In the last few days the post has gotten comments from some who are quite obviously aligned with the company. Some have self-identified as such, others merely claiming that they are customers or somehow sympathetic to the company in one way or another.

The timing was interesting, as it was quite a while after I initially posted about it. I’m guessing somehow because it quickly became the #9 hit to a google search of the term “Teavana”, it has gotten the attention of those who work there and they are eager to air their side of the story.

Some of the claims made by the commenters are that the tetsubins are 100% made in Japan only, with none from China. Others claim that they are doing a service to the community by making tea more mainstream, essentially getting people started on the slippery slope to tea addiction, which I, for one, am happy to indulge.

I don’t have problems with places that sell flavoured tea or sweetened tea per se. I think that’s fine, and in fact, very healthy. People don’t always like their tea bitter and esoteric. If it somehow makes it more palatable, sure. Lots of culture drink their teas flavoured and with lots of added sugar. That, in and of itself, does not a sin make.

What I do have problems with is the way they present their goods, and ultimately, the disparity between the claimed quality and benefits of the tea, and the actual utility that one might actually derive from them. Claiming that different teas have different health benefits has no scientific basis at all, as far as I am concerned, but that is extremely obvious from all the literature — that somehow different kinds of tea (black, white, oolong, etc) have different properties. A novice looking through their catalogue will think they need to buy all the different types to get all the benefits they claim they have. That’s about as fantastic a claim as I’ve ever heard when it comes to tea.

As for the teaware — there were definitely tetsubins I saw that day that were Chinese in origin, as far as I am able to tell. I do, however, allow for the possibility that I could be mistaken, and that it was simply a few Japanese tetsubins that somehow look extremely like the cheaper, less well made Chinese ones. Perhaps it’s the poor Yixing pots and expensive pricing that bothers me more. I can’t really tell once I’m in there.

Lastly, it seems that I am not alone, and that many others have a problem with Teavana as well.

This is my last post on the subject, as I don’t have any interest in furthering discussion on this. I turned off comments on my previous post on the subject, because the tone of the comments turned increasingly hostile and accusatory. Should it happen here, I will do the same.

Thanks for reading, and pardon the interruption.

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Teavana

January 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I hate Teavana

I used to think that it’s ok, they sell tea, they are trying to promote the drink just like anybody else…. and the thinking was, the more people there are who drink tea, the better.

Now, I’m not so sure.

I happened to stop by one today in the mall, so I figured, why not, I’ll go take a look. First of all, of course, there is the extremely overpriced teapots — such as $80 ugly 16oz yixing pots that are obviously machine made and very “oriental” in a negative way. Then you have the cheap Chinese made tetsubins that are really unsuitable for anything in particular. Then you have the $30 gaiwan that is far too large and flat for real use (it’s a breakage waiting to happen). Then you have the tea…

Oh the “tea”…

They always have teas out to let you sample. I figured I’d try one. This one was what they called “Utopian Jade Oolong” with “Roobois Key Lime”. How you blend the two together, I don’t know…. but I had about half a sip of it and I nearly threw up. The stuff tasted most like a fruit syrup of some sort — there was nothing “tea” about this blend, and everything sugary about it. The flavouring is obviously some artificial crap, and is just disgusting.

I picked up their catalogue, and found that Utopian Jade Oolong is, in fact, a mix of some cheap oolong tea and red raspberries and strawberries — probably dried and sugared to the nth degree.

This is why I have a problem with them — if they’re just trying to sell good, honest tea (and there are a few things on the catalogue that might qualify — if it weren’t so overpriced) then I am perfectly fine with them. With what they have right now though, this is no more than a sugar loaded soft drink pretending to be healthy (antioxidants, “good for your health” are everywhere on the catalogue). It’s not, and it’s shameful.

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Happy new year!

January 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Happy new year to everybody! I hope lots of good tea await you all in 2009.

After a relatively short 21 hours trip from Hong Kong back here (I expected 24), I am breaking out some of my recent acquisitions on this trip. The problem with visiting family, as nice as it is, is that you sometimes end up having no time at all to do the things that you want done while in places like Hong Kong and Korea. Almost all my time, especially meals, was spent with family. There’s nothing wrong with that, except it means no time to hit teashops, or very little, anyway.

I did manage to go to a few places and buy some stuff, and since getting married is a great scam for receiving free tea, I got some tea as well as part of the bargain. Among the stuff I bought

1) 600g of some wet stored pu, in the form of broken bings. Cheap reliable everyday kind of tea…. drinking it right now and enjoying it.
2) 70g of bug shit tea – entertainment value
3) 600g of some aged oolong. Not the highest quality stuff, but it’s stuff that I like, so heck….

Then there’s the requisite free tea of various sorts….
1) four tongs from a very generous friend of my parents’, two are from the late 90s and two of more recent vintage. More on that story later, although I left them in Hong Kong
2) another bing from my friend L in Beijing
3) Two small boxes of some sort of oolong
4) four tins of some British tea

I think that will all tide me over quite well for a while…. until the next trip anyway.

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Finding tea in Korea

December 27, 2008 · 4 Comments

I don’t know what Toki does, but I remember when I first came here in Korea quite a few years ago, the going was tough.  Finding tea in Korea is not as easy as it seems, given all the teaware that they make.  You do start wondering, after a while, where all the Korean tea is, because they seem few and far between, whereas you can find Korean teaware pretty easily.

For somebody who comes from Hong Kong, where caffeinated tea can be found everywhere and where the default is to wash your food down with a little infused camellia sinensis, Korea can be rough.  I remember when I could get a real cup of tea in a very decent restaurant.  That was in Seoul.  Here in Pusan, it seems like the situation hasn’t changed that much.  Mind you, this is not to say that you can’t find any tea in Korea… you can.  Much of the time, however, they are teabags, and they are only offered if you look for it.  Coffee is the preferred drink here, and finding a regular cup of tea that will scratch that itch when you’re addicted to the stuff is not easy.

There also seem to be those nice tea stores that dot the city, as I’ve passed by a few signs that advertise such establishments while riding a car, but until I’ve got some time to go roam the place, I’ll have to settle with darjeeling teabags.  Why didn’t I bring my own tea?

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Christmas shopping

December 24, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Between the myriad family activities and trying to recover from the jetlag, I did manage to pick up some tea — some aged oolong and some puerh, as well as a bit of bug shit tea. Anyway….. more later, gotta run again 🙂

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Price report

October 23, 2008 · 2 Comments

I’ve been talking to my friend L in Beijing recently, and he told me that the price of maocha in Yunnan has once again fallen to reasonable levels. The price of regular plantation tea is back where they always were — in the range of at most $2-3 USD per jin (500g). For old tree tea that are not from the top areas, he thinks they’re more like $20 per jin. That, I suppose, is good news.

The not as good news is of course the fact that many of these old tree teas, which is what most people want anyway, are increasingly being locked up by individuals who have long term contacts with the farmers If you’re a random guy going on a tourist trip, it is very unlikely that they will bring you the good stuff, even if you’re accompanied by friends who have strong connections. They simply don’t have the interest in selling you top of the line stuff, and moreover, they KNOW they can probably get away with giving you lesser quality tea, and will do so. The friends or local contacts you might have may turn a blind eye, mostly because they don’t want to sabotage their relationship with said farmers.

In other news, as those of you who pay attention to such news must know, the Chinese Yuan is now almost 20% higher than they were in 2006 when exchanged against the dollar. Now it’s 6.8 yuan per dollar, which means that all tea coming from China will automatically cost that much more compared to two years ago, other factors notwithstanding. The Japanese Yen (for those of you who like grassy greens) is about the same — in the past two years we’ve gone from 120 yen to a dollar to today’s 97 yen per dollar…. not pretty, shall we say.

Obviously, not all these costs will necessarily pass on to the consumer, but I’d imagine a large part of it will. Since we can expect the Chinese Yuan to continue its appreciation against the dollar, if you’re buying tea today from China and keeping it around, it’s not a terrible investment considering your other alternatives these days…

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