A Tea Addict's Journal

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.

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.

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.

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 🙂

I’m just curious about this. Everybody knows that we’re in the middle of a financial meltdown, with the credit markets in chaos and LIBOR rates that are through the roof, banks (or in the case of Iceland, countries) that are nearly insolvent and fear gripping everybody from Asia to South America.

Now, tea was an essential in a Chinese household, but much less so for an American or a European one. So my question to you is — are you cutting back on tea consumption/purchases? How about teaware, which is, obviously, much less of an essential good. Or is it more or less the same as before?

Just wondering as a former student of economics if this sort of thing trickles down to tea consumption at all.