A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘travel’

Tea meeting in Cambridge

March 8, 2007 · 2 Comments

I went and met up with Dogma and D today at Royal East. Dogma has already written about his previous experience at Royal East with Corax here. A scholar from my school who goes by the net name of Indra also joined us.

We met over lunch and chatted, with Dogma brewing up some darjeeling in those typical big pots of Chinese restaurants. It was rather strange drinking darjeeling at a Chinese restaurant, but it was good darjeeling.

When we were about done with dinner… we all started motioning for our teas. I pulled out one of the teas I bought from Hong Kong… the loose, broken cake that is well aged and rather smooth. It is a Guangyungong cake, vintage unknown. I suspect we have 30 years old pieces mixed in it, but also stuff of more recent vintage in there. Wet stored, I think, but mellow and sweet. Dogma commented on the clarity of the liquor despite the dark colour, and indeed, the colour of the tea is rather attractive. We drank it from the big pots in big cups, sort of like how you’re supposed to drink puerh. Puerh is better when you’re drinking in big gulps rather than tiny sips.

A few rounds after, Indra pulled out his traveling set, which includes a gaiwan, 6 small cups, and a small fairness cup. It’s quite handy, actually. He then pulled out the tea he was going to make — a rougui, medium roasted. He brews it in a rather unique way, one I haven’t seen before. The gaiwan is filled with tea leaves — I’d say 90% full. He pours the water in carefully, and waits…. for a long time. Whereas I would generally pour out the tea within 5-10 seconds, he waited at least half a minute with the first infusion, and subsequent infusions were even longer.

The resulting quality of the tea is rather darker than I imagined, mostly because of the long steeping time. It’s a bit rough from the tannins that got released, but full of the roasted flavour. The tea itself would’ve yielded a much weaker brew if brewed quickly. It was definitely interesting to see somebody make tea in a way that is very different from your own.

Meanwhile, we were still gulping down the puerh while getting the occasional rounds of rougui. We chatted about teas and other things, and the owner of the place, Otto, joined us. Dogma had to leave early, and we stayed on for another hour or so before heading out our respective ways.

It was definitely a fun time, and I wish we had more free time to drink teas. Oh well, that will probably have to wait till next time.

When we were leaving the table — requisite fortune cookies plus a lot of used teapots 🙂

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Reading leaves again

March 6, 2007 · 7 Comments

I’m bored, sitting here in EWR (Newark Liberty International Airpot) after what is probably the worst flight I’ve ever had in terms of service, and waiting now for my weather delayed connection to get into town so I can take it and then go back to Boston. I hate flying. You can guess what airline I’m flying by deduction.

So while I’m sitting here, bored, I figured I might as well blog, especially since I have pictures to show you. Thank god for Wifi in the airport (too bad you have to pay here — in HKG the Wifi at the airport is free!).

On the plane I’ve developed the habit of drinking the Yiwu maocha I have if I happen to be carrying it around, and this time on my lovely 14.5 hours flight it was no exception. I was finally starting to feel a bit of the caffeine headache at around 11pm Hong Kong time, after not having had tea for a whole day and some, so I took out my bag, brought it to the galley where the lazy flight attendants were sitting around reading Star!, and I asked for some hot water and put my tea in it.

The tea itself I won’t describe, as there is not much to say — it’s mild, sweet, kinda nice, kinda bland. The water is never hot enough for tea on the plane, so it’s really not a great way to drink tea. Oh well, it still beats the whatever mystery tea they are serving (I think it’s some really bad, overbrewed jasmine — didn’t try it this time).

Anyway, after drinking the tea, I laid out all the tea leaves I used and took some pictures, as it was a good way to kill time, among other things.

Some comparative pics — comments after

For the first two pictures in the above three… you can see two similarly sized leaves that are shaped quite differently. The ones on the left, with the thin, elongated shape and the pointy tip, is what I understand as a typical Yiwu leaf. The ones on the right, with the more rounded shape and no pointy tip, is what I understand to be NOT Yiwu like. I think that sort of shape is much more common in Menghai area leaves… nannuo, banzhang, jingmai, that sort of thing.

The third pic in the above three has a few broken leaves. The one on the top left is really pointy, and is only a tip of what looks to be a very large leaf. The two in the middle… the left one looks more like a Menghai type leaf, while the one on the right looks more like a Yiwu area type leaf. I’m not sure if this is really sceintific to any degree, and supposedly, with older trees, all the leaves look different because they are not planted by human intervention (i.e. not transplanted with branches from older trees). Instead, they were planted long ago using seeds. This means that the teas can have different genetic makeup. However, it does seem that different areas do have different kinds of teas, and so looking at the shape of the leaves can say something about where the teas came from. If I am not mistaken in this case… then I was probably right when I said, long time ago, that I thought this particular maocha tastes slightly confused with a few different kinds of teas mixed in, and not tasting quite like pure Yiwu.

I would really encourage everybody to take pictures of brewed leaves, and post them up. It is especially instructive when in a particular cake that is advertised as “xxx” that you find different kinds of leaves that look drastically different. It might be a sign of blending.

Lastly… a picture of a very nice, very furry bud. This is what I guess you can call “two spears, one flag”. Too bad the flag is slightly broken. I had to unpeel the bud myself to reveal the smaller bud in the middle, so perhaps this is really a “one spear, one flag”. I could sort of see a even smaller bud in there, but couldn’t quite get it out.

Back to waiting…

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Storage problem

March 3, 2007 · 5 Comments

I am looking for a place to store my teas in Hong Kong, and there’s a cabinet in the house that will do the job well, I think. One problem though — it smells of varnish still, mostly because the door is rarely open. What can get rid of the varnish smell quickly? Any thoughts? Will charcoal do it? Should I go buy a bag of charcoal, open it, put it in the cabinet, and so when I return to Hong Kong next time, I can stick my tea (from Beijing) in the cabinet without having to worry about them all smelling like varnish?

I don’t have many days left in Hong Kong, so I might do a little last minute shopping around, although mostly, I am just going to hang out at home. Then it’s back to Cambridge for me.

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Disneyland with niece and dad

February 23, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Which means no tea… until 7pm. I was, needless to say, having a bit of a caffeine withdrawal headache, since 4pm, in fact.

I came back and drank some of the Ying Kee puerh in a cup… it serves the purpose. It’s mostly cooked stuff, I think, with some raw mixed in, and just… well…. it downs well, if nothing else. The other great alternative is drinking some Wuyi tea, with a low amount of leaves in the cup. That also works well.

My girlfriend, who’s Korean, tells me that Koreans don’t have the ability to drink tea with leaves in the cup — apparently to lots of people it’s quite a difficult thing to do. In Hong Kong at least, and definitely in China as well, you learn how to use your teeth to filter out the leaves while getting the liquor into your mouth. With some teas, like biluochun, it’s quite difficult. With others, like Wuyi or puerh, it’s also doable.

At the end of the day…. that’s how most people in China drink their tea.

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A rather eventful day, tea or otherwise

February 22, 2007 · 4 Comments

I started my day early with a breakfast at Lin Heung Lau in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. One of the old style Hong Kong “Teahouses”, it’s a place where you go very early in the morning, sit there for a few hours while reading the paper, order a few dim sums and eating them at a leisurely pace (very very slow — you do not order a whole bunch and chow them down and head out. That’s not the point). You meet people you know and talk to them. You chat with the waiters. You enjoy the tea while you’re there.

This is our remnants (the steamers were taken away by the time I took the picture). Yes, the things on the dish are remains of what were chicken feet. The tea is wet stored puerh. The other people at the table we do not know, but some of the met up with each other, evidently friends of some sort, and were chatting, but they didn’t come together and it was obvious that they didn’t plan on meeting at the place. It’s really a neighbourhood place where people just go and meet others who they know anyway. We saw lots of “Gong Hey Fat Choy” greetings from various people to one another. It was very interesting to go today, and I think I will go again, although I might bring my own tea next time. By the way, the little card on the table says “Table reserved for staff meal — 10:45am”

(Not tea related, but interesting nonetheless) Then after lunch, in a mall, there were teams of lion-dancing people who came to the mall to perform. There’s a website that explains all this in more detail than I should post here, and you can look at it here. There are links at the bottom of the page (don’t ask me about the website’s design) that will lead to more information on this subject. You can, of course, also read the wikipedia article here.

I did take a video of the dancing being performed. Basically, stores put up a bundle of vegetables and a red envelope (with money inside) and hang it somewhere from their door. The lion will stop at every door where such a bundle is hanged, and will do more or less the following in the video that I took:

This wasn’t a particularly energetic version of a lion dance, but it serves the purpose of showing you sort of what you can see. It’s better live, and it’s also better if there are two lions (or even more). This is in the Southern Lion style (explained in more detail in the website I linked to). Quite an unexpected surprise and I spent some time watching them before moving on.

Moving on to tea tasting with K, a friend I met last time when I was in Hong Kong. He had some Zhongcha brand Traditional Character cake, and he wanted to compare it to the samples I had (from YP)… and we did.

YP:

K:

YP left, K right

The verdict is that YP’s is a little better in terms of aroma…. and K’s is slightly smoother. His was probably a little wetter stored, while YP’s was probably stored a little better. They were both quite good, and very, very nice to drink. It just goes down so smooth and sweet. The difference, if drunk separately, wouldn’t be very obvious. His was also compressed a little more (mine has been separated into pieces through traveling). I think it made somewhat of a difference. The colour of the liquor, however, is quite different, and the difference stayed throughout. The darker didn’t necessarily mean it was more flavourful, however. It was just darker. It was really interesting to see how the colour was so different yet the taste was not.

We also had some other stuff, but relatively unremarkable. There was some 15 years old liu an… barely drinkable. I don’t know if I should buy any liu an given the long aging you need before the tea is anywhere near good.

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Back to the BTH

February 21, 2007 · 1 Comment

Yeah, I know, it’s not very exciting when I’m in Hong Kong, because I just keep going back to the Best Tea House for drinks.

I tried a bunch of stuff there, as usual. I finally got to try the Best Tea House version of the Yuanyexiang, which tastes almost exactly the same as the one I got in Beijing. This is quite reassuring, as I bought it for a fraction of the price they charge in Hong Kong.

Another noteworthy tasting today was another sample cake of the Zhenchunya Hao. This particular one is a little poorly stored — probably got wet at some point, somehow. It looks like a slightly wet stored cake, and it tastes like it too. Funny enough, it also tastes a bit like the Yuanyexiang… I think this is what some might call the “storage” taste. The tea itself, after washing itself off the storage taste, is a little on the fruity side, but it’s not as good as other examples I’ve tried before. Price rise since July 2006 — 60%

I also tried a few different high fire oolongs/tieguanyins. It was interesting to taste them back to back.

As I was contemplating leaving, sjschen came back, and so we proceeded to drink one of the cakes I recommended him to try but didn’t get to last time. I bought a few of these last time I was in Hong Kong, and thought it was good enough for the price. To show you how weird young puerh pricing is, this cake is selling for less in Hong Kong than in mainland (in the only place I’ve seen). Granted, it wasn’t on Maliandao, so the markup is high, but higher than the Best Tea House? It’s odd.

I still think it wasn’t a bad purchase. I won’t say it’s the greatest thing ever, but it’s not too bad. I like the fact that the feeling of drinking this tea lingers on long after you’ve swalloed the tea, and it extends quite far down the throat.

Anyway, some pictures

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The traveling tea salesman

February 12, 2007 · 3 Comments

This is one of my luggages for my flight tomorrow to Hong Kong.

Most of this, I hasten to add, is for other people. The vast majority of it is for Rosa of Best Tea House (the two tongs and the stuff in the white bag in the back). Others are for a few other friends… only the small bags here and there are for myself.

I must look like a tea fanatic.

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Tea tasting with a lot of people

January 19, 2007 · 1 Comment

Today was a big event…. tea tasting with L, J, and Bearsbearsbears.  We met up before lunch, had two teas (one Menghai Bada Shan, one Zhongcha Bada Shan) and then got some food, after which we headed over to L’s friend, G, to try some teas.

G is an odd person.  He lives on top of a dual use building, with a nice view.  When we got there, his wife/companion was still in her pyjamas, drinking some tea, and I think G wasn’t even really up yet.  It’s a fairly big place, with a big coffee table that is filled with teaware that dominates the room.

We sat down, and soon we were underway.  The first tea we tried was a 1980s Tongqing Hao, which was really mediocre and wet to the hilt.  It was wet, wet, wet.  This is the sort of wet stored tea that leaves a nasty feeling in your throat.

Then we had a 50 years old 1000 taels tea.  It was nice.  It was not great, but not bad.  I enjoyed it.  Nothing too much to write home about — I’ve had better.

Then it was a newer tea.  G proclaims proudly that he doesn’t own any tea that is produced after 2000.  He seems to have bought, or is about to buy, a lot of this following cake we’re going to taste.  The tea is wrapped in the Zhongcha wrapper from the old days, of the original Yellow Label design.  This is a newer tea, looks quite young, and when he asked me how old I think it is, I gave the honest answer of 3-5 years.  He said “no!” and told me how none of the teas he has is younger than 7 years old, blah blah blah… so we brewed this one up.  It was, at most, about 5 years old.  It first only tasted mildly like the Lincang stuff I’ve had before, and the first infusion was quite nice, but as we went further along the tea got worse (rougher, more bitter, etc) and less interesting, and also more and more like Lincang stuff (Mengku, Fengqing, etc).  Lincang stuff of about 5 years aging should be pretty cheap, as they are produced in large quantities and prices simply aren’t high for this area.  He said he might be buying this cake for 250 RMB a piece or so.  I think it’s a ripoff, but I had to just smile and nod and say it’s not that expensive.  The guy doesn’t like to take no for an answer.

Then it was a cooked brick from the 80s.  While it’s entirely ok and mellow, it was a cooked brick, and one should not expect too much from a cooked brick.

In between all these, we had a conversation about how I am a PhD student studying history, and he showed us a 100 years old tea, supposedly.  It looks rather unremarkable, and he wasnt’ about to let us try it.  He also showed us what looked like a real Songpin Hao, but he wasn’t going to let us try that either.  So…. all in all, we didn’t have many interesting teas today.  They were all broadly similar, and really not that exciting.

After that, we went to tea shopping at the Tianshan market.  BBB thinks he’s coming back for the teaware, while I just looked at all the puerh stores.  We tried three teas total, all at my request… the first was a Haiwan Laotongzhi, which, oddly enough, tastes much nicer than I imagined.  The second and third were both “old tree”.  The first was a “Yiwu” that didn’t really taste like Yiwu.  It was cheap too… makes you wonder, doesn’t it?  I suspect it might be summer leaves masquerading as big tree leaves…. makes the tea look nice but really not that flavourful.  It looks better than it tasted.  The second was similar… more intense, but half the price.  Still not that interesting, and I think I can find stuff that is better, even if for a higher price…

All in all, a long day of drinking tea (and which got me a little uncomfortable as I started feeling the effects of it through dinner).  We ended the day with a drink at a bar, and I tried, for the first time, a Chivas Regal Royal Salute.  I was tasting it like a tea… smooth, sweet (it’s relative), with a nice aftertaste, and really quite pleasant.  I think I like it better than the JW Blue Label.  But ok, this is a digression.

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Tea production

January 18, 2007 · 1 Comment

I’m in green tea land.  Everybody drinks green tea here, pretty much.  Longjing is taken quite seriously, with last night’s dinner discussion partially centered around the differences of Meijiawu and Longwu longjing.  I feel ashamed that I don’t know that much about this drink anymore.  Although I can tell a good one from a bad one, I can’t tell the production locales, much less the finer distinctions in gradations.

It is, in many ways, the most versatile of teas.  Different greens do taste quite drastically different.  Using the same leaves, if you press on the pan instead of rolling the leaves on the pan, the taste will come out different.  While puerh “kill-green” is a pretty simple and unscientific process, longjing kill-green is an art form.  Everything from the temperature to the pressure is quite systematic and carefully done, because any variation can cause a detectable change in taste.  Puerh, from picking to production, is all done in such a carefree way — no specific time, no specific way of killing green, no control of temperature, etc.  Green tea is so exact.  I always wondered what will happen to puerh if somebody bothered to control all these variables and try to make it more of an exact science.  Will it produce better teas?

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Shanghai tea shopping

January 15, 2007 · Leave a Comment

I discovered last night that the biggest tea market in Shanghai, the Tianshan market, is very close to my house (very close being about a half hour walk, briskly).  I walked there after dinner, knowing full well it was about to close.

The place is weird.  Instead of a big, flat layout, like in Beijing tea malls, this one was multi-storied, with each story being rather small.  I only browsed around the ground floor, as shops were already closing and I think the ones upstairs were definitely closed.  I walked around… it was an interesting sight.  Lots more green tea and tieguanyin, and less puerh in general.  A lot of stores carry some puerh, but only a few specialize in it, and the ones that do only carry some pretty inferior goods.  There was only one cake that I found slightly interesting, but I have doubts about the price.  In fact, prices are high all around.  I asked about a Changtai Yiwu Zhengpin, which normally should cost about 50 RMB or so.  The quote?  400……….

I will head back there again for a closer look, but this is not very promising

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