China Tea Travels

Putuoshan Focha (Buddha Green Tea)

2011-06-02T17:42:00.016+08:00

I am always on the look out for tea whenever we travel to China. Since this trip to visit all the sacred mountains in China was going to be our last for quite some time, I wanted to be sure and take advantage of it to buy some interesting tea. We were visiting one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains (Putuoshan) when we got this tea.

I talked Sunee into buying a small can of the local (and very famous) Putuoshan Focha (普陀佛茶) or Buddha tea. It was super expensive but I wanted desperately to try it. We bought the tea at a local tourist place that was part of the package tour of Putuoshan so everything was expensive. I did not even see any tea on the island during our tour. So here it is over a month after arriving back home to Bangkok and I am just getting around to drinking it. Guess I was not so desperate after all.

The leaves are a bit curled and light green and gold with fuzzy hairs on most of the golden buds. They reminded me a little of Mengding Gan Lu but not as tightly wound.

I used my most expensive tea pot. (Hey, my pots are not really that expensive because I was told early on that tea pots made cheaply from the same clay that is artistically designed produces the same level of tea.)

I allowed the water to cool a bit from my boiling pot before pouring into the waiting small amount of tea leaves. I was only going to taste it so my desperation speech to Sunee would become truth.

This tea is as good as advertised or as good as the ads that I had read from some of the big suppliers on tea on the internet had promised . I liked it, very much.

To be perfectly honest, we sneaked a bit of this tea to try in our hotel in Ningbo after finishing the tour of Putuoshan. Neither of us were impressed. We simply put some in a tea cup, poured the boiling water on top and waited for it to turn color. As I recall, it seemed to be very grassy tasting. I got no grassy taste in this, the official tasting. It was sweet and refreshing and like the Longjing tea I had while we were in China, it reminded me of the sparkling water we used to get from the artisian well not far from where I grew up in Oklahoma. Refreshing, sparkling and sweet. I knew I should have bought more of it!

DuJun Mao Jian Tea

2010-09-12T20:46:00.007+08:00

Since I did the Henan Xinyang Mao Jian, I figured to break out a little of the Dujun Mao Jian (都均毛尖) that three of my students bought for me in their home town of Guiyang in Guizhou Province where this tea originates. It is a bit different looking than the Xinyang Mao Jian with more silver, yellow and lighter green leaves. Weight wise they seem to be about the same.

Here you can see the silver very clearly and the green does not appear to be as dark as that of the other Mao Jians.

In this close up, one can see why this is called Mao Jian or Hairy Tips. If you look close enough you can see the tiny down-looking hair on many of the lighter leaves. There is a lot of tea in a pound of Mao Jian tea.

I followed pretty much what I did with the Xinyang Mao Jian, letting the boiled water cool for about two or three minutes before I steeped the tea. This Mao Jian does not seem to be as delicate and contrary as that of the Xinyang tea. No matter how much I used or how long it steeped (of course I did not let it steep too long), I tasted no bitterness at all. The liquor is not as sweet and interesting tasting as that of Xinyang Mao Jian but it is very, very good. The color is a bit more yellow and just as light. I still have a lot of this tea in the freezer and have taken some out to drink regularly. It is considered to be one of the top ten classic teas of China. This tea is in most of the top ten lists but in some, if it is not listed it probably would be number eleven. Xinyang Mao Jian is listed in all the top ten teas I have seen.

Here is a nice view of the little cup of Duhun Mao Jian resting peaceably on my tea tray along with the other things brought from China. This tea is supposed to be one of the three treasures of Guizhou. The other two are the Maotai (powerful alcoholic rocket fuel) liquor and Dafang lacquered ware.

My three treasures from Guizhou were Katherine, Craig and Grace. All were from Guiyang and they were some of the finest English students I have ever had. Craig, in particular, was a scholar beyond belief while Grace was the most sophisticated speaker of English in all of China. Katherine was just a sweetheart with excellent English skills and a quiet personality. We visited all three in their home town two years ago and had a fabulous time.

Emei Mountain Yin Zhen Yellow Tea (last drop)

2010-09-07T15:32:00.003+08:00

Today I am working on preparing the pictures of my wife's silk scrolls that she is making out of all the watercolor painting she did while in China. So far she has finished 46 and is working on about two or three a day. While getting the pictures ready for publication, I thought I would use up the last of my Mount Emei Yin Zhen yellow tea. I bought this in early 2009 and only have a small amount left. It was very expensive and I bought it along with the Jun Shan Yin Zhen to see if there was any difference. The Jun Shan tea was probably fake but the Mount Emei tea is not as I have seen it for sale in reputable dealers in Chengdu. The tea is probably about a year old and has been stored in the freezer so let's see what we have.

As you can see the leaves still have a nice color to them thanks probably to the freezing. They remind me a lot of the Emei Sparrow Tongue that is so expensive and popular in the region.

This is a good close up view to show the light green, golden color of the individual buds and leaves. Still pretty good shape for being around a year old.

The first steeping and that is really all I could get out of this tea. It was a little sweet, a little this and a little that. It had lost a lot of its marvel but it was refreshing. I do not think it was ever a top grade tea since I bought it at the local department store. Hey, it was drinkable and quenched my thirst a little.

Here you can see the cup of Yin Zhen between my two pee boys and the glass tea decanter with the rest of the tea liquor. I had to get rid of it so drinking it and blogging about it was very pleasurable. When we go back to visit China (probably in October), I plan to get some more yellow tea as well as others. I just got a copy of The Harney & Sons Guide To Tea and plan on trying all the tea they talk about in it that I have not yet tried. The Tea Travelers are not yet done with China.

Xin Yang Mao Jian

2010-09-01T21:26:00.005+08:00

Last year in July, we decided to travel to northern China and look specifically for classic Chinese courtyard buildings. Beijing, of course, has the most famous and the most renovated. Shaanxi, however, has several times more than anywhere else in China. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaanxi was pretty much the financial center with Pingyao being the most famous. In fact, if one travels in eastern China, one can see the evidence of this success as many of the Shaanxi business people moved to other locations and became equally successful. So why am I writing about this trip in a tea blog?

Our trip began in Yuncheng, Shaanxi and then we traveled to Henan Province so my wife could visit the famous Shao Lin Temple not far from Luoyang. Since Henan is home to one of the top ten teas in classic Chinse tea history, I figured to find some so I could say I bought it in Henan. Thus, for my first tea tasting in Thailand, I dug out the Xin Yang Mao Jian we bought in Luoyang. Chinese Tea Travelers we are!

Here is the sample of Mao Jian bought in Luoyang. I do not recall the exact price for this, but it was not cheap. I do remember my wife not wanting to buy it because it was too expensive. We bought a half pound from the tea merchant's freezer. It has the characteristics of what I have read about Mao Jians - dark green and tightly dried with points at each end.

Before actually preparing this tea, I did some search (again) on the internet to find out if it had some interesting features for which I should be aware. At the Half Dipper tea site (my favorite tea site), I read the article on Xin Yang Mao Jian that saved me a lot of pain. Basically, this tea is very delicate and the water temperature has to be just right for the better Mao Jian from Henan. So I followed his advice for the first steep and used cooled boiling water. Was I rewarded?

This tea matched the Half Dippers comments about an expensive tea. It was refreshing, delicate and kind of reminded me a bit of lemons. I immediately shared it with my wife and she was delighted. Only problem was I did not empty the tea out of the teapot (my only expensive teapot) and when I went for more after about six or seven minutes of continued steeping, the tea was flat out bitter. Wew, it was as bitter as any tea I had ever tasted.

More experiments proved that the tea we had bought in Luoyang was probably the real deal. Too hot of water and it becomes common. Steep too long or use too many leaves and it gets really bitter. Do it right and one has truly one of the best teas in China. Amazing stuff this Xin Yang Mao Jian.

When China Tea Travelers travel they not only look for tea but for tea stuff as well. Here we negotiate for some really fine tea cups. All nice but what I was looking for was the Luoyang Jun pottery made famous during the Ming Dynasty with its three colors. Believe those on the left are the Jun style pottery. Not cheap but we did get a few as well as some of the other ones. Fun to be Tea Travelers indeed.

After our tea shopping trip, we stopped at a nice small restaurant and had some of the local dishes. This one is the most famous vegetarian dish. We broke out our Mao Jian tea and enjoyed it with our meal.

This is not a famous pork dish from Luoyang as we have eaten this all over Sichuan. This dish, however, was especially good with our nice Xin Yang Mao Jian.

I will have more on our trip to Shaanxi and Henan at my Emei blog later on.

2010. Finally A New Beginning

2010-08-30T20:49:00.003+08:00

In China, blogger.com got busted just before Tiananmen Square anniversary and it never got unbusted. What can one do?

I tried to set up another tea blog on wordpress but my heart was not in it as I was at the end of a semester and getting ready for our summer vacation. We were heading north to look at Chinese courtyard houses to get an idea of our planned Chinese house in Hua Hin, south of Bangkok.

In September, just after returning from our exciting trip to the north (I also snuck in a trip to Huangshan tea country as well), I experienced a right eye collapse. Actually, I was not sure what it was but it was not right. Internet research convinced me it was a detached retina but Chinese doctors said it was not. I believed because I wanted to believe. Went ahead and did the semester.

We returned to Bangkok in January 2010 and found out the eye definitely had a detached retina. I was in deep trouble because the longer they are detached the harder they are to fixed. To make it short, I underwent three operations from January to March. The last one worked and we returned to China to finish out my contract. History is history and this is a tea blog so enough.

Here is the plan for the next few months. I will be tasting most of the tea I picked up between June and our permanent return to Bangkok. With each tea, I will tell you the story of where and how we got it along with pictures and explanations.

I am back in business! Welcome aboard once more.

Green Tea Semi-Marathon Tea Tasting

2009-05-15T14:17:00.008+08:00

We scheduled a tea tasting to give the Gap Guys one last opportunity to share their ability to taste and develop the "qi of cha". Unfortunately, Tom was sick with an ear infection and John was being stalked by several of the young students he had met at the University. Made for a short but enjoyable tea tasting.

In addition, we had to attend the closing ceremonies for the ongoing English Culture Week. One of our students was going to take part in the opening of the singing contest as a guest singer. Seven finalist meant the opening duets needed an extra. She was the only member of the Foreign Affairs Department to take part in the singing contest. The winner of last semester's contest, our own Giselle, opted out as she was preparing for the finals of the Sichuan-wide speech contest. Other talented members also decided not to participate. We also found out later that Mr. Yao had been the official translator for one of the VPs who closed the week.

Anyway, here is the report from our last tea tasting with the Gap Guys.

We set up our Chinese Tea Service set on my desk which gave us a bit more room to enjoy the tasting. The plan was to do as many greens as we could. Things never turn out as one expects.

John insisted on taking a picture of one half of my now fully stocked tea cabinet. Do you think that my wife and I are serious about tea? She also has a corner full of tea that we plan to send back to Thailand when her family comes to visit us in September. Most of that is Yunnan Dian Cong, Golden Tips and lots of Puerh Beeng Cha.

The three tea stalwarts pose for the beginning of what we hoped would be a green tea tasting marathon.

The first tea was the Ying Bin Cha or welcome tea. I have been looking all over the internet to get information about this tea. "Welcome Tea" is what the wholesaler in Kunming called it. I think it is simply the traditional tea that Yi people in Yunnan Province and elsewhere offer their guests when they first arrive. It is part of the traditional "three tea" ceremony in the Yi culture. First the welcome tea, then the "let's talk and have a good time" tea and, finally, the "sorry to see you go." Hey, it sounds good to me. There really is a three-tea ceremony of the Yi. I am just not sure what kind of tea they use. The information I wrote down in Kunming just stated that it was a traditional welcome tea.

Here I am checking out the "welcome tea." The liquor appeared to be a green tea with nothing to distinguish it from a Yunnan blended green tea. I tried but I found very little to like about it other than as a remarkable green tea.

John received his "welcome tea" with the same dexterity as before. We all open this tea tasting with a hearty "WELCOME ONE AND ALL."

John gets the same reaction as I did with this tea. A weak and mild tea. John, however, in his unusual ability to taste the essence of tea, suggests that it is not really from the tea plant but a herbal tea. He does not think it tasted anything like a tea.

Dave takes this unusual picture that really shows off the beauty of one of the tea cups I bought in Yunnan. We discuss the possibility that John brings up.

All of us then check out the dried leaves once more to see if it is a herbal tea. Here is a picture of the dried leaves. We all concluded that this was, indeed, a herbal tea and not a real tea.

Dave shows his disdain for this herbal tea. He says it is uninspiring while I added that I would never again welcome any guest to my home with this tea.

While taking pictures, John also takes another good taste and agrees with our assessment.

Finishing the herbal "welcome tea."

A stalker calls John and takes him out of the tea tasting "game" for several precious moments. It is obvious that we have lost him as a viable taster of fine teas. This continues through the late afternoon until we are forced to shut things down and attend the singing contest.

We next do the Zhu Ye Qing green tea that Dave had brought from Mengding Mountain near Ya'an. He had gone there with Robert and had found a plantation that offered Zhu Ye Qing. They had tried the best and it was marvelous. The tea that Dave had given me was not the top quality but was probably number two. Our goal was to compare it to a top quality Zhu Ye Qing from Emei Mountain.

Here John, get off the phone and try this fine quality green tea from the number one tea green mountain in all of China - Mengding Mountain..

John forced the stalker to hang up so he could try this Mengding Zhu Ye Qing green tea. He liked it as he sits back and enjoys its "qi." A full-bodied "qi" he quips.

Dave agreed that this was a good green tea with a lot of "qi."

The Mengding Zhu Ye Qing has the familiar yellow green liquor found Zhu Ye Qings from Emei Mountain. Beautiful color!

Next up is a top quality Zhu Ye Qing from Her Majesty - Emei Mountain. This tea as given to me by the University for my work getting ready for the CCTV Speech Contest last month. People do not go to the trouble of putting cheap tea in expensive little bags like this. This stuff was expensive!

John is given the honor of trying the first cup of Emei's finest. He was not disappointed. This tea could very well be the world's finest green tea.

Dave frantically takes notes on what we think of this Zhu Ye Qing. He, too, has an inner feeling that we are enjoying the world's finest green tea, or at least the finest green tea that the likes of middle class working stiffs like us could afford.

Emei Mountain Zhu Ye Qing in all its golden green beauty. Simply the best.

To get John away from his stalker machine (cell phone), Dave and I insist that he take over the Tea Meister's slot. Here I explain the fine art of tea processing.

With confidence way beyond his years, John proves to be a novice expert at tea processing. as he pours all of us some fine green tea we picked up in Chuxiong - Bai Zhu Shan Lu Cha or White Bamboo Mountain green tea.

The stalkers do not leave John alone and we are only able to do this one last green before it is time to head out to the final installment of English Culture Week.

Before we head out, we take some much needed sustenance in the form of cookies. These are now a tradition at our tea tasting parties.

In addition, Sunee brings us some dumplings that she has unfrozen and prepared for us. They are inexpensive, convenient and very TOM DELICIOUS!

Hey do they look like this:

Notice the comment below from someone probably from Russia. I saved the recipe for these Russian dumplings and they are, indeed, very similar.

We closed out this tea tasting early because of the constant stalking of John and the start of the singing contest. Soon the Gap Guys will be back in England. Hope they carry on the tradition of tea tasting.

An Invitation To An Evening of Tea Tasting

2009-05-12T09:46:00.002+08:00

Another Day, Another Tea Tasting Party Planned

2009-04-28T18:51:00.005+08:00

The Qi Of Tom

Another day, another fun activity

Dedicated to the tree of desirability

We know all about this kind of tree

The tree that brought us all our tea

As we sat here with our open pot

We hoped to get our tea real hot

Dear Tom did work his magic great

And provided us with tea first rate

We heroes great were on his side

He filled our cups with speed and pride

With water hot and the qi of tea

We waited for him in solidarity

Tom did his thing both quick and true

And made us all one great brew

It was from Emei our mountain near

Twas Zhu Ye Qing the green so dear

We filled our cups not once but thrice

And drank them down at Tom’s advice

We were all experts in the qi of tea

Except for Tom, as we all could see

Tom cried out loud for the qi to come

His cheeks were red and his body numb

He poured his tea and we saw him frown

He bit his lips and swallowed it down

The tea passed down his anxious throat

At first a silence then a rumbling note

The qi began to flow into Tom’s sad face

His head spun around and his heart did race

The qi was strong in Tom this day

He is now one of us all the way

Searching for the Key (钥匙) to the Qi of Cha (茶气)

2009-04-18T07:39:00.038+08:00

Invitation to a tea tasting.

We scheduled an official Chinese Cultural Tea Tasting Party for 17 April 2009 (Friday) at 1800. I sent out official invitations to the participants (to include my brother in Oklahoma and John, a former teacher here who now lives in Guizhou Province). Participants were Tom, Dave Bishop (Gap Guy #1), John Whale (Gap Guy #2), Ivan (Gap Guy #3 doing his thing in Leshan down the road) and me. Tom was the designated Tea Meister as he had been practicing for the last two weeks to get things right. Tom also dressed the part as he wore is new Chinese white silk shirt which put the rest of us to shame.

We were in search of that elusive energy force we had heard about - Qi. In my research, I had read articles about how tea brings with it this Chinese Qi and many writers often described the Cha Qi they experience in drinking their tea. Why not us? Why not channel the forces of the tea for us in our own special tea tasting ceremony?

The Chinese Tea Ceremony's Seven Steps and what each step means.

The Qi of Tea movie poster starring the five great tea heroes of Emei Mountain.

Ode To Cha Qi

When we five heroes came, we drank our tea hardcore;

No matter how much we drank, we always asked for more;

The table was set to search the world for this thing called qi;

We sat around and philosophized about this drink called tea.

We guests, heroes one and all, drank from cups so fair and small.

The greens came first, two dragons involved in a battle brawl;

The Chengdu one , bought with cash, was the one we qi’ed about,

But both were great and gave us qi of which we were without.

When Ivan and John took the tea, they rolled upon the floor;

John smiled his smile of complexi-tea and quickly asked for more.

Ivan, drinking his stupidi-tea, grasped hard upon the chair,

And as he looked at all of us, he understood this qi affair.

The qi took charge as our visions dimmed, it must have been the tea

For Dave began to wax and wane about things that only he could see.

We tried to calm him down a bit, but nothing seemed to work

He crawled upon the table and quietly went berserk.

Poor Tom our tea master, saw us all heading south,

And wondered how it was, for his tea was in his mouth.

He’d tried to swallow several times, but all to no avail,

And now that the qi had come, he hoped he would prevail.

The qi was now inside of us and all around the room.

The tea had brought it on and now it spelled our doom.

Ole Cecil was dancing high, way up in a big white cloud;

The qi had taken him way up there and he was getting loud.

Poor Tom still could not drink his tea, it simply wouldn’t go,

So he never really experienced how the qi did flow.

He gathered up the four of us, and took us all outside;

He kicked our heads and faces until the qi did subside.

When we five heroes went back in, we drank our tea hardcore;

No matter how much tea we drank, we always asked for more.

The five famous and great tea heroes of Emei Mountain search for the key to the Qi of Tea.

The tea set up was meticulously laid out for efficiency and professionalism. No one could say that we did not have the right tools in our search for the Qi of Tea.

Tom, the Tea Meister, prepares the equipment and tools to start the ceremony. He was most anxious to feel the Qi as quickly as possible.

Our first teas to be tasted were the most famous in China, two different Longjing greens from the Hangzhou area. The first came from the Chengdu Tea Culture Street and the second was given to me by Grace Spright one of our students. She claims to have gone right to the source and bought this tea from the processor himself. We called this the battle of the dragons or dou cha ( 斗茶 ) - tea fight. A competition of tasting different teas to establish which is the best. Of course, we were tasting what was supposed to be the same tea. My research has revealed that many teas from the Hangzhou area are now called Longjing but only the real one comes from the original plantation on Lion Head Mountain. I must find out the exact location where Ms. Grace purchased this green tea. Here Tom shows the heroes the leaves of the Longjing green prior to pouring the first cups.

The first cup of Chengdu-bought Longjing green tea goes to Dave who smiles in "brilliant" anticipation of gaining access to this teas "qi." His excitement was palpable and almost embarrassingly overwhelming.

Here John portrays his normal oblique self-expression of Asian inscrutability. Notice how deftly and passionately he handles the newly purchased tea cups I bought specifically for this ceremony. John, of course, prefers any liquid to tea (especially water) but because of his Asian background felt obliged to enter into the halls of fame and heroism to observe this thing called "Chinese qi." Is his smile the wry smile of Asian amused condescendence or simply the obligatory politeness so often formed on the lips of his ancient ancestors?

Casually, Tom introduces the concept of sipping tea. Most westerners have no real understanding of what "sipping" entails. As an inveterate sipper, Tom provides needed depth to our understanding of how exactly one sips a Chinese Longjing tea to get the most taste from it and force the qi from its unwilling leaves. For Tom, sipping was easy. It was the follow-on swallowing that caused him great concern throughout the tea-tasting evening.

Time for the Grace Spright provided Longjing. After three infusions of the first Longjing and gaining enough experience from the process, we were all anxious to apply the rules of "dou cha" to this second Longjing. Notice, once again, the dexterity that John is applying to his tea cup. Also notice the "kung fu" stance of our great and masterful tea meister. I was led to believe that this stance brings out the "qi" of tea much quicker than just handing out the tea willy nilly.

Ivan jumps the gun on this second Longjing. He could not wait. He refused to wait. He glared at us with his nerdi-tea! He immediately scarfed the tea down in one gulp. Of course, Tom was shocked at this breaking of protocal. He spent the next ten minutes lecturing Ivan on the subtleties of sipping. Ivan was forced to sip slowly four more Longjing teas before he could join in our brilliant wordsmanship and philosophizing. He kept repeating to himself - tea is for sipping, tea is for sipping.

Dave, fully loaded with qi from this second Longjing green tea, begins to speak in a language that no one could understand - British English. Even John could not help but laugh at Dave's ridiculous accent. Tom, unawares of any language being spoken, had become involved with trying to swallow the tea. This was a constant struggle for Tom all evening. It was concluded that both Longjing teas were beyond reproach in their taste and the qi we received from them. We all agreed, however, that the Longjing tea I bought in Chengdu gave us a bit more of a "qi" kick than the one Grace had provided. Could it be that the Grace-provided tea had been unwilling to give us the full force of its qi and needed to be "aged" a few months more to discourage its beligerence? One will only know in two months time.

Qi was flowing amongst us and began to fill up the room to such an extent that I decided to slow things down by showing off my newly acquired Puerh Bing Cha that Jack, one of our students, had given me for my birthday. We are talking a serious bing cha (puerh pressed tea cake) here. The box was beautiful and the cake smelled wonderful. It took me more than fifteen minutes to wrestle this tea back from Tom's grasping hands. He kept insisting that we try it since he had been unsuccessful in swallowing the Longjings and thus sat as an empty vessel on his chair with nary a qi to be seen in or near him.

We also took a break and shared some cookies amongst us to slow down the rapidly expanding qi that most of us had begun to feel. Tom, however, felt nothing but contempt and thus was eager to eat the cookies to hide his inability to drain the qi from his tea.

We witness the full effects of the Qi as Dave passes out the cookies. Strange language!

Our next "dou cha" was between the yellow tea from Emei Mountain and the yellow tea from Jun Mountain in Hunan province. Both were called "silver needles" or "yin zhen" (银针). The Emei Mountain tea I had purchased several months ago from a local department store and had tasted it once with Tom. It was ok but nothing really great. The Jun Shan yellow tea I had purchased on our last trip to the Tea Culture Street in Chengdu. Here Tom examines both teas to see the differences. There were big differences to be sure.

Tom then allows all of us to smell the Jun Shan tea. This, of course, is testing the aroma to see if we could get a little qi going prior to drinking the tea. John takes a whiff and denies knowledge of any aroma, even though some of the tea stuck to his uncharacteristically none-Asian nose.

Dave gets some qi quickly and refused to quit smelling the aroma. Tom had to threaten him with "remedial sipping class" to get the bag back. Pouting, Dave, immediately goes back to his version of the English language which only he could understand. We all figured he was bad-mouthing us but none of us could really be sure.

One whiff of this yellow tea sends Ivan into Lala Land (as if he ever left there in the first place). Tom was quick to retrieve the bag of yellow tea before Ivan could eat it. In Lala Land, eating tea must not be thought of as immoral nor in bad form.

Here Tom is pouring our first infusion of the Jun Shan Yin Zhen. Because the gaiwan had grown a bit from handling to0 much of the qi from the tea, Tom needed some help to get the tea poured. No problem as Dave was willing to assist this delicate operation even though no one could understand what he was saying.

Tom proudly shows off his successful pouring of the yellow tea. He also spent ten minutes admiring and telling us how yellow the tea was. None of us were blind, yet that did not stop Tom from his pontification of the yellowness of the tea. The tea was, indeed, yellow.

Since we were all tired of watching John passionately grasp his tea cup as he got his tea, Tom decided to give the first cup of Jun Shan Yin Zhen to Dave. This was done mostly to quiet Dave down so we would not have to listen to the strange noise coming from his mouth that he kept claiming was English. Of course, Tom conned him into thinking that it was because of John's constant hotdogging in grasping his tea cup.

Ivan breaks away long enough from Lala Land to get some of the Jun Shan yellow tea. Here we see him concentrating on getting back to Lala Land. Does he live in Lala Land all the time or is it the qi of the tea that sends him there? None of us could really quite figure out how he moved between reality and Lala Land so easily.

As you can see by this picture, Tom, our Tea Meister, is doing an excellent job of not wasting any of the precious qi coming from the tea. His professionalism was astounding but we all felt remorse at his inability to swallow the very tea he was meistering.

Here Tom is carrying out the pre-dou cha ceremony where we are shown the two opposing teas. The Jun Mountain silver needles knocked the locally grown Emei Mountain silver needles yellow tea out of the ring. There simply was no comparison of the two teas. The Emei Mountain tea looked more like grass whereas the yellow tea from Jun Mountain looked exactly like the pictures I had found on the internet. Fake verses real. Real verses fake. Not even close!

My own cup of Jun Shan Yin Zhen. One can almost feel the qi as it floats up from the yellow liquid. This tea is great! We all had positive things to say about it and spent an unusual amount of time singing its praises.

Our dou cha was interrupted with a beautiful four-year old mini-tuocha that Sunee and I had taken from the hands of a dealer in Kunming two weeks previous. The dealer offered us fifty of these little jewels for 80 Yuan. As we were tasting it and deciding to buy it, he mentioned that we could get 150 of them for only 150 Yuan. A deal is a deal wherever one finds it so we bought the larger can of these marvelous little tuochas. We loved them in Kunming and the five heroes loved them on the slopes of Emei Mountain. This was the best tea we tasted all evening.

Isn't the dexterity of John's grasping of the tea cup amazing? We all stopped talking and stared as Tom handed the puerh-filled cup to John.

His fingers nestled the glazed blue cup filled with tea.

Smooth, feminine-like graspings promising much no respite

To the cup so often held in the light for all of us to see.

Yes, John, yes! It seemed to squeal in pleasure and delight.

Tom answers a question concerning his method of extracting the precious liquid from the mini-tuacha as John grasps with pleasure the small delicate blue tea cup. Notice the glow of qi that surrounds John but seems to be missing from Tom. Once more, Tom's problems continued through even the puerh session of tea tasting.

Ah, puerh. Blessed puerh. All agreed that this was a wonderfully complex tea. We all sipped and took a shot at describing what we were experiencing.

Here is my cup of puerh. This was around the fourth infusion and it remained as dark and beautiful as the first. Talk about a steal! This tea was worth every bit of Yuan we had paid for it.

Amazing but true, Ivan returned to reality just in time to celebrate his first infusion of the puerh. Here he toasts the puerh with Dave. Ivan, a brilliant linguist in his own right, was actually able to interpret for the rest of us what Dave had said over the last few hours. It was also Ivan who most impressively expressed the exact adjectival nouns that applied to this puerh. Such words as "halibut" and "squidy-like" aroma breached the etiquette that Tom was so forcefully trying to maintain as our tea meister.

Infusion after infusion brought on many more of these Ivanistic adjectival nouns to our ears and minds. Here John fakes a sniff of the puerh to show off his now "celebrated grip" of the beautifully glazed blue tea cup. He was obviously sniffing just for the "halibut."

Another infusion. More sniffing. More Ivanistic adjectival nouns. This time it is "the dust of a Rhodesian wine cellar" that Ivan smells in his puerh. What a nose for sifting through the dictionary of his mind to come up with just the right descriptions for this puerh!

The words grate upon the human ear and test our fortitude

Ivan, dear, Ivan bring forth your royal chants of pictured phrases

Let us all travel down your path of words for puerh so crude

And smell the aroma you describe and never cease to amaze us.

Here Tom continues to wonder why he simply cannot swallow the tea he has so brilliantly prepared for us. As John smirks "qi'ingly" at the way the other heroes hold their cups, Tom looks wistfully at the dark orange liquid lying limpid in his cup. No see no qi, we hear him muttering to himself between his tea meistering.

Left alone on a plain of existence below that of the other four heroes, Tom desperately seeks the qi in the actual dried tea leaves. What is it that makes the tea hard for me to swallow? Maybe it is just not my "cup of tea" tonight, he rationalizes to himself.

"I have fully "grasped" the qi of tea," John states emphatically after infusion number twenty of the tuocha puerh. No one dared argue as we all stared at the incredible spectacle of his thin, flawless fingers gently, yet firmly caressing the beautiful blue glazed tea cup from Kunming. Notice the index finger defyingly pointing toward the obviously inferior heroes that sit on his right. How dare this sycophant to the qi of tea so insult his fellow heroes in this "sippingly" uncharitable way! So much for the obvious benefits of puerh.

Round three of our dou cha - Tailand oolong #17 verses the world champion of oolongs: Da Hong Pao or Big Red Robe. Here Tom introduces the wet leaves of the Da Hong Pao to his fellow tea heroes. Notice how Ivan turns his now enhanced respiratory system into a sniffing machine; capable of tracking and classifying even the tiniest hints of adjectival nouns.

Da Hong Pao, the legendary tea of Wuyi Mountain in Fujian Province, brings only an arrogant sniff from John. Maybe he has not been clued in on the brilliance of the tea. Maybe his claim to have obtained "qi nirvana" has caused his sensory perceptions to become lazy in his newly-gained status as the foremost hero amongst us lowly mortals. Perhaps, perhaps he remains a neophite in teadom and has been putting on a show to fool us into believing he has reached tea stardom.

Darth Dave reaches a new level of "qi'ness." Denied the use his facade of speaking English, he rapidly moved into a different plain of existence than his fellow heroes. His language had also accompanied him to this higher plain. No longer the language of the barbarian and unsociable Saxon hordes who punished the original inhabitants of the island we call England by forcing them into using the now modern weird and strange language of the Brits, the Darth man's language now consisted of heavenly "hum's and ha's" and a few angelic "mmm's."

Rising up as if already gone

The teamonger Darth Dave

Like a white and flying swan

Moves into the nirvana cave

Entering into the mystery of the qi

As all us poor mortals sit so near

He takes another swallow of the tea

Then floats away on qi to disappear

The Da Hong Pao experience reaches a personal level as I sip and enjoy my own cup. Here the amber liquid reminds one of apple juice squeezed by virgins intent upon gaining the last drop of their precious liquid from the fruit they have so patiently picked.

The Thailand Oolong Number 17 turns out to be but a footnote in our quest for glory and qi. Up against the finest oolong money can buy, it pails in comparison. On its own, it would have done very well. This last round turned out to be a fight between the adjectival nouned - 800 pound gorilla and a pleasant and beautiful bunny rabbit. The rabbit, sweet and affectionate as it may be, was squashed into oblivion by the 800 pound gorilla. And so it was with Thailand's best. A footnote that states that there was no contest and we, as heroes, were guilty of fixing the competition in the champions favor. Guilty as charged!

Tom Terrific ponders his role as our tea meister, reviewing the errors made and the triumphs won. We all agreed that the last dou cha was unfair and promised our "bunny rabbit" of a Thailand oolong a chance against a more worthy and equal opponent. The Da Hong Pao was one of our favorites along with the incredible puerh. The two green Longjings were also very noteworthy in their ability to supply us with a load of "qi."

John was voted into the heroes hall of fame for his rapid rise from obscurity to tea hound extraordinaire. Dave remains firmly entrenched as one of the top heroes. He could easily join John in the hall of fame except for his inability to speak modern standard English. His British dialectual English prevents most people from understanding his deeply moving and spiritual thoughts as interpreted to us by Ivan, the adjectival noun wizard.

As to Ivan? Until he approaches the 50% mark of living in reality, he is neither allowed into let alone near the hall of fame. Hero he is but he remains in the "twilight zone" somewhere between reality and his own personal Lala Land. He made great progress this evening in approaching that 50% benchmark with his brilliant translations of the "sayings of Darth Dave" and his accurate and telling descriptions of the tuocha puerh. A few more tastings and he most definitely will have a shot at the coveted hall of fame.

All good things must come to an end and here Tom bids adieu to his fellow heroes. His plans over the next few weeks prior to our next scheduled tea tasting is to practice his swallowing techniques. Thus, he too, will be able to enjoy the Qi of Tea with the rest of us.

The following are the results of our tea tasting as transcribed by Darth Dave:

We witness the full effects of the Qi.

China Tea Travels To Yunnan For Tea (Naturally)

2009-04-12T23:52:00.015+08:00

We left the Chengdu airport at around 9pm and arrived in Kunming after 10pm. By the time we got to our hotel (courtesy of the many touts at the airport) it was well past 11pm. We were hungry so we walked down to the only restaurant open and had some quick noodles.

The next day we took the early bus to Chuxiong, about two hours by express bus from Kunming. Unfortunately, we did not take the express bus and our journey last three and half hours through some very rough mountains and bad roads. Wrong bus station. Wrong bus.

After completing our business in Chuxiong we had the next day's morning to explore this small Yi minority town (see inchinahil.travellerspoint.com for more information on Chuxiong). The first thing we looked for was a tea shop and we found one in the middle of the town.

Chuxiong Tea Shop

As we entered this couples well-stocked tea shop, they were having their lunch and did not seem too happy to see us. As we visited and had them finish their lunch, they became friendlier. By the end of our visit, they treated us as if we were part of their family, visiting with us about the local tea and giving us advice on how to determine the quality of the tea we were drinking.

Tea ceremony, Chuxiong style.

The tea on the left is a standard blended green from Yunnan. The one on the right is a local tea from White Bamboo Mountain. The first thing I noticed was the cloudiness the local tea had.

This is a close up of the Yunnan blended green tea. We have tried several of the Yunnan greens and all were solid green teas and very drinkable. This one was no exception.

Package for the locally produnced White Bamboo Mountain green tea. This tea was supposed to be grown by Yi people, picked and processed by them. It looked a lot like Bi Lo Chuan.

Here is a close up of the White Bamboo Mountain green tea. It was very unusual and obviously unique so we bought some to give it a try. I will do a tea tasting of it in the near future.

While we were at this shop, we asked about a puerh that we had purchased in Chengdu. Remember the white or tippy puerh we had purchased earlier? Well, this guy had one and so we asked if we could try it. Both, Sunee and I were disappointed and decided against buying his tippy white puerh cake.

Yulin Puerh Tea Shop in Kunming

We went looking for an art house for Sunee to check out some art books and look at some paintings. There is never a tea shop we can pass by nowdays without going in. Here we found the Yintai Shop next to Green Lake in downtown Kunming. It is a tough life chasing tea in China.

Inside we found wonderfully stocked shelfs of puerh. This was a puerh shop after all and we were in Yunnan Province.

We ended up buying one of those golden cans filled with mini tuochas. It turned out to be a rare find when we tried it later on at Emei.

Two different kinds of puerh. The one on the left was the min tuocha we eventually bought. It was great!

A full service shop no less.

And here is our tea master who let us taste tea to our hearts delight. Of course, we rewarded him with many great purchases as well.

Looking For Yunnan's Best Gold

After spending some yuan at the puerh shop we decided to seek out my favorite tea - Yunnan Gold. We stopped at several along the lake only to be told they stocked only puerh. We then walked through the beautiful Green Lake Park and decided it was time to return to our hotel. That was when we found our Yunnan Gold.

The owner had the gold and was happy to let us try some. Seems she did not cut her gold with the normal dian cong but sold it straight. We had to believe her as the tea we saw was solid gold and the taste was even better.

Here the owner's daughter (I assume) fixed us up some of her Gold. Was it fine! Of course we stocked up on it.

Sunee negotiates with the owner so we can have lots more of the Gold when we get back home. She was successful and I was happy.

We also got to try some standard Yunnan green. Got lots of green in Emei so we passed on this tea. Took a bunch of Gold off her hands, though.

The Kunming Tea Wholesale District

A Tea House in the Nongyuan Artist Village of Chengdu

2009-03-30T07:52:00.009+08:00

This past Saturday (March 28), we met Bogdan and his wife, Weiyan, in Chengdu and traveled to the Nongyuan Artist Village of Chengdu (see my emeimtn.blogspot.com) where we had lunch and visited for about three hours. As we walked through the beautiful setting, we came across a restaurant and tea house that were in the process of being finished. The tea house was open so we went in to check it out. The following pictures and information are about this very unique tea house set up for the resident artists.

A great "stash" of puerh on an antique Chinese medicine cabinet.

In addition to the main tea table in the front, the tea house had four antique looking tables with four chairs around the spacious and sunny room. Each table had its own tea server of different design and size. Here we see a tradition tea server carved from a single piece of wood with all the normal accessories.

This table had a very attractive tea server with coaster and hot water pot ready for guest to sit, relax and enjoy their tea.

A traditional Chinese tea server located near the windows with a beautiful view of the surrounding bamboo forests and flowers in the area.

Another table and another server. Again, this table afforded a view of the garden setting of the tea house.

A huge carved water buffalo gave an impressive feel to the main tea table located in the front of the tea house.

A second "stash" of puerh stood across the room from the first. Again, it was actually an antique Chinese medicine cabinet. What a great idea for storing one's precious teas!

One of the local resident artist welcomes me to their tea house with a great cup of puerh tea. The tea was really good with hints of floral and mushrooms.

A nice deep orange colored liquor made me feel welcome and warm toward the three artists who were enjoying a tea together.

These interesting tea canisters were filled with different puerh's from their collection, all ready to be brewed and enjoyed.

The tea house was beautiful and gave a feeling of warmth and friendliness that Sunee and I would like to replicate one of these days in our dream traditional Chinese compound we plan to build in Thailand.

Chengdu Tea Ceremony

2009-03-24T20:13:00.004+08:00

This is a short Tea Tasting we had at the Chengdu Tea Culture Street. The two teas were Huang Ya from Meng Ding Mountain and Dragon Well Longjing. Both were great so we bought a little of both.

An Emei Mountain Chinese Tea Ceremony

2009-03-24T09:28:00.003+08:00

This is a typical tea ceremony performed in tea shops and tea houses everywhere in Sichuan Province. This particular ceremony took place at a new Zhuyeqing Tea shop across the street from Southwest Jiaotong University in Baguan Village.

A Tea Presentation

2009-03-23T12:50:00.005+08:00

This is the presentation I gave as an example of a "How To" presentation. The students are actually teachers from different departments who want to improve their English. They will have to prepare a simple "how to" presentation along these lines.

Special China Tea Travels Hand-picked and Hand-processed Green Tea

2009-03-19T09:57:00.010+08:00

As stated in the previous post, all the "hard work" put in by the Freshmen Class 1 came to naught because we had not picked enough tea to process. I ended up with the tea we had picked. I took it home in hopes of convincing Sunee to become a tea processor. She liked the idea and we became our own specialists in tea processing. The above poster represents our new found field of tea processing. Actually it came from a website that specializes not in tea but in what is called "motivational posters." How is this for a motivational poster? The picture is mine as are the motivational words.

I did some internet research and decided on a process known as the Longjing method. Basically there are three ways to process green tea: fry it, bake it or steam it.

Since we have no oven to bake the tea in and we had no idea what steaming meant for tea, Sunee decided to fry it. The Longjing method calls for three separate fries of twenty minutes each. First, however, one had to let it dry in the shade for a couple of days. We followed these directions and you can see Sunee processing the tea in the first fry after the initial drying period.

Here is the tea after the second frying. Sunee would fry the tea at medium heat and move it around the pan with her hands to insure all the tea was heated.

After each frying, we would let the tea cool and "rest" the remainder of the day. The process took around five days with the first two days allowing the tea to dry on its own. Additionally, we allowed one day for each of the frying sessions for a total of five days.

So how was this hand-picked, hand-processed China Tea Travels tea? To be honest, Sunee sneaked some to try after the second frying and she thought it was pretty good, so our expectations were high when I did the official tasting.

We used our Gaiwan teapot to make this first "official" unveiling of our own special green tea. As you can see, the tea came out a pale luscious and beautiful amber. The aroma was wonderfully hypnotizing with lots of hints of "hand-processing" and essence of being "hand-picked." Could it be that the freshmen all forgot to wash their hands as they picked our tea?Complex is simply a word that does not do justice to this "fantastic" tea.

As we both lingered over this exhilarating aroma, a hesitation gripped our solace. What if this stuff tastes bad? What if . . . .. . ? What if . . . . .? What the heck! We have just spent five days preparing for this moment and here we are hesitating.

As I sipped the hot liquid, the first thing that came to mind was . . . well, Zhuyeqing. Sunee's first comment was also - Zhuyeqing! Hey, that means that we were a success, doesn't it? A tea that tastes like Zhuyeqing is a good thing not a bad thing.

Actually this tea was quite good - not too bitter but with a nice sweetness that starts on the tip of the tongue and goes all the way back to the throat. It also possessed an aftertaste for a little longer than the normal Zhuyeqing. A very nice green tea, hand-picked and hand-processed on the slopes of Emei Mountain that screams out to anyone who dares sip of its youthfulness - I AM FRESH GREEN TEA.

Based on our experience as tea pickers and tea processors, are we ready for prime time? I think if one did the math, one would realize that tea from Emei can be bought for a whole lot less than the freshmen class paid for this tea. It cost 15 Yuan for each tea picker to go out and do the picking. There were 22 freshmen along with the Gap Guys and me doing the picking. The tea that Sunee and I, thus, processed cost an astounding 375 Yuan for less than 100 grams of processed tea. PRIME TIME? I think not.

A Return to Zhuyeqing Garden

2009-03-14T20:35:00.016+08:00

The Freshmen Class 1 invited the Gap Guys and me to go pick tea with them at the Zhuyqing Garden. Pick tea! Great idea.

Mr. Frank and Ms. Jennifer dropped by our apartment at 0900 on Saturday and we walked back up the hill to the Live Plaza where several of the freshmen were waiting for us and transportation. The Gap Guys, Jennifer and I took a rented car to the garden while the other students took a bus to Emei City and would get a taxi.

Here is Jennifer waiting for the car while we visit with the other students.

The Welcome Sign at the entrance to the Zhuyeqing Museum and Garden.

We had a good time introducing the Gap Guys to some of the other students as we waited for the rest of the freshmen to arrive.

The "koi" and gold fish were especially active this morning so I had to get several shots of them. They looked pretty hungry.

The Zhuyeqing Rock is always a good place to take a few pictures. Still waiting for the others to arrive, we looked for things to keep us entertained.

Finally the rest of the class arrived and Ms. Freda arranged for us to meet our tea lady who took us over to the tea plantation to pick our tea.

The tea lady, Ms. Yang, went around and helped us understand which tea leaves we needed to pick. Here she trains me on what to look for in picking tea. Do I have what it takes to be a professional in the tea industry? With her guidance, I may have a shot at it.

Ms. Freda picking tea as quickly as she possibly can. Actually she was not picking the tea that quickly. I looked into her bag a the end of the picking and I counted 42 leaves.

Bless his little tea picking hands - Admon.

More pickers slaving away at trying to fill up their tea bags.

If one looks closely, one can see the newly formed teabuds among the mature tea leaves.

Ms. Yang seemed to really enjoy training the "waiguo ren" as he attempted to become a professional tea picker. She could speak a little English and we had a great time trying to get me to understand what leaves to pick and what leaves to leave. Leaving the correct leaves seemed to be the key to picking the correct leaves. She was a delightful teacher.

This is what we were looking for according to Ms. Yang. One small leaf attached to the unopen tea bud. These were the best tea leaves to pick.

A great picture of a newly opened tea leaf.

Here two students are bothering me for pictures as I try to fulfill my destiny as a tea picker.

After an hour of picking tea, these three students got bored so they started taking pictures and having a good time. Tea picking is boring!

Here, Mr. Jack, joins the bored trio for picture taking and none tea picking activities.

More freshmen clowning around not doing their class activity of picking tea. Guess none will sign up to the advanced tea picking class coming up soon.

Jon, one of the Gap Guys, conned these students into picking the tea for him. I looked into his tea basket and he only hand 33 tea leaves. No wonder he had to have guards with him all the time.

Here are some of the guys on the other end of the tea rows. Notice their empty tea baskets and bags. No wonder there are no professional men tea pickers. Only women have the hands that are small enough to get to all the good tea buds. Only women have the ability to pick tea from dawn 'til dusk. Only women do not goof around and take stupid pictures. Women also work together with the others in the group and do not wonder far afield and clown around when they are supposed to be picking tea.

This is the official Freshmen Class1 Tea Picking Picture. I will print a couple of these out and have the members of the class sign it and then we will present them to the Gap Guys.

Here is the sum total of all the tea the class picked. The basket is really very small so there is not much tea in the basket. In fact, we did not have enough tea for the tea cooker to mess with. We will have to fry it ourselves. I eventually ended up with the tea for Sunee to fry next week after she gets back from Thailand.

Mr. Frank thinks the fresh-picked tea smelled really good. Or did he? I forgot to ask.

As we walked back to go through the museum, I took these pictures of some of the girls posing for pictures. Not too bad, huh?

Mr. Jack is overwhelmed by the aroma of the freshly picked tea. Or was he? Me thinks he might have been acting, which he is famous for doing.

Here Ms. Jennifer and Ms. Freda pose by a flowering tree. I kept asking what kind of tree it was or what kind of flower. All I got was that it was a PINK FLOWER.

One of the flowers identified as a PINK FLOWER!

Inside the Zhuyeqing Museum

I got to watch the show again and, again, I was not impressed with the length. The whole thing took about ten minutes. I did try to get some better pictures of the lovely lady doing the gaiwan thing which she does here.

This lady obvious has done this before. She pours the water from a pretty good distance from the gaiwan cup. Seen it before and actually done better at many of the local tea shops.

The Sichuan style of pouring water into the gaiwan. This demo lasted about three minutes. I tried to get some good shots but my camera takes longer than three minutes to get ready.

A porcelain figure representing drinking tea in China. Notice the tea stuff around the guy.

The Gap Guys, Jon and Dave, discovered that this wood thing was actually a giant tea pot. I missed this the first time around.

Dave here is doing a really lousy impression of the Sichuan style of pouring tea. He made it appear to be very painful. I fear he does not have a future in the tea industry.

Each exhibit had English translations for us foreigners to read. Here Jon checks out the English to find out what the heck the exhibition is about. Actually Jon was just looking blankly at the Chinese.

Ms. Freda does a very poor job of faking caligraphy. I tried to get her to be more realistic but it is obvious that she is a poor actress. Maybe she is a good caligrapher!

Shopping area in the museum. The tea here was not cheap. In fact, it was very, very expensive.

The "what is it, what is it" photo I had so much success with the week before with Giselle, Cecilia and Taunis. Same picture, different models.

The garden and museum was fun and educational. Afterward we got vans back to the university where we had a typical Emei Shan lunch. Kind of a hot pot thing with chickens and taro floating around in a spicy liquid. Not bad but the chicken was full of bones and took a lot of effort to eat.

A final picture of Ms. Freda enjoying our lunch.

Thailand Doi Mae Salong No. 17 Oolong

2009-03-08T15:27:00.006+08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am very interested in the oolong tea now coming out of Northern Thailand. Specifically the tea that was produced at Doi Mae Salong.

Back in the 1980s, my Thai family and I made the trip to Chiang Rai and then on up to Mae Salong via the newly constructed road. It was a strange place with modern cars and fairly expensive looking housing. The people there were all Chinese and spoke Mandarin fluently. We walked among the buildings in the village (all pretty much on both side of the newly constructed asphalt road). We ate lunch at the main tourist building and visited with the sales ladies who were selling tea and other items, mostly Chinese. It was a strange experience because the ladies were certainly friendly but the men were rather scary. In fact, they all reminded me of the gangster movies from Hong Kong. These guys were bad, really bad.

We ended up buying three bags of their tea. When we got back to Bangkok, we found the tea to be really bad - almost fake tea. The people up at Mae Salong were not tea growers at this time and it was obvious that the whole thing was a scam to get the government off their drug dealing backs.

At that time, I did some research and found that this group of Chinese were the remnants of the Kuomintang's 93 Yunnan Division and were members of the 5th Army. They had moved out of Yunnan Province during the 1950s after NOT surrendering to the Red Army in Yunnan. In Burma they had become involved in the drug trade (opium) and were eventually forced out of Burma and into Thailand where they set up residence at Mae Salong around 1961. Their drug connections were still very much alive and well when we visited there.

I remember reading how the King of Thailand had worked with them to trade crops from opium to tea, cherries and other fruits. When we were there, we were told that these people had successfully used the program and were now honest tea growers. I did not believe it for a second! Their tea really sucked.

Now it seems after more than twenty years, they have become successful tea growers. Do a Google search about these Chinese Yunnanese and you will find that they have developed a pretty impressive tea. Seems they went to Taiwan and brought back some of the hybrid teas that Taiwan had developed and become famous for. Taiwan Oolongs are some of the world's best and compete favorably against the Oolongs coming out of Fujian.

Well, now it seems that these Chinese in Thailand have done exactly the same thing. I have read several articles which praised the Oolongs out of Doi Mae Salong and Doi Tung in Northern Thailand. When we went back to Thailand during the Spring Festival break, the tea from this area could be bought at several different locations. It was not cheap but reported about half the price of Taiwan's best. Sunee was not interested in it as she feels strongly that Thai tea (other than the traditional iced variety) pretty well stinks. She would not let me buy to try any of this tea. I did, however, steal a few grams from her sister who had paid nearly 900 Baht for a very small bag of it.

Now I have heated the water up and have tried this tea. It was labeled Number 17 from Mae Salong. Research found that this Number 17 is the hybrid number from Taiwan and is Thailand's best tea along with Number 12. Let's see just how good this Thai tea really is.

The tea looks like the standard oolong from Fujian or Taiwan. The smell was fresh and the color was a deep green.

Up close, the tea looked to be tightly wrapped and quite heavy. Again the color looked really good and it was obvious that the tea was fresh and well preserved.

I used my little teapot to make the tea, rinsing the leaves once before pouring the boiled water from my water pot. The first infusion was rather light but pleasant. The second and third I left in for about a minute and the result was superb. This tea is good! Really good. I got no hint of astringency and the front and back tastes and sensations remained pretty much consistent throughout my drinking experience - smooth and tasty. The liquor was a honey golden color and did not darken much even with longer infusion times. The taste became stronger with the longer times but the color was pretty consistent.

This is the second infusion and was very refreshing. Something tells me this is a great tea and the price indicates this as well.

I did not think I put much dry tea in my little pot, but when I emptied the pot into a small cup, the teapot was jammed full of the leaves. The spent leaves were huge and mostly unbroken. They were also very shiny and bright. Once more, Thai tea from this area is as good as any I have tasted from Fujian. Kind of nice having a good tea being grown when one plans to eventually retire. Try this tea. You will not be disappointed.

A Trip To The Zhu Ye Qing Museum and Gardens

2009-03-07T21:38:00.017+08:00

About a week or so ago, one of my students mentioned about a tea museum in Emei City. They were not sure exactly where it was so thought I would find out. My Freshman Writing Class #2 had a local Emei City student studying at Jiaoda so thought I would ask her.

As the students were working on an assignment, I asked Cecilia about the tea museum and she immediately volunteered to take me there. Two other students excitedly volunteered to go with us: Mr. Taunis and Ms. Giselle. We decided to meet at around 10 AM on Saturday (March 7) to catch a bus to Emei City and then take a taxi to the museum. All of us seemed to be greatly excited about the prospects of visiting the museum. Could it be that the Mists of Emei had been causing us some depression? For me this was most definitely true.

Saturday morning I got a call from Sunee concerning her return tickets. Seems we purchased a return economy instead of the expected business seat as we were led to believe. This little oversight meant that she could not get an earlier flight home and had to wait until Sunday. She was upset and wanted me to get someone to call the travel agency. I told Sunee I was going to see some students at 10 AM and I would take care of it.

Since Giselle, Taunis and Cecilia were more than capable of helping me get to the bottom of this "mistake," we all decided to go to the travel agency first. It was only a few meters from the bus stop.

The travel agency had some minor remodeling done and I almost did not recognize it. Between me and the three students we explained the situation to the agent. She did not perform impressively and it took about a half hour or more to finally come up with the answer - the return ticket was indeed an economy ticket. The question thus was why were we charged so much money for a business travel and an economy return. The agent, only an employee, could not help us so I said we would see her again on the 15th when Sunee got back. Taunis was convinced that we had been cheated. We shall see!

The Zhu Ye Qing Tea Museum and Garden

After getting frustrated by the ticket agency, we caught a taxi to the gardens.

The taxi to the museum was 7 Yuan and there seemed to be quite a number of tour buses parked outside. The welcoming sign was in both Chinese and English and gave a decent description of the place.

My three student guides anxious to get started as they pose for the opening photographs for this blog.

Hey look, Mr. Taunis yelled at us, this is the way to the museum. Was he reading the Chinese or the English?

This is the obvious Zhuyeqing rock as the brand name was prominently displayed on it. Zhuyeqing is both the name of the tea and a registered trademark of this big tea company. Makes for some confusion, especially for the none locals. Cecilia explained the situation to me very easily. Zhuyeqing Company charges five times more for their tea than does the local vendors for the same tea. I understood that fairly quick!

On the way to the museum, there was a row of bronze statues on both sides of the walk. I liked this teapicker so thought I would share her with you.

I also like the Sichuan-style tea server. I had heard about these guys so was hoping to see one in action today.

The entrance to the museum was obvious so we went up to check it out. The cost to get in was 5 Yuan so I bought our tickets. We all received a little cup of Zhuyeqing to try.

This is the ticket to the museum. Always a nice souvenir in China.

As we walked in, the ladies at the entrance told us we were just in time to see the tea demonstration so we hurried to the auditorium to watch. Of course, it was a Chinese Tea Ceremony.

It was ok but way to short. In fact, the whole thing did not even take fifteen minutes. It was a big disappointment plus I had seen better demos up close and personal.

As we walked out and followed the small crowd of visitors, we came to a large room with antique furniture. Must be a typical Chinese tea sitting room. So Taunis and Giselle sat and posed as appropriate on the chairs.

Around the room on the tables were tea stuff. Most of it had cracks or broken pieces. This teapot was very large and probably pretty useless because of its size.

Since we were in a tea sitting room, I figured I might as well sit for a photo as well.

Don't forget me! Don't forget me! Cecilia yelled as she sat in the sitting chair with her favorite bunny in hand.

The wall was covered with Chinese tea stuff so thought I would snap a picture for the blog. Believe the Chinese characters are for respect and humility or some such thing. For sure the one on the right is "respect."

The Museum

The next part of the building was the tea museum. It was small, nicely laid out but does not compete with the tea museum in Jia Jiang. Most of the stuff was rather drab and uninteresting. Might as well take some pictures since I am here.

I really liked this plaque so I took a picture of it. Believe I will try to find one like it for our Chinese compound in Thailand which we plan to build.

This is a root that grew (or was trimmed) to look like the Chinese character for tea - "cha."

Bet there are lots of teapots in here? Don't bet against it because there were. This weird one looked to be made of bamboo.

Another plaque that would fit well into a Chinese compound located in southern Thailand, don't you think?

This was an interesting display that caught my attention. The large teapot was rather simple but refined and I loved the "cha" that shows on the book next to it.

Bet there are some teacups in this museum. Yep, I was right. This one had some buddhas inside and outside and looked to be very old.

Teapot anyone? Lots of interesting teapots on display.

All the exhibits had a professionally laid out explanation board next to them in both Chinese and English. Throughout the museum, one saw these bilingual information posters. Now that is a good idea for all of us foreigners.

Now here is a weird teapot! As I looked at it, I finally figured out what the thing in the back was - a spoon to scoop out the tea and put it in the pot. Actually, this was really a very attractive pot.

As we walked through the rooms full of museum stuff we came to a room set up for calligraphy. Nicely laid out. Once more Cecilia checks out the seating and even does some calligraphy for the photograph. She, of course, forgot that the brush needs to have ink on it to work.

Moving on we came to an area that was entitled Sichuan Scenes or something like that. I call this photograph - SPOUTS. These are the water spouts that the sichuan tea servers used.

I call this photograph - The Pour Idiot.

Both Giselle and Taunis do a much better rendition of the sichuan tea server.

Here Cecilia and I pose in front of the typical Sichuan tea place for a picture. Notice that Cecilia loaned me one of her pet bunnies to hold in my hand. She always seems to have bunnies whenever we take her picture.

How are you? I am fine and you? Taunis greets his teacher and they pose for a photograph in OLD EMEI CITY.

Nice pose of Giselle and Cecilia. Unfortunately for Cecilia, her bunnies must have been hiding in her pocket.

Looking closely at the display to try to figure out what it is. Right, ladies?

Interesting old BW photograph of a typical street scene in old Emei City.

Path to the Garden

We leave the museum and follow the path that leads to the tea garden.

Weird, over-sized teapots sat along the path on both sides. Most were boring but this guy was different so I snapped his picture.

What is it? What is it? Yelling for me to take a picture, I immediately obliged their frantic yells. Well, "it" was nothing more than a teapot with weird things on its lid.

Zhuyeqing Garden

The garden was very Chinese (who would have thought!) and lovely.

My three guides pose for a picture just as we enter the garden. They are anxious to show me what Chinese gardens are all about.

All "real" Chinese gardens have water be it a pond or a running river. This garden was no exception with a beautifully laid out pond and buildings.

All Chinese gardens have a bridge of some sort. This bridge looked great with the surrounding architectural forms.

Here is another view of the garden with pagoda, pond and the surrounding architecture forms again.

The Tea Plants

The tea plants. The tea plants. Where are the tea plants? Cecilia was anxious and excited to show us the tea plants so she asked one of the attendants. Straight ahead on our left - we can't miss them.

An information sign telling us about the famous Emei Mountain zhuyeqing tea. Of course, the Zhuyeqing Tea Company zhuyeqing tea is by far the best!

Rows upon rows upon rows of tea. Me thinks this is not real as the zhuyeqing tea is supposed to be high up on Emei Mountain. Do you want to bet these are tourist tea plants?

And finally here is a little zhuyeqing waiting to be picked. See the bamboo leaf shape of the young leaf just now coming out.

Jiaogulan Herbal Tea

2009-02-22T17:21:00.008+08:00

I spend too much time on the internet researching teas. Ask Sunee. She will tell you the truth.

During one of these "trips on the internet," I came across something call Jiaogulan tea. The Chinese was xiancao or longevity grass. The stuff I found stated that some good examples of this tea were being grown in the mountains of northern Thailand. Great. Here is something I can pursue while in Thailand, knowing that buying quality Thai tea would be forbidden.

At a small organic shop not far from our home, I came across a cute little tin of the Jiaogulan Herbal Tea. It was not cheap - 130 Baht or around $4. At least for Sunee, this was expensive since it only had 50 grams. Hey, I thought the cute little tin was worth the four bucks!

Here is the front cover. Kinda classy looking, don't you think?

The back of the tin gave the information necessary to fix this up for drinking in both Thai and English. Very professionally done.

From this net: http://www.jiaogulan.net

Chinese: xiancao (仙草, literally "immortal grass"; more accurately "herb of immortality")
English: five-leaf ginseng, poor man's ginseng, miracle grass, fairy herb, sweet tea vine, gospel herb

History of Jiaogulan
Chapter II
(from Jiaogulan "China's Immortality Herb" by Michael Blumert)

Traditional Uses

Although jiaogulan grows in many Asian countries, there does not seem to be any early historical documentation in existence other than in China. The earliest information available on jiaogulan dates back to the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), when Zhu Xiao first described the plant and presented a sketch of it in the book Materia Medica for Famine in 1406 A.D.. But he recognized it only as a wild crafted plant used as food or a dietary supplement during famine, rather than as a medicinal herb. Later, about 1578 A.D., the renowned herbalist Li Shi-Zhen also described jiaogulan in detail and with a sketch in his classical book Compendium of Materia Medica. He pointed out that this herb could be used to treat hematuria, edema and pain of the pharynx, heat and edema of the neck, tumors and trauma. This was the earliest record of jiaogulan’s use as a drug, although at this time it was confused with an analogous herb, Wulianmei. However, in the Qing dynasty (1644-1912 A.D.) Wu Qi-Jun in his book, Textual Investigation of Herbal Plants, cited the description and sketch from Zhu Xiao’s book and added more information about its medicinal usage. He also clearly separated jiaogulan from its confusion with Wulianmei. Jiaogulan’s traditional use has not been widespread in China. It was used as a folk herb in the local areas where it grew wild. Jiaogulan grows mostly in the mountainous regions of southern China, far from the central part of China, an area which has long been known as the “ancient domain of China”. This central area of China is where the classical system that we call traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) evolved. For this reason, jiaogulan is not included in the standard pharmacopoeia of the TCM system, and therefore has not had as widespread use as TCM herbs. However, an experienced TCM practitioner in China has analyzed jiaogulan and described its qualities in terms of traditional Chinese medicine, as “sweet, slightly bitter, neutral, warm, enhancing ‘Yin’ and supporting ‘Yang’”, and suggested that “it would be used to increase the resistance to infection and for anti-inflammation.”

Modern Discovery

Jiaogulan has been used by the people in the mountainous regions of Southern China as an energizing agent. They would take it as a tea before work to increase endurance and strength, and after work to relieve fatigue. It has also been taken for general health and has been recognized as a rejuvenating elixir. People also used it for treating common colds and other infectious diseases. Hence, the local Chinese people called jiaogulan, xiancao the “Immortality Herb,” and described it thus: “Like ginseng but better than ginseng.” Another story states that in a village near Fanjing Mountain in Guizhou province, the inhabitants would drink jiaogulan tea instead of the more common green tea and as a result many people there were living to 100 years of age. In 1972 the Research Group of Combined Traditional Chinese-Western Medicine of Qu Jing in Yunnan province did a study on the therapeutic effect of jiaogulan in 537 cases of chronic tracheo-bronchitis. This was the first report of medicinal usage of jiaogulan in modern Chinese medical literature. Jiaogulan has since been included in the more recent Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica, where it describes the traditional uses for jiaogulan as a medicine. There it is indicated for anti-inflammation, detoxification, cough remedy, as an expectorant and as a chronic bronchitis remedy. Other traditional uses as a medicine have been anecdotally said to be for heart palpitation and for fatigue syndromes. In Japan, jiaogulan is called amachazuru. “Amacha” means “sweet” in Japanese, referring to the sweet component prevalent in the plant, “cha” means tea, and “zuru” means “vine”. The name perfectly describes the jiaogulan plant, which grows as a climbing vine and produces a sweet tea from its leaves. Amachazuru has been recognized in Japan since the late 1970s, and its description and uses are included in the Japanese Colour Encyclopedia of Medicinal Herbs. Among other things, it is stated there: “Because of the sweet taste of the leaves, it has been used as a mountain vegetable”, similar to its use during the Ming Dynasty mentioned previously. Perhaps one of the more significant revelations about jiaogulan came about in Japan in the mid-1970s. Previously unknown as a medicinal herb, jiaogulan’s discovery in Japan came about like many of the world’s great discoveries—partially through the hard labor of a dedicated scientist, and partially by accident. It all started like this: In the 1960s there was a trend amongst some research scientists to find an alternative sweetener to sugar. Although saccharin was in use for many years, they were still pursuing other sugar alternatives. In Japan, the government had prohibited the use of sodium cyclamate, a recently discovered artificial sweetener. Japanese researcher Dr. Masahiro Nagai, presently a professor of Pharmacognosy at Hoshi Pharmaceutical University, recalls:

I had been in the National Institute for Health (NIH) in the U.S. for two years, from 1969 to 1971, when Dr. Osama Tanaka, a professor in the Dept. of Medicine of Hiroshima University, sent a request to me asking that I send a copy of a thesis on Stevia, which had been a subject of research in the NIH. He was interested in the plant for his study as a safe sweetening agent, which is not a sugar. When I went back to Japan, I decided to study the ingredients of another plant, called amachazuru, for possible use as a sugar alternative which, because of my background in Pharmacognosy, I knew to contain a sweet component.

Upon analyzing the sweet component, he stumbled upon the first discovery by the scientific world of chemical compounds contained in amachazuru that are identical to some of the compounds found in Panax ginseng, yet in a completely unrelated plant. He announced his findings at the twenty-third Meeting of the Japanese Society of Pharmacognosy in 1976, at Hiroshima. As it turned out, there was no further investigation of the herb for its sweetness. At that time, another Japanese scientist, Dr. Tsunematsu Takemoto, whose specialty was herb medicine research, was seeking natural treatments for cancer and other ailments arising from stress, as well as a sugar alternative. His interest of study was in a Chinese fruit, botanical name Momordica grosvenori, a melon of the Cucurbitaceae (cucumber or gourd) family, known not only for its sweetness, but also for its medicinal uses. His interest in this fruit had been piqued because of its reputation as the “precious fruit of longevity” and as a popular Chinese medicine. After returning from an unsuccessful trip to Kenya in search of the Momordica fruit, he learned of the research being done with amachazuru, an herb in the same family as the fruit he was studying. According to Professor Nagai, “One year after my presentation of the study at the Pharmacognosy Society (1977-78), Prof. Takemoto and his research group saw my reports on the study of amachazuru, and became very interested in studying it.” Since the compounds in amachazuru were found to be similar to those in Panax ginseng, and because it was growing wild in the fields and mountains, Dr. Takemoto thought that he had possibly found, in an apparently insignificant perennial weed, an inexpensive and readily available health panacea, right in his native country.10 Upon analyzing the amachazuru himself, Dr. Takemoto discovered that it contained four kinds of saponins exactly like those in Panax ginseng and seventeen other kinds of saponins very similar to those in Panax ginseng. Over the next ten years he and his group of researchers identified and named eighty-two saponins from amachazuru, whereas Panax ginseng has been found to have up to 28 saponins. Although these two plants are not related, they contain the same major components: saponins, a substance that has the unique quality of dissolving both in water and oil, and when mixed with water and shaken, will foam up. In Panax ginseng the saponins are called ginsenosides, in jiaogulan, or amachazuru, they are called gypenosides. (See Chapter 5 for a more detailed explanation of saponins) Dr. Takemoto was very excited about this newly discovered herb and he embarked on a mission to gradually uncover all of its potential. Throughout the 1980s, Dr. Takemoto, along with his staff, performed studies which isolated and identified eighty-two saponins, which they simply numbered 1-82. In 1984 they performed three experiments that began to demonstrate amachazuru’s many health-supporting and medicinal qualities. They saw that amachazuru increased the activity and strength of mice in a swimming test, showing the herb’s ability to improve endurance. Another study on mice showed the herb’s effectiveness as a neoplasm or tumor inhibitor,15 and a third showed the herb’s ability (adaptogenic) to prevent the unpleasant side effects of dexamethasone (hormone treatmen).16 These studies used mice as subjects; nevertheless having been tested on mammals, they were a significant marker for the herb’s possible effectiveness on humans. This was borne out by subsequent studies on humans. Jiaogulan would prove, in studies, to enhance endurance, inhibit tumors and help protect the cellular immunity in humans, as well as provide many other health-promoting benefits. Although the Japanese findings were significant, they were only the beginning of the extensive research that would be done on amachazuru. Unfortunately, in 1989 the driving force behind the ground-breaking research, Dr. Takemoto, passed away. As a result, the energy to pursue the research significantly slowed in Japan. However, interest in jiaogulan by Chinese researchers was growing rapidly, sparked by the results of a nationwide population census taken in the 1970s. The census revealed that, in small regions in the south central portion of China (some villages of Guangxi, Shicuan and other southern provinces), high rates of people per capita were living to 100 years of age. Cancer incidence was extremely low among the inhabitants as well. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Medical Science in Beijing and other institutions began to research these regions and discovered that the people living there were regularly drinking a tea made from the herb jiaogulan. Because of the significant results of the census taken in China during the 1970’s, and then the boom of scientific interest in jiaogulan (amachazuru) in Japan during the 1980s, many research studies on jiaogulan were undertaken in China, and they have been continuing up to the present. Various pharmacological and therapeutic effects of jiaogulan were investigated and proven by tests on animals and human beings. Tonics and recipes made of jiaogulan have been developed and are being used in Chinese medical institutions. Surveys of the resources of jiaogulan in various portions of China have been made and cultivation techniques investigated. Nearly 300 scientific papers on jiaogulan or its saponins have been published in respected journals, and information about the herb has been formally collected and published in the modern Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica. Jiaogulan has been recognized and accepted by ever-increasing numbers of Chinese people. From the time of the Qin Dynasty (221 B.C.), the Emperors of ancient China would send various envoys overseas to search for the “elixir of life”, but their efforts were always fruitless. Perhaps, the “elixir” has been found by descendants of the Emperors, growing in their own homeland!

The leaves were delicately dried and twisted and oh so tiny and light.

A closeup reveals how green the tea is and how tightly each little leaf was twisted. These weigh almost nothing so the 50 gram turns out to be quite a lot.

The finished product. The tea is bitter at first but cannot compare to the Kudingchas that we have been drinking. The bitterness is quick and as one swallows the tea it immediately becomes a syrupy sweet sensation. Weird! The taste is strange and one immediately knows that this is not tea but some kind of Chinese herbal medicine. The taste is not unpleasant but weird keeps coming to mind. Weird it is and weird it will always be.

IMHO, this stuff is medicine and I would have to be a seriously believing Westerner to drink it as such. WIll it make me live longer? Maybe. Would the weirdness each day be worth an extra day or two in my life? Ahhh, that is the question. This stuff is so weird that it would probably mess up my taste buds to where I would not be able to taste all the green tea I must drink over the next year so I can start over with a new batch. PASSSSSSSSS!

Tea In Thailand

2009-02-21T16:10:00.003+08:00

Our trip back home to Thailand had little to do with tea. Thai oolong tea, however, is now being sold just about everywhere one looks. I have read several articles about this tea and how it is competing with the best from Taiwan and Fujian. The tea was planted about twenty years or so ago by members of the Fifth Kuomintang Army that moved out of Yunnan when the communists took over China in 1949. I remember visiting them at MaeSaLong a long, long time ago when the road to their mountain top hideout was first opened. I found the people to be less than friendly and the tea to be terrible. It was reported that these people were heavily into opium crops and the Thai army looked the other way. The King of Thailand did some crop swapping and encouraged them to plant tea. That tea is now coming on the market in a big way and some experts compare it favorably with oolong tea elsewhere.

I tried to get Sunee to buy some for me to taste but it was expensive, very expensive. I did talk my sister-in-law out of about 50 grams to try later on when I get the time.

In the meantime, I was forced to make do with Thai iced tea and Thai iced coffee. Wooo is me! Wooo is me! Who does not love Thai iced coffee and Thai iced tea. The coffee especially reminds me of Bryers Coffee Ice Cream back in the States. It was wonderful.
Tom came to visit so we took him to see some of the local temples. Lunch included some Thai ice tea and Thai ice coffee seen here

Unfortunately about a week after we got back to China, we got a call informing us that Sunee's brother-in-law had suddenly passed away. He was only a year or two older than me and this came as a complete shock. Sunee left to go back to Thailand almost immediately! Makes one realize how tenuous life really is.

Puerh Menghai Lang He Chi Tse Beeng Tea 9599

2009-01-09T22:32:00.004+08:00

We visited the new Focus Market in downtown Emei City yesterday to buy a few chocolates for Thailand. In addition, Sunee bought her sister a cute little teapot, a little bigger than the one I got. Many things were on sale for the upcoming Chinese New Year. One of the items on sale that caught my attention was a Puerh Cake I had seen each time we had visited the market. It was on sale for less than half price so we bought it to try. As one of the tea bloggers (can't remember who) stated - buy puerh that you like. Here is my take on this puerh.

This is the cake we bought. This particular cake cost 56 Yuan or 58 Yuan depending on where you buy it in the local department stores. We bought this cake for 28 Yuan which is about half the normal price. We thought we would give it a try.

I am totally clueless about Puerh Tea. I do not understand what I am reading when I do research on the internet. I have only bought a few interesting cakes and I do like them very much. I will only buy puerh that I like per the blogger expert's advice.

What are we looking for in a good puerh? I don't have a clue. The cake we bought last time in Chengdu had a bunch of silver leaves. In fact, it was almost entirely light colored leaves throughout. Believe that is what is known as "tippy." It means the tea leaves are new and young. As you can see from the this picture and the following one, this cake has almost no "tippy" to it. They are all dark.

I understand that the leaves are oxidized then steamed and then pressed together to make the cakes. The process differs depending on what the final outcome of the tea is meant to be. What is the final outcome of this tea? Clueless!

The only thing that counts is the end product or the tea that one plans on drinking. The end product in this case made us go back and get three more of these cakes while they were still on sale and before we go to Thailand. Had some more of this puerh when we got back from buying the three cakes. It is good and that, so all the puerh people will tell you, is all that matters.

Keemun Black Tea

2009-01-07T11:25:00.012+08:00

I bought this tea as one of the "famous" teas I wanted to try on our last trip to the Chengdu Tea Culture Street. I bought it along with a Dian Cong to give them both a try. We bought 500 grams of this Qimen tea and 250 grams of the Dian Cong since I already had the Yunnan Golden Tips, I figured they would be about the same.

I retrieved the following information from the internet:

The Processing of Black Tea

The processing of black tea requires a full oxidation of the leaves. After the leaves are plucked, they are laid out to wither for about 8 to 24 hours. This lets most of the water evaporate.

Then the leaves are rolled in order to crack up the surface so that oxygen will react with the enzymes and begin the oxidation process. The leaves are left to completely oxidize, thus turning the leaves to a deep black color. After that, a final drying takes place. From there, it goes off to be sorted, graded, and packaged.

Keemun black tea (Qi Men Black tea), is 0ne of the most famous black tea in the world, also called Qi Men Gong Fu or Qi Men Oolong. Be assessed as the chempion of rea tea in the world match of tea in Panama in 1915.

Keemun blacktea has been praised as 'one of the best three high aroma teas in the world and the 'the queen of fragrance'. This one is the special grade of super high quality. The rich brown liquor with a slightly scented flavour and the bright amber infusion has an appetizing honeyed sweet aroma while the taste is wonderfully smooth and with a light hint of floral aftertaste win its distinctive name 'Keemun Flavor'. Also, because of its subtle and complex nature, it is considered as the'burgundy of teas'.

This particular tea is supposed to be the "mother" or "father" of most of the tea sold throughout the world.

Black Keemun tea has its place amongst the ten best known Chinese teas despite its relatively short history. It has been produced in the district of Qimen in the prefectship of Huangshan Shi in the An Hui province since 1875, where formerly only green tea was produced. “Keemun” is an English transcription of the Chinese “Qimen” from the colonial era, and it is rightly considered the “champagne amongst black teas”. Its taste is distinctly suggestive, fruity with a hint of grape, with a woody base, generally unrivalled and may be very subjective. Its aroma is sometimes compared to the scent of orchids or roses, it is floral to fruity with a flavour of coniferous wood plants (similar to Lapsang Souchong). Black (or more accurately red) Keemun tea, as one of a range of Chinese teas, won an award at the international Panama-pacific exhibition in 1915. The production procedures for this tea are fully in accordance with the strict norms of USDA/NOP-Final Rule for the production of organic foodstuffs.

The Qimen tea leaves are black and very similar to the Yunnan Golden Tips. The Dian Cong (Dian actually means Yunnan) I bought was almost exactly the same as the Yunnan Gold Tips I have already been drinking. The main difference was the amount of golden leaves in the mixture. The Yunnan Golden Tips tea had almost 100% golden leaves while the Dian Cong tea was about 40% to 50% golden leaves. These Qimen leaves are almost all black with an occasion goldish leaf.

Here you can see the Qimen tea leaves that I used to get six solid infusions from. I probably could have gotten a couple more, but I was in a hurry to get this on this blog.

The first infusion was lighter than the second and it contained all the flavors mentioned above in the internet write-up. It had hints of the American Lipton tea but a level one hundred times better. It was strong and flavorful without being astringent but I never did get any hints of what I would call floral. This is nothing like Puerh floral and, IMHO, does not match the Yunnan Golden Tips in flavor or in the subtle nuances of the great teas I have been drinking. I think this tea would handle any amount of milk or sugar one wanted to throw at it. It is solid and strong with a mild front taste and a lingering but not overpoweringly strong aftertaste. I can see why people add stuff like flowers and things to it. The flavor is not overly abundant but honest and smooth all the way through from teeth to throat. Solid seems to be the term that keeps coming to my mind.

I let the second infusion go for about three minutes and it came out darker and even more subtle with its flavors. This is a great tea if one likes the taste of "Western-style" tea. It tastes exactly like a more expensive and more powerful tea from a Lipton tea bag. Same flavor but more pronounced and much more genuine. Maybe I have drunk too many cups of Chinese tea, because this is not my favorite. I understand its strengths and why it is the "mother of all Western teas," but still I prefer the Yunnan Golden Tip black tea. To me the Golden Tip tea is almost chocolaty in its flavor whereas this is just tea flavored. It was, however, well worth the trip to Chengdu and I think Sunee will put some honey in it to get the black tea benefits. An experience well worth repeating now again.

Tibet Sweet Tea

2009-01-07T11:25:00.007+08:00

I received some Tibet Sweet Tea from my Tibetan student, Ms. Trysa. She is one of the few Tibetan students we have here at Southwest Jiaotong University-Emei Branch and I was very excited to have her in my Freshmen Writing Class. She is absolutely a beautiful woman, I was surprised by her gift. Although I have been drinking this tea for breakfast off and on since Christmas, I thought now would be a good time to introduce it to you.

During the Welcome Freshmen night, Trysa performed a traditional Tibetan dance in Tibetan costume. She was wonderful!

This is the "chop" on the top of the box of instant Tibetan Sweet Tea.

No need for me to copy this off the box to let you know what is inside.

The box contained ten packages of instant Tibetan Sweet Tea. I think I have around five left.

The bags are typical instant tea bags and are easily opened and very convenient to use.

The sweet tea is great for breakfast and especially if one likes coffee with cream and sugar. The tea is almost the flavor of chocolate and certainly has the color to match the flavor. Overall, this is a really interesting tea and probably gives one a "taste" of the Tibetan sweeten tea. I bet it is close to the famous "Yak Butter Tea" I have heard so much about. Any one ever try the "yak butter" tea?

Punishing the Tea Traitors

2009-01-06T08:06:00.004+08:00

The peaks of Emei do not call to me
Neither can I look upon their beauty
Nor do I walk in the forests in awe
For today like yesterday is cold and raw

The teas on her slopes drink in her mist
Oh, yes her green teas are hard to resist
Two weeks on and the mists remain
For humans it is nothing but a pain

Crying out for the mountain to cease
The mist and rain and give us peace
She laughs at us and continues the pace
Of mist filled air and water in the face

Her beautiful temples do not beckon me
Stay away from rocks for they’re slippery
The cold is real and cuts to the bone
Hey, I know this because I’m not alone

She’s scolding us daily this great mountain Emei
Making us pay for not drinking her tea each day
It’s three weeks since we’ve seen the sun
Living in her shadow is not much fun

Kindly stop this cold mist from coming down
Making us miserable here on the ground
We promise to drink only your wonderful tea
Please stop the cold mist and give us some liberty

My First New Tea of the New Year: Xin Yang Mao Jian

2009-01-03T11:15:00.009+08:00

On our last trip to Chengdu, we bought this tea pre-packaged to give it a try. I had read that it was considered one of those "top ten Chinese teas" I keep reading about. The price was around 8 Yuan for 100 grams and I had to get it to try.

The following is a quick compilation of several sites (mostly commercial tea sellers) that provide information about this tea. I read them all and then put together the information.

Xin Yang Mao Jian

Xinyang Maojian is produced in the top of Xinyang, Henan Cheyun mountain, Jiyun mountain, Tianyun mountain, Yun wu mountain, Zhenlei mountain, Hei Longtan, Bai Longtan and other mountains. The end products' color is green, the pekoe revealed. The color of tea is bright-green, the fragrance is thick, the flavor is good and the leaf bud strong, light green even.

This Xinyang area has a superior climate and earth soil conditions ideal for green tea production. A couple of thousand years of perfecting the manual system tea craft, causes "the Xinyang Maojian" to be unique and unequalled. Tea Saint Lu Yu in his "the Book of tea", stated that Xinyang Maojian is the high-grade tea, Song Dynasty big literary giant Su Dongpo also placed " Huai Nan tea Xinyang first " among great teas of China.

Xinyang Mao Jian attained the famous tea high quality certificate in 1915 at the Panamanian international exposition; In 1959 it was listed as one of ten big famous teas of China. In 1982 it was, once again, evaluated and given the ministry-level high quality famous tea of China.

Though Xinyang is on the edge of the arid North China plain, the mountainous southern and western parts, crisscrossed by streams and brooks, have plenty of the clouds and mist needed for good tea. The processed leaves are in fine, taut strips. They make a delicious tea with a chestnut flavour and a long-lasting aftertaste. This tea was produced with only very simple equipment. What makes it different is the skilful hand movements of rolling, adjusted to the heat and softness or dryness of the tender leaves.

Front of the package.

From the back of the 100 gram package we bought:

Xinyang maojian lies in mountains of Xinyang with densely covered rivulet and fog. It is finely made by tender bud as raw material. It is adopted traditional craft and modern science and technology to produce. It owns features of elegant and slender shape, peak green, little white, clear green in water, fine aroma, special style. It is special tea titbit.

The back of the package contained the above description and date of production. It states that this tea can be stored for around 18 months.

Ok, enough preparation for this tea. Let's find out how it tasted

The tea looks pretty much like the other Mao Jians we have tried from Emei Mountain and elsewhere. It was dark green and twisted nicely together. It looked to be about the same density as the Emei Mao Jian.

My close up shot reveals nothing out of the ordinary. This tea looks like any other Mao Jian one can buy locally.

And, of course, the proof is in the cup. This tea is good, really good. Since we bought it pre-packaged, one can probably figure it to be a lower grade of tea than one could buy in its loose-leaf form. Nevertheless, this tea is great. It is smooth with a full-bodied sensation and a sweet and fairly long lasting aftertaste. The word "cooling" comes to mind whenever I take a sip. We really like this tea and when we go back to Chengdu, we plan to stock up on it.

I did about five infusions before it ran a little weak. Do believe if I let it set longer, I could have gotten a couple of more infusions. A truly great green tea worth drinking regularly.

Happy New Year 2009

2008-12-28T11:04:00.002+08:00

Hope Unsurpassed

As the mists of Emei fly
Across the endless Sichuan sky
And we approach this year’s end
With all the things we had to contend
I hope the new year brings you
Joy under brilliant skies of blue
Wealth beyond belief
Health for your relief

As the cold of the region settles in
And winter bites your reddened skin
I hope you have a warm and joyful place
To celebrate the New Year to embrace
Those you love as well as those you like
Forgetting those you hate and want to strike
It is my desire in hope unsurpassed
That I am one of the first and not the last

A Merry "Mao Feng" Christmas

2008-12-24T12:54:00.006+08:00

It's Christmas Eve and we are set for at least three different parties. My sophomore class number three will be having a Christmas party at 1550. I have been having Christmas parties in my classes all week. A great way to do Western culture! So far I have attended four parties with yesterday's two classes combining to have one party. It was great fun.

Today after the class party at 1550, we have been invited to celebrate with the Dean and other faculty members with a dinner at 1800. Finally, at 1930 the students of the Foreign Language Department will have their party. So little time, so many parties.

My good friend Bogdan (an American here who has a computer software company) had his wife drop by to give us a huge tin of Huangshan Mao Feng. Another of those "top ten classical teas of China." I could not wait so we opened it and tried it.

Weiyan, Bogdan's wife, brought the tea in this bag. Obviously it came from a Huangshan place.

The actual tea was housed in this huge beautiful tin. We are talking a lot of Mao Feng here!

The Mao Feng tea leaves were a lot bigger than the Emei Mao Feng. One of these days, we will sit down and do some serious comparison of the Mao Feng and other teas.

Close up, the leaves are various shape with some having hair and others just folded nicely. This Mao Feng also has a lot more green to it than the stuff we buy from Emei.

I used my new pot and Induction Tea Cooker to make this Huangshan Mao Feng. The results were excellent. This tea lives up to its reputation easily. It is a bit heavier than that coming form Emei but also sweeter with more delicate undertones. Once again, who would not like such a fine tea as this? It is truly a great tea.

I did five infusions with these leaves but really only got two good cups of tea. After the third steeping, the tea was pretty weak and lost any meaningful sensations. Green tea is only good for two and, at the most, three infusions.

Menghai County Raw Puerh Tea

2008-12-20T20:24:00.006+08:00

On Saturday, we made the trip down to Focus Market after dropping a watercolor painting off to our friends who have the Chinese medicine store. We had the painting framed to give as a Christmas gift. At focus, we bought several more packages of tea to give away in Thailand and I bought this tea to try it out. It only cost around 9 yuan for 60 grams. That comes to about one dollar and thirty cents. We had tried a "raw" puerh in Chengdu and love it. Even bought a bing cake of it we liked it so much. I hoped this puerh would be a choice that would bring us joy. The price certainly was right.

This is the packaging of this puerh. Attractive and convenient, it stood next to all the green teas that one sees everywhere.

The leaves look like puerh, smell like puerh and are, indeed, puerh. Nothing fantastic to see, just plain puerh processed tea leaves.

Up close the puerh leaves look and feel like smoking tobacco. The wrinkles are the same and the color is identifical. I sure wish I understood puerh better than I do now. I get confused whenever I try to read an article about its history and processing. Makes me want to go visit some puerh factories in Yunnan.

The actual liquid from the leaves was disappointing. The puerh tea we had in Chengdu was much lighter. This tea is OK but it is what one would expect from a decent puerh tea. Nothing outstanding, just a good drinkable tea. Sunee does not like it because it reminds her of the Tea she sees in Thailand. I, however, really enjoy a good cup of puerh, especially when it puts my cheeks to sleep as it often does.

As one can see, the leaves are mature, dark and heavily textured. Guess that is what makes them puerh, right?

Liu An Gua Pian Green Tea

2008-12-20T20:18:00.007+08:00

Liu An Gua Pian or Melon Seed/Pieces green tea is considered to be in the top ten (maybe even top five) great Chinese classical teas. I had been reading about this tea for several months so when we went to Chengdu this past week, we bought some.

The Melon Seed/Pieces tea is the result of a labor intensive picking style in which the farmers cut the pointy tip end and woody stem of each leaf creating indentically sized "melon pieces". Lu An Gua Pian is made only using the tea leaves and no buds at all (similar to Japanese green tea). The emerald-green dried tea leaves are long and narrow, each measuring between 1.5cm to 2cm in length. The long leaves are thin and soft creating a rich flavor without bitterness. Only the first, second and third tea leaves are used to produce this tea. The leaves are withered to reduce leaf moisture and then baked and simultaneously rolled to stop oxidation while frequently turned to impart a delicate hint of smokiness. This also gives the tea its unique melon seed shape. The tea then goes through several drying processes requiring the skill of an experienced tea master. After drying, the tea is sorted, winnowed to remove broken tea and then graded. This tea originated in Anhui province in 1776 during the Ching dynasty.

The dried leaves are easily identified from other greens. The leaves are dark to grayish green, long and tightly closed. They have by far the longest tea leaves of any green tea we have tried thus far.

Up close, one can see the darkened texture and the folded dried leaves. Once again, the leaves are easily identifiable.

The liquid is a beautiful golden yellow, light and transparent. The taste is fantastic. Sweet, mild and not a hint of bitterness. It has a unique floral taste and a long aftertaste much like that of Tie Guan Yin. The pleasant floral sweetness, if that is what it is, fills the whole mouth with a very refreshing and smooth sensation. These really good teas always remind me of drinking the pure water from the artesian well not far from where I grew up in Oklahoma. There is a purity in the taste that one feels more than tastes. Wow! One can see why this tea is in the top ten famous teas list. It is wonderful beyond belief!

Here you can see the Gua Pian leaves after being infused four times. One cannot really get much more than four steepings from these leaves and I think this is probably true of most green teas. The fourth infusion was rather weak and lost the beautiful golden yellow color.

Quick Trip To Chengdu Tea Culture Town

2008-12-20T20:15:00.010+08:00

Since we were planning to return to Thailand in January, we decided to take a quick trip to Chengdu to buy some tea for Thailand. We left on the 0800 school bus and arrived at SW Jiaotong University in Chengdu at around 1040. We immediately caught a taxi to the Tea Culture Town and found the area shops we had done business with before.

The trip into Chengdu was foggy and cool, almost cold. As usual, Emei Mountain was putting out her usual misty morning skies.

One of the first things we did was to check out the Liu An Gua Pian. I had been reading up on this famous tea and definitely wanted to give it a try. Here we are buying the tea after successfully negotiating for a discount on bulk.

The leaves of the Gua Pian are the most unusual we have ever seen. Guess this must be way they have their name - Melon Seed or Melon Pieces.

How about a little sample to wake you up in the morning. Nice flavor and nice aftertaste. One can see why this is in the top five teas of China.

Sunee and I are both very happy with our purchases from this shop.

Our next stop was to find the tea accessories shop from our last visit. The lady we bought the last batch of tea from walked us over to the area where the store was. The store is on the second floor so we returned, bought our Induction Tea Maker, two big Giawans, my new better teapot and some other items.

This is one of the two huge Gaiwans we bought to use daily. It cost 6 Yuan (less than $1 USD) and is really big, bigger after we bought it and got it home than even we realized.

This is the first "expensive" teapot I have purchased. The one in the previous posts cost a whopping 2 Yuan at one of those Two Yuan stores that have popped up in Emei City. This was several times more expensive and if one compares just the pictures of the two teapots, the difference is obvious. I will have to wait for my REALLY expensive teapots until later.

We originally wanted to buy four cup mats (is that what they are called) to match our tea tray. Sunee said she want four (si4) of them. When we got home and checked over our receipt, we realize we had been charged for ten of these mats. Instead of 3.5 Yuan times four, we found we had 3.5 Yuan times ten. Speakers of the Sichuan dialect and virtually all southern Chinese speakers have trouble with the reflexive sounds in Chinese. Four thus sounds to them like ten if a none native Chinese mandarin speaker says these two sounds. Ten is the pinyin shi2 but actually sounds like si2. At least it does to me and obviously to Sichuan speakers as one sees them clarifying the four and ten with the fingers crossed for ten. Sunee obviously did not cross her fingers. As it turns out, we are now both happy to have bought ten of these cute little mats to use around the house.

We are also the proud owners of an Induction Tea Cooker. This keeps the cups and such warm while rapidly heating the water via induction in a nice teapot. It works really great. I have it setting next to my computer and am looking at it as I type this. The cost was 180 Yuan or about $26 USD. Well worth the money!

On the way back to the main road to catch a taxi to the Walmart closest to Southwest Jiaotong University, we met this lady when I stopped to look at her collection of Yixing Teapots. She specialized in Puerh from Yunnan so we talked with her about buying some more cakes. She suggested a young puerh cake she had just received. We decided to give it a taste.

In addition to the young puerh cake, we found two different kinds of puerh in these two smaller cakes and decided to buy them for 15 Yuan each (around $2 USD). One was cooked while the other was not cooked.

This is the puerh cake that the lady showed us and told us about. Sunee bargained until she got it down to 75 Yuan (about $11 USD).

We were very impressed with the tea from the above tea cake. It was not as dark as what we expected and the taste was just marvelous. Now Sunee thinks we should have bought several of them. We bought one plus to two small cakes to take back to Thailand with us.

All together we bought the following teas on this trip:

One Puerh cake
Two small Puerh cakes
Liu An Gua Pian tea
Xihu Longjing tea
Dian Hong tea
Qi Men Hong tea
Xin Yang Mao Jian tea
Jun Shan Yin Zhen tea
Bi Luo Chun tea

After our tea culture town journey we got a taxi to Walmart where we bought a CD/cassette player for the Buddhist Nun we have been teaching English. She works and lives a FuHu Temple about a fifteen minute car ride from Jiaoda. This should assist her learning English. To learn more about this nun and the FuHu Temple please go to:

emeimtn.blogspot.com

Emei Mountain Que She (Sparrow's Tongue) Green Tea

2008-12-17T21:46:00.004+08:00

According to various sources on the internet, “Bird’s Tongue” Tea occupies an honourable second place in ranking the green teas of China (Longjing being number one). The top buds and the first or second leaves of the branches of the tea plant, and only those which show no signs of mechanical or other damage (the heavy rains often cause considerable damage to plants) are gathered for this tea. The tea is gathered and processed exclusively by hand, which is very laborious. The tea has to be transported from the mountains to the place of processing, rolled manually in order to soften the leaves and subsequently pressed by hand in woks in order to attain glossy, flat leaves. Bird’s tongue is a very delicate tea, but supposedly a sensitive nose can smell the chestnut aroma typical of this type of tea.

This particular tea is produced in Sichuan province on Emei Mountain. Some tea connoisseurs claim that this tea is one of the finest green teas available. According to these connoisseurs, this prized tea is a true treat, with a unique and delicate appearance and flavor.

Quite frankly there is not much to be found as far as information goes on this particular type of green tea. It is very expensive, so I doubt if we buy a lot of it.

As I stated in an earlier blog, we bought our Que She with three other types of Emei Mountain greens. It has taken me this long to get around to finding out about it.

As seen earlier in one of my blog reviews, this is the package the Que She came in. It weighed in at 50 grams and was not cheap.

The leaves are about half the size of Zhu Ye Qing and thinner. They are delicate and multicolored with a deep pastel green being the predominant color. The leaves are solid and relatively heavy for a tea.

Up close, one can get a good idea of the shapes and colors as well as the delicate hairs on each leaf.

The leaves made a light pale amber liquid similar to all the other teas of this type, such as Zhu Ye Qing and Xue Ya. The taste is very pleasant although I could not smell any chestnuts or anything like this. I do not know if I could really tell the difference between the green teas mentioned above. The Zhu Ye Qing is certainly the stronger of the three with a much heavier taste and aftertaste. Que She is closer to Xue Ya in its mildness. It has a bitter-sweet aftertaste but it does not last very long. This is most definitely a very pleasant and wonderful tea. It, along with the Zhu Ye Qing and Xue Ya, are all very close in taste and aroma and feeling. All are great teas worth drinking and enjoying.

Tibetan Tea

2008-12-14T20:33:00.005+08:00

We bought this tea in a Brother Friendship store in Ya'an, Sichuan. It looked interesting and, of course, we had often heard of Tibetan tea and butter tea. Thought this might be the tea they added butter to.

From their website at www.yayycc.com:

Old Horse Road Of Tea

　　Old Horse road of Tea is another new tourism site in the world. It is the road which is on the highest height, the most dangerous and the most magic. It is named for the exchanging marketing between Tibet and Han. The road starts separately from Sichuan and Yunnan, crosses mountains, Jinsha river, Lanchang river, Nu river and Yalong river, and go on to the west and meet at Changdu. It is a main way of cultural and economic exchanges between Tibet, Han and other nationalities. It is also the guide of the Yuman-Tibet road and Sichuan-Tibet road.

　　Old Horse Road of Tea are two roads in fact, Sichuan-Tibet horse road and Yunnan-Tibet Horse Road. The Sichuan-Tibet Horse Road is more famous. Our company is located at the first stop of this old road. The road is famous for large quantity of tea transportation and dangerous ways, which Yunnan-Tibet Horse Road is far less. This can be proved by the TV play See of national TV.
　　
Frontier tea is hardly pressed, which is a drinking necessity of Tibet people. Frontier tea produced by Ya'an has a very long history. Long time ago, Frontier tea from Ya'an is sold to Tibetan in Tibet, Ganzi and Qinghai. Ya'an also becomes the exchanging marketing between Tibet and Han. Jinjian tea and Kong brick tea is the most preferred by Tibetan. "Tibetan would rather eat no food in 3 days than drink no tea in one day." Then you can see how importan tea is in the life of Tibetan.

Poem, book and picture can mold a person's temperament, piano, chess and tea can cultivate the heart and nature culture.
Let's love tea, teste tea, chat tea and make tea.

The website is in both Chinese and English and has a bunch of pictures of the Old Horse Tea Road. It does not have a lot about the actual tea we bought but lists all the health benefits of this tea and others.

This is the can of Tibetan Tea from our Ya'an trip before the school started. I put off tasting it simply because it was in the can. Thought maybe we would be taking it back to Thailand with us and did not want to break the seal.

It seems now that we will not have enough room in our luggage for it so figured it was time for a taste test. Always love to give a new tea a taste.

When I opened the can, I found the tea was loose inside without an inner package. There was also a name card stuck in among the leaves which gave the name of the company Brother Friendship and the address in Yaan to include the website above. Not sure if this tea would have lasted long in Thailand without a sealed bag inside the can. The leaves are really dark, almost a solid black and look to be of different sizes. The smell was fresh and strong and a bit earthy. Kinda reminded me of a puerh smell.

Up close one can see the texture and the different sizes among the leaves. Pretty black looking tea, huh?

I put about a table spoon or so of the tea in my little pot and let it steep for about a minute. The liquid was dark and orange and looked a lot like puerh. The aroma was stong and earthy with hints of floral. I thought it would smell like tobacco because that is exactly what the leaves reminded me of, good strong tobacco for a pipe.

I liked this tea because it was full-bodied and strong. I can imagine that this is the tea the Tibetans put their butter in to drink. It is as strong a tea as I have tasted yet not as shallow as most of the tea bag teas I used to drink before we discovered what tea was all about.

The tea was fairly relaxing but nothing like the puerhs that I have tasted. There was no numbness in my cheeks that had come with the puerhs. I simply felt relaxed and alert at a casual rate.

If one likes black teas, I would think that this would be a solid tea to be drinking in the morning to wake up with. It is robust and firm with a smoothness that seems to be with all the other black teas I have tasted. No initial bite and no serious lingering aftertaste. Just a sold tea with an earthy and no nonsense floral taste, smooth from front to back. It is not a tea bag taste but one that has real substance and "meaning."

I can see why the blacks are us Westerners favorite tea. They do not play games with the taste buds and are not delicate and whiney (how about that for a tea tasting word!). This black tea is very pleasant and I definitely will be drinking some more of it later on. Glad we bought it and welcome to the family, Mr. Tibetan Tea.

This is the expended leaves after eight infusions. It was still going strong but I needed to drink some Yunnan black tea to get ready for bed. Seems I have fallen in love with the Yunnan Golden Needle tea.

Pi Lo Chun (Green Snail Spring) Green Tea

2008-12-14T13:15:00.005+08:00

Pi Lo Chun or Bi Luo Chun is considered to be the number two tea after Longjing in all of China. The original Pi Lo Chun tea came from two mountains in the west part of Dongting in Jiangsu Province. The best still comes from there but now it is grown in several other provinces and Taiwan. For top quality Pi Lo Chun tea, peach, plum, and apricot trees are planted between the tea bushes. The tea leaves absorb some of the fragrance from these fruit trees which helps gives Pi Lo Chun its special aroma and flavor. The tea leaves for Pi Lo Chun are only picked once a year during mid-March to mid-April when the leaves are at their peak. The tea is hand picked for just the leaf and its bud. It takes 60,000 to 80,000 leaf-bud sets to produce one pound of finished Pi Lo Chun tea. Due to the stringent selection process for high quality leaves, this tea is not widely available.

We bought a pound of this tea from the same vendor who sold us the Longjing tea. She assured us that it came from Jiangsu Province. Once again, I question whether this tea actually came from Dongting because of its price. It is expensive but not as expensive as I found on the internet.

We had the pound split into two separate bags, one for us and one to take back to Thailand. Today I finally opened "our" bag to give it a try..

The leaves are very light and are, indeed, curled up like little snails. The leaves appear to be very young. One gets a lot of tea for the weight.

This is a hairy tea. The color is about the same color and look about he same weight as that of Mao Fengs and Yun Wus. Light, delicate with hair. This tea, however, had more green than the others.

The liquid is light and golden hued. The taste is magnificent and reminded me of peach blossoms. No doubt about it, this tea grew up around peach trees.

Both this tea and the Longjing tea reminded me of spring water with a refreshing aftertaste of sweetness and purity. Both these teas are well worth what we paid for them. They are totally different than any of the green teas we have been drinking from Emei Mountain. Sweet, delicate and floral without a hint of bitterness to them. We will definitely buy more of these two teas next week when we return to the Tea Culture Town in Chengdu.

I was able to get a good solid five infusions out of the leaves. I do think, however, that I started with too fews leaves as I had to wait an addition minute or so to get a good taste of the tea. This is simply as good as it gets in tea drinking. If this means I have become a snob, then so be it. I love this tea.

West Lake Longjing (Dragon Well) Green Tea

2008-12-14T08:19:00.004+08:00

This is the Longjing tea we bought last month at the Tea Culture Town in Sichuan. Since we are getting ready to return to Thailand for a visit, thought I should get caught up on the tasting of all that tea we bought from Chengdu. We want to know what to take to Thailand for Christmas gifts.

Of course, this tea is the most famous and considered the best in all of China. The question will always be asked - is this real West Lake Dragon Well tea? From what I have been able to find on the Internet, the answer is probably yes. But . . . one might ask if this is the exact same tea that has proven itself over and over to be the best? The answer to that question is a resounding no.

The original Dragon Well tea comes from the Lion Peak Mountain in West Lake (Xi Hu) and has many classifications. Is this tea from that particular tea plantation? I am pretty sure it is not. In fact, this tea could probably come from just about any place as far as the Internet says. The lady we bought it from insisted it came from Hangzhou. What we paid for the tea probably puts it in the Hangzhou area but certainly not from the Lion Peak Mountain plantation. There seems to be a lot of Longjing tea named this because of the method used to process it. Guess this means we need to take a trip to Hangzhou to check out all the tea being grown there and get a lesson in the production of this tea.

This green tea is totally different looking than all the other green teas we have tried. The leaves are flat and long with evidence of frying if one looks close enough. The leaves are light and hairy to some extent.

Up close, we can see the effects of the frying process with the dark burned areas visible. The tea leaves are a nice jade green and, once again, extremely light in weight.

The light amber liquid is very beautiful and remained consistently the same color through five infusion with the time of each increased.

The taste of the tea is really fantastic. No bitterness but a honey-like sweetness up front. This tea reminded me of the artesian well we used to go visit as a child in Oklahoma growing up. The water has a distinct freshness to it and a sweet refreshing aftertaste that lasts a long time. It is like drinking well water that has been pulled up from great depths. Sweet, clean, cooling sensation and refreshing.

I do believe that I can drink this tea all the time. Even though I think this is just a Hangzhou green tea processed in the Dragaon Well method, it tastes great. When we return to Chengdu this week, we will definitely buy some more of it.

The leaves are a bright green and, as you can see, very young. This may not be the real deal, but it is a real tea!

Mabian Qiaoba Hei Lu Cha (Black Green Tea)

2008-12-11T21:38:00.006+08:00

We just bought this tea at the new Focus Market in downtown Emei City. I am always on the lookout for interesting teas, much to my wife's chagrin. On the second floor of the market, there is a new tea house which sells mostly green teas but has some other interesting teas from Sichuan.

As soon as I saw the Black Green Tea (in Chinese), I became very interested. Here is the write up on the back of the 250 gram package:

The product is made from Mabian Qiaoba area which has predominant natural condition as has flaky exuberant thousand year old tea tree up to now, , tea mountain is over 800m altitude, mountain green water beautiful, cloud and mist wreathe. The nutrient tea has water endurance to infuse, fragrant and mellow taste, sweet long aftertaste. It was ranked as Tribute from Ming and Qing Dynasty. It was offered to Zhongnanhai of Beijing in 1959. Now Qiaoba has been cognizance as green food producing base for national green food manage center. "Qiaoba Tribute Tea" is recognized "famous excellent produce" by Sichuan China West produce fair in 2002, evaluated "high quality famous tea" by Sichuan province AGriculture office in 2003, and assessed Leshan city well-known brand at January 2007.

Little bit difficult to grasp the exact meanings in the above label but I think we can all get the idea that this tea came from mountains where there are a lot of mist and clouds and it is pretty high. According to the back label the ingredients consist of "one sprout two or three leaves to make high fragrant bake-fry type green tea."

In addition, the shelf life is supposed to be 18 months. The date of its production was 2008/05/6 or June 5, 2008.

Ok, so what did it taste like?

The tea looks a lot like Mao Feng Green tea but looks to be much more substantial. The leaves are dark green with light green mixed in a little.

Check out the tight curl of the leaves. Nothing special in their dried appears, similar to a Mao Feng or even a Mao Jian tea. Probably came from about the same altitude if the back panel can be believed.

The tea produces a liquor that is similar to all the other green teas from Emei. Light bodied with hints of green and slightly amber in color. The tea is light and refreshing with a slight bitterness at the front followed by a semi-sweet aftertaste that lingers a bit longer than the normal Mao Feng or Mao Jian. This tea is OK but it is not a great tasting tea like my two favorites from Emei: Zhu Ye Qing and Xue Ya. The tea costs 18 Yuan for 250 grams so it is about the same price as the common Emei Mountain Mao Feng we bought at different stores in Emei City.

Here you can see the expended leaves. These made seven infusions before I decided to take the pictures and blog it. The first infusion, I admit, was astringent due mostly to the fact that I put too many leaves in the pot. After the third time, the tea was quite pleasant and it is this third infusion that I am basing my opinions on concerning the tea. The tea is OK. The name is interesting and the write up on the back was cute. Overall, a pretty interesting tea to get to know.

Meng Ding Gan Lu (Sweet Dew) Tea Tasting

2008-12-09T21:26:00.007+08:00

We finally got around to opening the Meng Ding Shan Gan Lu we bought last month at the Chengdu Tea Culture Street. I was anxious to try it as it is listed as one of the top ten teas in China. The Gan Lu that we bought was supposed to be the real thing. We bought only 100grams to give it a try.

The leaves are very light with alternating green and almost yellow leaves. When I write that the leaves are light, I mean very thin and very delicate looking. The 100 grams of tea we bought is quite a bit of tea. It takes a lot of these leaves to make up a single gram. This is nothing like the green tea from Emei.

Close up you can see the light yellow with a lot of white hair along the sides of each leaf.

Here is what the internet says about this tea:

MengDing Gan Lu tea is a famous mountain tea in China, belonging to tender green tea classification. The rainy season there is as long as nine months each yearand the temperature is relatively cool on the slope of the mountain. This environment is ideal for this mountain tea.

As early as in the western Han Dynasty (202 BC - 24 AD), a farmer named Wu Li Zhen discovered a special tea species amid the foggy peaks on Mount MengDing. He is believed to be the founder of the MengDing tea gardens.

During the Tang Dynasty, the best tea gardens were assigned to be royal gardens. Every year around the Qing Ming Festival (April 5), the local governor would be dress in ceremonial attires, offering sacrifices to gods, and asked the Buddhist priests
to worship the tea trees, then picked up 365 pieces of tea leaves. When processing the leaves, the Buddhist monks would continue with their prayers. These 365 tea leaves would be called the "holy tea" and reserved in two silver bottles. The tea would be used in the Emperor's sacrificial ceremony to his family's ancestors. The local officers would also pick some other leaves, process them to the tea product, then reserve the tea in another 18 tin bottles, which was called "ordinary tea" or "secondary tea" for the royal family's daily life.

This traditional was maintained from the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD) for more than a thousand years. (http://tea.timzhao.com/CTCOM/product/mengding.htm)

The first cups from the Gan Lu tea show a pale yellowish to golden color. The tea is light, offering a sweet first taste, with a smooth and refreshing sensation as it moves from tongue to throat. There seems to be a slightly sweet aftertaste, extremely pleasant. As I drank this Gan Lu tea, I tasted or experienced absolutely no astringency even when I let the tea steep a few minutes extra on the third infusion.

Who would not like this tea? It is subtle and mild and energizes one's senses quite a bit. Unlike the puerh I drink, I felt no numbing sensation on my cheeks. I did, however, experience an awaking of my spirit as I drank my fourth and fifth cups. This is as good as advertised! What a pleasant tea!

The only thing I might have done incorrectly is not put enough leaves in my little teapot. Even with more leaves, I cannot imagine the tea changing much in taste and performance. It simply appeared that the leaves had not filled up the pot as I had expected they would.

Here are the expended Gan Lu leaves. As you can see, they are truly small and picked very young. The green color is pretty consistent on each one and each stem looks to have a bud and two leaves. A very wonderful experience I had with this tea. We definitely will add this tea to our MUST HAVE list.

Da Hong Pao (Big Red Robe)

2008-12-08T11:47:00.010+08:00

Da Hong Pao is considered the strongest full-bodied Oolong comparable to a top "espresso" in the coffee world. Multiple infusions of this tea will keep offering a uniquely multi-dimensional oolong flavour along with a silky-smooth aftertaste. It is a really good (maybe the best) mild-tasting, mid-roasted tea from Wuyi Mountain.

From the internet:

Dà Hóng Páo (大红袍) is a very important Wuyi Oolong tea. Legend has it that the mother of a Ming Dynasty emperor was cured of an illness by a certain tea, and that emperor sent great red robes to clothe the four bushes from which that tea originated. Three of these original bushes, growing on a rock on Mount Wuyi and reportedly dating to the Song Dynasty, still survive today and are highly venerated. Less than one kilogram of tea is harvested from these plants each year, of which a portion is retained by the Chinese government. The remainder of this original and real Da Hong Pao is auctioned, with an initial asking price of 4000 RMB/100 g, but often reaching millions of dollars per kilogram[1]. Cuttings taken from the original plants have been used to produce similar grades of tea from genetically identical plants. Taste variations produced by processing, differences in the soil, and location of these later generation plants is used to grade the quality of various Da Hong Pao teas.

Xiao Hong Pao, or Small Red Robe refers to Da Hong Pao grown from plants of fourth or greater generation, but the term is rarely used. In some cases Xiao Hong Pao is simply sold as Hong Pao, presumably for marketing purposes.

As it's of very high quality, the Da Hong Pao is usually reserved for honored guests. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Hong)

On our last trip to Chengdu, we bought some of the most expensive as well as some mid-priced Da Hong Pao tea. Here are the results of the tasting of these teas.

This is the most expensive Da Hong Pao we bought. We had the store put them in little individual bags which is quite common in most of the area tea stores in Emei City.

The leaves are dark and tightly curled. This seems to be typical of Oolong teas all over China. I wonder if one can really tell if a tea is a Oolong just by looking at these leaves. I would say one probably could.

This is a cheaper version of Da Hong Pao. Quite frankly, I could not really tell the difference between the two. This seemed to have less tiny pieces than the more expensive but this is probably because it was taken from a jar with a lot of teas and the flakes and dust were probably on the bottom of the container.

A close up reveals the texture of the dark orange colored tea leaves. Again, I could not see any great difference between the two teas. Sunee fixed herself some of the cheaper brand and let me taste it. The Da Hong Pao I was drinking definitely had a stronger and more distinct flavor but is it worth the difference in cost?

The first infusion (steeping) came out fairly strong with a bit of astringency but not bad. The "floral" taste must be the woody or earthy taste I experienced. Now that I think about it, I can taste the hints of floral but it is a quasi-floral with no distinct tastes coming to mind. The astringency part was probably because I let it seep a bit too long before drinking it. Nothing as astringent as we experienced with our yellow tea, however. This was not altogether unpleasant.

This is the third infusion and it remains consistently "floral." The taste is a bit stronger than the Guan Yin Wang I tasted yesterday. The floral taste was much more floral in the later infusions. This is a great tea for special occasions. It is not cheap by any standards. Even the mid-priced Da Hong Pao was, for our small pocket book, quite expensive. I can see why this is considered in the top ten best teas in China. It is time to make plans to visit Fujian and find out where this tea comes from. It should be a great trip, don't you think?

These are the wet leaves after three infusions. I ended up using the tleaves another four times before discarding them. Probably could have gotten another two out of them if I had pushed it. Kinda makes the tea not so expensive after all.

Just to prove that the tea came from a Da Hong Pao tea bag. The bags were small, just enough for a gaiwan.

Guan Yin Wang

2008-12-07T18:41:00.008+08:00

Guan Yin Wang means the king of the Iron Goddess Teas. Tie Guan Yin is listed as one of the top ten best teas in China. Guan Yin Wang, therefore, is supposed to be the king of Tie Guan Yin. According to what I found on the internet, the taste of this tea is light and can make people's mouth fresh and clean. The best way to make this tea is to use a small pot with hot water. It is supposed to be able to make 6-7 steepings. Let's check this great tea out as we bought a couple of pounds when we were in Chengdu last time.

As you can see, the leaves are a mixture of dark and green. Most of them are tightly curled with some easily recognized as tea leaves. The color seems to be about 60 percent green and 40% dark. Rather an interesting looking tea.

A close up of the leaves pretty well looks like tea leaves with the green being a very pretty shade. The dark leaves are definitely dark as you can see.

Here is the label from the bag we bought the tea in. We had the loose leaves placed in the container from the store that specialized in this tea. This just proves that the tea at least came from a Guan Yin Wang tea bag.

With my cute little pot, I placed about a spoonful of the dried leaves in the pot and filled it with hot water. Did my first drain and then refilled the pot. I let the tea leaves steep for about a minute and had my first Guan Yin Wang tea. Was it light? Absolutely and it was also very refreshing.

As I surfed the web, I had three more steepings of the tea and I found that the fifth was, indeed, the best. The tea is mild and refreshing with indications that it has affects on my senses. By the time I had a couple of cups, I felt slightly alert, not that I was falling asleep or anything. This tea is very, very good. We will be taking some of it back to Thailand with us for sure.

The leaves unfurl and are quite large in relation to what we have been drinking before. As you can see in the pot, the leaves are definitely leaves from the tea plant. This is a wonderful tea to drink throughout the day.

Sunday Afternoon Tea Tasting

2008-11-30T17:40:00.014+08:00

We wanted to use our new tea tray and our new gongfu tea set so we decided to have a tea tasting party. Of course, we invited Tom for a Sunday afternoon tea tasting. In addition, I sent an email to my older brother in Oklahoma with an invitation to join us. More just to let him know what we were doing than anything else.

Using Apple Mail, I developed my own invitation template to emphasize tea and sent out the invitation that went over 10,000 miles away. Needless to say, my brother did not show up for the tea tasting.

Tom showed up for the party at exactly 1400. We had already set up our tea service tray on the coffee table in the living room. I had laid out all the utensils and the tea. Actually, I laid out a bunch of tea just in case we got diligent in our tasting. I had only planned for five teas with a couple more greens if we had the time. Tom reads over the steps for a Chinese Culture Tea Tasting that I copied from the internet.

Here Sunee prepares all the cups and pitchers and teapots for our first official Chinese Tea Tasting. We had bought a couple of pounds of cookies which we could munch on as the party went forward.

Here Sunee heats the cups and gets them set up for the ordeal. Since I had already done a tasting of the fine Yunnan Golden Tip or Bud Black Tea, I did not take any photos of it except when Tom drank some. We started with this tea because it was not overpowering and was very smooth and easy to drink.

Tom agreed that it was as good as advertised.

Next up was the Puerh Tuocha that we had purchased last summer in Yunnan. I had also already tasted this and registered it in this blog so I did not take a lot of pictures.

The Tuocha performed wonderfully, giving us three or four solid steepings which we drank with enthusiasm. I asked Tom to describe the taste and he responded that it reminded him of a damp forest with the smell of woods and earth. Each steeping provided the same sensation with the second being the best. This puerh was smooth from beginning to end, front to back. I, once again, felt my face go a bit numb as the tea took effect. I like puerh very much.

Normally the Tuocha puerh is of lower quality, has a lot of dust in it and tends to be smooth but a little lacking in excitement. Not so the loose leaf puerh we had purchased in Chengdu. Here Tom takes in the aroma of the leaves before we begin the "gongfuing" of the tea.

Following directions from the internet concerning a tea tasting, we also felt and looked closely at the leaves, noting the size, color and texture. Of course, we had no idea what we were looking for or looking at, but we were tea tasters for sure!

Sunee prepares the tea and pours the first steeping of this fine tea using the Gongfu method.

The puerh is beautiful in this first steeping. The color is dark, deep with orange overtones. It was as good as it looked. At first, we had hints of wet woods and earth and something else we could not quite get. Something that was familiar to us but . . . we were not quite sure.

Sunee prepares the second steeping and then leaves us to go work on her Chinese watercolor painting.

Tom continues with this second steeping, leaving the steep for a couple of minutes longer than the first. This second steeping absolutely blew us away. Both Tom and I said, "Tobacco!" at exactly the same time. This puerh felt, tasted, or whatever one calls it like a fine, expensive Cuban cigar. Now we are wondering if one can call it "cigary?" Such a cigar has a sensation that one has to experience to understand. As the smoke fills the mouth, the tongue and roof respond with unique sensations like no other. This is exactly how our mouths were reacting to this tea. Cup after cup, we enjoyed this really unique feeling and relaxed and talked about cigars and this puerh tea. Both of us were enjoying our first official Chinese Tea Tasting.

As we drank our "cigary" puerh tea, we talked about puerh and I showed Tom my two cakes I had bought recently in Chengdu. I shared what little knowledge we had learned and suggested that these puerh cakes may be a decent investment to take back to the States whenever he decided to return. We plan to get a few more to take with us back to Thailand in January.

The third, fourth and fifth steepings, although the time increased for each, were equally as good and satisfying as the second.

This is the fifth steeping and it was just as beautiful and just as "cigary" as the previous. We discussed the cost per serving of this fine tea and decided that it was probably cheaper than the others even though we had paid a lot more for it than the others. Puerh is a great tea to drink and it is supposed to be one of the healthiest teas to drink as well.

During the sixth and final steeping of the puerh, Sunee returned with her recently finished watercolor painting to show Tom. She has gotten to be very good in her paintings as you can see.

Time for a change. I had this Hong Xiang Fei Scented Green tea and wanted Tom to try. He does his smell, look and touch thing as all good tea tasters are required to do. This tea is one strange looking tea. The tea is rolled into little balls with brown looking stuff on the outside. It looked very much like rat or rodent droppings, a big rat or big rodent to be sure.

With this tea, I became lazy and used our teapot from Taiwan. After around two minutes of steeping, we poured our first shot.

The tea turned out to be weak so we decided to do it again by pouring it back into the basket for a few more minutes. We then discussed what we had experienced. Tom thought it had hints of rose or some other flower but he could not be sure. I could not make out the fragrance because my stomach felt a bit odd. I had not liked this tea when we first tried it and my feeling probably would not change this time.

The second steeping screamed at us "ROSE!" and my stomach returned the scream of "ACID!" Tom, however, liked it and finished it off. Me! I went to get some Zantac to stop the heartburn. This tea is not for me! We both decided that it tasted like year-old rose potpourri that had been left in my grandma's easter hat box for at least a year. I hated the smell and the taste.

Tom emptied the used leaves into one of the cups so I could take a picture of them. Do they look like tea leaves to you?

Here Tom finally gets one of the balls to open up into a definite tea leaf. It looked to be a very young leaf but who am I to know what is young and what is not! I ended up giving the Hong Xiang Fei we had left over to Tom. At least, he will drink it.

Our final tea would be the Emei Mountain Yin Zhen Yellow tea I have already tasted for this blog. I wanted Tom to try it and see what his reaction would be. Here he loads the gaiwan up with the yellow tea. He, of course, did the aroma smell, long look and feeling beforehand.

He was unsure of the amount of tea he should use so he filled it about half full or so.

The washing of the white heron, or so the Chinese saying goes for this step. Making sure the unwanted impurities are washed away.

The above steps are carried out with precision and we let the yellow tea steep for several minutes.

Here Tom pours the first steeping as I anxiously await this unique yellow tea.

Here is the first steeping and I thought it looked a lot darker than when I had made it before. The yellow was very deep and strong looking. One sip and Tom and I both let out a yell. Astringent is the correct word, but we both said WOW!. Too many leaves and too long brewing for sure. Eventually we did a second and third steeping and they were both perfect. It is difficult to describe this tea. It starts out with a bitter feeling (not really a taste) and then changes flavors or tastes depending on where it touches the tongue. Strange but wonderful sensations as we held the tea in our mouths. The aftertaste was definitely there, a bit sweet and a little bitter but not unpleasant. We may have made a mistake by not rinsing our mouths out after the first cup but I doubt if the sensations would have changed much. This tea is complicated, interesting and very pleasant. I can only imagine what the Jun Mountain Yun Zhen yellow tea would be like. It is listed as one of the top ten teas in the world. We plan to find some when we travel to the Tea Culture Town next month. Could get some at the local department store but I truly doubt if it is the real thing based on what I have read about it.

This yellow tea was a great way to finish the tea tasting. Luckily we started with a smooth and single taste tea and finished with a very complicated and complex tea. Our first tea tasting would have to be considered a great success. Now when to have another one?

Yunnan Golden Bud Black Tea

2008-11-26T10:08:00.006+08:00

This morning I felt like trying something different. We had just finished all of our tea from the "I have no idea what this tea is" cache of teas and are now into the fully labeled and identified teas. Something about this Yunnan Black Tea that interested me. Here is one of the reasons why:

One of the few best Chinese black teas, given as tribute by Yunnan local government to visiting foreign VIP’s and Chinese top leaders. Growing in organic tea gardens of high mountains, only fat fine buds of Spring first crop are plucked to produce this Golden Bud A. Less than 2,000kg made each year. Attractive golden buds without a black leaf in sight. This tea brews a bright amber color liquor. Smooth, sweet honey flavor with elegant flowery aroma. Highly prized by tea connoisseurs. (http://www.pu-erhtea.com/BlackTea.htm)

Pretty impressive write-up, wouldn't you agree? Of course, the site is a commercial tea site so they will never have any negative write-ups about their teas. The information we were given about this tea pretty well matched the above description.

It was the best black tea money could buy out of Yunnan according to the guy we bought it from. He had a tea shop that specialized in tea from Yunnan and, of course, he was from Yunnan. It is called Jin Ya or Golden Bud/Shoot. The guy we bought it from in the Tea Culture Town gave some pretty good information about the tea and we tasted it before we bought it. Sunee does not care for it (she thinks it taste like Thai tea) but I like it because I definitely "feel" its effects on me almost immediately. Here is the "tasting" of the Yunnan Golden Bud Black Tea.

As you can see, the tea leaves are almost entirely golden in color. This means it has been hand-picked and only the "buds" or "shoots" have been chosen.

This is a very impressive close up to show the golden hue that each tea leaf has plus the white hairs that cover the buds. According to the seller, the number of golden leaves and the fine hair is the guarantee that this tea is what he says it is.

This tea makes a beautiful dark amber liquid. It really is as beautiful a tea as one will ever fine, IMHO. It looks like tea to the Western eyes. The taste is smooth from start to finish. It does not have the characteristic green tea bite at the beginning and the green tea aftertaste. It is smooth and mellow with hints of smoke and pepper. The effects are almost immediate for me. My face gets very numb all over and makes me feel very relaxed. It is almost like getting a shot of novacaine at the dentist office. Is this the "qi" thing that I have read about at some of the sophisticated tea sites on the web such as Mattcha? I will definitely buy some more of this tea when we return to Chengdu in a couple of weeks. It will also make nice Christmas gifts to my friends and relatives in Thailand. Too bad I have no way of getting it back to the United States before Christmas. Maybe next year, big brother, maybe next year.

As I mentioned earlier, Sunee does not care for this tea. She thinks it tastes like the cheap Thai tea she is used to. For me, I like it a lot and especially for the feeling I get after drinking it. My mind is clear but my body is very relaxed. Guess that is why we drink tea and the Chinese wrote so many lines of poetry about drinking tea.

Here are the leaves after my last steeping (third infusion). I have seen some of my favorite tea blogs show pictures of the tea leaves when they were done with them. Hey, I can do that too!

One thing I have found about this tea, it is only good for two or at the most three infusions. I am waiting now to have my third and final Yunnan Golden Bud Black Tea. Why not come and join me?

Emei Mountain Yin Zhen Yellow Tea

2008-11-24T07:00:00.007+08:00

There is a new department store (Focus Market) just down the street from where we generally do all of our shopping. On Thursday, we went there to see what it had. It was modern with many new products that we may be interested in later.

What really caught my eye was their tea offerings. Much of it was typical green tea from Emei Mountain, but some were quite unique. I had not prepared to look at tea so I did not have my cheat sheet with me. I did notice two kinds of tea that seemed to be white tea. I remembered that a kind of white tea was called "silver needles" or yin zhen. Two types of this yin zhen were being offered at this store. I went back home and researched white tea and the yin zhen and, sure enough, it was as I had remembered.

On Sunday we went back to visit the store and I bought some of the Emei Mountain Yin Zhen. The other was a Jun Shan Yin Zhen but I wanted to have the locally produced tea. When we returned home, I did some more research and found that this particular yin zhen was, in fact, a yellow tea. The white tea was known as bai hao yin zhen. According to my research, the best yin zhen yellow tea comes from Jun Shan:

 Mt. Jun Silver Needle is one of China’s most famous teas and is honored as the king of Yellow teas. The tea originates from Jun Shan Island (also known as the Island of Immortals) of Lake Dong Ting in Hunan Province. The yearly production of this tea is very limited, using only early Qing Ming harvest. Tea leaves picked after this period were processed into other teas such as Jun Shan Mao Jian and Jun Shan Lu Cha. Jun Shan Yin Zhen was an Imperial Tribute tea back in the ancient days, and is also well-known as Chairman's Mao favorite tea. The tea is composed of needle shaped buds that are relatively dry and green in color. In recent years, it is getting increasingly difficult to obtain authentic Jun Shan Yin Zhen. Processing this yellow tea requires great skill and effort. It has a delicate aroma with a hint of floral notes. The taste is smooth, light and sweet at first sip but finishes with a fleeting smoky taste. After a few cups, you will still feel the light sweetness in your mouth.

OK, so I did not buy the most famous yellow tea in the world. It will be interesting to try this particular Emei Mountain Yin Zhen and we will just have to try the other later.

To try this yellow tea, we broke out our new tea tray which we had bought at the Tea Culture Town area. Isn't it beautiful with the matching set of "tea tools?"

The leaves of the Emei Mountain Yin Zhen are greenish to yellow in color and resemble the shape of Zhu Ye Qing and other premium green teas from Emei. We only bought a small amount to try because it was expensive (50 grams was around $3).

This is a close up of the Yin Zhen leaves. One can easily see the light green and yellow color and the texture. They were not as tightly dried as the best greens from the local area.

We do not use the Gong Fu Method for our teas yet. That will come later. For now we are lazy and use a teapot kind of thing from Taiwan we bought from a Pu-erh Store in Yunnan Province this last summer. It is called the Piao I Teapot and it works great! Eventually we will get some bigger gaiwans for our wulongs and some teapots (hopefully Yixings) for some of the other teas. For now we just use this great little invention. In fact, we have three of them with the other two being cheaper Chinese copies. They seem to all work about the same. Guess we have not reached the "tea snobbery" state yet.

The tea is a beautiful deep yellow. This is with about a three minute steep. The taste reminded me of the initial taste of Xue Ya but much sweeter and with less of a lasting aftertaste. The sensation is very complex but seemed to be just a bit weak. I think we will have to steep it longer to get these flavors to come out a little stronger.

Sunee thought it tasted like Zhu Ye Qing but I found it to be a lot more subtle with several different overtones that I would be hard pressed to describe. I like the tea and especially its deep yellow color. I think it would be interesting to get the famous Jun Mountain Yin Zhen and do a taste comparison between it and this tea. What do you think?

Chengdu Tea Culture Street

2008-11-16T11:03:00.023+08:00

I travel to Chengdu to pick up Sunee. We visit the fairly new Tea Culture Street to see what teas are offered. The place is huge with hundreds of stores, some specializing in specific teas while others selling accessories.

While walking to my hotel from the Jiatong University bus stop, I met an old friend from Mozambique. Mr. Gugu is a PhD student who lives on campus. I met him about a year ago and we never did maintain our contact. This time it will be different.

14 November 2008, Our First Trip To The Street

The Southwest Chengdu Tea Culture Town is about a twenty or thirty minute taxi ride from Jiaotong University. This is the entrance to the largest street in the town.

Not far down the tea street, sits this huge pot on the side with its huge tea cup. Guess this just proves where we are.

As we walked down the street we saw several ladies working diligently removing stems from what appeared to be Tie Guan Yin tea. We verified this to be what was happening when we asked at the shop we bought most of our tea that evening.

Tea shops were everywhere. This one was right across the street from where we bought most of our tea.

This is the tea shop from which we bought our first batch of tea in Tea Culture Town. The people were really nice and we got a lesson in Pu-erh tea for free.

Deciding which cake to buy proved to be difficult, so we asked for more information.

In this Pu-erh tea cake, there were both young and old tea leaves mixed together. It looked so good that we ended up buying it.

We asked questions about how the tea was prepared and pressed and then sent to market.

The wonderful sales lady explained everything we wanted to know about Pu-erh Yunnan tea. This quick course in Pu-erh took over an hour and still we felt we knew very little.

We ended up buying two Pu-erh tea cakes to save for a couple of years. The older the better so it would seem.

In addition to a lesson on the history, picking and processing of Pu-erh, we participated in a free tasting of the various kinds of Pu-erh.

These horses were loaded taking the tea to market.

The area was full of tea shops of all kinds. We only went to a total of four shops during our quick stop to the area.

Two more stops brought us more tea and more samples. We bought some Guan Yin Wang tea at this place. They put them in tiny little packages which we really appreciated.

We also bought some Da Hong Pao, one of the most famous teas in China.

In this tea store we sampled Mengding Ganlu and Huang Ya.

Mengding Ganlu/Sweet Dew (on top) and Huang Ya/Yellow Tip (on the bottom). We bought around 100 grams of each to try. I already had some Mengding Ganlu that two of my students had bought for me in Ya'an at the foot of Mengding Mountain. This tea, however, was beautifully packaged and we did not want to open the packaging so we bought some more Ganlu here.

This is a cup of Huang Ya tea which was very good. We bought a small sample to see if we really liked it.

Next we went looking for tea accessories. This shop was on the second floor off the main street and it was a really great store.

The store had all kinds of great tea sets in all different styles and colors.

The sales lady was from Xiamen so she could speak Min Nan with Sunee. They both had a lot of fun negotiating and renegotiating the items we decided to buy.

This is a very inexpensive Gongfu set we bought to get started. It was delicate white with a black dragon on each piece. not bad for around $3 USD.

We also considered buying a gaiwan or two but decided to wait for another trip.

This is the tea service set we decided to buy. It was $41 USD. They gave us the utensils after much negotiations.

The store also offered beautiful Yixing pottery. These will have to wait for another trip. They are not cheap.

We met this gentlemen as we bought our tea accessories and he invited us next door to his tea shop.

Along with sampling his teas, we provided us with more history on tea, especially the black teas and Pu-erh teas from Yunnan.

He had taught for many years and seemed to be expert in all things Yunnan.

He let us sample some of these black teas from Yunnan.

He told us that this Pu-erh loose leaf tea was the best he had so we bought some to try it out.

His tea shop had several beautiful displays of Pu-erh cakes and tuo cha (birdnest) teas.

This is a close up of his Golden Tip black tea from Yunnan. One can see why it was called Golden Tip.

Golden Tip Black Tea from Yunnan. We bought a half pound of this to try.

We ended the evening with this guy. He was personable and seemed to give us pretty good prices on his teas. We will probably do more business with him later.

15 November 2008, Return For More Tea
The following day we caught a taxi to the Sichuan Art Gallery where Sunee bought some books and watercolor supplies. Afterward we took a taxi back to the Tea Culture Town to look for some teas which I was interested in.

We originally were going to walk into this store the night before but instead went to get something to eat before we shopped. We never got back to the store. The lady in the store remembered us and was overjoyed that we had returned. She was very fun to negotiate with and went out of her way to help including sampling whatever we wanted.

I was interested in getting some white tea. No one seemed to have it available. She had some tea she said was white but we decided not to buy it until I did more research on it. This is the white that she offered us. It just did not seem right or what we expected.

We got to try some really strange looking stuff that came from the top of Emei Mountain. Have no idea what it was but the lady assured us that it was good and healthy for us. We passed on buying any as it had very little taste.

This is a glass of Hangzhou Longjing tea. We got a half pound of it because of its fame worldwide. We got the second to the best grade and it was not cheap.

The kuding tea is called Clear Mountain Green Water. We had bought some in Baguan Village where we live and liked it even though it was bitter. This kuding tea, however, was not as bitter and was very good. The lady told us this was the best Clear Mountain Green Water tea money could buy. We believed her because it was really good.

Another area of the Tea Culture Town. This place really is very big.

Sunee still shopping for tea and accessories.

A final look at one of the big tea shops in Southwest China's largest tea market area.

Emei Mountain Ming Tea

2008-10-23T18:22:00.005+08:00

Tuesday night our friends from Emei City came to bid Sunee a good trip back to Thailand (she left on the 22 October). They brought us half a kilogram of very good Emei green tea. It is called Ming Cha or Freshly Picked Tea.

This is the packaging the tea came in. Each package held 100 grams.

The leaves once more are not like Xue Ya or Zhu Ye Qing. They are very similar in appearance to the Emei Mao Jian we bought earlier but much smaller.

This is the first steeping in our cute new little glass pitcher. It is light and smells very refreshing.

And this, of course, is the tea I drank to see what we had.

The tea appeared light but, in fact, was fairly heavy with the now familiar bitter in the front, sweet in the back taste. The feeling on the tongue was very similar to the other green teas but was just a bit longer lasting. This is a great green tea one can enjoy anytime as it is not overpowering or too strong. Hey, and the price was certainly right! Our friends assured us that this was one of the best teas and was made up of the youngest leaves from the tea plant. This is obviously true from the taste and the leaves after they have unfolded.

Emei Mountain Mao Jian or Hairy Tips Tea

2008-10-18T19:55:00.008+08:00

We went to one of the bigger markets in Emei City today to buy some chocolate for Sunee to take to Thailand. Once again, I was lusting after the selection of cute little Yixing teapots. They have tripled their selection since I was there last. Sunee was not interested so I browsed the tea section. It was then that I discovered the Mao Jian which we eventually bought. Got a 100 gram bag to try. This is what we found:

Emei Mao Jian does not look anything like the Zhuyeqing we have been drinking nor the Xue Ya we just discovered. The leaves are different sizes and have funny bits of hair on them. They are also dried differently. Both the Zuyeqing and the Xueya are uniform in appearance and maintain their tea leaf appearance. As you can see from this, the leaves are distorted, curled with no uniformity in either color or shape.

If you look closely, you can see the hair on the underside of each of the leaves. I guess that is the reason it is called Mao Jian, right?

Beautiful light green and orange color. A beautiful cup of tea. How does it taste? At first, it was totally different than the Zhuyeqing with a different taste and aroma. As I drank it, though, I got the distinct feeling that is did have an up front taste of slight bitterness and the familiar sweetness in the aftertaste. Very similar "feeling" that I had with the Xueya. All three green teas are great teas.

I cannot say enough good things about Emei Shan green teas. They are special. If I had to rank the four green teas we have had thus far, my favorite would have to be the Xueya. Wow, is it magnificent. Of course, the famous Zhuyeqing is close behind followed by the Mao Jian. The Emei Shan Mao Feng would then follow the Mao Jian. The Mao Feng, though, IMHO, does not so neatly fit in with the first three. It is a different taste altogether and if there is such a thing as a "family of teas" based on tastes, Mao Feng would probably be a cousin not a brother or sister.

The main difference in these four Emei green teas would have to be price. Zuyeqing and Xueya are relatively expensive. The least expensive is the Mao Feng. We tend to drink it as our daily tea because of its pricing and value. No doubt that after today, we will be drinking a lot of the newly discovered Mao Jian, which almost matches the pricing of the Mao Feng. Living in the shadow of Emei Shan does have its benefits.

Emei Mountain Xue Ya or Snow Bud Tea

2008-10-17T12:52:00.008+08:00

Last night we walked over to the tourist section of Baguan Village to get some Teh Guan Yin for Sunee to take to Thailand for her family. I took some interesting pictures as we went:

The Bronze Pagoda at the base of the tourist area.

This beautiful man-made waterfalls next to the bronze pagoda is very impressive at night.

Another view of the bronze pagoda at night. I fiddled with the huge incense burner to get it to show up

As we walked to the tea seller where we buy our tea, we stopped at a fairly new tea store specializing in Emei Mountain Xue Ya or Snow Buds. We had seen this for sale at Baguan Temple during the holidays and wondered what it was. It looks like it is being marketed as a "precious Emei tea." Maybe we should check this tea out. It is not cheap.

We bought a couple of bags of Teh Guan Yin and asked about the Xue Ya tea. The lady had it so we bought a little to see what it was like. This is what we found:

Xue Ya or Snow Bud tea looks a lot like Zhuyeqing but the leaves look a little smaller and more delicate. The color is almost the same as is the smell.

Fabulous looking tea! It has the familiar greenish color of Zhuyeqing and smells similar. The taste is magnificant. It seems to have all the good qualities of Zhuyeqing but the sensation lasts a bit longer. The familiar sweet aftertaste is present as well.

We tried it also in the traditional way to serve Zhuyeqing. The leaves were much more fun to watch than Zhuyeqing. They were slower but more definitive in their movement to the bottom. We had a great time watching them dance their way to the bottom. The tea is stronger than Zhuyeqing in the same steep time. I think this is because the leaves are lighter and take longer to get to the bottom. This is truly a great green tea.

Sunee plans to return immediately to the tea seller and stock up on this tea for here and for Thailand. Welcome to Emei Mountain and its wonderful teas!

Emei Gao Shan OoLong

2008-10-17T12:37:00.007+08:00

We bought this tea a month ago from one of the tea sellers in Baguan Village. We remembered that it was an Oolong and that was all. Last night we walked to buy some more tea for Sunee to take to Thailand and we asked the name of this tea. It is Emei Gao Shan Oolang or "High Mountain Wulong." This morning I thought I would make some and see what we thought.

This tea is dark and tightly curled. It's aroma is not bad but not very impressive. From a distance, the dried leaves look almost black.

A closer look reveals that the tea is a dark green with an occasional lighter leaf. The best way to describe it is to say "tight and compressed individual leaves." Is there a special name for this?

Here is another view of the tea up close.

The tea, after about a minute of steeping, comes out a pretty good dark orange. It looks pretty good, but IMHO, it sucks. It tastes exactly like Lipton tea bags and most of the tea one buys in Thailand at the local grocery store.

The taste is not complex but in your face (or in your mouth). It has no sweet or bitter or any other sensation that we have come to expect from great teas. I cannot imagine ever being satisfied with such a lousy tea. No wonder Emei is not famous for its oolong and this stuff is relative cheap compared to the greens we buy. I bet they use the worst of the leaves, leftovers maybe, to make this stuff. We only bought a little to give it a try and we tried it. Anyone interested in some tea for free? I eventually gave this tea away to my fellow teacher, Tom, who uses it with milk and sugar.