one of the most influential Chinese tea books

Chinese Teas, 2nd print book cover

Below is an introduction written by Dr. Miles Xian Liu (comparative literature researcher, English professor and tea enthusiast) and me. And you could see the writing is much better-trimmed than my usual blog articles.

Dr. Liu and I have been working on the English translation of this book and are looking for cooperation of a publisher in the US. We hope to make English version of this book available in a couple of years. 

I read this book in (around?) 2007 and started my communication with Dr. Wan Xiaochun in 2008. After many conversations with him and reading some of his peer-reviewed research articles in tea biochemistry, I've got a thorough understanding about his passion in tea and his scientific vision that embraces this book.

Back then, this was one of the few encyclopedia style tea books. Later one, there are more books following this style, including a few high quality books written or edited by leading tea scientists in China. But among all, this is still my favorite encyclopedia style tea book, and probably the most influential contemporary Chinese tea book (and probably there is no "one of" in front of "most").

Chinese Teas, 1st print book cover

A little bit extra that was not included in the formal introduction. The making of this book took 3.5 years (from early 2003 to late 2006). Several leading tea research institutions in China and dozens of the best tea scientists participated in the discussions for this book. From 2003 to 2006, these people traveled across country to get together for three formal meetings for this book. More than 300 top-grade tea samples were collected from more than 20 tea-producing provinces for the photography of this book. This kind of work, considering the amount of efforts and human resources involved, can hardly be replicated. This is probably why this book remains the most influential tea book of its genre in China.

The book, Chinese Teas (中国茶谱 ISBN: 978-7-5038-5854-3), is a single volume of comprehensive tea study by the leading experts in China.  Already two editions within three years testify to its significance and popularity.  Although a little pedantic in tone, the book is intended for general tea enthusiasts across the world. 

Comprehensive in its coverage and scientific in its discussion, the book—Chinese Teas—offers encyclopedia-like deliberation on a wide variety of teas in China.  The first of its two main sections chronicles tea origins, classification, history, and arts of tea ceremonies, with extensive illustrations.  It provides both the latest scientific analysis of health benefits of tea drinking and intriguing descriptions of twenty local tea drinking customs throughout China. The second section illustrates a hundred and twenty-nine varieties of Green Tea, five kinds of Yellow Tea, thirteen types of Dark Tea, two categories of White Tea, eighteen kinds of Oolong Tea, nine varieties of Black Tea, and several “Scented Tea.”  These hundred and eighty samples best represent many thousand teas in China.  With color photos throughout, a reader can get a quick overview of a tea, its history, producing region, and preparation process.  Whether for a casual read or academic research, this book can serve as an encyclopedia on Chinese teas.

Its general editor—Wan Xiaochun  (宛晓春)—is one of the utmost Chinese tea authorities, and his contributors range from botanists, professors, tea scholars to expert tea growers across China.  The wealth of information in the book thus represents the latest developments of tea research in China. The need for two editions within three years—2007 and 2010 respectively—shows the market demand for this book inside China.  

__________________________________

About the author:

Wan, Xiaochun (宛晓春)—the general editor of Chinese Teas—is one of the utmost authorities on Chinese teas.  A leading scientist of tea research in China, he serves as President of Anhui Agricultural University and Deputy Director of China Tea Science Society.  He has written several books on tea, including a college textbook of tea science widely adopted by universities across China, and contributed more than sixty tea research articles to influential science journals both in China and abroad.  To write this book, Professor Wan has marshaled ten tea experts and scholars as his assistant editors from several universities and research institutions across China and published what many has regarded as the most authoritative source of tea knowledge among all Chinese tea books so far and the most influential book in its genre.

Yixing Jade Bamboo (宜興翠竹)

Yixing bamboo in yixing eggplant :-D

My first time ever having this tea. Such moments are always exciting!

This tea is produced in Yixing, the hometown of yixing tea ware. The tea is named after its shape - the dry leaves look like tiny bamboo leaves. This tea has a more famous cousin - Tai Lake Jade Bamboo, which is supposed to be very similar to this tea, but is produced in Wuxi, another region of Jiangsu province. Wuxi and Yixing are not far from each other and they are about 40 miles apart. Wuxi has very good soil/mud resource, which is used to make the famous Wuxi small figurines.

I had never had Tai Lak Jade Bamboo either. So I didn't know what to expect from this tea. The dry tea leaves look quite similar to those of Bamboo Leaf Green.

It's said that more than half of all green teas of Jiangsu province is produced in Yixing region. This is both surprising and not so surprising. I was a little surprised because Jingsu has quite a few famous green teas and Yixing green tea is not as famous as them. Meantime, it's not really that surprising, because Yixing was a famous green tea producing region throughout history. It was praised for its green teas long before it was praised for its teapots. Yixing has become a famous town of tea ware, not only because of its unique clay resources, but also because of its tea culture background.

Since this is a low-profile tea, I didn't expect it to be super good. But it surprised me with its floral, sweet taste. Good producing location, good manual processing, high grade leaves, and freshness, the tea has got it all. In traditional green tea culture, the leaf shape and outlook of brewed tea are very important. This tea has got them too. Brewed in a tea bowl, the little leaf buds all "stand up" and look like a green flower.

In the past a few years, I've got this same question for several times - "Is yixing tea ware not suitable for green tea because of its porousness?" Actually, yixing teapots are great for green tea. They were invented for green tea (at that time, other types of tea were either not invented yet or not in the mainstream culture yet). People have been using them for green tea for centuries, and are still using them for green tea today too.

Then, why would some people say yixing is not suitable for green tea? Here are my thoughts:
1. I think it's not 100% correct, but has its reasons.

2. Yixing teapot could be great for green tea. Yixing pitchers (like the above-showed eggplant) could be great for green tea too.

3. Some yixing clays are more absorptive than others. So indeed some clays might be less suitable for green tea than other clays. But it's all relative. A good yixing teapot won't be so terrible to ruin a green tea no matter what. Some more absorptive clays, after being used for a while, would become better seasoned. If one drinks green tea all day long (like in 18th century when there was barely any other tea in most part of China and most people didn't have as many yixing teapots as modern day shopaholics :-p) then it doesn't take long to have a yixing teapot well seasoned.

4. This myth of "yixing teapots not suitable for green tea" may somehow reflect the dwindling yixing teapots quality in modern time. Generally speaking, even when we talk about authentic yixing clay, there are a lot more low quality yixing teapots in modern day market than in the past. Historically, Yixing was famous not only for its clay tea ware, but also for larger clay wares such as plant pots. Typically the clay used for plant pots is of lower quality than the clay used for teapots, and the lower quality clay cannot go through very high kiln temperature without being broken. But in today's market, many yixing teapots are made by the clay that would have been only qualified for plant pots in the old days. And there are a lot of clays of borderline quality, better than the plant pots clay, but not good enough to sustain high kiln temperature. With compromised kiln temperature, the teapots would end up of lower density, and more porous than it's supposed to be. Such teapots would undermine taste of any high quality tea, and especially green tea.

purely dry storage 1996 Menghai tuo (covered by white stuff)

I started writing this right after I wrote the blog post about the 8972 brick, where I mentioned this tea. Somehow this post fell into the split of time and I forgot about it all this time...

And the "covered by white stuff" part of the title was added recently, which I will explain later in this post. And I have to admit that part of the title was added to catch attention and coax more people to click into this post... The tea is not really "covered" by white stuff. But don't be disappointed and don't feel cheated. I will show you some "white stuff" soon :-p

This is a tea that I would call "purely dry storage", and by now, I'm sure most of you know about my definition of "purely dry storage", which, hopefully, is consistent with the definition in most people's minds (but I don't really know).

The photo on the very top shows the spent leaves. The color bias is little (in spite of my poor photography skills), and I hope the photo can tell aloud that the leaves don't seem to have experienced any humid storage.

Now the tea liquor (one of the infusions... don't remember which one, probably five-ish):

This is a CNNP tea labeled Menghai Tuo. It might be a product made for export. There isn't any date labeling with this tea. The production year of 1996 is according to the dealer who offered this tea, and he got this date from his source of purchase. So this is a fuzzy date. But it's generally consistent with my impression with the taste of this tea. Yunnan dry-stored tea ages much slower than tea stored in more humid places. I think the tea tastes like a typical Yunnan dry-stored tea, and it would take these many years for a tea to age to this level. But there is no way for me to tell whether it's exactly from 1996, or an adjacent year.

The tea doesn't have a inner ticket (nei piao) or tuo ticket (neifei). I like this tea very much. But in my opinion based on previously discussed criteria, this is a tea for drink instead of a tea that can make money for its collector, due to the fact that it doesn't come with full package and it doesn't have a whole set of paperwork with it.

This tea doesn't have as prominent aromatic aftertaste as the butterfly tuo and 8972, which might be why I like those two teas better than this one. But I do think this tea has nice features of a Menghai tea, and its strength is probably not at aroma. The liquor has a nice texture that feels thicker and stickier than the other two teas. The aftertaste is not strong but lasts quite long.  

Now, as promised, I shall show you some white stuff!

I didn't think much of the white stuff until a teachat discussion last year about a photo of the xia guan butterfly tuo. I don't have an intention to defend the butterfly tuo (because I like it, I own it, I probably can't be objective about it, and I think it's so great that it doesn't really need any defense). But I've found it somewhat interesting that a number of people do have deep concerns about the white stuff being mold, yet I had never related it to mold because I wouldn't think the dry storage allows mold growth.

Then, a year later, I bought a 2003 Chang Tai Yi Chang Hao small cake, a quite popular and somewhat rare cake, at a rather low price. I will write more about this cake later. The reason for the relatively low price is that there was a debate going on among a group of Chinese tea drinkers about whether this cake was of "bad, wet storage". I was interested in studying outcomes of storage styles. I even got some humid-storage tea (which I rarely buy) like one of these, and a bad-storage tea like one of these, so I got this little cake as well. It turned out, in my eyes, this 2003 cake is a purely dry storage and even drier than some other teas from this seller. I couldn't find a hint of bad storage or wet storage on it... but there was some "white stuff" mentioned by the seller of this tea and some other buyers of this tea.

This incidence made me further realize that how much impact the "white stuff" could make. But what else could I say. People believe what they choose to believe. And indeed the market is confusing and indeed there are a lot bad-storage teas out there. So I guess some tea drinkers were immediately freaked out by the white stuff on the tea and immediately returned the tea to the seller without even tasting it. In this case, I wonder how hard I should try to make it a point to others that I think this tea is a great dry-stored tea... after all, because of some people disliking it, I got it for a nice low price...

Many dry-storage teas I've had don't have white stuff. But I've also had quite a few dry-stored teas with white stuff on them, such as the above-mentioned butterfly tuo, and this one!

From this photo, you could see that it's not entirely exaggeration to say this tea is "covered by white stuff". In fact, this tuo has a lot more "white stuff" than any of the butterfly tuos that I've opened. There are a lot of white spots here, most abundant on tea stems and cut ends of tea stems (this is also what I've observed on several other dry-storage teas with white stuff,. I don't know why though. It might have something to do with the surface layer of the leaves and stems). 

There is a Chinese saying that "A melon seller would always tell you his melons are the sweetest in the world." :-D  To some degree, it's true and it's people's perceptions. So sometimes I consciously hold back from giving too much explanation about my own tea (because of course I love them and think they are excellent...) This is not because I'm social phobia, but rather because there is no way to make everybody agree with what everybody else says (however, I believe, everybody would agree with this last sentence ha ha~). So probably we should save the time and find something more fruitful to do.

About the white stuff, there is a little more explanation. Not from me, but from somebody much greater than me - Shi Kunmu. In his book Classic Puerh: Term Explanations, Shi Kunmu mentioned that "white frost" could happen in humid storage as well as in "low temperature (lower than 26 C), low humidity (lower than 80% relative humidity)" storage. He didn't put it in detail (because it's a term explanation book almost like a dictionary, with a concise style), but I believe the "white frosts" in humid storage and in dry storage he talked about are not the same kind of "white frost". He did mention that compared with the "white frost" in humid storage, the "white frost" in dry storage is more evenly distributed throughout the compressed tea (this is consistent with my personal observation) and is overall good for the aging of the tea (this is his opinion, and he didn't explain it. I don't get it though how the white frost could help aging, and think the "white frost" in humid storage might not be that bad either).

This is Shi Kunmu's explanation and I've found it quite reasonable. But on the other hand, this doesn't mean everybody would agree with it. In puerh world, Shi Kunmu, a very peaceful person, is sometimes a controversial figure. I don't agree with everything he said, but have enjoyed many of his articles and respect him a lot. Many people enjoy Shi Kunmu's products and have benefited from his teaching of tea knowledge. But I've also heard quite a few people bad-mouthing him (I like and respect some of those people too, without agreeing with them on bad-mouthing each other...). I feel, this Shi Kunmu phenomenon somewhat demonstrates that in tea world (or the entire world), nobody could be liked by everybody, nothing would be agreed upon by everybody, and debates will be going on, forever.

reunion of another pair of twins - good storage and bad storage

In the last episode of "reunion of twins", I posted about a dry storage version and a Hong Kong humid storage version of a same tea. Although neither of them is perfect - I wish the dry storage version gets smoother and wish the HK storage version without the hint of "wet straw" taste - I enjoy both of them fairly well. I could drink either of them every day for weeks without any complaints. So for those two versions of storage, I think they provide an interesting comparison of two styles, but not a contrast of "good" or "bad".

Here I got another pair of twins. And this time, I would simply call one of them "good storage" and the other one "bad storage". It's possible that some people would even like the "bad storage" in my eyes (because it's actually not that bad... I've seen much, much worse ones). But would anybody prefer the "bad" to the "good"? Hmm... anything is possible. But for this scenario, I guess the chance is really really small.

In the photos to come, you may notice that this time, I didn't take any "group photos" of these two brothers, yet last time for the other twin brothers, I took most of the photos with the two cakes side by side. That basically reflects my feelings about these two pairs of twins. For these current two cakes, I couldn't bear with putting them next to each other, seeing one of them as a "contamination source".

How did this type of twins/brothers comparisons start? I once wrote about the different styles of puerh purchases. Of the three styles mentioned, one is "philatelists" style - basically, buying a little bit of this and a little bit of that, so to have a diverse collection. I guess many people have some tendency of being philatelists. For me, a big motivation (or excuse) of philatelists style purchase is, when I have an interesting tea, I would be also interested in getting its brothers, cousins, spouses, twins, etc. For example, I got these 3 brothers, the above mentioned twins, these cousins (I got a few more of their green stamp cousins too), the spouse of this tea, and could build up other family trees among my teas.

The tea discussed in this post, is one of my favorite puerh (when well stored). It's not the "giving you a strong kick" kind of puerh or super old puerh many people seek for (it's a 2004 tea) . I can't quite sort out why I like it so much, but I think it's pretty much what an ideally aged Yiwu is like in my mind (although this tea has Menghai tea blended in as well).

The bad storage version was for sale at a price much lower price than I had ever seen (and I somewhat knew nobody would bother to fake this tea) and the seller did mention to me that the tea needed to be aired out a bit as it had some storage smell. So in spite of the bad storage, I'm ok with the seller and actually still think his price is quite fair (because the bad is only relative to the good storage, and is not that bad). The tea is not commonly seen in the market, so I was glad to have a chance to have a twins reunion to compare the storage, whether they are two styles or contrast of good and bad. Besides, I thought if the storage smell mentioned by the seller was not that bad, maybe I would just stock up some and air it out. But eventually, I've figured out that I'm already old enough to treasure my time, and I live in one of the most expensive cities of the country, so basically, I can't afford any time, money or space for the bad storage tea, although it's not that bad. The bad storage tea could serve as a specimen and be examined again in a few years.

This time I will put the show-and-tell in a reverse order.

The photo on top of this post is from the bad storage. The loose leaves look not bad at all. Without smelling it or tasting it, I would have thought it was totally fine.

The bad storage being brewed. The leaves are actually adorable and don't look very different from my normal version of this tea.

I didn't take brewing photos of the good storage tea, but actually they don't look that different in small amount of leaves and in brewing. It's somewhat surprising, and also makes me cautious that without tasting contrast of various version of the same tea, sometimes it's really, really hard to tell whether the final quality of a tea results from the tea leaves themselves, the storage, or other factors.  

There are a few rather counter-intuitive things about this bad storage tea.

1. The liquor color doesn't reflect wet storage. But later we will see some photos of this tea indicating that the tea suffered from at least short-term dampness.

2. More surprisingly, this tea doesn't have much of the "typical wet storage taste" either. The "Ji Feng Yuan" twins in a earlier post include one Hong Kong humid storage tea that has some "wet storage taste" in a rather mild way and the taste has already faded a lot during the follow-up dry storage (which is an essential stage of professional Hong Kong humid storage). I also had some humid-stored tea whose "wet storage taste" didn't recover that well and would be a little harsh. But overall, this tea doesn't have that wet taste, yet we could see this tea did suffer from dampness (from whole cake photos), in a way much worse than proper humid storage.

3. The spent leaves look quite adorable. Not that much different from the good storage version, at least in this small amount. I guess this means that, the bad storage didn't kill this tea and probably this tea could recover more in the years to come. On the other hand, this demonstrates that the appearance could be very deceiving. Because after all, this tea tastes quite different from the good storage version.

4. After the above 1, 2 and 3, you may wonder, so, this tea doesn't look wet storage, doesn't have wet storage taste, and doesn't look that bad, then what's wrong with it? The tea tastes much bitter than the good storage version, and doesn't have the nice, gentle, fruity taste and unique aroma that I have always enjoyed from the good storage. Still, it's not such a bad tea. It still has some nice aftertaste. But it's by far not comparable to its good storage "twin brother".

5. I'm afraid the the worst thing about this tea is, it's very confusing and probably deceiving. It looks pretty good. It doesn't taste horrible, but rather underwhelming, with its nice leaves and good fame. The taste is not as suspicious as the smell of the tea cake. So if one has never tasted a good storage version and just tastes this bad storage version, one may think it's just the tea and it's just a mediocre tea. If one knows about the tea being water-flashed (which is not hard to tell from the whole cake outlook), then one may blame wet storage for its mediocre taste and its bitterness. However, it's the bad storage, not wet storage that caused the problem (I will explain more about its bad storage smell later). If one only looks at the liquor color, then one may think the bitterness is due to a rather young age of this tea through dry storage, then the water disaster history of this tea might be disguised by its liquor color and even taste.

Now here is the back of the bad storage cake:

We can ignore the straw - that's not a problem and just a regular "gift of purchase" as with many puerh products. But if we focus on the 12'o clock to 2'o clock region, we can see the surface is somewhat "smeared". And below is an enlarged view of that region:

 But still, not much other than the smeared region. No "white stuff" that is supposed to be a common criminal evidence of damp storage. Actually the Hong Kong storage version of the "Ji Feng Yuan" twins does have some subtle hint of "white stuff", likely residues of white mold from humid storage, yet I wouldn't call it a bad storage.

Below is the back of a good storage cake for comparison:

The front side of the bad storage cake doesn't look that bad at all, probably just a little more dull. But the good storage cake looks brilliant! Sometimes good and bad are just relative. A bad is only bad when compared with the good!

Below is the front side of the bad storage cake (the double cake ticket is not a real problem here but a small accident, I guess):

Below is the front side of the good storage cake (it has a "gift of purchase" too, this time, a plastic string!)

And a few more photos of the good storage cake... It actually looks even better than the photos!

The bad storage cake has some bug bite holes on the wrapper. But that's not a problem for me. Quite a few nice aged puerh I've had have bug bite holes on the wrapper too. But it seems that the bugs were only interested in the paper and didn't mean to hurt the tea. I've heard of teas that were severely damaged by bugs but have never seen any. I guess it's generally not a problem in dry storage, and shouldn't be a problem in proper humid storage.

The wrapper of the bad storage tea looks not that bad at all. So overall my impression is, this tea might have suffered from some accidental water flash problem instead of going through intentional humid storage. This also makes the tea confusing and probably deceiving. Although not everyone likes humid storage teas (I myself could enjoy very few of them), accidental dampness is always much worse than professional humid storage. In quite a few occasions, I've seen people blaming the bad taste of a cake resulting from its humid storage, while the cake actually went through destructive water disaster. Also in quite a few occasions, I've seen people praising a cake for its proper humid storage and called it "not as harsh as dry stored cakes", while the cake looked obviously purely dry storage in my eyes. All this, I think, is because puerh could be very confusing overall. So probably one thing for sure is we will always be confused. And probably it's good to be aware that we can easily be confused and will be confused for many more times in the future. With this awareness, we have the hope of being confused in a higher level with time being :-)

Below is the bad storage cake:

Below is the good storage cake. It has got some bug bit holes too.

And I haven't explained it yet why I would call it bad storage to begin with (the smeared cake surface itself might not serve as strong enough criminal evidence). It smells bad! It has a typical damp warehouse smell that I'm familiar with through my clothing purchase from Southern China.

I buy fairly amount of my clothes on Taobao, because I've found quite a few nice small business designers there, and overall it's easier to get shorter sizes in China. Most of my clothing purchases come from Southeastern China. Many of them have a "wet storage smell" on arrival. Although I'm thinning my list of sellers to those whose clothes don't have such warehouse smell, there are some sellers' stuff that I've got to buy (because they are adorable!) in spite of the bad warehouse smell. And it's understandable that sellers have to use unlivable space (such as damp basement) as warehouse (not equally understandable for tea though). For clothes, it's much simpler to deal with the storage smell. I simply hang them in the attic till the smell fades. And if it doesn't fade from a piece, I would just wash it.

This bad storage tea has exactly the same warehouse smell as found on some of my clothes purchases. When I enjoy the good storage version of this tea, I've always thought of it as having an aroma of mountain spring rising from the surface of tea cake. Obviously such aroma can't survive a warehouse smell. Interestingly, when I took photos of the bad storage version, I noticed that after being exposed in the air for a while, the bad smell faded significantly, and the "mountain spring" smell came back a bit (it could completely be my illusion though...) Then when I left the tea wrapped up for a while and opened it again, the tea was full of the bad storage smell again. Same thing happens when I left some of the bad storage version in a box to "wake up" the tea. So I guess, the bad smell would fade, little by little. But with the loss of bad smell, I'm afraid other good characters would be lost more or less. Maybe after several years, the bad storage version will no longer smell bad or taste bitter. By then one may or may not be able to tell about its dark history. But even if the bad storage tea recovers well, I don't believe it could ever get nearly as good as the good storage version.

quick udpate - Tea Nazi is back!

(The photo is from Pan's Tea Travel webpage, explaining the green tea processing.)

Here are of Tea Nazi that I wrote two years ago.

Ok... I admit I was really blunt to call him "tea nazi", as he is by far not as harsh as the "soup nazi", and he is really a nice guy!

This spring I got "official" announcement from Pan that he is back to tea business - on part-time basis, but in some sense, more devoted than a lot of full-timers in tea world. I know a bunch of "amateur" tea people, part-timers, moonlighters, or "hobby sellers(?)". In fact, among my favorite tea friends, tea suppliers and tea "colleagues (?)", there are probably more part-timers than full-timers. Thinking of that just surprised me! I haven't had any business relation with Pan yet. But I sort of like it that he has come back to tea business on part-time basis!

Now I know it's easier than ever for foreigners to shop on taobao. So here is Pan's taobao store:
http://youjianchapu.taobao.com/search.htm?spm=a1z10.1.w28-18216832851.5.3q9noD

His store name is the same as the name of his store before he "retired" from tea business last time. It literally means "Here's a Tea Store". I think it's a lovely name!

There aren't many items yet there. And I've already asked him "would you please add more stuff in the store and make it more business-like?!"

Pan told me that he will add more items to the taobao store, but probably not a lot and not very fast. So far, he would visit every of the production site or collection source of his teas, and he would only carry teas that don't use any pesticide. He will not do a lot of business in a short time. But he will maintain very high standards for quality and health of the teas, as always!

I think it's not hard to tell that one can hardly make a living selling tea in this way, especially in China, where there are about a few million tea sellers doing business more efficiently on lower budgets. But it may work out just fine as Pan keeps his day job, which is an interesting job anyway.

If you look for more things to see, his "tea travel" page is very cool:
http://shop58835027.taobao.com/view_page-43393581.htm?spm=a1z10.3.w3-18202084498.4.9cTPU6

And I'm sure he will add more photos and writing to this page to document his tea journey and his teas. I've already suggested him to put his writings in text format on the webpage so that non-Chinese readers could use google translate to read them. But so far photos dominate and photos tell most of the stories already!

Besides, anybody who are Chinese-English bilingual, if you are interested, please feel free to translate his writings, publish the English version online and link back to his webpage.

drinking two Huang Shan Mao Feng

Before the start, I would like to salute to Malaysian friends with these 2006 shu and sheng cakes made per special order of Malaysian Puerh Association.

I've been living in my small world and didn't know much about what was going on in Malaysia. But I have a facebook friend who is Chinese Malaysian American and updated me a lot about the recent Election in Malaysia. It was quite amazing!

___________________________________________

These are two Huang Shan Mao Feng that I have every year since 2010. Huang Shan Mao Feng is one of my favorite green teas (probably top 3, and Long Jing is not even in the top 3...) It's hard for me to pick just a few of "favorite green tea". Similarly, it's hard to pick up just a few of "favorite" Huang Shan Mao Feng producers. There are actually many that I like. But these two, I think, are most unique in style and from quite unique places. I've explained about them here and here.

This is pretty much a casual tasting rather than "evaluation" tasting. I love them both and hence can't really evaluate them objectively.

The one on the left is the semi-wild Huang Shan Mao Feng (which I happened to take from the very bottom of a pack so there are more broken leaves than usual), and the one on the right is the 1400m Huang Shan Mao Feng. 

Semi-wild:

1400m:

Overall, the semi-wild Mao Feng has higher bud/leaf ratio than the 1400m Mao Feng, while there are are fewer broken leaves in the 1400m Mao Feng. The amount of broken leaves is partially due to that I reached the bottom of a pack for the semi-wild. Besides, the semi-wild Mao Feng must be carried from its remote site back to the factory for processing, unlike the 1400m Mao Feng, which is carried from a site near the village (the near distance is still by the standards of locals who have very strong legs) back to the village for processing.

In terms of taste and aroma, I feel the 1400m Mao Feng is more "typical" Mao Feng taste, with a subtle floral aroma to begin with, and with very smooth tea liqour. The semi-wild Mao Feng has a quite "interesting" taste, with some edemame flavor and more prominent sweet aftertaste than most green teas.

I didn't take dry leaf photos this year - but they are quite consistent from year to year. If comparing the dry leaf photos from the above-mentioned earlier blog posts, we could see the semi-wild Mao Feng has more bud, and the pan-frying is not as heavy as the 1400m Mao Feng. It's still traditional heavy kill-green process. But naturally they shouldn't be pan-fried as hard as larger leaves.

In contrast, the pan-frying of the 1400m Mao Feng is quite heavy that we could easily see the "blisters" on the rim of the leaves.

Semi-wild Mao Feng (it has some blisters too)

1400m Huang Shan Mao Feng (a lot of "blisters")

"Blister" is something quite interesting, and I plan to create a blog post with a series of photos of tea leaf "blisters". It's commonly seen on traditional green tea genres and sometimes is used to judge if a tea is manually made. But the "blisters" on some teas (such as Long Jing) are much more subtle than some heavily "blistered" green teas (such as Huang Shan Mao Feng and Lu Shan Yun Wu). Between these two Huang Shan Mao Feng, I think the "blister" is an interesting contrast and somewhat reflect the different styles of these two teas.

Some updates: Mr. Wang's village finally got the road built. My feelings about it are complicated. But I know it's good for them. Mr. Wang is thrilled about driving a car to visit his parents instead of walking for 8km in the mountain.

guess guess guess... reunion of twins

By the way if you like the guessing game, here are some of the earlier ones - and make sure to take the guess before seeing the final answer or other people's answers :-D

* reunion of "3 brothers"
* price of a oolong

And a couple of *really* old ones on teachat - they make me feel old! :-p

* a oolong (and by the time of the posted game, I hadn't seen this specific style in American market yet, so it was harder to guess then than now!)
* which oolong is different from the other three

________________________________

Now here is another one... The tea is 2004 Chang Tai Heng Feng Yuan sheng. Heng Feng Yuan is one of the numerous (as I complained before) trademarks of Chang Tai. There are mostly shu products under this trademark, but there are some shengs. This one from 2004 is relatively well known for two reasons. One is that many people think the leaf materials are pretty good. A second reason is that on the wrapper, the trademark "Heng Feng Yuan" is mis-spelt. The first character "heng" is put as "ji", which could be interpreted as "ultimate or supreme". It's not officially confirmed, but rumors are the misspelling was done purposely. I think that was plausible. Back in 2004, Chang Tai was in extremely good shape, their tea was indeed good, and the company had probably got already quite arrogant (which might be the root of the arrogance that caused them trouble in 2007, I think). But there is no official story about whether the misspelling was done in purpose. And one obvious effect of the misspelling is that the tea can be more easily recognized among all other early 2000s Chang Tai teas.

So I got these two versions of exactly the same tea. With a purpose similar to the that of these "tuition tea", I got these twins of Heng Feng Yuan for study and comparison purposes. This time, I think, it's an excellent comparison opportunity that rarely comes up. The two tea cakes here are from two different storage environment. One is purely dry storage, as most of my puerh. The other one is Hong Kong humid storage - if you are a drinker of purely dry storage only, you might think how brave I am to get this bunch of tea... But in fact, it wasn't a hard decision, and I will explain why later.

Now the question for you is, which is purely dry storage, and which is Hong Kong humid storage?

Don't be shy of taking a guess. It's 50%, 50% chance :-)

On the other hand, don't be surprised if your guess is wrong :-p This guessing game is indeed a little tricky - and I usually pick tricky ones to post anyway ;-) It's never hard to tell between a dry storage and Hong Kong humid storage, if you hold them in hands. But from the photos (and I don't know if the blog page would allow the largest resolution of the photos but you can try clicking them), it's not that easy to tell, especially when the dry storage is not the stereotypically "forever green" tea and the Hong Kong humid storage is not the stereotypical "rotten" tea.

There are indeed "keys" to recognize if the photos can be enlarged. Meantime, photos could be deceiving in various ways and they might show some "false keys". Last month I posted these photos on a Chinese tea forum and let people guess. Most people got it wrong - although there is 50% chance to choose each answer, somehow most people chose the wrong answer!

Now here are the photos. All the photos have the same tea on the left and the same tea on the right.

Although they are "twin brothers", their wrappers aren't exactly the same to begin with. One has thicker paper texture. Printing should be the same.

Below is the cake on the right.

Below is the cake on the left.

At the end, I also want to point out that I can't say for sure the Hong Kong humid storage is the typical product of its type. I do somewhat believe that's what Hong Kong humid storage is "supposed" to be. Many other things between these two teas are a lot more different than what's showed by the photos of these two teas. To me, that's the huge difference between dry storage and humid storage (but not necessarily difference between a theoretical "good" and theoretical "bad"). But I'm a dry storage drinker in general, so the "typical" Hong Kong humid storage in my mind is not necessarily the same as the "typical" in everybody's mind. Even though I got the humid storage tea for study purpose, I would like a "tuition tea" to be more or less drinkable to me too. In this sense, I can't say for sure how typical a humid storage is, if it's drinkable to a dry storage drinker.

Taiwan "Style" Oolong (1b) - Zealong Dark and Zealong Pure

This just reminds me of my terrible procrastination...

I started this series in 2011. Taiwan "Style" Oolong (0) is here, explaining why I'm interested in them.

Taiwan "Style" Oolong (1) is here. I wish I had finished writing this part (1b) much, much earlier, before the close-up of the late Chicago Tea Garden run by Tony Gebely, so that some people could have grabbed their last Zealong at a very good close-up discount price. In fact, I wish I had grabbed some myself, as these teas (even including Zealong pure) have quite long shelf life and the prices were great. But I was fully occupied by other non-tea stuff and didn't manage to do either of this. Though I did remind quite a few people of the good deal in various conversations.

All the Taiwan style oolongs I mentioned in part (0), plus quite a few other Taiwan style oolongs I found later, I've tasted them all. But besides once writing a short tea log here at steepster, I have yet to write down my thoughts of them.

Meantime, please let me know if you know of any good sources for Zealong with good prices! Prices are important to me. I know Zealong is good stuff and have no doubt about it. Price is the key factor in my tea purchase for Zealong. Last time I checked, Ya Ya Tea House of New Zealand carries Zealong products. And I don't know if there still are USA sources of these oolongs.

So here is what I think about Zealong Dark and Zealong Pure.

Zealong dark:

Dry tea leaves. Although it's called "dark", it's not that dark from dry tea leaves to tea liquor. The tea is made with certain degree of roasting. But the purpose of roasting is not to make it "dark", but to let it reach the best level of taste aroma. The tea processing is "tea centered". It's not like that the producer decided "today we make a darkly roasted tea". How the tea is roasted, depends on the tea.

First infusion.

Fourth infusion:

Seventh infusion:

Tenth infusion:

It didn't have to go to 10th infusion though. I'm often thrifty on tea drinking and tend to use the last drop of it. But I don't judge a tea by the number of infusions (I feel I need to clarify it here because some people do seem to give a tea higher score when they get more infusions from it... but on the other hand, you could often get more infusion by using more tea and less water. So to some degree, scoring a tea in this way is a biased method, I believe.)

Spent leaves:

Zealong pure:

Dry leaves:

Second infusion:

Seventh infusion:

I didn't take more photos of Zealong Pure because as previously mentioned, they are already documented by Matcha and Sir William, and their photos are much better than mine. Sir Williams documentation includes all three Zealongs from the same year (2010?) as mine.

Overall, I think these two teas, together with Zealong Aromatic, tell some very interesting stories and reveal important things about oolong, especially Taiwan oolong. Also interestingly, although they are Taiwan "Style" Oolong made on another continent, I think they inherit some of the best legacy of Taiwan oolong that's not always seen in every Taiwan oolong made in Taiwan. Basically, I think that's one of the interesting themes involved in quite a few Taiwan "Style" oolongs that I liked.

1. Comparing the leaf material of the three tea, we can clearly see that the youngest leaves were used for Zealong Pure, the oldest leaves were used for Zealong Dark and the middle level was for Zelong Aromatic. This is not necessarily the rule for all oolong. But it reflects that the processing style of the tea was coordinated with the characters of the leaves. To process a tea based on the characters of the tea leaves, I believe that's the spirit of artisan tea making.

2. The three types of tea leaves, no matter older or younger, all look very alive. The older leaves of Zealong dark may have a lower market price than the younger leaves of Zealong Pure, but they don't look inferior. They are thick, leathery, elastic and succulent. These are all signs of good organic cultivation. Whether or not the tea is certified organic, the leaves already reveal nice organic fertilization. I have to stress "good" in front of organic cultivation here. Organic cultivation only means no synthesized fertilizers or pesticides are used. It doesn't necessarily indicate the quality level of the cultivation. Some commercial organic cultivation, while omitting synthesized fertilizers, simply doesn't give the plants enough fertilization or maintain a nutrient-dynamic ecosystem for the plants. Then the plants could end up lacking vitality or nutrients. Organic cultivation in a poor ecosystem is not as "organic" as it may sound. The good organic cultivation results from thousands of years of agricultural wisdom and involves various eco-friendly cultivation methods and brilliant ideas of maintaining good soil nutrients and giving the plants organic fertilization (such as sheep droppings and soybean cakes!).

3. The three styles here are more or less similar to the three main styles of Tie Guan Yin that I talked about earlier. Different teas, same philosophy of tea making! Among the 3 Zealongs, my favorite is Zealong Aroma. Among the 3 styles of Tie Guan Yin, my favorite is the traditional light roast, which could be seen as a counterpart of Zealong Aroma in Tie Guan Yin family. On the other hand, I also enjoy the other two styles of Zealongs and other well-made styles of Tie Guan Yin. It's hard to dislike a style if the tea is well made.

4. The Zealong Pure, although the "greenest" style among all three, doesn't look as green as some other modern green style oolongs. The purpose of green style oolong processing is to maintain the natural, fresh leaf aroma by controlling for lighter oxidation level. But it's a commonly shared idea among a lot of great oolong workers (Taiwan oolong and Fujian oolong all included) that "green" is not the ultimate goal, and even green style oolong should have a right level of kill-green (enzyme dis-activation process) and right level of oxidation. Although I say this is an idea shared by great oolong workers of both Taiwan and Fujian, I feel the idea is much better implemented in Taiwan. Although some Taiwan oolongs could be "too green" for my value system, Taiwan oolong competitions don't favor the "greenest" style. A commonly quoted standard of Taiwan competition tea is "golden yellow and honey green" (金黄蜜绿). This is in contrast with the "green liquor" （绿豆汤色）and "light green liquor" （白水观音）standard from many Fujian Tie Guan Yin competitions.

5. The Zealong Dark, although the "darkest roasted" among all three, doesn't look as "dark" as some other roasted oolongs. The purpose of roasting is to induce the best aroma from the tea leaves. It's also a common idea shared by a lot of great oolong workers (again, Taiwan oolong and Fujian oolong all included) that "getting the tea dark" is not the ultimate goal of roasting, and a favored tea is dominated by tea aroma but not “fire flavor”.

6. The spent leaves of all three styles of Zealong show that they are very carefully made. The producer of Zealong holds very high standards for tea cultivation and tea processing. I think Zealong is quite expensive, but the price is not unreasonable with this level of work.

7. If drinking these teas and some Taiwan-made Taiwan oolongs side by side and blindfolded, can I tell which is which? Well, if there is a large difference in elevation levels of the production site, probably it will be largely revealed in the taste of the tea. But if it's a blindfolded comparison between Zealong and Taiwan oolong of similar processing styles from medium elevation level, I don't think I could tell which one is from Taiwan. That's something very intriguing to me about Taiwan "Style" oolong. I don't think I could easily tell which one is from Taiwan, which one is not, among two equally well made teas. If some people claim they could easily tell, I would say, let them go blindfolded test first :-p

8. In the above discussion, I was hypothetically comparing Zealong with Taiwan oolong from medium elevation level. This is actually related to something else about Zealong that amazes me. I tried to look up the elevation level of Zealong's production site, and it seems an almost ground-level place. I always think elevation level is one of the most important geographic factors for tea production. Most of the best Taiwan oolongs are from much, much higher mountains than the production site of Zealong, which can hardly be called "mountain" at all. But the quality of Zealong is way above what I would have predicted just based on its elevation level. I think it's quite amazing, and don't know how they did it. Well, no matter how they did it, they didn't do it fast. From what I read about Zealong, the tea wasn't put in the international market until 15 years after the establishment of Zealong plantation. Sometimes, "taking time" is part of the secret recipe.