Between Green and Red (2) - Fo Shou (Buddha Hands) Oolong

A brief introduction of Fo Shou Oolong is here.

Between Green and Red (1) is here.

In my eyes, Fo Shou is a very intriguing varietal. In Southern Fujian, this tea varietal is called Fo Shou (Buddha Hands), named after a fruit (Asian Bergamot, which has fruit like a slightly closed hand of the Buddha's). In Northern Fujian (Wu Yi), this same tea varietal is called either Fo Shou, or Xue Li (Snow Pear), or Jin Fo (Golden Buddha). I love every of its names!

Here are two Yong Chun Fo Shou products, one is light oxidized without much roasting and the other is medium oxidized with light to medium roasting.

The "greener" style Fo Shou. It's not as tightly curled as Tie Guan Yin, and doesn't usually yield as many infusions as Tie Guan Yin. But it has very unique flavor that reminds you of greener fruits.

 

Fo Shou with slight charcoal roast. The roast is not very deep and dry leaf color is mainly from medium oxidation, not from roasting.

The liquor is light golden color. It's still of brighter flavor than most roasted oolong. The leaf materials are not suitable for heavier roasting and therefore this tea was made with light roasting.

Yong Chun Fo Shou used to be much more popular than it is nowadays. It was one of the most exported teas in the old days in Fujian. And it was one of the favorite oolongs among Southeastern Asian Chinese. But It was not easy for me to find some good Yong Chun Fo Shou. And I have yet to find a darker roasted Yong Chun Fo Shou that has more complex taste than fire flavor.

Wu Yi Fo Shou, although a small varietal among numerous Wu Yi teas, has been well existing through all these years. Here is a Wu Yi Fo Shou that I've luckily obtained from an artisan tea worker and Wu Yi tea scholar.

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Many years ago, in 1980s, there were more and more of these tasty Fujian citrus/oranges in my hometown in North China. They were sweet and juicy, a great treat in winter days. They were big and shiny, individually wrapped with tissue paper. We all loved them and they were people's favorite gifts. A lot of these oranges were from Yong Chun, hometown of Yong Chun Fo Shou Oolong. Many years later, a Fujian friend told me, his family used to own a lot of orange trees in Yong Chun. In 1980s, oranges were sold so well that many farmers chopped down their tea trees and converted their tea plantations to orange orchards. But several years later, there started to be so many oranges in the market and prices of oranges dropped a lot. Tea farmers became orange farmers, but their oranges didn't bring in as big a fortune as they had expected. Several more years later, there started to be a pathogen infecting a lot of orange trees in Yong Chun, and many farmers lost all their orange trees. In recent years, more and more farmers chopped down their orange trees and re-started Fo Shou tea plantations.

When I read about Taiwan tea, I've learned that similar story happened in Taiwan too. In 1960s, when bananas were sold well in export trades, many tea farmers chopped down their tea trees to make space for banana trees. Then, banana prices dropped rapidly, leaving lots of farmers in desperation. Later, many farmers put themselves together and re-started their tea plantations. And this time many of them made a fortune. The following decades became the best era of Taiwan tea.

My Fujian friend says, nowadays Yong Chun oranges are not that abundant, and he really misses those oranges. Me too! We both wonder, can't we have both the nice tea and tasty orange from Yong Chun? Why would everybody want to grow the same thing as everybody else? But to us, the "city dwellers", it's just "I love the oranges!" or "I love the tea!". To the farmers, what they grow connects to everything in their lives, hope, struggles, disappointment, desperation, and new hope. We can hardly say what the farmers "should" grow. More often than not, the farmers know better than we do, and they just need to make a living. It seems we are now in a great era of tea. When tea cultivation is rewarding to tea farmers, we, as tea drinkers will have our luck to get a lot of great tea.

an old business and its traditions

Wu Yu Tai is a teashop in Beijing with more than 170 years of history (their English website has no valuable information, but the little painting is cute). It is THE teashop where my parents go tea shopping in all these decades. Before Wu Yu Tai's rapid expansion, it was our neighborhood teashop. Nowadays with many Wu Yu Tai teashops all over Beijing, my parents still go to the small, quiet neighborhood shop. Unlike my parents, since long time ago, I have been buying most of my tea elsewhere. But in my eyes Wu Yu Tai is still the good old teashop that always has great tea.

In fact, today's Wu Yu Tai is no longer the traditional business as it was established. In the past decades, it expanded rapidly through enfranchisement. I've never liked the idea of enfranchisement in tea business. However, in business sense, it has been a success for Wu Yu Tai. The other day, I was thinking, what makes people like my parents and I love Wu Yu Tai throughout all these years, in spite of all the changes in the society and in the teashop? I believe it's because of the traditions that have been retained in this business. These traditions include:

1. It's a tea business that knows how to make tea. A hundred years ago, Wu Yu Tai purchased tea leaves directly from the farmers and had tea processed by its own artisan workers. The company owned jasmine plantations in Fujian and transported blooming jasmine plants for thousands of miles to Beijing to make jasmine green tea. They are still doing all these today (except that most jasmine tea is made on site in Fujian where the jasmine is grown), which is actually not the business mode of most other large tea companies in China. A friend of mine, a Tie Guan Yin expert once commented that one of the largest problems of many large Chinese tea companies is they don't care about growing tea, processing tea or carrying out tea research; instead, they only care for buying finished tea products from farmers and selling them for much higher prices. They believe in packaging, marketing and advertising, but not the basic work. In fact, some of them are financially successful. But I doubt many of them can last over 100 years.

2. It holds strict standards. Many modern tea businesses seemingly hold strict standards, with their products bearing all kinds of grand titles. But nowadays tea drinkers constantly question, are there standards at all for tea products? Before 1980s, when all Chinese tea businesses were state-owned, there was a full set of National Standards on various types of tea and they were strictly followed. With the privatization of tea businesses, national standards are no longer commonly applied on tea products, and basically a company can call whatever tea Grade 1 or Superior Grade without liability. In the old days, it was well known that Wu Yu Tai held stricter standards on their tea than the National Standards. Today, as far as I know, they still have high standards. Very often, a Grade 2 product of theirs is much better than a Grade 1 product from another large tea company.

3. It has signature products that are not affected by market trends. The teashop's inventory structure does change a lot with market needs. But veteran tea drinkers can always get what they've been enjoying for decades. When Taiwan High Moutain Oolong gets trendy, Wu Yu Tai carries it too. But meantime, they always have the nice, medium-oxidized Dong Ding. When 90% of tea drinkers in Beijing drink green style Tie Guan Yin, Wu Yu Tai sells it too. But they always have their honey-aroma traditional Tie Guan Yin. Trends come and trends go. Nowadays in Beijing, there are numerous places where you can buy tea, let it a lone the even more online shopping options. But there are only few old businesses like Wu Yu Tai where people can get the same specific teas that they've enjoyed over decades.

Wu Yu Tai is changing fast. It has started enfranchisement. It sells more and more types of teas (sometimes they seem too many to me). It sells more and more super expensive products. It even sells tea mooncake - I don't mind Haagen Dazs selling ice-cream mooncake, but I don't really like seeing a teashop selling tea mooncake. After all, Wu Yu Tai is a teashop in a fast-changing society. It surely loses some traditions in all these changes. And I don't know if someday it will change so much that I will stop loving it. But so far, it still remains a pleasant part of my tea life.

Concept Tea (3) wild oolong

(Happy Moon Festival! I think it's like a Chinese Thanksgiving!)

I got this tea from my friend and my favorite TGY supplier. I have no idea how the tea tree variety is related to TGY, and he neither. But it's a local tradition in Fujian that people picked up wild tea leaves in the mountains during Qing Ming time (early April) and process it with very simple method. Therefore this tea is often called Qing Ming Tea. (However, Goden Osmanthus Oolong (Huang Jin Gui), a different tea, is sometimes called Qing Ming Tea too.)

One of the major purposes that people traditionally make this tea is for its health benefits. Local people believe wild tea has greater medical potency than cultivated varieties and like to use it as diet supplement to treat chronicle diseases, especially liver diseases. This has not been tested by modern science. I asked a few Fujian people and none of them knows why the tea is of medical benefits, although they all believe it. Some Chinese traditional medical theories take tea as a treatment for liver diseases. But I don't remember reading anything about wild tea has larger potency than cultivated tea.

Traditionally wild tea was made with very simple sun-drying and kill-green procedures, almost as simple as the procedure for raw puerh. Taste of traditional wild tea is by far not as delicate as Tie Guan Yin or other famous oolongs, often with some bitterness and astringency. Nowadays fewer and fewer local people pick up and make the wild tea. With increased living standards, many people turn to the "normal" fine tea. Besides, people in rural Fujian are busier and busier in other jobs that brings in a lot of money.

This year, after the March snow storm, Huang Jin Gui and a few other early harvest cultivars had very low or no yields. Without much tea to work on, the 70 years old Shi Fu in my friend's small factory couldn't bear with such idling in early spring. He said, Why not pick up some wild tea? We've got to have ourselves occupied with tea work, so that we will get thoroughly warmed up when new harvest of Tie Guan Yin arrives! That's how I got this wild tea carefully made by one of the most skillful Tie Guan Yin Shi Fu and his apprentices.

The dry tea leaves don't look as pretty as "normal" oolong leaves. Leaves are smaller than most other oolongs.

The initial taste was surprising. After hearing about the rough taste of traditional wild tea, I had not expect such fragrance and sweetness! The tea still has some wildness in it. It's still not as floral or elegant as Tie Guan Yin, Ben Shan or Huang Jin Gui. But it is quite pleasant. It still taste like a Fujian tea, but in some sense, it remotely resembles Taiwan oolong and raw puerh.

After several infusions, leaves expanded. It surprised me again that spent leaves look quite nice, which is in contrast to the raw looking of dry leaves. The most prominent character of this tea is the sweet aftertaste. I rarely see a oolong at this oxidation level with such strong sweet aftertaste.

So, this tea is said to be healthy (which is not backed up with any "scientific explanations"). But what matters to me the most is always the taste. I love the unique taste of this tea. And of course it's a bonus if it's indeed healthy.

I would like to put it in the list of "Concept Tea" because it's something existing for hundreds or even thousands of years yet something we don't often see. Besides, it's not exactly the same as its wild tea antecedent. With careful processing, the wild tea becomes a fine beverage, yet it tastes untamed. It's interesting to think, What tastes are people seeking for in tea? Theoretically, the cultivated tea varieties reflect people's taste preferences over hundreds of years. But then, why sometimes a totally different wild taste can attract us so much?

Can this be a product line? I don't know yet if my friend and his Shi Fu will be making more next spring. But I think I will urge them to.

This tea will be included in our offers to tea bloggers, along with a few other unique teas.

Four keemuns, 3 reds and 1 green

Most Chinese teas have 4-character names. I suspect it has to do with the acoustic aesthetics of Chinese culture. The currently found earliest recorded Chinese poems have four characters in each sentence. And throughout the history, there are popular styles of rhyme essays in 4-character-per-sentence format. The four teas here all have 4-character names:
Qi Men (Keemun) Hong Cha (Red Tea) - 祁門紅茶 or 祁門工夫
Qi Men Xiang Luo (Aromatic Spiral) - 祁紅香螺
Qi Men Mao Feng (Mao Feng as in Huang Shan Mao Feng) - 祁門毛峰
Qi Men Cui Mei (Emerald Brow) - 祁門翠眉

In the traditional nomenclature of Chinese teas, one popular way of naming a tea is putting its production region (often in 2-character format) in the front and then another two characters describing the tea. Above four names all follow this format. All the four names start with Qi Men (Keemun in English), which is their production regions, and is why I put them together here - they are all from the same region of Anhui province.

The second and the third are both red tea and therefore can be called with the first name, Qi Men Red Tea. However, they are given more specific names in order to describe their unique features. The second one has a leaf shape similar to Bi Luo Chun and therefore has "spiral" in its name. And the third has a leaf shape similar to Mao Feng tea (not really that similar though, I think).

The last one is a green tea, which is reflected in its name by "emerald". The leaves have rich silver tips, and hence the word "brow" in its name.

Keemun Red Tea. Keemun Aroma - the aroma from a typical Keemun Red Tea, is the benchmark I use to determine my personal preferences on many black/red teas. Although it's somewhat unique in Keemun, other red teas may have hints of it too.

Keemun Aromatic Spiral. It's a relatively new variety, invented in 1997. It's made from very young leaves and harvest time is much earlier than that for traditional Keemun red tea. Here is my tea log about this tea on Steepster.

Keemun Mao Feng. It's made from younger leaves too compared with the traditional Keemun. Similar to the Keemun Aromatic Spiral, this tea is very tolerant to long infusions. I think this tea has more "Keemun Aroma" than the Keemun Spiral, however, the Keemun Spiral has more floral, fruity aroma.

Keemun Emerald Brow.  This is one of the most beautiful-looking green teas I've seen. It looks similar to the more famous Jin Zhai Emerald Brow. The flavor is light but long lasting. I enjoy it very much. I don't know how this tea can ever stand out among the numerous great green teas of Anhui province. But I would love to have it more often for its beautiful leaves.

traditional paper tea pack

Traditionally, as many other food stuff, tea was manually wrapped in a piece of paper. Folded by skillful hands of professionals, a thin piece of paper was turned into a well-secured package that could endure a lot of transportation and handling. The traditional way of packing tea was slightly more complicated than packaging for other food products, because tea is a more delicate product.

In traditional society, only upscale teas were packed in small portions. A typical portion was 4 liang, approximately 150 grams. The little 150g paper pack was where the name Baozhong is from. When the tea Baozhong was first in market, it used the paper wrapping which was then very popular in Fujian for upscale teas. Baozhong in Chinese means "wrapped product".

I always have sentimental feelings towards the traditional paper packs, in which I got snacks, candies, books and teas, without fancy paintings, without shiny plastic or metal. The paper was the most plain and simple kind, but the salesmen would make each pack in the most perfect shape and exactly the same size, all in seconds. It's a art that's not seen anymore.

Once I got this wonderful tea gift from Tead Off, who got it from a hundred-year-old tea shop in Bangkok. The tea, Qian Li Xiang (or Thousand Mile Aroma) is fantastic and is very hard to find even in Fujian, its production region. The tea came in a very neat, traditional paper pack! I spent a long time admiring the paper pack before I finally opened it. The little paper pack touched my heart deeply and brought me the warm memories of old days.

 
It also amazes me to think that people have never stopped packing tea in this way in a hundred-year-old teashop in Bangkok, while this tradition has almost died in Wuyi, where all the oolongs were originally from.

Today, many people buy tea from thousand miles away instead of in the teashop at street corner. Paper packs are replaced by vacuumed cans, mylar bags or other modern style packs. I don't know why I was interested to learn how the traditional paper packs were made. Not that there is any use of it. To me, it's just interesting to know.

After talking with a few tea friends, I've learned that to make a traditional tea pack, two wood boxes are needed, one should fit right inside the other. I happened to have this set of four wood boxes which were common in American society in the old days. They can do a good enough job.

First, paper is wrapped around the smaller box.

Then, the paper wrapped small box is set into the larger box.

 Next, the small box is carefully removed from the paper wrap.

After the small box is removed, the paper wrap is filled with tea. To avoid any wasting in my clumsy action, I used rice instead.

 After the paper wrap is filled to the top, the paper is folded on the top.

The lid of the wood box is used to press on the paper pack to make sure it's fully packed but not packed over the top. 

At the end, the paper pack is made and it's carefully taken out of the wooden box. 

It took me more than half an hour to make this poor pack. But in hands of professionals, it would just seconds!

Youth in tea drinking

It's an interesting phenomenon to me that in North America (and maybe Europe as well?), significant amount of serious tea drinkers (not to sure how to define it, maybe "frequent tea drinkers who are constantly curious about and mainly focus on loose leaf tea"?) are very, very young! I have the impression that most serious drinkers in China are in their late late 30s or above, who are lucky enough to have had a childhood free of coca cola or McDonald, who have got stable jobs, a little leisure time and kids beyond infant stage. However, in America, again and again I am amazed how some young people are seriously involved in tea drinking culture. I remember seeing from TeaChat a high school student collecting many dozens of puerh cake in his bedroom closet. On Steepsters, college students talk about organizing tea clubs on campus. Oh my goodness! This never happened when I was in a university!

A quick look on my blog list (the list I keep in the right column of this blog) lead to a conclusion that most of the Chinese bloggers are older than me (I somehow know most of their approximate ages) and most of the western bloggers are younger than me (some of them, although I don't know their ages, simply look so young!). I am in my mid-30s (I put myself on the watershed just for the convenience of a quick comparison).

I wondered why, and my partner's comment is, young people are naturally adventurous and curious about various cultures. In China, curious young people explore Coffee and in the western world, curious young people explore Tea! I would add to it that tea is a perfect wonderland for young people. One will never get bored with tea because there are so many varieties and so many styles to explore!

Some young people do wonders in tea world. The manager of the small factory making my favorite semi-wild Huang Shan Mao Feng, the guy who strives to revive traditional charcoal roast Tie Guan Yin, the farmer who made Red Tea Dan Cong creatively after his tea bushes were damaged by snow storm, they are all very young, ranging from early to late 20s!

But age is just a number. There are many tea drinkers who, no matter how old, are always young at heart. My aunt started drinking oolong at her 50s and my mom got interested in gongfu tea in her 60s. After drinking green tea solely for the first several decades of their life, they now explore their new tea world like curious children. Gong Zhi, one of China's top tea scholars, started writing his most important tea books (Oolong Tea of China, Red Tea of China, Tribute Tea of China) after retirement, and finished them in his 70s.   

In thousands of years, people believe tea helps us maintain youth and vitality. In modern scientific sense, that's still largely true. I always think I am lucky to have tea in my life. Few foods or drinks I love are as healthy as tea, physically and mentally. Drink tea. Stay curious. Stay young. It's a wonderful life!

About aging oolong - 1 question and 1 answer

Sometimes I would ask one same question to different people and learn what they have to say. It's not that I don't trust one person, but rather because many tea questions don't have standard answers. Sometimes I get opposite answers from different people, and I may like both answer as well. No answer is the final answer, but a collection of such answers make me learn little by little.

It was a summer afternoon when my friends and I sat in a small teashop in Beijing, drinking tea with the shop manager. In Beijing, teashop managers often share tea with customers, without intention to push for immediate purchase. It's a nice, warm traditional business mode that's seldom seen in other trades in modern day society. Of course not everybody walking in is treated with the top notch tea. But I was so lucky to be with my tea friends. Because of their friendship and good business relation with the teashop manager, we were treated with a lot of great teas, one after another. Among them, we had two Wuyi Shui Xian products. Both are high fire. One was made two years ago. One was made this year, manually roasted by this teashop manager. Both yield many infusions of complex great flavors. The 2-year-old Shui Xian is smoother and more sugary. The current-year Shui Xian is more striking with a lot of characters. We love both of them. My friend Charlie liked the 2-year-old Shui Xian better, while I prefer the new Shui Xian. In fact, many hours after our drinking session, at that night, the flavor of that Shui Xian came back to my mind again and again. It was not an aftertaste in mouth but an aftertaste in memory.

By the time we've exchanged a lot of conversation and I liked this teashop manager very much. She is a beautiful young woman, a certified senior tea taster, a qin player, a Buddhist baptized (? ordained?) in my favorite temple in Beijing. She is knowledgeable and witty, quiet but outgoing. In our conversation, I thought of this question that I've asked some people before, and I asked the question again to her. Do you think the inner quality of a oolong can be promoted by aging? I explained my perplexity to her. Although it was historically recorded that Wuyi tea of three years old was favored by tea drinkers even more than new tea, and although I did enjoy a few great oolongs that had been aged for several years, I don't have much idea about what long-term aging (say, 10 years or more) will do to a oolong. I also had some aged oolongs (not sure for how long though) that's definitely mild to stomach, good to your health, but not so special in taste.  I thought it would be interesting to learn what she thinks.

The manager told me she believes Wuyi Yan Cha can benefit a lot from aging, while she doesn't think Tie Guan Yin can age as well. Here are her reasons. Tie Guan Yin is made from relatively young tea bushes, while the best Yan Cha is usually made from old bushes. Besides, Wuyi tea bushes are grown on top of very thin soil, and majority of their nutrients and complex biomolecules are stored in the leaves instead of roots. Therefore, Tie Guan Yin's value is usually in its floating, refreshing aroma, while Yan Cha has thicker and naturally more complex flavor, which last well over years and has great potential to build up a great aged flavor.

I further asked her, If we give a grade 100 to a good oolong when it was new, will aging make its quality up to 120, 150, or allow it to maintain 100, or will aging cause its quality to fade to 80? She believes for Tie Guan Yin, aging will cause the tea to fade little by little, while for many good Yan Cha products, aging can promote the tea quality to 120, 150, 200 or even higher.

These are my question and her answer. With my limited experience, I don't know how much I am ready to accept this answer, and I am aware this is only one of many different answers on this question. But I think I like it that she has reasonable explanations on her opinion.

Previously in a blog on a vintage Tie Guan Yin, I recorded answers from a different group of people to the same question. Their answers are quite different from the response from the teashop manager, but they do share some common ground.

Ajiri Tea from Kenya

I learned of this tea from Marlena's blog, love the package of this tea, and love the idea of using tea income to support orphans.  

I always like Kenya black tea. I think it has a very refreshing floral aroma when brewed in moderate concentration in a topless vessel. Besides, I believe Kenya tea has a potential to be better than its current average level. Like some lowest grades of Chinese tea, much of Kenya tea is sold for relatively low price in the international market. It seems the world market just demands a lot of cheap tea, and large companies like mass production of cheap tea. But theoretically the landscape elevation and rich soil of Kenya should enable growth of some expensive tea, I believe.

It's quite similar to other CTC Kenya black tea I had before, while it's much more expensive. But even then, the tea is still quite affordable. It tastes very good, and it's not as expensive as some products sold by large companies that spent lots of money on marketing and printing elegant brochures. Sure the mark-up on this tea is higher than some other Kenya black tea. But the you know the extra markup goes to places that make you feel comfortable, such as supporting orphan education, creating employment for women and funding community based tea facilities. According to Ajiritea.com, Ajiri black tea is produced at a Rainforest Alliance Certified™ tea factory, owned by over 10,000 small-scale farmers. As far as I know, Kenya is one of the tea production regions dominated by industrialized mass production of large companies. Therefore, I believe the idea behind Ajiri tea is invaluable.

Besides, the package of this tea is so cool! This award-winning package is very lovely and very African. According to Ajiritea.com, each unique label is handmade using dried banana leaves and package materials are environmental friendly. I know this lovely tea box will sit on my desk for a long time!

ATB blog carnival

Here is another blog carnival! The theme is having tea outdoors. I don't have much experience having tea outdoors. But after reading some posts from the blog carnival, I think I will soon want an outdoor tea session!

http://blackdragonteabar.blogspot.com/2010/09/september-tea-blog-carnival.html

Discussion on Long Jing (2)

Discussion on Long Jing (1) is here.


（Blogger's notes: some of the contents were inspired by discussions on Steepster between other Long Jing lovers and me. There is so much fun conversing with these people!)


4. Geographic regions

Authentic Long Jing is from Zhejiang province of China. In the market, there are also “Long Jing” products from Yunnan, Sichuan and other provinces. Whether or not tea from other provinces should be called “Long Jing”, I will not discuss about it here because it’s a “should or should not” question. But most people agree on the fact that teas from other provinces, even made with Long Jing processing method, are dramatically different the real Long Jing from Zhejiang province.

So I will focus the discussion on Long Jing from Zhejiang province only.

The central production region of Long Jing is Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. If you are highly selective about geographic site of your Long Jing, then you would want your tea from one of the tea districts in Hangzhou. According to Chinese national standards (yes there is a set of national standards for various teas, but not all of them are enforced in tea industry), there are three types of Long Jing based on production districts in Hangzhou. All of them are currently called Xi Hu (West Lake) Long Jing or Hangzhou Long Jing.


(1) Shi Feng (Lion Peak) Long Jing. Many people believe this is the best of the three types of Hangzhou Long Jing. Historically Shi Feng Long Jing has been always priced slightly higher than the other two types, although all three types of Hangzhou Long Jing are always priced much higher than Long Jing from out of Hangzhou. The most famous villages for Shi Feng Long Jing are Long Jing Village, Weng Jia Shan and Shi Feng.


(2) Mei Jia Wu Long Jing – From Mei Jia Wu village and surrounding area.


(3)  Other tea producing area near West Lake. (This third type used to be called Xi Hu Long Jing. But currently Xi Hu Long Jing is used as a general name for Long Jing from all Hangzhou production districts. Therefore it will be less confusing not to call the third type Xi Hu Long Jing).

Historically, Long Jing has been cultivated all over Zhejiang province. Overall there are three Long Jing regions in Zhejiang province. They are:

A.   Hangzhou – as above mentioned, it is the most central and most famous Long Jing region.

B.    Qiantang – about 30km (20 miles) from Hangzhou

C.    Yuezhou –about 100km (60 miles) from Hangzhou, of the highest geographic elevation among the three regions. The famous Da Fo (Great Buddha) Long Jing is from this region. 

I hope I didn’t make a mess listing all these production regions. Overall, Long Jing production regions include:

A. Hangzhou (tea from this region, including A1, A2, and A3, is called Hangzhou Long Jing or Xi Hu Long Jing)

A1 – Shi Feng Long Jing

A2 – Mei Jia Wu Long Jing

A3 – Oher Xi Hu Long Jing

B. Qiantang (tea from this region is called Qiantang Long Jing or Zhejiang Long Jing)


C. Yuezhou (tea from this region is called Yuezhou Long Jing or Zhejiang Long Jing. Tea from Xichang county of this region is called Da Fo Long Jing)

All above mentioned regions are under geographic patent protection, which means, tea produced out of above regions cannot be called Hangzhou Long Jing, Xi Hu Long Jing or Zhejiang Long Jing. 

A relevant question is, how much can geographic conditions affect quality of tea products?

In some sense, the question is easy to answer. Hangzhou region produces Long Jing of the best quality – this is not judgment of few people, but conclusion from tea drinkers in the past several hundred years. 

In another sense, this question is very hard to answer. Actually I’ve never seen a person (highly experienced professionals included) who claims he or she can accurately tell a Long Jing’s cultivation area by tasting (or someone claimed so but we wouldn’t know whether to trust the judgment). I believe if we take many samples from various regions, we will find Hangzhou region yields more top quality tea products. But there is always possibility that a very high quality Long Jing from another region is almost as good as Hangzhou Long Jing.

A Mei Jia Wu farmer once did mention to me that he thought Long Jing from a Weng Jia Shan farmer was better than his (although both villages are in Hangzhou region) and he believed it was largely due to the soil of various sites – I think he was very truthful to say that because many farmers won’t have the self-critiquing, out of pride. But he also mentioned that the other farmer’s processing work was better than his, so it was not just the difference of cultivaiton location.

When we compare Hangzhou Long Jing and other Zhejiang Long Jing (“Long Jing” out of Zhejiang province would be totally different), Hangzhou Long Jing usually has the best geographic conditions, the best processing workers, and the most careful work dedicated to it. Geographic factor surely contributes to the differences between Hangzhou and non-Hangzhou Long Jing, but how much the geographic factor contributes to the final result, is hard to say.

Currently Hangzhou Long Jing and the other two regions of Zhejiang Long Jing have been protected by geographic patent. This is good news for consumers, because more accurate information of the tea source must be provided by the producers and sellers. However, I personally believe this is by far not enough. Due to the current cultivation reality of Long Jing, it’s also important to have cultivar information provided for each Long Jing product (for many other teas, cultivar is not a problem). Geographic Patent has been largely advocated by farmers and sellers of original tea production regions, because they directly benefit from it. However, there is not as strong request for specifying cultivar information of Long Jing products. Maybe it’s up to the consumers to demand the information. Just like the harvest date information, few people used to care about it or asked about it. But when more and more consumers want the information, they will eventually push the entire “tea industry”, from producers to retailers, to provide the information. 

cheers for the tea communities

The summer trip took longer than I had expected. There is so much to catch up with the tea community! In fact, the tea community never fails to surprise me and inspire me.

By reading people's tasting notes, I've learned that a generous tea drinker at Steepster kindly shared tea she purchased from our store with a bunch of other Steepsterites. I feel so grateful to this nice gal whom I haven't exchanged a word yet. Because of her generosity, more people got to know and like our tea. More importantly, she spread love of tea in the community. Some people who had never experienced oolong started to like this tea genre, and some people who had never tried dark oolong fell in love with it.  

While I was away, people had fabulous discussions and contributed great thoughts on this blog. And of course, there are so many nice essays to catch up with from fellow tea drinkers' blogs, including the monthly blog carnival held by Association of Tea Bloggers.

Also during the summer, Leafbox Tea has got its new outlook and, as always, great articles! Rate Tea Net has grown a lot bigger over a summer!

There was a lot going on in my personal life in the past summer. I've spent weeks without a drop of tea. And I've also spent days drinking so many types of teas in a row that we called it tea mardi gras. To my great pleasure, in Beijing, I finally got to meet a Korean Teachatter whom I've admired for a long time! He and his Chinese-Medicine-Doctor-to-be friend, who is also a tea aficionado, took me to fantastic places only "insiders" can get in :-D Both my fellow Teachatter and I realized, with a bit surprise, that it was the first time for both of us to ever meet a tea friend from an online tea community. Yet there are so many great tea drinkers from these online communities, and I think I've got to go out more and meet more of them!

The summer flied away so fast. My goals in the coming autumn are working harder on tea, meeting more tea friends and building up more tea karma by giving away more tea to fellow tea lovers.

Two Huang Jin Gui (Golden Osmanthus, 黃金桂) products

Huang Jin Gui is one of my favorite oolong cultivar. When it was first introduced to market in mid-1800s, it was also called Tou Tian Xiang (透天香), meaning its fragrance soaring to the sky. Its fragrance is similar to that of osmanthus flower, and the tea liquor is a golden color, hence it's named as Golden Osmanthus.

Huang Jin Gui is harvested around early April. This year, the early March cold current killed buds of a lot of Huang Jin Gui tea bush. Therefore I didn't get any spring Huang Jin Gui of this year. Fortunately, I still have some of this tea from last autumn and the past winter, one of them is traditional green style and the other is modern green style (less oxidized than traditional style). I am very much pleased by this winter Huang Jin Gui. Usually, it's not super hard to find inexpensive and good Huang Jin Gui, because a se zhong (non-Tie Guan Yin southern Fujian oolong) can easily beat the quality of a Tie Guan Yin with twice the price, due to the relatively high price for Tie Guan Yin. But meantime, it's not easy to find super good Huang Jin Gui or other se zhong oolong, because not many people would put a lot efforts on inexpensive products.

Autumn tea, traditional green style. When I first sipped this tea, I wasn't impressed with its fragrance. Sometimes, when drinking a southern Fujian oolong, we just can't help expecting some great fragrance. This tea doesn't have the explicit fragrance in the first a few infusions. I thought it was very comfortable to drink, but not super exciting. After a while, when I reached the third or fourth infusion, I suddenly experienced a sweet and smooth taste. It wasn't explicit aroma, but very tasty. Traditional style oolong sometimes release aroma and flavor more slowly than modern style oolong, and therefore the best tastes sometimes come from the third to fifth infusions. Besides, traditional style tea usually is very good at causing sweet aftertaste in the drinker's mouth. Then by the time of the third or fourth infusion, the taste is positively influenced by the sweet aftertaste built up in the drinker's mouth.

Dry leaves:

First infusion:

Fifth infusion:

Winter tea, modern green style. Many people say winter harvest is the best season for Huang Jin Gui, because that's when Huang Jin Gui has the best fragrance. Modern green style processing can elicit the fragrance and refreshing taste of a tea to a maximum degree. The fragrance of this tea is, like its nickname, "soaring to the sky".  Besides, I am impressed by how good looking the leaves are. In modern green style processing, the leaves are usually largely crushed. That's mainly because the red edge formed on the leaves of modern green style tea can negatively influence the taste, and therefore after the oxidation, the tea leaves will be packed in bags and punched hard on the ground to have their red edges shed. But this manufacturer has a unique way of processing. Somehow they managed to avoid significant red edge on the leaves and bypass the step of punching the leaves. This is the best Huang Jin Gui I've ever had.

Dry leaves:

First infusion:

Seventh infusion:

Concept Tea (3) - certified organic Taiwan GABA oolong

What's GABA? - GABA is gaba-aminobutyric acid. It's briefly called GABA. It's an amino acid that plays important role in nervous system and endocrine system. There are many medical research on health benefits of GABA as dietary supplement. I didn't look into them, because I always think human body is an extremely complicated system, and dietary supplements to human body are seldom as simple as gasoline to cars (well some dietary supplements, such as some vitamins, do have more straight-forward effects).

So health benefit is not the main purpose that I got this tea. It's a nice bonus if it's super healthy, but I think a tea should first be tasty.

Tea leaves with rich GABA contents were first discovered by Japanese tea biochemists. Then Japanese tea professionals started to intentionally cultivate and process tea leaves to promote their GABA contents. The tea leaves are slowly oxidized in an environment with very little oxygen. This is very different from the regular oxidation of tea (I have to say Japanese sometimes are extremely creative). This special process can result in a tea with more than 150mg of GABA content in every 100g tea, which is the standard for GABA tea.

According to some Japanese studies, GABA tea has many health benefits, reducing blood pressure, cardiovascular disease prevention, slimming, liver health... just to name a few. I didn't read much about these benefits but I felt the benefits covered medical conditions of everybody in my family :-p

There are organic and non-organic GABA teas. I got this MOA certified organic one. But the main reason I got this tea is, a few people mentioned to me that this tea tastes somewhat like Oriental Beauty and is more tasty than other GABA teas (some say the special processing causes GABA tea to have less aroma), which I like very much.

I brewed this tea in both gongfu style and with a small tea bowl. The tea does have some honey and fruit aroma similar to Oriental Beauty, but not as prominent as the aroma of OB. I think an obviously feature of this GABA tea is, it tastes very smooth and sugary - a strong sugar taste minus the sweet part. It may fit the tastes of people who love Oriental Beauty, Muzha Tie Guan Yin and/or black tea, although its flavor is not exactly the same as any of them. In later infusions of gongfu style, this tea yield some taste of herbal medicine. Overall, the front taste of this tea is rich, but aftertaste is weak or none. The tea does well in tea bowl or mug brewing. When using a mug, 10-15 dry tea grains can make a good mug of tea with about 3 infusions. Compared with most other oolongs, the tea releases flavor faster, therefore less tea can be used for each session. On the other hand, in mug brewing, the tea gets weak at about the fourth infusion, not as long lasting as many other oolongs.

I am not sure yet if I am fond of the concept of promoting specific healthy content in tea. But it's an interesting phenomenon to observe. Besides the GABA concept in this tea, something else about this tea that attracts me is, the producer tried all means (including adjusting ingredient of organic fertilizers and modifying the procedure within GABA standards) to make the tea tasty. I don't think it's as tasty as my favorite Oriental Beauty, but it does have some good taste. I don't want to drink a tea solely for its health benefits, and I am glad the producer thinks the same way!

Hands of tea workers

Photo taken by 大碗.

For a few times, people asked me, why are many tea workers' hands as dark as ink-stained when they work on fresh tea leaves? It's actually a simple chemical phenomenon - oxidation. As we know, tea contains de-oxidants. That's partially why tea is considered healthy. What a de-oxidant does is reacting with any oxidant molecules (which is a major cause of cell aging and cell damage) very fast. Therefore many oxidant molecules are removed from the cells by such reactions, and the cells live healthier and longer.

Oxidation often causes color change, which can be observed in a lot of fruits and vegetables. For example, if you cut open a potato or apple and leave it on the countertop for a few hours, browning happens to it. The browning is because of oxidation of catechol, which is a biomolecule found in potato, apple and many other plant tissues. Catechol, when oxidized, is turned into benzoquinone. The reaction requires oxygen and an enzyme in the plant tissues. In healthy cells, catechol is not exposed to oxygen or the plants' own enzyme, therefore browning doesn't happen until the cells age or are damaged.

In tea leaf tissues, one of the major tea polyphenols is catechin (there are a group of molecules that are called catechin), which is similar to catechol but a even stronger de-oxidant. Catechin can be oxidized into molecules (such as thearubugins, dark color molecules in red/black tea) that cause dark color. Oxidation of catechin requires an enzyme in fresh tea leaves. When the enzyme is "killed" (which happens in the "kill green" step of green tea processing), the oxidation cannot happen and therefore the tea leaves will be maintained green for a long time. However, any strong de-oxidant can be easily oxidized. That's why green tea has a relatively short shelf life. Eventually oxidation can happen, only more slowly, even without the enzyme from the tea leaves. If the enzyme in tea leaves is active, then when the tea leaf cells are damaged (in harvesting and rolling step of red tea processing), then catechin in the tea leaves will be oxidized, which causes the color of red tea and darker oolong. The mechanisms of catechin oxidation is described by Wan et al. in Oxidation Mechanism in Tea Catechins, in Natural Products Research and Development (2006, Vol. 18, pp171-181. But it's not new discovery and was documented earlier in Tea Biochemistry (a university textbook) written by the same first author.

When tea workers handle fresh tea leaves, the leaf "juice", containing both catechin and enzyme from leaf cells, gets all over their hands. Exposed to the air, oxidation of catechin happens very fast. In a harvest season, a tea worker's hands remain black for weeks.

The above photo tells us two things:
1. Tea is indeed a powerful de-oxidant source.
2. It takes a lot of hard work of tea workers to make the tea we drink.
3. If someone says tea workers' hands are "dirty" or "contaminated", you know they are not.

Tea Longevity (茶壽）

In Chinese culture, there are names for some senior ages. A senior person of 77 years old has "Happy Longevity" (喜壽), because in cursive style of Chinese calligraphy, the character for Happy, 喜, looks like Chinese characters for 77.

A person of 88 years old has "Rice Longevity", because the character for Rice, 米, has two character 八 (Eight) in it, one at the bottom, one on the top, inverted.

A person of 99 years old has "White Longevity", because the character for White, 白, is one stroke short of 百 (One hundred).

A person of 108 years old has "Tea Longevity". In the character for Tea, 茶, the top part means Twenty (廿); below it there is a 八 (Eight); further below there is a 八十 (Eighty); and finally there is another 八 (Eight). All together, the character for Tea has 20+80+8=108 in it!

Tea is one of the healthiest beverages. Of course we have reasons to think there is an actual relation between tea and longevity!

Do you know anybody who has Tea Longevity?

I think the oldest person I've ever known is my grandmother-in-law, who passed away at the age of 106. She was a strong and smart woman throughout her life. In the last a few days of her life, she still walked around fast, without a walk-stick. And she passed away suddenly in sleep. We believe she left without pain. In fact, as a rural woman who was born in 19th century, she never got any exact information about her own age or birth date. She didn't know when she was born. Her birthday was celebrated by her children and grandchildren on a "hypothetic" day every year. And people, including herself, could only guess about her age. So, we never know if she lived for 106 years, 108 years, or even more.

Uses of unwanted teas

As you know, sometimes some teas are so unwanted or expired that you don't even have a heart to pass them to others. And sometimes a tea is so dear to your heart and you can't bear with throwing the spent leaves away. Here are some extra uses of tea that I've thought of.

1. Marinate hard-boiled eggs in water with tea (unscented black tea only), salt and soy sauce.

2. Put tea leaves (unscented tea) in a pillow or sofa cushion, or small pouch – depending how much you have. (For this purpose, I use spent leaves only. I've seen commercial products made with unused leaves though.)

3. Put tea leaves in small pouches and use them as dehumidifying bags for storage boxes or deodorizer bags in fridge. (Spent leaves do the job well.)

4. Put tea leaves in very warm/hot water for feet spa (I mean, resting your feet in warm/hot water). You can always expand this to the scale of hot tub tea bath. But I’ve found feet spa very convenient and a great enjoyment. Do it before you go to bed. Very helpful for high quality sleep, especially in winter. This is said to be one of the Chinese secrets for longevity. Well, longevity is too big to think about. But feet spa feels great! Before you go to bed, reading a book while having your feet in a big pot of warm water, that's paradise! Having your feet in a big pot of warm TEA water, that's an upgraded paradise.

5. Put tea leaves in small pouches and use them as “sniffing bags” in office. Make sure it’s a flavor that you like. I mostly use spent leaves and apply vodka based essential oil mix on them.

6. Use brewed green tea for facial (with pop-up facial paper, or mix the tea water with other facial product). Even expired green tea is very good de-oxidant and good for facial. In Asia, many women would mix green tea powder in their facial mask formula too.

Any other ideas?

Wu Wo Tea (Selfless Tea, 無我茶會)

I first read about Wu Wo Tea (Selfless Tea) in Tea Culture, a college textbook of China Southwestern Agricultural University, written by Liu Qinjin. The idea attracted me immediately. Later I learned more about it from the website of Wu Wo Tea.

Wu Wo Tea is a tea activity designed by Cai Rongzhang, the first manager of Lu Yu Tea Center of Taipei. Lu Yu Tea Center is a for-profit company, but since its establishment, it has organized many invaluable education and cultural activities. Wu Wo Tea is one of the most influential activities. It's held periodically throughout the year, and is also adopted by companies and organizations as an activity to promote teamwork spirit.

The basic idea of Wu Wo Tea is, tea drinkers gather to drink tea. Everybody brings his or her own tea, a small teapot or gaiwan, small tea bowls (about 4), thermos and hot water - simple and inexpensive gears, pretty much like the set showed in the picture (the small tea bowls were not taken out in the picture). People sit in a circle, in an order randomly assigned by the host. Then, in silence, people start to make tea. Each participants make, for example, 4 cups of tea. Three cups go to the three people on the left of her, and one cup for herself. Then, for each infusion, everybody gets 4 cups of tea, one from herself, and three from people on her right. When everybody has 4 cups of tea ready, the group start drinking tea. After drinking, people start making the next infusion and share the tea in the same way. Throughout the activity, there is no talking, simply making tea and sharing tea. After several infusions and rounds of sharing, the activity ends.

In Wu Wo Tea, every tea drinker serves others and is served by others. Besides drinking his own tea, the tea drinker also get a few other teas, which may or may not be the same type of tea as his own, and can be higher or lower quality. There is no verbal conversation or commands. Tea drinkers try to follow the group pace in tea making, and try to make the best out of their teas to share with others. The activity can be held indoors or outdoors. Once on a scenic site out of Beijing, I saw some Taiwanese tourists sitting in a circle drinking tea quietly. It was such a beautiful scene. Back then I didn't know about Wu Wo Tea. But now when I am thinking of it, I guess they were probably having their Wu Wo Tea.

Ever since I learned about Wu Wo Tea, I've hoped someday I can participate in one! I like the meditative and action aspects of it. After a lot of positive influence, I am still very bad at meditation. It's hard to learn doing nothing! But this tea party sounds fun, because not only it provides you tranquil moments, it requires you to do something - making tea. Besides its meditative aspect, it satisfy tea drinkers' need of making tea. I know a lot of tea drinkers who enjoy making tea as much as drinking tea. A tea part in which everyone makes tea sounds fun! In addition, I like the feeling of tea drinkers united. I guess many tea drinkers are loners (which is not necessarily bad because basically all scientists and artists have to be loners for at least part of their lives). Sometimes tea drinking is entirely private - which indeed sounds unfortunate. How nice to make tea and share tea with a group of tea drinkers! The communication is not through language, but through tea!

I've got my gears ready but don't have a party to join yet. My tea friends, I hope someday we can have some Wu Wo Tea together! And be sure to let us know if you are going to have a Wu Wo Tea party someday!

What is puerh? (2) Debates

There are many debates about puerh definition. Here are some biggest ones. Most of these debates not only exist among ordinary tea drinkers, but also among tea experts and senior tea professionals. It seems that puerh is so complex that it's almost impossible to clarify it with one definition, one interpretation or one straight-forward view. For each of the following debates, there are many protagonists and antagonists. I believe it's important to be aware of them, because sometimes people have to agree to disagree. When we see exactly opposite opinions on puerh, probably neither is ridiculous.

Debate 1 - Is Modern Shu a puerh?
According to 2008 National Standards (which was carefully made and supported by many people), Modern Shu is one type of puerh. But there are also many people who strongly against counting Modern Shu as puerh, because it didn't exist before 1970s, and by inner character, it is much closer to various other type of Hei Cha (Black Tea, which, as a Chinese tea term, is post-fermentation tea. Not the same as black tea in Western tea terminology.) than to Young and Old Sheng. (my notes: I like Sheng a lot more than Shu. So I sympathize with this view.)

Debate 2 - Is young Sheng a puerh?
This may not be as big a debate as Debate 1, because no matter how much you argue about a young Sheng, some day it can possibly become an old Sheng. But there are people who strongly object that young Sheng should be called a puerh. Their major reason is, before a young Sheng gets aged enough, it's not puerh yet. It doesn't have the inner characters of old Sheng, and young Sheng doesn't have the same health benefits of both old Sheng and modern fast-fermented puerh Shu.

(my notes: I have less sympathy for this view, because there can hardly be a well-defined standard about how old a Sheng must get in order to be called an "old Sheng". But I do have some sympathy for it, because obviously, puerh factories benefit from blurring the boundary of young Sheng and old Sheng. This makes people, including me, suspect how much the 2006 and 2008 puerh Standards were influenced by the "puerh industry".)

Debate 3 - Does Shu mean modern fast-fermented puerh product, or does it include both the modern fast-fermented puerh and old Sheng?
This debate is reflected by Definition 5 in "What is puerh? (1)" - Da Yi's definition. Some people believe the modern Shu can never be similar to an old Sheng. Some other people, including Da Yi people, believe old Sheng will share similar characters with modern Shu. (my notes: this view needs to be tested by time and research. It may or may not be true. But obviously Da Yi's current interpretation is helpful for them to sell both young Sheng and modern Shu.)

To summarize Debate 1, 2, and 3, there are three different views:
1. Both puerh Sheng (of any age) and modern fast-fermented Shu are puerh. This view is consistent with 2008 National Standards.

2. Puerh Sheng (of any age) is puerh, but modern fast-fermented Shu is not.

3. Old Sheng and modern fast-fermented Shu are both puerh, but young Sheng is not puerh, YET. Within this group, some people believe that young Sheng should be called "Yunnan Sun-dried Green Tea" instead. Some other people believe young Sheng is an unfinished product, and is not ready for drinking/sale at all. (my notes: Even if it's not a final product, probably we can still buy them and store them at home. I believe these people's point is, price of Young Sheng should be that of an unfinished products, but nowadays there are too many expensive, upscale Young Sheng. Meantime, I can understand that these people's another point is, once factories sell you young Sheng, they are not responsible for the future of it. So if the young Sheng doesn't have inner quality to be well-aged, it's factories' gain and consumers' loss.) Supporters of this view say, "Although chicken is from egg, you can't call an egg chicken." Ultimately, name is not the most important. People's concern is, if the "puerh industry" attempts to sell an egg for a chicken's price, it's too much value inflation.

Debate 4. Can Hei Cha products from provinces such as Guangxi, Sichuan and Hunan be counted as puerh? Or,  can puerh be categorized as Hei Cha?
Actually this is more of an ambiguity and not as much a debate. Most people agree that puerh is very much different from Hei Cha from other provinces. In tea market, most Chinese sellers wouldn't call Hei Cha from other provinces "puerh". But some Chinese tea books and articles (most of them don't focus on puerh, though) put Puerh under the category of either Hei Cha or Post-fermented Tea. In contrast, an interesting phenomenon is, some western tea articles and sellers would put Hei Cha (such as Liu Bao Cha, Sichuan Brick Tea, Hunan Brick Tea, etc.) under the category "puerh". I guess, listing Puerh (instead of Hei Cha, or Black Tea) as one of the six general categories of tea has something to do with a historical terminology dilemma. In Western tea terminology, the term Black Tea is already adopted for the tea genre which is called Red Tea in Asia, and so far in the West this tea genre is the most popular, best-known and most widely enjoyed one among all tea genres. Therefore it's barely possible for tea sellers to give consumers a strange name to their familiar tea, and use the familiar name "Black Tea" to a tea category that is still strange to them. Sometimes, what a seller wants the least is confusing buyers.

Debate 5. How proper is the geographic patent for puerh? Should the name puerh be restricted to products from Yunnan province only?
The Geographic Patent for puerh started from the 2006 Yunnan Province Standards for Puerh. But as a province document, it doesn't have regulation power on products of other provinces. But once the National Standards for Puerh came out in 2008, it has become illegal for products from other provinces to be called "Puerh". Although puerh originates from Yunnan, Guangdong province has more than 100 years of history of producing and exporting puerh products. Some people argue that the Modern Shu technique is largely from Guangdong. Therefore many people believe it's unfair to forbid Guangdong products of the similar technique to be called "puerh".

Have a great summer!

Dear friends, I will spend the next two months in China. During the time, I am not sure if I will be able to reach this blog over the Great Wall, but I will try :-D I've scheduled some blog entries during the next two months. If I can't talk with you over the two months, I expect to catch up in August!

Blog Carnival on Daily Life Tea Drinking - Teabags and Loose Leaf Tea

This is part of the 2nd Blog Carnival of ATB (Association of Tea Bloggers)! A full index of contents for this blog carnival can be found at The Sip Tip.

1.
I've had probably fewer than 30 teabags in my entire life, with at least half of them made at home in the past months. I started doing this first because I am very frugal and don't want to throw away tea debris at the bottom of each tea container. Secondly, there are days that I am too tired to even lift my fingers. Although I never think brewing loose leaf tea very energy consuming (to me, so much easier than brewing coffee!), there are days that I just want to do as little as possible. That's how I made my first teabag. And I logged it on Steepster. Before that, I was gifted some homemade teabags by tea farmers and tea merchants. (For example, this one.) They are all great. No commercial product can compare with them. There are higher end, even whole-leaf teabag products in the market nowadays. Although they are good, in my eyes they can't compare with homemade ones because only the homemade ones, made by the tea drinkers (or their friends), are tuned to each tea drinker's particular taste. And, of course, homemade teabags are the most economic ones, while many good, especially whole-leaf teabags in the market have very high per-unit prices.

To make your own teabags, you will need heat-sealable teabags and a heat sealer. I got my teabags from a seller in Thailand by searching "tea bag heat seal" on eaby :D If you don't have a heat sealer, then probably foldable teabags are the most convenient. The foldable teabag was invented in Taiwan. It's very convenient to use. The way to fold it is pretty much like how you can fold a pair of socks when putting them away. It looks like this:
http://i00.c.aliimg.com/img/product/65/66/11/65661169.jpg
But I don't know yet where to get more of them. The website indicated in the photo doesn't exist!

2.
The other day, I was SHOCKED by someone's response when I walked into an office holding a glass of tea. The secretary of the office stared at my glass in disbelief and asked what it was. (Did she think it was weed?) When I told her it was green tea, she said "eww..." and frowned. And she had this facial expression which I would interpret as being scared or even disgusted. Maybe as a tea drinker I am too sensitive. But I was convinced by her expression that she was thinking that I was drinking something lousy. I know tea is not new to this office. They serve coffee and assorted teabags all the time in their kitchen, and they are quite familiar with teabags. I've seen all kinds of responses to loose leaf tea. People may think it's novel, mysterious, strange, impossible to deal with, hard to drink, so on and so forth. But, this was probably the first time I've seen somebody subtly indicating loose leaf tea as inferior to teabags. Maybe this lady has a thing about loose leaves and it's not about the tea at all. But, I can't help thinking, is it possible that some people deal with teabags all the time and never see naked tea leaves? When something is "never heard of" and strange, people may just intuitively think it's awful. After this small incident, I've decided to carry my loose leaf tea drink as much as possible to public places, and, in a transparent vessel (including this, this, this and this) when possible. I guess if people are more exposed to it, loose leaf tea won't look like some shocking scene.