Australia

I'm in Australia, I've also recently moved to near Brisbane's China Town, and have been working my way through the tea aisle at the Chinese supermarkets trying out their range. Haven't found anything to beat their cheap Yunnan Toucha yet.

Hey there Mr Flintstone,

Another one you may want to check out is

They are also in Australia.

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

Yup, from Melbourne. Do most of my tea shopping at T2, since it's convenient and `thorough' enough that it has puerh, quite a few white teas, etc. Should probably make my way to the various ethnic grocers at some point though.

Oh, and T2 don't stock gaiwans. :(

Cheers,

- Joel

Have fun and enjoy the experience. Don't pay any attention to any urls encouraging you to leave this group by people who are too lazy to drive too their local Chinatown and all they know if the webpage has spinning graphics and makes noises all they want is a virtual Shopping Cart and let the delivery man find them in suburbia. The other term you'll see on packaging is Vintage Oolong. Learn the characters for Puerh because there will be the anonymous waxed paper kilo in the dried bulk herbal section that the Chinese apothecary sells by the gram. It won't be cheap and doesn't match any description or taste you can find here or on any websites. You can satisfy your curiosity by buying 50g or so from a herbalist. The reason most Puerh in stores is 100g tins because it is more used as a digestive aid along with the popular chrysanthemum.

Jim

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to give it a try. (I've been buying pre-packaged stuff, and never really thought to check out the herbalist.

I agree with you on people ordering online, half the fun of getting it in Chinatown is being able to check out all the other things and meet some new people, not to mention the exercise.

(Besides that guy's site posted above costs almost twice what the chinese stores want for toucha.)

'Carl

Since you're in Chinatown look for a "Chinese herbal cooker" which I mentioned here in 95 and nobody else since. You're not going to find it using any URL only by shopping Chinatown. Get the clay version which is getting rarer and being replaced by electric versions. The interior has a thick glazed and designed for any subsequent herbal infusion. It has a parallel tubular horn handle and spout and the liquid to poured toward you and not away like a convential tea pot. You will have the most unique certified eclectic teapot of any of your surfing friends. It is designed for direct gas flame cooking or electric with trivet but I use it as a teapot and not cooking. So let your feet do the walking and let the keyboard kibitzers simmer with envy.

Jim

Space snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com3/3/04

to which I add that you'll find some really cool matching other pots and cookers of similar type as well as real cheap cooking utensils, much neater than ones you'd pay six times as much for. The things Jim refers to always looked like rough giant kyusus to me. Wouldn't think of boiling up herbs in anything else.

likewise, BTW, I'm the last on my block not to have an electric rice cooker. I learned to cook rice in Denmark and then again in India. You don't need a stupid rice cooker. But, from out main point we digress.

I'm drinking Fragrant Plum, a green oolong of David Hoffman's (Silk Road Tea). This is a delightfully fragrant most vegetal tea I've ever drunk. Squash, asparagas, cucumber, bean -- whatever the vegetable, this is not the vegetal of over-the-hill. I like it. It's the fragrance that pulls it all together, I think. And it's good for many steeps, bringing the price down per cup if that's an issue.

Michael

The kyusu is a tiny Japanese teapot with fluted tubular handle at imaginary right angles to the spout so a rotation of the wrist pours the tea. Apparently popular with the Geishas. I just recently bought a kyusu sake set which is my eclectic version for gongfu service. Frankly I not even sure how you pour the liquid from say a 32 oz Chinese herbal cooker since the spout and handle are essentially parallel. Maybe from the edge of a table where the handle acts like a crank or a martial arts wrist to tilt the pot back. You gotta have both. The two keywords for Chinatown cooking is china and clay. The fluted tubular handle can't be unique so it remains who copied who.

Jim

Space snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com3/4/04

Guess I misunderstood your post describing the clay herb cooker with the "parallel horn handle" thing. I've seen the "giant kyusus" in Chinatown stores. Wonder what they'd be good for? As for the Geishas, I have it on good authority that the side handle (perpendicular to the spout) of the kyusu was designed so that the geisha could pour tea unobtrusively from behind the client. How true this is I neither know nor care.

Michael

My everyday teacups are actually Shino style saki cups.