Back from China!

Jason,

What a great article and chronology of what seems like a great buying trip. Thank-you.

Between you and Mydnight China is the last place to buy tea off the shelf. The barter markets work for the locals but not for strangers with no time. You were smart enough to know what things should cost via auction sites. However looking at the cost of the trip the Internet dealer markups don't look that bad and the selection is about the same as your suitcase. I'm thinking of the 2008 Olympics and killing two birds with one stone. Besides the adventure was there another purpose for this trip? Did the puer sellers think they were special versus sellers of other teas? Thanks for sharing your experience.

Jim

PS: I have a shipment > Heylo all,

Great read Jason, it was like being there, nice stuff. I have two questions if you don't mind:

1. Travel info. You mentioned 00 at 11 nights. Would you mind sharing some of the actual travel info? Where you flew into, stayed, etc. That is one place I have always wanted to visit and if it would be possible to do on k-3k for two people it would be possible much sooner than I anticipated.
2. I see a lot of different terms and numbers tossed around for Pu-erh that I never can find a definitive guide for. Like the numbers of the cakes, I know they stand for the factory, etc. but where does one go to figure them out. And terms like tong and fangcha are new to me. I know that these can be answered by scouring the web, but is there a single place for a good comprehensive breakdown?

Thanks,

- Dominic

I have both lists on my site. The cake Factory Codes, Factory Names, etc can be found at:

General Puerh related Terms and Translations can be found at:

Although I am missing Tong and Jian, I will add them this weekend. A tong is seven cakes wraped in a bundle. A Jian is 6 tongs, often packed in a bamboo basket.

Also, Babelcarp is a great resource where you type in a tea term and spits out the translation:

Mike

You don't have to comb the Internet. This group is just as definitive as any webpage. Tong means tube. It is a stack of cakes in bamboo wrapping. Normally the number is seven 357g cakes called a QiZi. Fang means square. It is the small 10g+- cubes of puer. Larger 100g bricks are called zhuancha. Cake numbers are well established formulas which can be replicated by any factory.but in practice only a few choose to do so.

Jim

Dominic T. wrote: ...snip-a-roo...

Sorry, I meant to say say twelve. Totaling 84 cakes. The 6 was a typo.

Mike

Thanks Mike and Jim, I figured you guys could get me pointed in the right direction. I knew I hadn't seen "tong" anywhere, and I must have overlooked the number breakdown on Mike's site (I figured it was there).

I should have known Jian, I never made the connection that it was for the basket and not connected to the tea in any way.

Since it is basically on-topic, I'm looking to try a green pu-erh, could anyone direct me to a place to purchase a smaller amount (or at least affordable)... also to the exact tea you would have someone try as their first green pu-erh? I have no way to decide which one to start with out of all of them. I've read on Mike's site, but nowhere is there an easy way to figure out 1 or 2 to start with as good introductions.

Thanks, Dominic

If you have access to a Chinatown look for the 100g Xiaguan tuocha(small bowl) in a round green box. In my Chinatown they cost $1. Otherwise simply shop for cheap prices on the Internet. I like the vendors on Ebay who ship from China. I figure $10/kg for SAL shipping. For $20 you can get two or three recent vintage 357g green cakes or three to four smaller 100/200g tuochas from various factories. Totaling $30 you get a kg from China but you have to wait about 30 days from Kunming.

Jim

Dominic T. wrote: ...

Regarding bartering, it took a lot of intuition to decide what opening price was too high to bother with in order to save time. The selection was more extensive than my sampling--more cakes there than I have ever seen before, but time being the issue again, I targeted my purchases to what I knew I wanted, rather than being too open minded about what I bought. Otherwise, I would have been tasting new teas all 11 days!

The trip was my spring break, and the purpose was to see as much of Old Beijing as is still standing before the Olympics come and bulldoze it all down. I saw all of the Imperial sites (forbidden city, temple of heaven, summer palace, great wall, ming tombs), temples (lama temple, dongyue temple, white cloud temple, etc.) and had some of the best food I've ever paid $1.50 for!

Pu'er vendors didn't think they were special, I don't think. I didn't get much of that attitude from anyone, just a lot of the same shiftiness regarding bargaining. They also assumed I knew little about what I was buying until I pulled out my cheat sheet!

I would recommend a trip, definitely. The problem is more that I got worn down in 11 days...I would recommend a week tops unless you'd rather devote much more time than I did to Maliandao!

-Great read Jason, it was like being there, nice stuff. I have two

-questions if you don't mind:

-1. Travel info. You mentioned $1200 at 11 nights. Would you mind

-sharing some of the actual travel info? Where you flew into, stayed,

-etc. That is one place I have always wanted to visit and if it would be

-possible to do on $2k-3k for two people it would be possible much

-sooner than I anticipated.

The flight was $731 per person, and my partner and I split the hotel, day tour, and great wall tour, which came to $923 (Capital Hotel Beijing, Qian Men, great location and beautiful hotel!), so $2385 for

1. Very inexpensive to eat there (-/meal), and to travel around (35 cents metro, .5-.5 cabs)

-2. I see a lot of different terms and numbers tossed around for Pu-erh

-that I never can find a definitive guide for. Like the numbers of the

-cakes, I know they stand for the factory, etc. but where does one go to

-figure them out. And terms like tong and fangcha are new to me. I know

-that these can be answered by scouring the web, but is there a single

-place for a good comprehensive breakdown?

Mike P.'s translation help is where I got most of my terminology. Fangcha = "Square" tea, tong = 7 cakes (i think i first read this on the Hou De site). As far as numbered cakes go, the convention is that they stand for a recipe and the last number is the factory, but those same numbers (7542, 7262, etc.) appeared on cakes from different factories all over Maliandao, so either other factories are attempting to recreate Meng Hai recipes (for example), confuse the marketplace of novice customers (possible!), or there's something else to the story we're not getting.

-Thanks,

-- Dominic

oops this was a reply to Jim.

-Between you and Mydnight China is the last place to buy tea off the

-shelf. The barter markets work for the locals but not for strangers

-with no time. You were smart enough to know what things should cost

-via auction sites. However looking at the cost of the trip the

-Internet dealer markups don't look that bad and the selection is about

-the same as your suitcase. I'm thinking of the 2008 Olympics and

-killing two birds with one stone. Besides the adventure was there

-another purpose for this trip? Did the puer sellers think they were

-special versus sellers of other teas? Thanks for sharing your

-experience.

-Jim

-PS: I have a shipment in route of green,black,same factory,2003. The

-black is my first hydrothermal 'aged' puer. This is my first chance to

-compare the same leaf processed both ways.

Last time I got one of those in our Chinatown it turned out the tea had be substituted in the box with another, lesser and cooked toucha. When I had a look through a bunch of Chinese stores in other parts of the city I found the same thing in them. Basically fake pu-erh tea than what should be in the box (a green pu-erh, not cooked). Not very encouraging. Someone out there is making a killing snatching these good quality toucha before import and substituting a lesser quality tea in its place.

Kathy

I heard that story before. Where is the profit on a buck sale even with substitution? Cooked is generally less but not necessarily by that much. The all green Xiaguan tuocha box should have the crane emblem on the outside. The inside should have a wrapper with the same crane emblem and green puer. The green Millennium tuocha box should have the characters for Jan followed by 00 on the bottom along with other production information. The green/white/yellow boxes have the cooked Xiaguan. Those are the French export boxes. The uncooked is all green box. The prices are the same. Some have said you can find green puer with the zhong/tea emblem in the green/white/yellow box but I've never seen it

Jim

Kathy wrote:

SPRING BREAK? I never even went to Florida! I can tell you think big which is good.

Jim

Jas> The trip was my spring break, and the purpose was to see as much of Old

I wondered that - mind you these same teas - the real thing that is - sell for a lot more than $1 on-line which makes the supermarket prices seem unrealisticlly low for the so called quality. Could this be reason they are so cheap.

Cooked is generally less but not necessarily by

This is the dead give away. The inside wrapper does NOT have the crane emblem - it has some chinese writing design and not a crane in sight. I couldn't find any boxes in any store which still had what should be the original contents based on the outside box.

It was a very disconcerting experience to say the least when I realised that I'd been had like this, and I'll be the local chinese sellers are probably clueless as well as they ALL had the same thing.

The green crane boxes I found in LA Chinatown had crane logos inside and actual raw pu'er, and the cranes had all four feathers so I figure they're not fake, unless the fakers got that much right this time.

Unfortunately, somebody else was clued into my finds and snatched up the rest of these tuo, and the only thing remaining at that store is cooked menghai discs that look like fakes.