I've told the powers that be at Adagio. Apparently, they never gave permission, much less asked for the ad to be on the site. I don't know if they'll take action, and I don't know if teahistory would pay attention if they did. But now Adagio knows.
Marlene
Cool, at least they know now. I will do the same for Michael at GenTea.
Mike
I didn't mind the ad for their site.. at least they're providing some content and I figure they can plug their stuff if they've gone to the trouble to make some vids.
However I agree, the pots are very expensive.
I thought you used smelling cups for any type of tea you want (of course white tea doesn't have much smell so it would be kind of wasted on it). I'm sure there are as many styles of gongfu as there are gongfuers.
I just wanna know, and nobody will tell me, why you'd use toothpaste to clean a pot! Doesn't it leave mintiness in the pores of the clay? Or is Chinese toothpaste flavor-free?
It does have a decent odor, but I think using a sniffing glass wouldn't do much for it. The point of using those glasses is to catch the full bodied scent of the more aromatic teas. Da Hong Pao does have a nice earthy smell and a good flavor, but it's not prized on it's scent like Tie Guan Yin or Gao Shan are.
You can just smell the lid of the teapot/gaiwan or even your glass after you've finished drinking the tea and you would get the same scent concerning DHP.
In short, yes. It's a part of their culture to copy.
Cheating foreigners here in China is considered a prized ability in business. More and more Chinese are learning that by using the internet, they can cheat people even easier. The OP is undoubtly Chinese and he has probably started a business based around the idea of finding foreigners on the internet and trying his best to cheat them. I mean, look at the prices for those pots on his site. I can ride down to Fangcun and find some of those exact same pots between 5-15 bucks and he's selling for over 100 (sometimes 200).
As for the copying. There isn't much that can be done about that unless he is hosting his site outside of China.
Anyway, before I get into a long lecture about Chinese business practices and go into a tirade, I'm going to bed. Bottom line is, don't buy anything from this guy. He's just trying to cheat us "stupid foreigners" out of money when in fact, we probably know more about tea than he does.
I find an aroma cup *intensifies* the aroma of a tea, and this can be especially nice for teas like DHP whose scents are less flamboyant than some others. It's also a nice way to follow the evolution of the empty-cup aroma over time.
/Lew
You don't need to pay anything to them in the internet, if you want to buy someting, you should ask your chinese friends to help you. You can see some tea art perform video here
Who did you STEAL these videos from?
Please go away....
Mike Petro
Those are professionally produced videos, that you can purchase in bookstores and videostores in China. They make videos like that on a wide variety of topics - like cooking videos, hairstyle videos, applying make-up videos, massage videos, tea videos, all kinds of stuff. You watch videos like that, and you can learn a lot. I watched a lot of those in China - just because I was bored. It was fun. The make-up video was really good. I learned a lot from that - maybe more than I should know. In China, it's a good way to get instant education.
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