going to china

Hi Chris, been there a few times and shipped 10s of kilos back home. There are so many excellent teas (and not so nice teas) available, it´s simply overwhelming. I mainly stocked up on aged Pu-Erh, Oolongs and high quality green teas. Other nice souvenirs would be Gong-Fu pots (Yxing) and all kinds of paraphernalia. One thing: most shops (99%) I found in SouthWest China feature a Gong-Fu table and you can have your tea of choice prepared for you. However on more than one occasion I found that the seller tried to rip me off, e.g. selling me a different, prob. cheaper tea than the nice one I sampled. In another shop the shop owner exchanged samples below the table. After all I would stay clear of tea shops in touristy areas.

If you have any further questions feel free to PM me @: psyflake ... AT ... yahoo.com

Cheers, Karsten

it´s quite common to

Also, you can email me pictures of the things that you think they want to buy and I can tell you an approximate price. Be careful in the tea shops that are on the main roads and in the more popular areas of the towns...they are the really big rip-off places.

Stay away from TianFu in Shanghai in Beijing if at all possible...although they have some nice tea stuff (pots, etc), they are sold for probably 2 or 3 times what they would sell at any small shop.

Depending on what time they go, tell them to look for some new teas...it's around first pick time for Tie Guan Yin and Pu'er now!

Thanks, She is going in June, I might just leave it up to her to pick stuff out, as im not an authority on tea either.