Hi all, let me send you greetings from Menghai/Yunnan, the capital of Pu-Erh tea. I spent the last three weeks in this wonderful province, mostly hunting for tea (and drinking truckloads), Yixing pots, ... Even for a tealover it can easily get too much here with a couple 100s (estimated 500+) of teashops alone in Kunming - the capital. As I've been hunting for weeks I've been invited to at least 50 full-blown gongfu sessions with ALL kinds of tea (mostly excellent Pu-Erhs and Oolongs -one guy even gongfued the Shincha-Sencha he discovered in my backpack, he'll never do this again, hehe). There are a lot of stories to be told, as well as some myths to be shattered (Yixing teapots). In the next couple of weeks I'll try to set up a tiny webpage (address posted to this group) with some information on tea-shopping in Yunnan, Yixing-Pots, Pu-Erh teas, where to look, how not to be ripped off (impossible!), you name it.
PS: Pu-Erh cha really got me hooked. After sampling unnumerable cups of all kinds of Pu-Erh including some stone-age stuff (telling from the taste) I can't live without it any longer :-)
Cheers, Karsten