Christmas in Waikiki

I usually write about reverse culture shock themes, or running, when I'm back here in Hawaii.  We moved here 3 1/2 years ago, mostly so our kids could experience the US education system, and Keoni is half a school year away from graduating high school.  Kalani has experienced middle school for the first time this year, a big change from earlier elementary / grade school experience.  This won't mostly be about them; they would just as soon stay anonymous online, so even mentioning them breaks form.

Christmas has been nice.  I guess I've not experienced a Christmas here in nearly 20 years, back when Eye and I went to grad school in the University of Hawaii (at Manoa), where we met.  It would've been 19 years ago now.

It never feels completely like Christmas in the tropics, related to the winter expectation, but that's familiar in Bangkok.  There mostly malls and hotels decorate, and office buildings put up some token lights and a tree.  You don't hear the Christmas carols there, but that music does play around here, in Honolulu stores.  They put up lights as a city display, in two different places; that was nice.

I could add, about the kids, that we are terrible at observing holiday traditions in both cultures, but did ok for pulling together some token gifts this year.  Kalani's favorite gift was something she said that she wanted, seeing it in passing, an inexpensive karaoke system.  It's tiny, so small the speaker and microphone would fit in a woman's purse, but the function is decent.  It can play music through a bluetooth connection; the technology is mature enough now.  And it was so inexpensive; people buy coffee drinks for almost as much.

Keo's favorite gift was probably an above average quality headphones set, and he also got a Lego car set, both things he had mentioned wanting.  They were surprised; we usually drop the ball.  We didn't do much else for observance, walking around Waikiki some that day, but it was nice, spending time with family, even cooking basic meals.

Maybe adjusting to local culture, or the US version, went better this time, since I was last here 3 months ago.  For whatever reason I don't need any adjustment time back in Bangkok, in Thailand, but here it feels a little strange for the first week or two.  

Of course we are living in a tourist resort as a main residence area (for us), so that part is unusual.  I did that back in Colorado for a decade or so, in a different life phase, in a ski resort, in the Vail Valley.  It didn't seem so unusual then.  Lots of vacationers were visiting, but then it takes a lot of locals to support that particular industry.  Here resident locals might seem a little less integrated, since there isn't an isolated resort community; Waikiki is within a city of half a million or so people.

One part I always struggle to place is the emphasis on consumption, in local culture, to the extent it makes sense to call it that.  On vacations that seems relatively transparent, that of course you go there to eat special meals, to participate in special events or activities, and it all keeps costing money.  As a local there's a lot you just aren't doing.  Of course I don't miss whale-watching outings or luaus, but everywhere you go everything you see is oriented towards a tourist spending money.  

Even with the ocean right there, which you can experience for free, people rent or buy beach chairs or snorkels, or hire guides to take them places they probably could go, like to go snorkeling.  At least the tourists do visit the beach.  Surfing they couldn't do on their own; plenty take lessons for that.

Tourists don't always do much with the beach theme though.  A chance earlier life-phase contact visited in the Spring and her family seemed to barely see the beach, for doing guided outings to different places.  It seemed odd.  Seeing Pearl Harbor makes sense, or a waterfall somewhere, but the Polynesian Cultural Center doesn't really accurately represent Polynesian culture.  It's ran by Mormons, so it's like a Disney version of cultural summary.  

My Thai family loves that place, so it's not all bad.  Fire dances and whatever else are fine; there would be some historical basis for all of it, even though it also surely includes plenty of interpretation.  Any cultural summary would be like that, so I don't intend that as a unique form of blame.  It would be touchy summarizing "white American" culture, since half of what I valued in the late-middle of the 20th century might seem politically incorrect now, things like Thanksgiving, or pledging allegiance, that form of indoctrination.

This branches a little further into my own musing, not about local experience, but lots of this consumption-oriented tourism ends up dividing people into economic categories, more than they really need to be.  It's not about a intentional, central guiding "them" causing that, it evolves organically.  If you can spend $400 to 500 on a hotel that's who you will be surrounded by, and if you need to seek out "budget" alternatives it's a different class group.  Activities, and all sorts of other offerings, will naturally divide out from there.

At least people can still dress casually regardless of what context they end up within, and nature is still available to everyone.  Not a very natural version of it though; it is an intentional limitation, that tourists are steered to stay within either Waikiki or other appropriate areas.  In online discussion groups it's taboo to mention anywhere else.  I remember someone mentioning my favorite local beach, which isn't too far out of the way, and someone commented that they don't even tell their local Honolulu family members about that, never mind tourists in a broad Facebook group.  There are many more isolated places locals would never mention.  Not that it matters so much; going where lots of other people go instead is comfortable, and easy.

This reminds me of a discussion about tourists being airlifted from a popular local hike, which is definitely no secret, the Koko Head Crater hike.  It's essentially a set of stairs up an old rail line.  We've went up it twice, and to me once was already enough, given that context and theme.  If you get injured along the way it would be problematic getting yourself back down.  Of course locals were blaming people for not knowing their limits, which seems a little unfair to me.  How could someone know how they would react to hiking up over a mile of stairs, at a conventional steep incline?

It's a different story not knowing your limits about swimming in an ocean current, even within 100 meters of the shore.  Once you panic everything changes, and your danger level doesn't match what you might normally expect.  Once Eye and I were caught in a fast current just off a beach in Kauai, and she panicked, and even though she's normally a very strong swimmer it was all she could do to stay afloat.  The irony is that she can't sink in the ocean; salt-water makes you more buoyant, and when we would see sea turtles she couldn't swim down to get a closer look.  So out we went.  

A surfer girl was passing, and read the situation, and put Eye on her board, and she and I pushed her straight back in through that current.  Ordinarily the worst case is that you go out 100 to 200 meters and swim back in (a different way), but right there who knows.  We were at the "corner" of that island, and maybe we really would've been caught in a broader current, and headed out to Australia.

Enough of that tangent.  Tourists are safe and sound in crowded Waikiki beaches, in luaus, and overpriced happy-hour beach bars.  They sometimes feel an inclination to get out and see "the real Hawaii" but that's always a little contradictory, a tourist wanting to go somewhere tourists never go.

in a Waikiki McDonald's; a nice touch, the decoration

Homelessness and drug use

It can be hard to avoid touching on these darker themes when discussing US culture, but instead of adding more general perspective here I wanted to share a couple of unusual related experiences.

Of course I see mentally ill and drug-affected homeless people in Honolulu on a daily basis; it's almost not that big of a deal.  Until you are out late somewhere you shouldn't be, and then it is.  But we recently passed through one part of Chinatown, a sort of rough part of downtown, at mid-day, and saw two sets of people using drugs.  I see people smoke weed about a dozen times a day, but this was something else.  Two guys had a blowtorch and glass pipe of some kind; I guess that's crack?  Right in a crowded plaza space too; kind of strange.  It was a full-sized construction use blowtorch, along with elaborate glassware, straight out of a chemistry set; surely they could've used a smaller and functionally equivalent set-up.

We walked on to a bus stop where a guy was selling some sort of drugs, and one guy smoked some right there.  Off foil; I'm not sure what that means.  It was really something, seeing people walk up to buy drugs, and one guy smoking some.  He didn't react to doing the drugs all that much; that part was a little anti-climactic.  It all seemed normal enough to them, as if that bus stop was just their space for that kind of thing.  I guess it had good customer foot traffic?

It changes things a little seeing it, versus just knowing that's a part of where you live, and what those people are doing.  I don't mean "those people" in some sort of generalizing, negative sense; homeless people would surely all have different stories they're living out.  But at least a half dozen people are living that life, based on what we saw with our own eyes over the course of a half an hour or so.

Honolulu wouldn't be ok with tourists seeing that; it would get cleaned up in Waikiki.  Which reminds me; they had an extensive "spread Aloha" neighborhood watch sort of program before, maybe even back in the spring, and that's not going on now.  Maybe it's cyclic?  There are a few places that homeless people set up camp within 3 blocks or so of our house, with mats and bedding and such.  We don't live far from the zoo, for people familiar with this area.  I don't mean the sizeable encampment area by Paki park, or the outposts by the library, or the edge of the golf course, all within a 5 minute walk of the places I am talking about.  Over in Dillingham road there are whole homeless encampment villages.

Where am I going with all of this?  Nowhere, I guess.  It's a real issue.  That's not news to anyone living in any US city.

We always had a few homeless people around, 20 years ago, when I went to grad school here, maybe a half dozen or dozen you'd always see in Waikiki.  And many in other parts of the island.  But the numbers are different now.  I'm not the right person to shed light on what it means, the causes, or how to resolve it.  Of course I feel worse for those people than I do for myself for experiencing it, for being caused to see them.  

Having my kids be around relatively unstable people is a third thing; I also get it why people see it as a real issue beyond the aesthetic part.  In general not much violent crime is adjoined with homeless issues, but some it.  I've always discussed most themes with my kids, so talking about what drugs are and how they destroy lives is normal ground for us.  People smoke weed every 100 or so meters in Waikiki, so you get limited exposure to that other part of it everywhere else.

I should close on a happier note.  I met with online tea friends here this stay; that was a highlight of the trip.  They were here for the Honolulu Marathon.  I run, but I've never ran in an organized race, at least not since my teens, when I did run cross country and local 10ks.  I've been off running for half this stay, due to a minor tendon tear, and have been happy to get back to my normal route over the past week or so.  It's a fantastic place to run here, around Diamondhead.  It's a great environment for lots of reasons, and purposes.  The positives vastly outweigh the negatives.  I've been swimming even more, seeing sea turtles regularly, on a 200 meter route out in a lane from a local beach.

in Foster botanical garden, in Chinatown

with pineapple ice cream, sort of

gardening; we have two small boxes at Kalani's former school

One of the first photos from this visit, of Christmas decorations at home, from Kalani, our resident artist.  She made them for everyone, listing their favorite color, cat, and food, and Christmas wishes.

each cat's favorite cat was themselves.  I'm not so sure about that.

Kaley Tea's Ceylon based Christmas blend

 

A vendor who had sent me Ceylon tea to try in the past, Kaley Tea, recently sent a Christmas tea blend version to try.  So nice!  Earlier in this blog history I would experiment with making Christmas blends every year; it seemed a good time to make an exception from only drinking plain teas, and to experiment.  

This says that it contains tea, cardamom, and cloves, so it's a simplified variation of masala chai.  Masala chai is a good start for a Christmas blend; from there people could add fruit, like orange peel, or cacao, or pine needles, but keeping it quite limited could work well too.  It might allow the tea to play more of a role, where if you mix enough things in it wouldn't matter what the tea is.

drying fruit and peels for use in a Christmas blend (covered here)

It's nice to feel like I'm observing Christmas too.  It's a little early for that, since it's around Halloween time, but holiday experiences never match up here anyway.  It might not be so hot in another two months but otherwise the weather in Bangkok is generally consistent year-round, beyond when it rains more.

I'm brewing this using their recommendations, sort of.  They suggest using a teaspoon to make a cup, brewing that for 3 minutes, with an option to brew it a second time.  I brewed more than that, I think, and for longer, so maybe this will be a little strong.  Ordinarily I'm opposed to diluting tea, adding water, no matter what happens, but I could always make an exception if I've screwed this up.

it's definitely less monochromatic in person; I think shading inside the infuser caused that

Review:

Infusion strength isn't bad, maybe just a touch strong.  It wouldn't be unusual for people to add milk and sugar to this, not to cut overwhelming astringency, since this is mild enough, but just to play up the dessert experience feel, or how masala chai is usually made and enjoyed.  I could drink some and then adjust it, to review it both ways.

The spice balance is good.  Cardamom and clove alone really work, and it seems like this is pretty good tea matching with those.  The flavor input of all three is reasonably balanced; it would be easy for spices to overtake the tea range, but they all show through.  It's pleasant like this, but the extra infusion strength pushes it a little far, off of being sweet, light, complex, and approachable, as the softest and sweetest black teas are.  The tea input seems pretty good but I'll stop short of adding a flavor list here.  Malt doesn't show through, so it's not like an Assam, and maybe some of the mineral base that is distinctive in Ceylon is giving this good balance.

The general effect is very clean; there is no negative contribution of any aspect.  Not very poetic a description, right, compared to bringing up some childhood image of people around a fireplace, drinking tea and eating gingerbread Christmas cookies, or whatever else?  This would go really well with cookies; that's what is missing in the overall balance, a reason for drinking a clean and positive black tea with spice inputs.  

I like the tea but it's not what I'm accustomed to, and this really would make a lot more sense in some sort of late fall or winter context.  It probably would make a nice iced tea, but it's odd mentally switching channels like that, considering a radically different context.  For drinking it plain maybe it would be better with food or those cookies.  I'll try it with a little milk and honey and see how that works.

It's good with those added, probably better.  I used skim milk, what I'm drinking right now; surely that's not optimum, but it's still nice.  As with plain black tea all the flavors fall into a completely different balance when you add milk and sugar (or honey, also what I had most handy).  Going even heavier on infusion strength and using more full cream milk than I added would probably be more optimum, to get the full effect of both inputs.  I tried a second infusion brewed for longer (with the same leaves), this time using whole milk (my wife couldn't sleep at night knowing there are two cartons open at once), but of course the effect is better from the first round, the intensity.

One nice part about drinking it this way--adjusted--could be that people who don't drink tea might be more likely to like it.  These particular spice flavors might appeal most to people with more developed food flavor background (in Thailand or in the West), but to me it's quite approachable and pleasant.  For people familiar with this spicing range there would be no need to mess around with this recipe form, and aspects balance, but for others continuing on to add cacao and a fruit input might be good.  Using an apple peeler to remove some outer rind off an orange might be a nice addition too, giving a touch of extra fruit edge.  I don't see this as working well for coupling with some sort of alcohol input (which can come up as another Christmas theme), but people on that page may take that differently.  A little cognac or brandy would definitely completely change this.

It works for evoking a Christmas feel, I think.  It needs those cookies though, not just any one kind, whatever theme people tend to connect with their own expectations.  My Mom would make a lot of kinds; we had large trays of many types around in the holiday season.  This would be perfect with a kind we didn't make then, which we called whoopie pies, two soft chocolate cookies sandwiching a cream filling center.  Maybe even better with gingerbread men; that would round out the typical set expectation of ginger being the other main input in a traditional masala chai (as I see it; for others black pepper or other things could be added).

This might be a good year for messing around with your own Christmas blend experience; either go out and buy one, or keep an eye out for spice inputs, like spearmint, cacao, or whatever else.  There's still time to work out how adding pine needles to tea works for people in the US, which tree type needle inputs definitely won't poison you, and how drying or chopping the material changes infusion results.  Making adjusted masala chai versions takes practice; you might need a couple of trial rounds to prepare something you can serve to others (all of which I've covered in this blog).

Many thanks to Kaley for sharing this, and an early happy holidays for all readers!  

Trying Gopaldhara autumn harvest Darjeeling oolongs

 

Rishi of Gopaldhara sent some really interesting looking teas to try, a batch of some autumn harvest teas, I think these are.  Seasons don't match temperate climates perfectly at other latitudes but maybe Darjeeling does experience more autumn and winter than here in Bangkok, related to being at a much higher altitude.  We can tell that the days get a little longer and shorter here but that's about it, except for one week typically being cooler than the rest of the year here in December.  This year that ran early, and lasted for two weeks, so it was a nice cold season for us, down into the teens C at night (60s F), not cold, but nice and cool.

I don't know anything about these, beyond the names, but per usual process I'll go back and add more after making the notes.  Let's skip the part about how close Indian oolongs really are to Chinese style oolongs.  Not that close, but medium oxidation level and some comparable degree of processing steps needs to have some category name.

After checking, the background related to a website change includes more to consider than just the description; this is posted in the Gopaldhara India site, but there's an additional international site now too.  With pricing listed in US dollars, so maybe it's a US site instead?  I'll check on that and add more about it in a later review post.  When vendors list multiple site versions, as Yunnan Sourcing does, it's often about basing stock and shipping out of somewhere else, which drops cost and speeds up delivery time anywhere, and can relate to avoiding customs issues in places like the EU.

This listing information:

Rohini Winter Frosted Rare Creamy Oolong – Master Series 2021

This rare Darjeeling yellow oolong tea has very exceptional characteristics than any other oolong teas in the Darjeeling Hills. It is produced from P157 clones at the picturesque valley of the Rohini Tea Estate in the winter season. In this season the growth of Darjeeling tea is very slow and the workers could only bring in a very small quantity of leaves that are very special. The workers carefully pluck the tea leaves while making sure that only the best shoots with eminent buds are plucked.

The teas are very mildly oxidized and delicately processed to induce minimal damage to the whole leaves. As a result, the dry leaves become greenish with abundant silvery tips that give us an amazingly clean cup with very high notes of aroma. The texture is very creamy and we get the mixed flavour of Green Apple, Ceylon olive or Indian olive, Indian gooseberry, pear, and vanilla.

Sounds good.  Per my understanding both of these are somewhat experimental, representing ongoing evolution of processing, where the related autumn "Red Thunder" version is pretty far along that path, something they've been tweaking for years.  

This "Christmas honey oolong" Rishi said was sold as a batch but not listed on either site.  It's interesting how that part works out, how producers try to re-create standard branded versions, like the Red Thunder, accounting for variations in annual results by blending inputs from different lots to get to a more standard outcome.  To the extent any part of what I'm claiming or implying is wrong I'll also amend that in another post; it's not as I'm passing on these few comments directly from input from Gopaldhara.

Review:

Christmas honey oolong:  that is really interesting.  I gave it a nice long soak so I wouldn't be saying "we'll know more next round," and infusion strength might be just a touch over optimum.  The flavor is complex and positive, and character really isn't even completely familiar.  After trying so many experimental Gopaldhara teas that's nice, that they can keep breaking new ground.  

I want to say that there is a novel aspect in this, but it's not that, it's a set of them.  The varying oxidation levels apparent in leaf color would indicate that might happen.  One part is bright, floral and including vegetal range, that green wood that I take to be one main characteristic of Darjeeling.  Another is warm, rich, and sweet in a different way.  There's a risk in such circumstances that it might not integrate, but it really does.  I think astringency expressing so much range makes this interesting in one way and a little confusing in another.  Not in the sense of it being unpleasant, but related to fully taking it in.  As to flavor list someone could brainstorm and just keep going on, about honey, floral range, warm spice, trailing towards cocoa, or an aromatic part relating to cedar or other wood tone.  It'll be interesting to see what stands out as this evolves, and how the proportion shifts.

Creamy oolong:  a similar experience of not really being able to place this tea occurred again.  Again it's quite pleasant, so not in the sense of it seeming off, although the warmer range mostly dropping out in relation to the other seemed a little jarring at first.  I think a crazy range of floral tone is making these hard to interpret; their characters are crowded around expressing a lot of that.  This is creamy but not buttery; the smooth and rich tone also connects with a bit of vegetal edge.  It tastes like butter in relation to how a butter cookie tastes, at the intersection of that butter flavor and shortbread.  The more vegetal part I'm not really identifying yet.  It's not so far off flower petal or stem but it's not that.  

I think it also complicates things that these teas are expressing mostly floral range but also rich fruit.  I wouldn't be surprised if that seems more dominant and noticeable as infusions evolve.

Christmas oolong, second infusion:  much better a little lighter, and opened up. Intensity is good, and overall balance. Astringency edge is moderate related to typical Darjeeling range but substantial as the much lower whole-leaf Gopaldhara versions go.  At this level it gives the tea a nice balance. It would be just as good with less, but it's not negative.  Honey sweetness stands out more than in the first round.  Floral range seems to evolve more into dried fruit, it's just hard to pin it down to one version.  Maybe not far off dried apricot.

Creamy oolong:  it's interesting how this tea would be completely different without this degree of astringency edge and green wood flavor.  It's nice as it is, but with half that input the overall effect would shift.  Put another way this stands between Chinese oolong character range and first flush Darjeeling.

Maybe my kids' review input will help clarify.  My daughter tried both and said that both are nice, and that she liked this creamy version more, but didn't really explain why.  My son tried both and said that both are bitter.  Maybe a little, but it's really astringency that he's picking up.  My daughter, who is 8, seems to tolerate it better, and see both as more positive, which really makes no sense given that her only food preference is for eating candy.  He could live on bacon, and neither prefer to ever eat vegetables, or even fruit.  Ok, maybe all that is not helpful.

The richness and creaminess in this tea make it very pleasant, and the positive floral and fruit tone complexity.  It's not so citrusy but it leans a little towards lemon citrus.  For being a sheng drinker the slight astringency edge and touch of what really could be fairly interpreted as bitterness is very moderate, and as positive as it is a weakness, for adding complexity.

Christmas oolong, third infusion:  I would just be repeating the earlier comments to add more, but I'm not really bringing across how this is.  It's novel.  Intentional or not they've managed to oxidize these leaves to a lot of different levels and it really adds a unique depth to the experience, a broad range.  It's not unlike how rolled oolongs might be browned at the edges and greener at the center, it just varied more within different leaves.  This goes an extra step, because parts seem to be contributing true fully oxidized character to this, and other leaves relatively green inputs.  It almost seems that in theory it shouldn't integrate as well as it seems to.  Again without that final green edge and feel this would be a relatively different tea, and I suppose it might even work better, but it also works like this.

Sweetness, floral and fruit, and overall intensity are so pronounced that it leaves you with a perfume-like aftertaste.  That one dry edge really defines the feel; probably that would improve somewhat if it balanced more with the rest, if it didn't stand out.  But this tea experience is like drinking perfume, in a good sense, so it's not appropriate to focus on part of that seeming like a flaw, since how it all works together probably depends on the parts in a way I can't unpack.

Creamy oolong:  this is warming in tone; interesting.  A lot of all the rest of that about the Christmas version applies to this too, just in a different sense.  This is a little lighter and brighter in character, with that other tea's warm dried apricot range swapped out for fruit towards citrus.  Floral range is probably brighter flowers; it's not my personal strength to add flower names to that.  Plumeria and what I think is an Indian cork / peep tree grow in one yard now and it's along those lines.

Christmas oolong, fourth infusion:  this round I brewed really fast, just trying out variations, and it works quite well this way.  One nice outcome is that it would brew very many infusions made that way, cup after cup, without losing intensity.  Transition could also relate to a pattern of character changing across rounds; that happens.  With astringency dialed back as an outcome this is just the straight experience of warm and complex flowers, with a bit of warm dried fruit underlying that.  It's still intense enough to carry over as a pleasant floral aftertaste.

Creamy oolong:  again the aromatic floral range is off the scale for this version, just in brighter range, with a different touch of feel grounding it.  These teas are nice.  I'll probably give both one longer infusion (still 10-15 seconds, not long) to see how that compares with transition cycle input and then stop taking notes.  These will easily brew another half dozen infusions; it's more about me running out of patience for the review process.

Christmas oolong, fifth infusion:  interesting how feel shifts along with infusion strength, and a warmer toned input.  This might have evolved to include more citrus along the way, more a warm orange citrus, versus the other being brighter and towards lemon, or at least Mandarin orange.  It wouldn't be surprising if transitions included a little more flavor range shift, beyond balance just changing over the next half dozen rounds.  The feel to this includes an edge but there is a cool syrupy quality to it as well, which matches together with that perfume-like floral blast nicely.  Aftertaste and feel effect both trail off slowly for teas of this typical type range.  Or maybe these aren't part of any typical type range.

Creamy oolong:  this is quite pleasant, but I think sheng pu'er conditioning for high levels of astringency and bitterness help with that interpretation.  Someone drinking a lot of typical edgy, slightly harsh first flush Darjeeling might end up in a similar place, and see this as soft and approachable as a result.  The level of floral range intensity in both is hard to really describe.  Both contribute a real open handed slap of floral flavor.

Conclusions:

Both very nice!  I suppose I liked the Christmas version better related to appreciating warmer toned range in similar teas.  The usual first versus second flush character divide is pretty much about the same thing, with the "creamy" version closer to typical first flush range.  Both were nice though, novel, complex, and pleasant.  Both definitely included plenty of floral and fruit range.

About the oolong theme, I get it why producers in  other places (than China and Taiwan) try to produce and communicate a general range for medium level oxidized teas.  The character is just never going to be a close match, because of other starting points varying, tea types, growing conditions, and so on.  I'm open to styles borrowing from other places, and name uses being flexible.  Some people see the words "Thai Oriental Beauty" together and see that as a misnomer, but to me it's not a problem.  What they mean is clear, and until a designation is origin area protected there's no need to avoid using it, as I see it.

It's really about how people see language use in general, more so than views on tea.  If someone is open to seeing "literally" mean "figuratively," or they / them as a singular gender neutral pronoun, then it's easy to embrace the concept of Indian oolong.  If not what can you do; people vary in how they prefer language is used, especially related to changes.  Calling these oolong, in addition to autumn flush Darjeeling, just communicates that the oxidation level is medium.  For some that's clear, appropriate communication and positive branding, and for others they probably shouldn't be saying that.  It's up to Gopaldhara to decide it, since I see this as more of a branding issue than a category use issue.

They are not a distant away from dialing in a narrower range of oxidation level, it seems to me, and these would seem a lot closer to Chinese and Taiwanese oolongs in style.  Tie Guan Yin often have a darker leaf edge and "greener" center, so it's down to getting that less oxidized part to transition just a little more.  Or what do I know, really; I'm just a tea blogger.  I can express how I interpret flavors and my own match to preference, and beyond that I really am just guessing.  Related to those factors these teas were nice.

Osmanthus black and Shui Xian oolong from Jip Eu (Bangkok Chinatown)

visiting Jip Eu that day

A few weeks ago my wife and I were doing a rushed version of Christmas shopping that included a quick pass through Chinatown, so I stopped by my favorite shop there, Jip Eu, mostly to buy tea for gifts.  I bought 6 packs of an inexpensive Shui Xian, all but one to give away, and a spare Xiaguan tuocha there, and some Thai oolong and a couple of Dayi tuochas elsewhere, at Sen Xing Fa.  

Kittichai (the shop owner) gave me a tea there as a gift, an osmanthus black tea, which I'm reviewing here, along with the Shui Xian.  Very kind of him!  Those guys do feel like extra family to me, and I would probably visit them even without buying or drinking tea.  Maybe it feels slightly less like that for me only seeing them a couple of times last year, but that's how the covid era goes, Bangkok keeps shutting down and opening back up.  I don't work out of my office, almost ever, so stopping by Chinatown while on that side of town doesn't combine together.  I suppose I could be biased about their teas, liking what I would prefer to like; it's worth considering.

One might wonder what else is in Chinatown as gifts for kids.  There is a toy area of the wholesale shops there but my kids are both moving on from Legos and dolls and such.  We did buy some of those educational toys, about setting up a demo water filter and a seed sprouting kit.  Some extra clothes and such were most of the rest, some hair accessories, and we picked up a half a kilo of chrysanthemum due to almost running out.  It wasn't one-stop Christmas shopping; another trip to a department store and going to a sporting goods store later that day rounded it all out.  They do have online shopping here but we are slow to move to that (my family, and that also works for Thailand in general).

On to how the teas worked out.

Review, Osmanthus black:

first infusion:  really nice, although that interpretation depends a little on how one takes tartness.  Floral tone stands out most, leaning a lot towards fruit, along the line of roselle (hard to describe, between rose petal and cranberry, I guess).  Smooth, warm, rich tones fill in beyond that; this is definitely not an edgy version of black tea (astringent, or harsh, or flawed in any other way).  That roselle tone, which really has to be osmanthus, given what this is, includes a bit of tartness, or I suppose that's just as likely coming from the tea, but seems to link to the floral range.  Black tea contributes really mild mineral tones and other warm toffee like sweetness.  Probably floral will fade in a second infusion and wood tone will pick up, maybe even warmth like spice, which should also be nice.

Where to go from the basic flavor list for discussion?  The only other flavored black tea I ever tend to drink, besides Earl Grey, is jasmine black tea.  That's probably my overall favorite flavored tea form, the way that input can integrate in a good version.  Osmanthus is pleasant too, sweet and rich, floral towards fruity, not disagreeable in any way, and well suited for blending with tea.  

One might've tried mild osmanthus oolong and edgier, intense jasmine green tea, or strong versions of jasmine white, and think that jasmine has too harsh an edge, but that's most typically coming from the green tea.  How it works out for white is a bit strange; that tea has to mild, if it's white, but jasmine input can get to be a bit much.  I suppose at some point the balance is determined by the level, and producers making adjustments by mixing actual flowers (versus layering tea and flowers to add flavor), or adding chemical agents to extract flavors is something else.  What is the word I'm leaving out here?  Along the lines of solvent.

Anyway, this isn't as good as the best jasmine black tea I've ever tried but it is quite good.  For someone with more of an osmanthus preference that opinion could easily be reversed.  It's probably as well to say more about the tea base after a second infusion, since heavy floral input extracted relatively quickly this round, and dominates the flavor range, which isn't so bad.  I tend to brew Western style on the heavy side, using a proportion that works well for three infusions (maybe 4 grams for a 12 ounce cup, but I don't measure either, so I don't really know).  In this case, for flavored tea, the first two infusions will be quite positive, but very different, and the third might well be pushing it.

second infusion:  maybe a little better, for the black tea input ramping up.  The floral and fruit range didn't change much, just fading a good bit, but the tea input did.  It has nice toffee range sweetness, and a bit of a savory edge to it.  I have no idea what tea this is but it's not like the Dian Hong I drink most of.  I suppose it's closer to Wuyishan Fujian black tea I've been having, or it could be something else altogether.  

It kind of doesn't matter, exactly what black tea style this "should" be like.  It's suitable for a flavored tea base, mild and rich, maybe just a bit non-distinct to stand alone, but it would be easier to determine that trying a plain version.  Mineral tone gives it more of a positive base effect, along with the mild towards wood or spice range aspects.  If it's fruity or floral at all it's not possible to separate that from the osmanthus input.  It's good.

 

Review, Shui Xian oolong:

first infusion:  this won't be the fairest appraisal of this tea because I'm using the end of a bag that I separated out as two separate parts from an original paper wrapper.  I've drank this a few times and it's quite pleasant, but that form was more whole leaf than this.  Since I took out the top half to put in another bag just thinking it all through better earlier would've resulted in using the most whole material, instead of the most broken, but I'm not that clear minded first thing in the morning.  Or even now, at 11; there's a narrow window in the afternoon where I'm more optimum, maybe between 1 and 3.  My kids and I sometimes joke about how I'm not a morning person or an evening person, and it's not just a joke.

This has a really nice inky mineral base and strong woody sort of flavor, like tree bark, towards spice.  There's a Chinese name for that I'm forgetting; I'm not good with memorizing that list of main tea terms.  It makes you sound so much more knowledgeable and authoritative too, like you are speaking for an old tradition.  

This includes some cinnamon as well, more than I would expect for Shui Xian.  The flavors are really intense and clean, with what I take to be good input from a roast step, and a great level of oxidation (probably mixed, since they blend inputs to get to the most positive outcome in these sorts of teas).  It all works better than it should.  I've tried Cindy's Qi Lan again since drinking this and the character overlaps a good bit (Wuyi Origin's, really good tea, a version from a different quality level).  To say this is more rustic or rougher edged implies more of a difference than I'm really experiencing, since that degree is so limited, but I suppose that's it.

This tea most definitely punches above its weight.  If you bought this for $8 for 50 grams it would seem like a good buy, as standard tea versions go, and I paid $3 for what could've been 100 grams (I think it was that).  Packaging was entirely in Thai (maybe with some Chinese mixed in), and I didn't have it translated, and was in a rush when I bought it.  It's odd how this tea is a great value whether it was 50 or 100 grams; it usually doesn't work out like that.  For $6 it still would be (200 baht instead).  It goes without saying but twisted style teas like this taking up a lot of space in a package is what makes it hard to determine amount; it was mostly whole leaf, and again this is the end of the "bottom" half.

That's the opposite of how that would almost always go in buying random Wuyi Yancha, to some extent even there at Jip Eu.  Very inexpensive teas can be drinkable, positive and interesting, but not this good, with this degree of balance, intensity, pleasant aspect range, and lack of flaws.  I suppose it just so happened that they bought Shui Xian versions with limitations that merged to become really good by matching up.  An inexpensive version like this should be a "daily drinker," the kind of tea you would have with breakfast but not focus on in a session as the main theme, but it could stretch and cover both.

To put that in perspective Cindy's (Wuyi Origin's) Qi Lan sells for $17 for 50 grams, and to me it's a good value for that.  It's better than this, but the character overlaps, and this tea should have notable flaws that it doesn't have.  For that tea slightly cleaner and more intense flavors and better feel and aftertaste would all mark it as being different, with general flavor range not as different as would be normal.

for outdoor tasting level of sunlight can affect images a lot

Second infusion:  so nice, that intensity, and again the cinnamon with inky mineral and an aromatic tree-bark version of being woody, pretty close to spice range.  I should get back there and buy a few more of these packs.  I did buy 6, but only one was for me.  Three others went to monk friends, and two to local shopkeepers, one the family Happy is a part of, that local cat that I love visiting with.

Another aside:  our cat, Myra, just changed from being an inside cat to more of an inside-outside cat, spending days outside, then visiting some inside and nights in a pen (cage).  She's been adjusting to those other environments for over a month, but just made the switch in the last week.  Kalani said that she's so proud of her, that she can do it.  She ends up exhausted at afternoon nap time, when she gets a lunch, and in the evenings, after she spends all day exploring.  Later I guess she will just head up to the roof spaces to hang out, like the other two cats often do.

I didn't edit these pictures; my "new" Huawei phone does ok, a new but a dated P20 model

Not much to add about this round or this tea.  A bit of a heavy earth edge is as close as this gets to a flaw, a bit towards a roasted coffee tone.  Even that is nice, to me.  You can't really spot the quality limitations without being familiar with the intensity, feel, and aftertaste experience of better versions, and I suppose prior to adapting to prefer those they wouldn't be that much of an improvement.

third infusion:  flavor deepens; inky mineral picks up and cinnamon fades a bit.  This will shift in character, and probably not be as positive as higher quality versions after 8 or 9 rounds, but it's kind of holding its own now.  I tried this with an orange cake a couple of weeks ago and the way that heavy mineral and towards-spice tree bark flavor matched up was just fantastic.  

From trying it a number of times already I already know it's not going to fade away quickly, as can occur with some modest quality Wuyi Yancha versions.  The depth in this indicates it's not like that; lower quality versions can have good flavor if you push them through early rounds, but they can't back it up with the same kind of complexity.  A touch of cardboard flavor range often also gives up lower quality versions; this doesn't include that.  Roast input is typically heavier in lower quality versions too, used to cover flaws, and to integrate blend inputs together that don't completely match.

Conclusions:

Two really nice teas!  I don't know what the osmanthus black sells for, although I suppose they probably do sell that, but it's a lot better than a standard grocery store blend would be.  It's a full quality level better than anything Twinings would sell, probably at the top end of the range for high profile French vendor blended teas.  You might be able to buy something comparable at local TWG outlets for five times what Jip Eu sells this for.

I mentioned this experience in a post about oolongs in a Quora Space about tea I developed, Specialty Tea, and someone on there commented that it's always nice finding an inexpensive gem of a tea version.  It's almost not about the expense, because if I'd spent two or three times as much it wouldn't have changed much.  It's that I'm drinking much better tea than I expected to, and the people I bought it as gifts for are.  I've got other Wuyi Origin tea around, so I can have some when I feel like good Wuyishan oolong, but I can use a pretty good version as a daily drinker through this, for rushed breakfasts and such, or experimenting with grandpa style brewing.  I mostly use mixed tisanes along with sheng for that now, sometimes just with chrysanthemum.

If others reading this want to visit Jip Eu they might wonder what types are best there, beyond inexpensive oolong and floral flavored black (which they almost don't carry any of).  They stock good Wuyi Yancha, that other quality range I mentioned, but it helps trying versions with them to match style to preference.  Slight variations in oxidation, roast level, plant material input, or general style can vary outcome a lot.  I've written about buying a couple versions of aged sheng there, not necessarily rare and high cost versions, but those were sold as CNNP / Zhongcha and old Dayi, so not really random stuff.  Half the time I go in there I restock an older Tulin tuocha version, a nice basic aged tea, not so far off Xiaguan range.  

If you bring up aged sheng that automatically raises authenticity discussion, and to me the heavier range fermentation effect of teas being stored in Bangkok is another main consideration.  They are kind of like Malaysia stored teas, but I at least think I can taste a difference.  Again visiting and tasting pins down what you'll get, and match to preference.  You just can't buy aged sheng or supposed good Wuyi Yancha without at least having a really good idea of what a vendor sells, and how they tend to describe versions, and what Jip Eu sells isn't supposed to represent a consistent, narrow range.  Tasting a tea first is ideal, and they're open to try teas with you.  You need to be patient there if you only speak English; that will work, but 100% of discussion content won't come across in both directions. 

I've bought pretty good mainstream commercial Dan Cong there a few times; that's an odd thing to come across.  Relatively moderate cost Dan Cong is usually so edgy that you end up balancing really fast brewing with not extracting enough positive flavor, but that wasn't like that, or as good as the more typical 50 cents a gram range versions either.  I've even bought Thai versions of black tea that were nice, and jasmine green (which I usually don't like, but did), and local, wild origin, very unusual sheng ("pu'er-like tea," in relation to that Thailand origin).  

One thing I almost never experience there:  trying the same tea twice, even varying year versions.  If you walk in and walk right back out with some tea, as I just did, you aren't approaching shopping there correctly, in general.  It worked that time though, a perfect time for it to, since the tea was for gifts.

Christmas, revisiting the Bangkok Chinatown

 

My wife and I went to Chinatown to buy some Christmas gifts, per usual just a couple of days before Christmas day.  I made two quick stops in familiar tea shops, and bought some tea, but it wasn't mostly about that theme.  I'll pass on what the Bangkok Chinatown experience and feel is like these days, more or less at a low point in between covid waves here.  Omicron should probably pick up and cause us to close contact back down over this month but so far that hasn't happened.

at the subway / MRT ready to put in some kilometers, how Chinatown works out

It was great to be back there.  Logistics for visiting that one shop and the owners I really feel a connection with weren't ideal, because we had to walk a few blocks in the wrong direction to get there, and then to walk back.  It was a little strange going in there and saying that I couldn't stay, buying some tea in a rush versus visiting, then moving on to sorting through blocks of local warehouse market style shops, with some walking in the middle.  

the owners of Jip Eu, my favorite Chinatown shop

The tea was nothing special, just some low cost Shui Xian that I could buy for a number of gifts without spending much on it.  Those were around $3, and probably 200 grams of tea each, although maybe that's not right.  I bought enough one is for me, so I can taste it and see how moderate the quality level really is.

At the end of the rushed path I stopped at a second shop and bought a couple of Dayi sheng pu'er tuochas and some Thai oolong, mostly for one monk who I give tea to who loves rolled oolong, with one of those tuos for me.  I had bought an older Xiaguan version at the first store, one I've reviewed a couple times here; it would be interesting comparing the two.  I think I'm pretty clear on how that would go but it would still be interesting.

I bought some inexpensive Thai oolong at Sen Xing Fa as well, near there

Chinatown isn't dead, at all; it was nice contrasting that experience with visiting Pattaya not so long ago, which is really struggling.  Half of all the businesses in Pattaya have closed over the last year, and bars there are lucky to have some patrons in them to offset costs with some revenue.  We went there because my wife was taking a short training course on how to cut hair, one more odd and likely pointless venture on her part.  Since the kids go to school online and I work online in a sense we can do that from other places, and Pattaya is just a 2 or 3 hour drive away, with some hotels there quite inexpensive at this point.

Chinatown had lots of people eating in outdoor cafe themed restaurants, like a hybrid version of street food dining.  The wholesale oriented shops and market spaces we visited were as crowded as ever.  If it felt like the risk of covid was high I suppose that might've been uncomfortable, even though essentially all of it was outside, or only related to stepping into an open shop briefly.  We did eat in one enclosed restaurant, in Hua Seng Hong, which isn't something we've been careful to avoid over the last few weeks.  Covid stats are pretty low right now, and of course my wife and her mother and I are vaccinated, a process that ran so late that our booster requirement isn't quite timely just yet.

foot traffic picked up later

Thailand just matched the US for vaccination rates over the past two weeks or so, so likely has pulled slightly ahead now.  I just checked that; Thailand has 63% fully vaccinated, and 72% with at least one shot, with the US at 61 and 73 respectively, so nearly even still (with Thailand's stat counts running a few days behind in that Google dashboard).  I probably should skip interpreting what I think that means here, since to some extent it's all anyone's guess at this point.  It must help, having more people partly protected.

There aren't that many tourists in Chinatown compared to Thais.  One might wonder if I can reliably tell the difference, since a tourist from any Asian country could look Thai to me.  I can tell whether someone is speaking Thai or not if I'm overhearing them, but of course I was going mainly by appearance of the hundreds or thousands we walked by.  We might've saw a few dozen "Westerners" over a few hours, including on the subway to get there, nothing like the normal pre-covid case.

It was nice feeling that free, to just be there.  I had missed the smells and the feel of Chinatown.  It's never completely routine to me, always a little like I'm on vacation, even if I'm visiting there every other month or so.  We stocked up on chrysanthemum but didn't really buy much for my wife or I, besides very little tea.  

It's not an ideal place for Christmas shopping for an 8 and 13 year old but we found some interesting things, toys, inexpensive jewelry, and clothes and such.  The night before we checked out a department store, to buy a purse I think Kalani will like, and after visiting Chinatown we crossed Bangkok to a sporting goods store to buy them snorkels, something they've somehow never got around to trying out.  Christmas will be ok.

Later update:  for the kids being 8 and 13 we're at turning point for Christmas not being the same, and they helped exaggerate that by waking up at 5 and starting Christmas without us, opening almost everything on their own.  A year or two earlier I would've been disappointed, but now it just is what it is, at the end of their experience of such things, at least that earlier form.  Kalani is onto how the Santa thing works, even though she maintains the pretense out of respect and hopefulness.

The did love everything.  By far their favorite gift was a 300 baht / $10 Roblox gift card, which my wife didn't want to give them, because them playing games and watching videos instead of joining online classes has been a huge problem for over a year now.  It's what they wanted though.

We were that close to skipping Christmas, since if we had went on a planned trip to Chiang Mai almost none of those gifts would've worked out, and the only decorations we experienced would be in malls and a hotel lobby.  I'm glad we did it, that we changed plans to put emphasis on that holiday experience form instead.  I skipped a dinner outing to put up a tiny (very tiny!) Christmas tree, and to wrap everything, listening to those old "crooner" carols, and it was nice for me to think it all through again too.  Christmas here has never been a match for the old, traditional form I experienced in rural America (PA), but it's nice that we could give them as much of the experience as we could manage.  

Christmas at home 5 years ago; covid prevented planned visits for the past two years

It's funny how every year it seems new to my wife, who is Thai, that each time she asks how many gifts I think they need, and how things work out with Santa giving things and also us.  Her take is that she hopes this is the last time we need to go through this same form of the experience, and unfortunately she is partly right about that, that a 9 and 14 year old will relate the experience differently.

Merry Christmas to all readers!  I hope that your life has a bit of extra magic in it, and that if it's not these traditional forms then it's something else that helps you connect with a feeling of hope and positive reflection.  Everything is ok, and it's going to be ok, even when parts aren't working out.

of course the Charlie Brown Christmas special came to mind setting up that tiny tree