Ori Puer Lab 215 Da Xue Shan sheng pu'er

I'm reviewing a sheng pu'er that I initially knew nothing about, except production date, from an unusual source.  Stephen Liu--maybe a nickname of sorts, since he uses two different names in FB?--is the head of the largest Thai Facebook tea group, with 67,000 members, and the founder of a Thai FB tea marketplace group, and he writes a blog about tea background.  He is a main authority on tea in Thailand.

I saw him giving a presentation at the recent tea expo in Central Embassy, at the Tea Atlas event.  I brought teas for two people to try, who I had met at the event the first time I visited, and didn't see either there, so I passed on some to him.  We've crossed paths online for years, so it was an odd real-life intro, sharing tea out of the blue, but it's nice to give tea to people who can appreciate it, even if they don't really like that style best.  I've been into Vietnamese teas lately; it was those.  He shared back even more tea, which is likely to be better, at least in a sense, this 200 gram cake of sheng pu'er that I'm reviewing.

I could look up more about what he has done, and who he is in relation to tea, but essentially he's a name that comes up whenever local tea themes develop.  He sells tea (I think), gets involved with functions, like that one, does some touring, and so on.  There must be plenty of academic connection to cover as well.  This write-up ran long, looking up related types for area background, and turning up a related version from the year before, so I'll skip looking into more background, on him or the tea, and get back to that later if there is more to say.

I looking up what Da Xue Shan is--which Google lens translation mentions--this listing came up first, for a 2023 Daxueshan Old Tree Pu-erh (Gu Shu Sheng Cha - cake 200 g), selling for 64 Euro for a 200 gram cake, or $70:

Da Xue Shan 大雪山 is a mountain located in Lincang Region of Southwest Yunnan. The peak (3430 m) of the mountain is covered by snow all year round. Hence its name the Big Snow Mountain. Wild tea (Ye Sheng Cha 野生茶, often called as Shan Cha 山茶 by Yunnan farmers, ) grows at the altitude around 2000-2300 m in the mountain. Although growing in the very high altitude, it germinates earlier than other common teas. In the end of March, the tea is well ready for harvesting. The Daxueshan wild tea is famous for its wild orchid flavor and mild mellow taste. Local farmers are of Li Su race which is a rare minority group in Yunnan. 

There is at least one review of a version from that local origin in a review here, but they're not much of a standard reference.  I'm not sure this version that I'm reviewing is wild origin tea; it could be, or maybe not.

I looked up a Yunnan Sourcing related area listing to get more description of it, and another related tea version, 2015 Spring "Da Xue Shan" Wild Arbor Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake:

A powerful first flush of Spring 2015 tea from 50-80 year old trees growing in Da Xue Shan area of Lincang (45 km west of Lincang City). 

Da Xue Shan aka "Big Snow Mountain" is a high altitude area and perfect for growing tea.  The neighboring "Da Xue Shan Reserve" is home to some of the oldest tea trees in Yunnan as well as Yunnan's own Black snub-nosed monkey.

...The tea is very strong in taste and aroma.  It is both bitter and astringent with a lasting huigan and somewhat over-powering cha qi.

That tea was selling for $38.50 per 357 gram cake; it's interesting that the two examples vary so much in price, with both described as wild origin tea. 

Another example from there, 2018 Yunnan Sourcing "Big Snow Mountain" Old Arbor Raw Pu-erh Tea Cake, sells for $130.  

The pricing is going to tie to quality, and to whatever other factors influence producer selling price.  I tend to take these "old arbor" / gushu claims with a grain of salt; vendors might tie selling points back to expectations per related areas, or producers might present teas as something they're not.  In general I'd trust Yunnan Sourcing more than most sources, but in the end, to me, it's about how the tea comes across when you brew it, what the character is like.  

It would be nice if the teas were grown in the forest; there's a lower chance of pesticide use in that context, and less reliance on chemical fertilizers.  That second point wouldn't necessarily change much related to risk, I wouldn't expect, but character should be better from more naturally grown teas.  There's a harshness to low elevation grown, plantation, mono-culture produced teas that were forced to produce a lot of material, harvested at volumes that are hard for the plants to sustain.

Looking further I found a 2023 example of this same tea, the same producer and formula number (215), through a familiar Western facing China based vendor, Teasenz.  It was selling for 29 Euros or $31.50 for a 150 gram cake, and they had also carried a 250 gram cake, which is unusual, the producer making two different sizes:

2023 Oripuerlab Da Xue Shan 215 Raw Pu Erh

This is a typical raw pu erh that has a light and soft taste, yet packed with intense refreshing floral aroma. The mouth-watering honey sweetness and accessible flavour makes it one of the best teas for the beginning raw pu erh tea drinker, while the complex aroma will be loved by advanced drinkers.

Lingcang, Mengku (2250m)

The 215 Da Xue Shan series, has been produced by Oripuerlab since 2013, and due to the popularity, these cakes have become part of the factory's annual production. This cake has consistently sold out for many years in a row, and this year will be no exception.

They forgot to mention strong bitterness and high overall intensity, if the 2023 is like the 2024 (based on trying it before looking up background), but to some extent all that still works.  They're from different years, but I can't imagine that they're opposites in terms of general character.  This doesn't mention plant age or the wild arbor theme directly, but growing the tea at 2250 meters in elevation implies that it's not from a standard low elevation, high production plantation.

Review:

#1:  bitterness is really pronounced; that can happen.  Floral range is positive, and promising, but this is brewed a bit too strong.  One challenge going into this was that a lot of sheng isn't really ideal for drinking within a few months of being made.  Not everything needs a decade and a half of transition, but some is much better for settling for a couple of years.  I can brew this lighter in following rounds, and that will offset this intensity, and bitterness, but it's still going to be a bit extreme.

This reminds me of trying a tea from a local shop again, from Ju Jen shop in the Paradise Park mall (in Bangkok), the Lincang version reviewed here.  That post said that it was from 2021, so three years old now, and it has settled to a nice aspect balance.  Three years ago I would imagine it would've been a bit much, too high in bitterness level, and a little intense.  This may follow the same pattern, as clearly possessing some positive aspects and character early on, being of good quality, but not quite ready in terms of an optimum.  If someone loves really high intensity and bitterness of course that's just wrong, and it's perfect when young, brand new.

#2:  easier to relate to brewed much lighter.  This flavor profile seems to remind me of that tea [as it should have, at least being from the same broad area, Lincang].  Pronounced bitterness and floral range are pretty common themes though.  It's quite drinkable made this way, brewed light, but a year or two of limited transition would make it more approachable, and enable drinking it at more of a range of infusion strengths.  

Quality seems pretty good for this.  Intensity is a bit much, and the bitterness is really something, but those aren't flaws.  Feel is fine; it has good structure.  One part of the flavor is a bright fruit note; that is nice.  It's almost lemon citrus, or at least in that range.  To me it adds a pleasant complexity, but then I always do love a bit of fruit in sheng.

#3:  warmth picks up; that's nice.  Mineral is quite strong in this, in a dry mineral range, like limestone, or something such.  It could just be my imagination since it's so early in but I swear that I can feel this tea already, the drug-like effect.  I mostly had fruit and yogurt for breakfast and that doesn't tend to offset sheng stomach impact or feel (cha qi / drug-like feel), so maybe it is real.  I really can't relate to people drinking sheng to get a buzz, but to each their own.  I'd be using drugs if I wanted drug-like effect.

Of course aftertaste experience is pronounced in this; that goes along with saying that it's intense, quite bitter, heavy on mineral, and complex in flavor range.  It's pleasant, if someone is ok with high degree of bitterness and somewhat heavy astringency, and wants intensity to be dialed way up.  Per my own preferences I think I'd love this more in about two years, after it has mellowed out a bit.  In really dry storage maybe in 4 or 5 more years, but here in Bangkok sheng changes fast.

#4:  fruit continues to evolve, with most of the flavor range in this still relating more to bitterness, mineral, and floral range.  That catchy set of bitterness, sweetness, floral flavor, and a hint of fruit is familiar enough; that works.  Aftertaste switching from bitterness to sweetness is a common theme, hui gan.  I was just thinking that it was a shame that the Ju Jen cake was so small, and almost finished, produced at half this size (100 grams, where this is 200).  That's more of a sample.  

This sheng version will probably only get better over the next few years, and I probably wouldn't hold onto more for longer, to check how it is in a decade or longer.  I suppose if it doesn't cost too much setting aside a cake would probably give good results, in another 15 years.  Or maybe it would make sense at an intermediate transition point, between 5 and 10 years, but that's hard to judge.

#5:  astringency and mineral eases up a little; the balance is more approachable.  This is still on the edgy side, a bit dry in feel, and quite bitter, so only people well acclimated to that range would like it at this stage.  Again in a couple of years that may shift; intensity will still be fine, but tones could warm a little and that challenging bitterness and feel could smooth back out.

#6:  it continues to settle well.  Over more infusions it should carry on with a slow transition to warmer tones, maybe expressing just a little more fruit, and easing up on bitterness and astringency.  It won't make it to an especially drinkable when young range, so all that is relative. 

Conclusions, additional background:

Really nice tea; I like it.  It's a bit intense at this young age, but it should mellow and be more approachable fast, over the next year or two.  For people into sky-high intensity, pronounced sweetness and bitterness, and heavy floral range this is perfect right now.

I asked Stephen if he sells this and he said that he doesn't, that it's a version he likes that he owns a lot of.  That's so nice!  This would be an ideal tea to own many cakes of; I can't imagine that it wouldn't be better and better over any length of time, even 25 more years.  And it should drink quite well over the next few years, as a younger version that doesn't need more complete aging to be pleasant.

Many thanks again to Stephen for sharing this!

Vendor use of social media for tea marketing

first published in TChing here 

I was just talking to a vendor friend about this topic, mainly from the perspective of a moderator for a large Facebook tea group, International Tea Talk.  This isn't a rant about people joining a tea group to post ads that violate group policy, I want to discuss the rationale for such rules, and how it works out to filter those in relation to Facebook feed filtering (what gets shown).  Then I can extend that on to how to optimize use of social media posting for exposure, to do better than just posting a typical ad.  

It's not just about working around group rules to counter their intended limitation, instead about engaging potential customers in discussion by providing informational content versus ads.

Let's start with what an ad is.  It's this:

used with permission from vendor, credit source

That's from that group's post filtering folder; that was never shown in the group feed, that part or the catchy supporting background information and contact.  It's not offensive, or badly done, in fact to me that's a pretty good effort, a good example of showing a product using good graphic context.  It just violates the group rules.

So as I define it an ad is a product image and description, with some selling points, contact information, and maybe sales details, like something about a discount.  But other types of promotion isn't as clearly an ad, but can overlap in scope and function.  Here I'll talk about the two extremes, one of which makes filtering an issue, when a post isn't clearly an ad (like that one), but it's still pretty obvious.  Then the rest is about the other extreme, how to "create content" instead, which can be interacted with as a fundamentally different type of thing, which will allow the Facebook algorithm to promote it (show it to people).

High Quality Low Price Green Tea 8810 and 8008.  Crop from Spring tea material with highest quality. Special taste to make it unique style. Talk to us for more details at...

I will often put profiles that show products, but that aren't clearly ads, on pre-review status, because such content is slightly less ad-like in appearance.  I tend to let first posts like that show in the feed as a new member self-introduction, then restrict approving them to group feed distribution a lot more, especially if they are posted frequently, versus once in awhile.  

It's inconsistencies like that which make it hard for group members to keep up with judgment, but without putting every post on automatic pre-review--which I've avoided doing--ad posts or those just showing product photos are posted every day.  It's easy to imagine how that range sorts into a grey area; if a vendor doesn't mention contact detail and price, and only shows a tea product image, that's only implying that they sell it, not explicit advertising.  Let's leave off the definition issue and get on with why groups tend to exclude ads, even though it probably seems obvious enough.

Why the ad prohibition?

A lot of tea groups on Facebook, maybe most of them, consist of feeds that are streams of the exact same ads shown in other tea groups.  Many tea vendors post ads daily, or every other day, and in a group with 25,000 members it's normal for 100 of them to post ads regularly, multiple times a week.  So that's the feed; the group is then just an ad board.  If you are in 20 or 30 tea groups you would never see any of that in your personal feed, because rock bottom level interaction with ads--who is going to comment on one, or "like" it?--relates to those being shown to almost no one.

So that's it; ads defeat the designed purpose of many tea groups, to promote discussion, tea enthusiast or vendor interaction, spreading information (about events, courses, tea background, whatever), or providing a place to ask questions.  And they shut down group activity, because almost no one will interact with advertising content, and it won't be shown in individual feeds by the FB algorithm, generally.  If you can restrict such content, which really takes some doing, that clears up space for information content, event notices, etc., which is more likely to be interacted with.  This brings your tea group back to life, in relation to Facebook algorithm perception and activity (showing posts to people).

Promoting a social media group as a place for discussion isn't as simple as that filtering step, only separating the chaff from the wheat.  The other range of positive input depends on active participation by interested parties, and your group more or less needs to develop a social shared-interest feel to support that.  The one I moderate doesn't exactly have that, at this point.  There was a core group of people active in discussion and posting at one point, but as can happen natural turnover led most of them to become less active there over time.  Even me, to some extent; I monitor the group daily but I'm not as consistent now about sharing interesting things I see on there.  I add blog post links there but that's sort of something else, a different form  of self-promotion (not that I benefit from my blog financially, so I guess being heard is the point, perhaps related to helping others).

Creating content instead

A recent post by a vendor friend, the manager of Gopaldhara, serves as an example of how someone with the right background or awareness of tea themes can express ideas and include informative media content that is a totally different thing than an ad.  That content (a partial citation):

used with permission from Gopaldhara; original source

It has been widely marketed by big Tea Companies that they buy different varieties of tea to create a unique blend. However our view is very different. Each cultivar depending on season produces a unique flavour and aroma.

For eg Yabukita is very Umami in Spring and has complex notes of Plum and Spice in Summer

AV2 has very sweet nectar like notes in Spring and a well made AV2 in Summer will be richly sweet and the best ones will have rich plum and earl grey finish.

The third one I like is B157. Very herbaceous in Spring and Sweet and Woody in Summer.

Another wild cultivar has Spicy notes.

If you mix all these teas the delicate notes are all lost and you will get the flavour of the most common texture. It could be flowery or mineral or stony but without the complexity...

As a tea blogger I can see plenty of room for development of these ideas, and the connection back to the image content (it's not clear which cultivar is being shown, but they know that information).  The subject of character of blends versus more narrow material type inclusion goes on and on, although saying a little about it is still interesting, as this did.  That's basically already it in summary; if you blend a lot of tea plant type inputs together you can balance out flaws or limitations, but the distinct flavors that make a tea version seem the most complex, interesting, and pleasant get blended out, too combined together to appreciate as individual experienced aspects.

The extra effort to express more was there in that post, and responses by people seeing it caused the FB algorithm to show it to more people, so it reached over 3000 views, versus most posts not getting far.

And that's basically it; pretty simple.  The same issue comes up in my company, related to IT services, how Marketing staff write ad content and it doesn't reflect the same depth of understanding and perspective as technical staff.  It's equivalent to tea plantation marketing staff not understanding cultivar differences, or having access to a broad range of photos.  Which is crazy, right?

Let's look at this from a tea blogger perspective:  which steps would help staff who don't understand tea on that deeper level create better content, which might engage potential viewers better?

-get input from other staff who actually make tea, or acquire the same information in whatever ways it is available (eg. read references, or follow tea groups).

-understand what is interesting to social media participants by following group discussions (seems pretty obvious, but then a lot of these points will).

-go easy on overused themes like health benefits and sustainability.  If there is a novel, developed, and well-grounded point to be made that's fine, but otherwise leaving those topics alone is better.  

-reference to older, developed tea cultures is fine, but that takes a lot more development than one might expect, and citing a Wikipedia summary level tea origin myth isn't close to enough.  I suppose it could be sufficient if that's the goal, using a few words of ancient tea wisdom input as a set of short phrases, but it won't add interesting perspective framing or new idea content for tea enthusiasts.

-use local or online events to participate in a form of discussion, for example attending or mentioning seminars, conventions, etc.  Learning and networking are useful outcomes, but it also relates to having something to say, beyond "buy this particular product." 

-related to producer promotion, creating an event could help provide something to talk about.  There's nothing wrong with on-location services including a tour theme, which could be very interesting, but adding distinct events (eg. a hands-on tea production workshop) could add depth to that, which could work better to support online discussion.

-think way outside the box.  A Thai wild origin tea producer once gave a local TedX talk on sustainability.  This is obviously an extreme case for developing theme and a new communication channel, but limiting exposure to purchased ads, FB and Insta posts stops short of exploring a range of other options.  Developing a Discord server might work, or really any such steps would depend on how a producer or sales vendor fits into a niche, which channel or form would make sense for them.  

-standard resale vendors would need to put work into developing a theme just to fit anywhere, to be distinguishable.  Writing a half dozen blog-level researched short articles is a good start, and visiting a tea area is great, but that week's vacation worth of exposure is still going to relate to sightseeing level input.  Meeting a producer and telling part of their story that's better; there would be real depth to that.  It's for the best if the story has a hook to it, some reason that it should be interesting, which could take lots of forms.

 

How do you maximize quality of text or graphic content, given that the ideas are already developed?

-don't write a first draft and final version quickly; produce the content in stages instead.  This gives you time to think of other ideas to include, or to re-consider how ideas are framed, or to trim back redundancy or fluff in the writing.  It might trigger thinking through variations that could work for other posts, and help you better arrange which peice to put extra ideas.

-if you are cross-referencing other resources, events, organizations, or subject experts include an attribution, and where applicable a link reference.  This absolutely never happens in marketing oriented content, because it's about directing traffic to you, not elsewhere, and it's too quickly developed to reach that depth.  But this kind of content context identifier changes what is presented from self-promotion to information, because the form is different.

-use appropriate photo or other media adjoining content.  It's all too easy to over-rely on a set of in-house produced stock photos, or worse yet, online sourced standard stock photos, which would be created to a high quality standard, but with minimal editing lower quality content could also serve in this role.  The average cell phone image will still not be ok for a lot of context use; the idea is to pair development of media content along with development of ideas and supporting text.  Obviously this is necessary if Instagram is to be used to support some external awareness.

back to the ad theme, simple sale promotion content with a product photograph works well

In conclusion if a vendor doesn't put more work into creating online marketing content than the average personal Instagram account it's going to show, and ads will not attract attention.  Shifting from creating ads to creating content with greater depth can help, including opening up new channels that allow that to be shared, but not ads.  It's important to be sensitive to individual group rules, since even personal blog posts are prohibited in many groups, and then informational post content blurring the line between an ad and sharing information probably also would be.

It takes time and effort, and of course that's a problem, given all the other business function, sourcing, logistics, sales related, packaging, and other aspects to running any business.  But if it grows directly out of personal interest, versus working backwards from creating standard advertising content, that could result in greater external appeal in relation to any level of work input.  

If you can share an idea that a consumer is not already aware of that can create a point of interest for your tea product beyond the potential consumption experience itself, which can't be fully communicated images or text, or even video content.  Using a video medium can show expression of reactions, but for other types of content other information or ideas will need to fill in what can be conveyed, with product descriptions a limited form of that.

Internet fame and tea awareness development

 

I've been considering writing about what it means to have been the subject of an interview related to being a tea blogger, or something along that line.  It doesn't mean anything in particular, of course, just a touch of exposure, probably partly as thanks for helping a tea vendor and friend with minor editing and online mentions (Sergey Shevelev, the founder of Moychay).

the unconventional grooming look has progressed well since then

I keep discussing a deeper and related theme, about people promoting tea awareness, across different channels and in different forms.  As it has always stood more discussion and group promotion occurs on an even and open basis among many participants, not as led by any one expert, or "cult of personality" center.  There are exceptions.  As much as many people question Don Mei and Mei Leaf's business orientation and ethics to be sure he has done as much as anyone in promoting tea awareness, through Youtube basics theme content creation.  The ethics issues were mainly about fair pricing and getting communicated details right, both kind of grey areas, with a take on the rest here.  The Global Tea Hut mixing of tea and religion themes ends up being criticized, which I addressed here, but as I see it to some extent it's really more about people with both interests sharing and developing those forms together than as a mainstream influence of tea culture.  

Others aspire to fulfill a similar role.  Most often that seems to stem directly from a strong personal interest in advancing tea awareness and culture, to help others, and of course also to business interest.  Sergey of Moychay, that interviewer related to the video I've mentioned, and So Han Fan of a Texas based tea business are good examples of this.  Both create online content to help introduce people to tea basics, and from there extend to exploring interesting aspects of tea culture and background.  It comes up in other places; this Polish vendor seems to have driven their business and tea awareness through Youtube promotion, seemingly with Rafał Przybylok filling the role of a high profile tea promoter.

another interesting tea persona

If we have an isolated few individuals stepping forward to serve as promising tea evangelists, and multiple platforms and channels of tea discussion groups, why is it that tea awareness spreads so slowly, that none of this ever worked as a stronger catalyst?  One can only guess, or identify likely partial causes.  One guess is that it's starting from so far from coffee preference scope that interest level doubling a few times isn't noticeable.  

I'm reminded of an interesting video example about exponential growth curves, which is worth watching, from back at the beginning of the spread of covid.  It explains why exposure doubling in a patterned way is especially problematic, just not at first.  The example was about what happens if we repeatedly double the amount of water in the Grand Canyon, on a set interval (I think starting from a low level, in the example, from a liter of water or something such, to make the point more dramatically).  Of course flooding would be severe right away, if you start from doubling a current river level, but if you start with periodically doubling a liter of water instead the doubling doesn't seem noticeable at all for awhile.  Then the second half of the canyon fills in the last time-interval unit, whatever that had been set to.  

So what feels like tea building to a critical mass of interest taking awhile may just be how a slow natural progression of increase would normally feel, in earlier stages.  On the opposite side we kind of get used to the "going viral" theme relating to everyone jumping on an interest, trend, or idea in short order.  But that pattern is something else, related to a fashion trend or app interest spreading faster, with tea preference uptake a different kind of thing.  It spreads through people having experiences, one person connecting through contact with another, not like memes do, where a cute image of a dog or The Rock making a funny face can be copied thousands of times in a week, or a limitless number.

To back up a bit, I've been considering lots of subjects in relation to Youtube content promotion, and it's interesting how the pattern of Youtuber popularity tends to happen.  The form of interest progression might connect.  It takes a content producer a long time to struggle to reach 10,000 followers, and from there the move to 100k can be much faster.  A local Thai lifestyle blogger commented a little on this, making a concerted effort to reach 10k viewers over the last half a year, pushing on to exchange following with other Youtubers doing a series of interviews, and they moved on from 10k to 16k followers within a couple of months.

It reminds me of the Matthew principle:

For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

— Matthew 25:29, RSV.

As I see it this is at the root of the problem people have with the "white privilege," that the real starting points for personal financial success in relation to having a favorable childhood, education, business starting point, and connections really relate to a main cause of someone already being successful prior to their actual business success.  It gets interpreted as the effect from not struggling with minority status, poverty, personal debt, a lack of early childhood support, and so on, but really the keys to success were built up across the first 20 years of everyone's lives, versus there being few limitations blocking them.  Or else they weren't.  Cases where Elon Musk or Donald Trump's parents granted them millions of dollars in start-up funding are something else, but the same pattern applies, that it would take over a lifetime for a normal person to collect together a few million dollars in seed capital.

Only partly related, and tying to another dimension, someone asked in a Quora question what made children stand out as popular, and many answered that wealth or attractiveness would cause that.  That's true, but it's also expectations, at least as I see things and answered that.  By the age of 5 this social role development is largely complete, and by 8 it's all the more solidified, based on what I've experienced from raising two children to or past that age.  I suppose it makes a difference if it really is physical attractiveness, wealth, or expectations related to parents implicitly emphasizing that their children will be social leaders.  It could be seen as their birthright, but only on an implied level; that's what I was getting at.

Really I'm still talking about two different subjects, wealth and class status as an input, and a set of social expectations that has a profound effect on young children.  So does this even connect back to tea themes, to awareness spreading, or to the influence of social leaders in driving that change?  Probably, but I would guess that the patterns aren't simple enough to be easy to follow.  To consider a natural evolution from early start-up to tea industry leader we need to consider an example case.

Yunnan Sourcing as an example

I've used this as an example of a successful tea business in a relatively recent post, and it will work again to support this related point.  I'll cite from external material cited in that post, about Scott Wilson's personal background and perspective, that business founder:

...I came to Yunnan in 1998 and just fell in love with the place, especially the tea and the food. In 2004, I got fed up with being in the states and decided to pursue my dream of living in China and doing something with tea... 

We have a tea room in the Kunming Wholesale tea market. It is a place solely to drink tea. We have a library of more than 600 pu-erhs that are available to try! Our eBay store is our only online presence at the moment. Most business is conducted outside of eBay. In fact, individual customers with small orders can contact me directly and get at least 10% (or more) off the retail price. We will open yunnansourcing.com and yunnansourcing.us before the end of 2009. The latter site will feature products that will ship from the USA instead of China...

So that content is from prior to the end of 2009, or at least 13 years ago.  I could develop my own interpretation of how Scott's personality and later business decisions inform this kind of narrative, but it's more interesting to me which parts of a business story followed, and which didn't develop.  He did use social media content posts to support those sales, but not to the same extent Don Mei and Sergey Shevelev did.  A Facebook vendor support and discussion group has expanded discussion of his business offerings, but that was started by an independent fan, per my understanding.  How could he and his business become uniquely successful then?

It was the right theme at the right time.  Sales site catalog and vending outlets are common now, for tea and any number of other goods, but they certainly weren't in 2009.  Beyond timing the broad product selection, value, and clear descriptions could only come from someone with that degree of product exposure, from years of working within a Chinese sourcing and vending system (5 years, it looks like in that source).

So it wasn't "cult of personality" driven (although Scott is interesting and nice).  Tea blogs and tea discussion circles were well-developed by 2009, but as I see it that was the beginning of a "golden age" for groups, the time of Tea Chat and Steepster, with Facebook groups soon to follow.  I joined my first FB tea group in 2013, and became a moderator for an International themed version 6 years ago, with that three years mapping out a lot of the ramp-up time of FB tea group.  Many thousands of people have mentioned Yunnan Sourcing as a good place to buy tea over this last decade, based on having positive experiences themselves; the success came from that.

Elyse of Tealet using a meetup channel form to connect and share information

All that makes it sound like women aren't tea subject social media influencers, or that one person sharing their own knowledge and perspective is a conventional form, versus podcasts, discussion groups, meetups, and so on.  Really the opposite of both is more true, that tea expertise isn't a gender-specific theme, and that alternate and broadly varied forms of information sharing are now the norm.  Sergey (again of Moychay) interviewing me is a standard theme in his channel, about showing different locations or events, or meeting with someone else offering their own input.

Connecting it further

It seems like there are next steps to follow that will drive tea popularity, and the industry, or else sales forms and uptake will continue as they have.  Not necessarily mostly from individual inputs, but that always could be a factor, some kind of visionary, high profile business developer doing more, or a popular celebrity adding exposure.

It's strange how the larger corporate inputs have stifled the growth of popularity of tea, instead of supporting it.  I'm not sure that's only a coincidence.  Starbucks bought Teavana, and let it thrive to a good sized mall chain, but the decline of mall popularity in the US seemed tied to shutting the entire business down.  Unilever bought T2, a small outlet chain poised to move an entire level beyond the scale of "mom and pop" cafe or dry tea outlet business, and shifted product focus to higher return blends, swapping out higher quality teas sold previously.  Covid hit that business hard, another casualty of negative external influence.  I don't think both large corporations killed the businesses on purpose, but shifting to a high-return, lower quality product theme probably didn't help either.

Oprah promoting tea might've been a main launching point, but instead she tried to sell her own herbal and tea blended chai product, which wasn't really universally well-received.  See a pattern here?  Oprah, Teavana, and T2 weren't promoting prior accepted tea versions, or the Chinese tea cultural experience, or pushing on to highlight more interesting and higher quality offerings, they were promoting specific lower quality products that they could potentially make a higher return on than those other types of products.  And that failed more than it succeeded in all three cases.

Expansion through small vendor sales has been the norm in the tea industry, with real significant growth limited to a broader wholesale layer ramping up.  This gives rise to the ability for new tea forms to appear and gain exposure faster, and also limits the degree of that exposure.  Hundreds of small businesses either are or are not involved in that successful marketing promotion, each with very limited influence, taken alone.  

It almost seems like an economy of scale limitation issue is holding tea in place in this current form.  Past a certain threshold tea might experience what wine did way back when (in the late 80s?), when a critical mass of interest might enable media channel development, and support a broader producer and distributor network.  I was interested in wine in the 90s, and there was a great local shop that sold all sorts of interesting versions in my small town (a ski town with a few thousand residents), but with no comparable tea shop there, I think even now.  There was an "alternative perspective" oriented health foods shop, so I did venture into tisanes a little, but not plain tea, which just wasn't around, beyond new tea bag offerings (eg. Tazo).

When I see tea related Youtube channels or groups grow to include much higher follower count it makes me wonder if we aren't seeing that slow progressive growth play out, now in that later form, onto doubling from significant numbers then very large ones.  I've just noticed that the Reddit r/tea group membership is unusually large, at 645,000 members, which one can assess better from considering my 2018 writing on that topic:

The main problem with online tea interest groups--beyond activity tending to drop off at some point--seems to be people being on the same page, sharing perspective.  Facebook groups work well for sorting that naturally; if you talk about scope beyond group theme interest you probably won't hear much back, or feedback could be negative.

That's why it's odd that the Reddit subforum works; it isn't sorted, beyond an emphasis on most people being newer to tea.  That's also probably why it has 120k+ members and almost none of them seem to be regulars, beyond the moderators.  There are some but they are exceptions.  Vendors had seemed to be more active in the past but a few scandals about product promotion inconsistencies may have threw off the friendly neighborhood self-promotion vibe...

So r/tea increased five-fold in under 4 years; not bad.  "My" FB tea group, really owned by a friend who runs a Chinese vending outlet and training organization, has levelled off at 25,000 members, still adding new ones, but not at the rate that brought it to that level.  I think the "new to tea" theme is more promising for broad membership.  For promoting advanced tea interest what the Gong Fu Cha group evolved to become works better, than for a general producer and vendor oriented "international" theme, even though both groups are about the same size now in terms of membership count.

One might look closer at group sub-themes and try to sort out the role they are playing through that lens, but that might miss parts of the larger picture.  For any number of reasons a half a million new Reddit followers joined that tea sub in four years, a group that isn't doing much beyond letting people express their own interest, post by post.  The average post has been and will continue to be images of boxes of tea bags sitting in a kitchen cabinet, the kinds I said were all that existed in the early 1990s.  But then maybe it's not an anomaly that finally in the last year that range has expanded, with "better tea quality" related posts only now turning up on a daily basis.

I think it's easy to misplace how Don Mei and Sergey Shevelev building up to over 100,000 Youtube followers changes things.  I watch Youtube content about some strange and random subjects, without much meaning, perspective, or connection to my life habits, but for sure those videos are helping people move on to buying and brewing a broader range of tea.  The channels alone must generate more video views ad revenue than most home tea businesses (unless ads are turned off?), which is partly beside the point, but also worth considering.

Let's back up to a level of assumptions I've not yet addressed here:  why would I want more people to drink tea?  If my own reader numbers double that changes nothing; there is no ad revenue from this blog, and no financial gain through another business function.  Topic bloggers can tend to tie their personal self-image to a subject theme; I think that's a lot of it.  Usually that plays out in a 3 to 4 year blog lifecycle, before it either leads to financial return or not, but in rare cases people might stick with it, for no normal reason.  Maybe there could be a perception that later gain could follow, that a different kind of meaning could evolve.

I like to think that I'm really still just sharing experience, except that I've moved on from basic exploration, what different kinds of oolongs are, to digging deeper into local production issues, or other background, like social media influence.

Given the range of broad speculation here I should end this with my guesses about the future of tea.  Do I think tea interest is "really about to take off," or that gradual and increasing rate uptake will have the tea sales, vending forms, common offerings, and interest groups looking about the same in another decade?  I think there will be a tipping point experience, I just don't know when, or what extra factors will seem to fold in.  Conventional media mirrors common perception in not caring about tea; maybe both will change together.  NPR ran some articles at one point, or moderate sized food interest pages also sometimes do, or a more mainstream newspaper might mention "duck shit" oolong as a novelty; that has been most of it.  

It might take a decade for tea to get where coffee was in the early 90s, for seeing an interest level spike, or maybe only half that long.  It's easy to forget that there were an awful lot of small but developed theme specialty coffee shops around before Starbucks arrived at a format that consolidated the interest trend, and put a lot of those out of business.  The changes in progress are complex in form, and take time.

Meetup with Mr. Mopar

privacy concerns give this meetup capture an unusual look

I've talked with this well-known tea enthusiast in group discussions for years, and he agreed to join an online meetup session with those tea friends.  It seemed a great chance to hear about US sheng pu'er storage, and tea circles, even onto earlier forms of US tea culture, since he seemed to be at it for awhile.  First some background.

John (he shares my name) got into tea around a decade ago, and seemed to move fast towards pu'er obsession, a process that took me and many others some time to develop.  He's from the East Coast of the US, with the reference in his online name related to car interest.  We actually met online twice, since the first session was limited in time and two of my regular circle of friends were dealing with illness issues.  Per usual this summary is just some ideas that seemed interesting to me, with filtering to focus on a central theme, on talking to John, versus serving as a faithful representation of everything expressed.  They both had a lot to contribute, that I've left out describing, or at least attributing.  One writes a tea blog, Teakurrim, worth checking out.

We talked a lot about storage, favorites, and vendor options in the first session, which only Ralph also joined.  It was interesting, but a lot of what one might expect.  I was wondering if he focused mainly on aged factory teas, since those came up most in online discussion, but at least not exclusively at this point, since he is exploring a little of everything.  He likes intense versions of sheng, so not so much the lighter, sweeter, fruity and floral "oolong pu'er / pulong" range.  Seemingly he is more into aged teas than drinking it young, but even that doesn't seem to work as an absolute generality, since he described his taste preferences as broad.  The preferred vendor and source list he mentioned included more than it left out, on from Yunnan Sourcing and through many other names into atypical source options, just stopping short of random trials through Taobao.

His storage preference is kind of conventional for US tea circles, towards the safe side of wetter.  He uses the mylar isolated, boveda controlled approach.  Ralph and I really grilled him about how many tea cakes he has, and the range is in the hundreds, if I remember right, so a good bit.  

John sells tea, which he described as not really a conventional vendor practice, but just selling some cakes to free up funds to buy more of others.  I noticed a post about selling some of a version not long ago, on Tea Forum here, for an early 2000s CNNP Bulang.  I remember mention of him selling one particular Dayi numbered version as a known theme, just not which one.  We didn't talk that much about vending issues, related to him selling tea.

We talked about how far along he prefers teas in relation to fermentation level, and a running theme that kept repeating was that he sees his own preference as a yardstick that doesn't apply to others, that he just happens to like what he likes.  He said that different teas are better or more ideal fermented more or less, a pretty standard take on things.  One thing he said, that's not something you often hear, is that fermentation level can go too far, and that it makes sense to adjust storage conditions once a tea is where you like it.  This would relate to discussing 20 or so year old versions, most likely, or older, and tie back to the conditions designed to keep fermentation pace moving.  I reviewed an 80s Thai sheng once that tasted a bit like charcoal, seemingly degraded, and it was nice after the first 4 infusions or so, but definitely further along for fermentation than it needed to be.

Since Huyen was also present in the second round it was interesting checking on her take on fermentation preference for sheng there in Vietnam.  It's a type they drink a lot of, her and her family, all from there (with a partial background intro related to them making tea here).  It seemed likely that they wouldn't be focusing on drinking 15 to 20 year old versions there, and what she said bore that out, that relatively fully aged sheng isn't a popular theme there.  

I tend to like a lot of younger or partly aged versions myself, and can appreciate and relate to trying lots of more fully aged versions, and own some cakes that are like that, but nothing like the hundreds that John owns.  Huyen showed a couple of pressed Vietnamese sheng cakes that she had handy; although the tea type may come up more as maocha (loose versions) there pressed cakes are also around.

Related to other participant themes, two others joined us in the second session, which made it interesting for drawing on different input.  I suppose it diluted the "Mr. Mopar as meetup theme" subject a bit too, but those talks are always organic discussions, never structured as interviews, or subject-oriented.  This summary rounds off their input to stick with a theme more than them not contributing ideas or input.

It was interesting to me how across themes John kept returning to the idea that preference dictates what is best, related to tea types, storage conditions, and so on.  We all get that, to an extent, but it's also easy to let our own preference sort of organically take on the function of determining what is best, even beyond that scope.  In taking about brewing he covered how he likes to make tea, and variations based on different daily preference, all offered as trial and error informed outcomes based only on his own preference.

As far as social media channels go I knew him first through Steepster, which is relatively inactive now (I think).  He seems to check in most with Discord servers, the pu'er sub on Reddit, and Tea Forum.  He brought up an interesting sounding past Hong Kong based pu'er forum that I missed out on, which he said went inactive some years ago, probably before I focused most on sheng, as of about 4 years ago.  John said that he's open to talking to people about tea issues, and of course there's that vending sideline theme, so I'll include his email contact here, per his request, a step that never comes up here, since it's usually easy to cite Facebook profiles instead (mrmoparnrv@gmail.com). 

A bit of a tangent, to me the main tea discussion areas are still on Facebook now, like Gong Fu Cha, with the Pu'er Tea Club a bit quieter now.  The FB group I moderate, International Tea Talk, is currently in an awkward place for being mostly frequented by international vendors, which can be interesting, but really leads to too much commercial promotion.  All of these groups seem to thrive based on having a half dozen or more most active members fill in a social network feel, and it's interesting how Gong Fu Cha stays active without that.  It's nice the Discord groups sort of change the balance a little, enabling people to set up small groups that use an old mainframe discussion format, versus FB groups and such being an option.

It was interesting talking with John, although for it just being about ordinary tea preference and storage themes this summary doesn't seem to come together as a story.  That is the broader story of tea culture though, lots of people taking up different preferences and practices, now including social media and meetup channel options.

Tea vendor bias and group identification

 

Sergey Shevelev in the Moychay Amsterdam shop

I had mentioned talking about tea vendor perspectives in a meetup session summary post, about appreciation for or bias against Moychay by Russian tea enthusiasts.  I'll go into more on that here, reviewing how I see cases of vendor support or negative impressions.  I think it might have more to do with embracing shared group perspective and association than what one might take to be more intuitive inputs, about range of selection, best quality offerings, or about value issues.

Alex said that the further along tea awareness exposure among Russians you go, relating to people with more developed preference and awareness, they tend to have a more negative opinion of Moychay.  But why?  It could be because they are better informed to judge, but that's not what Alex added as his main take.  He thought it's because as a vendor grows, gains a lot of exposure, and seems more "corporate" opinions naturally become more divided on them, including significant negativity.  To interpret that a little, it could be that tea "beginners" appreciate supporting introductory content, and haven't yet sorted into preference related groups.

We can see that in cases like Yunnan Sourcing and Mei Leaf, although maybe there's not a direct parallel to the layers of controversy surrounding Mei Leaf.  Or maybe we can set aside problems with plant age claims, exaggerated descriptions, and that one glitch related to branding through a Native American cartoon image, and perspective issues might start to match back up across vendors again.

I've noticed myself being more critical of Don Mei's content than may be justifiable (explained at length related to causes and limitations in this post).  In some cases his Youtube content contains minor gaps or errors, but even when a number of statements aren't wrong, but aren't clearly objectively right either, and that's all presented as background to sell a specific tea version, it seems a bit dodgy to me.  It could be like that with Sergey (the Moychay owner), that people are overly sensitive of tone in presentation, suspecting that a lot of the range is as much indirect marketing as it is genuine background content.  

Back to Don, I'll cite an example to place what I mean.  In one post about a Rou Gui he mentioned how the link between that type and cinnamon flavor--what Rou Gui translates as--is often overstated, that it doesn't necessarily taste like that.  Some do taste like cinnamon, or cassia, and some don't.  But if he had said exactly that it would be providing good background information content that could support selling the version he was discussing (which didn't taste like cinnamon), but as I interpreted his statement he implied Rou Gui just doesn't really taste like cinnamon, which is wrong.  Then probably if he had been selling a version that happened to include that flavor the opposite would have been emphasized.  Maybe I'm wrong about that; I tried to look up that video to re-watch it to evaluate that again, but I'm pretty sure that video has been deleted.  He did upload another on judging Rou Gui and Wuyi Yancha (Wuyishan area "rock oolong"),  but it's not the one I'm mentioning.

In that second video on judging Wuyi Yancha quality most of his ideas seem fine, it's just not how I would put similar interpretations.  He doesn't really get into mouthfeel and aftertaste as considerations, which to me leaves a lot out in terms of describing what people experience and value.  Complex flavor is part of it too, and I tend to frame descriptions a little differently than he would, but I can't say that he's wrong about what he said in that.  

There is an intensity and hard to describe character to good Wuyi Yancha that isn't exactly about flavor, feel, or aftertaste, but spans those.  I see it as a liqueur like or perfume like fragrant and aromatic quality, which comes across and balances differently in different versions.  His take is more about a long flavor list occurring, including subtle flavors, which is ok.  Different people can focus on different things, flavors really can be complex, and they do tend to transition over rounds, further complicating things.  People new to tea do tend to focus on flavor as the main experience, which never completely drops out later, but it's often seen as only part of what one is experiencing.

It's interesting how Yunnan Sourcing avoids this particular range of objection by Scott (the owner) not really using Youtube content as marketing, and erring on the side of limiting written product description of teas, just saying a little to give a bit of sense of what they are.  There's a good chance that half of his Yunnan Sourcing Fans Facebook group--which kind of is a sales tool, but a different subject, since Scott isn't really active there--aren't familiar with his Youtube content, because they just don't emphasize it.  

Different people do pass on thoughts on teas there in that group, so that's not different and could support sales, and marketing could still be the main point of the Youtube product description videos.  Part of this point relates to Yunnan Sourcing having 6000 subscribers on their Youtube channel, compared to 3900 members in that Facebook group; just promoting videos there would surely add to that viewership and follower count, but they don't do that.

Scott Wilson (of YS) making light of image issues, through a "caption this" contest, as I see this

Mei Leaf has almost 90,000 Youtube followers, and Sergey Shevelev of Moychay has 105,000.  Mind you I see nothing wrong with vendors producing tea background content to serve as both marketing and information for customers, and others.  It promotes the industry and general awareness, in addition to one vendor's products.  Everyone else selling or promoting tea should be grateful that both are successful at it.  

The point here is that in developing a lot of content, and being successful in gaining a following, even without self-promoting as a tea expert a vendor would automatically seem to take up the mantle of being an authority, one step towards being a "tea master."  To me it seems to help a little if there is less marketing angle and they are de-emphasizing their own reference content, as Yunnan Sourcing seems to.  William of Farmerleaf strikes a really great balance; nothing in their Youtube background information material seems geared towards sales, more just on background, but of course it could still support sales in that form.  He has 6000 subscribers too, as YS does; you can make of that what you will.

I can't really offer any opinion about most of Moychay's video content, related to that factor of balancing general information and promotion, because I've only seen a half dozen of their videos, mostly geared towards a Western audience, the translated versions.  It seems sales emphasis neutral, but there could be indirect marketing concerns with the more viewed Russian videos, for all I know, with that content open for critique.  It's sort of a slippery slope.  One might say that Wuyi Yancha is good, and then that this particular version is, and then that you should buy this through our shop.  It takes a deft touch to offer informative background but to not take the last step, so that it doesn't feel like watching an ad.

Alex's point that people are just going to be divided makes sense.  

Next one might consider whether or not there are broad quality or value issues that could trigger negative reactions from some Russian tea enthusiasts.  I'm not sure.  Moychay's product quality and value don't seem so different than Yunnan Sourcing's, to me; pretty good in general, covering a lot more range than is normal for standard vendors.  Some is exceptional, above average tea selling at a great value, or representing really novel offerings, with other examples just kind of normal related to all that.  Eventually a below average quality or value product might turn up from any source.  

For teas that are completely unique it can be hard to identify value, for brand new types, hybrid style versions, or rare aged teas.  For example, this yellow tea from Khosta, Krasnodar region, 2021 sells for $20 for 100 grams.  Sounds kind of low to me, but who knows, it might also depend on how well it turned out.  I doubt that there is a second yellow tea from that Russian area being produced to set a market value, not that I would know if there was.  I tried a yellow tea from Mississippi last year, from Jason McDonald's farm, which listed for $14 per ounce (50 cents a gram instead of 20), but production overhead in the US would probably be much, much higher, and the tea could be better, or the target audience could vary.

The main opinion expressed about Mei Leaf is that their tea is good, which is the main thing, but that value isn't very good, that you could get the same quality level of products elsewhere for less.  Then some Mei Leaf fans reject that last part, seeing the teas as unique and positive enough for above average level pricing to be fair.  A sub-theme about people liking or disliking Don Mei almost eclipses whether or not his teas are good, or a good value, as discussed in this Facebook group thread.

Where am I going with all this?  How vendors present themselves and end up being perceived is an interesting theme to me, especially related to forms and causes.  My final take may be way off, that people are really looking for a way to self-identify and connect with others in a lot of cases, even though they may or may not see it that way, framing their own outlook as a normal shopping perspective.

Group identification related to tea vending

For one particular reason I think Mei Leaf probably doesn't get fair treatment, in retrospect, maybe even from what I've communicated, even though I think their tea is probably generally overpriced too.  I think Don "rubbing people the wrong way" as a video persona factors in a lot.  I don't think Scott Wilson of Yunnan Sourcing gets too beat up online, but it seems like any successful vendors can easily become targets for criticism, justified or not.  Maybe justifiably so?  A bit of pushback here and there might keep them honest.  Reddit comment discussion sometimes tends to go a couple steps beyond that.  Scott did get involved with a messy discussion issue there once, but then that's Reddit for you, not much better than Twitter for sometimes being harsh.  

That's only half the story though.  People love Don Mei more than seems justified too, clear from that Facebook group post I mentioned:

*In Mei Leaf's most recent video*

Commenter: "Why does the Facebook Gong Fu Cha goup hate you so much?"

Don: "🤷‍♂️ Maybe I would dislike myself if I was on the outside"

Lololol I don't buy Mei Leaf teas because of shipping costs, but I love Don so much.

I guess that he loves Don because of his sense of humor?  I'm not sure that comment was offered as humorous.  The comments there talk about appreciation for his teas, his online content, and for him being an interesting and charismatic person, the part that people are divided over.

I think group inclusion is the extra component that's not as evident.  Why would almost 4000 people join a Facebook group to talk about tea from one vendor (Yunnan Sourcing Fans)?  To be fair Q & A discussion does go better there than in most places, but cutting off discussion at one vendor's selections seems limiting.  Why are there lots of vendor specific Discord servers now, with varying degrees of engagement?  I only belong to Farmerleaf's and Liquid Proust's, because I was just checking those out more than participating, since I wouldn't have anything to add for not being a regular customer for either.

Moychay's tea clubs theme is something else, but it connects.  That adds in drinking tea in a setting that goes a long step beyond a cafe for being decorative and establishing a vibe, and it supports a more ceremonial take on tea experience.  All the same it is also shifting individual tea experience to social experience.  

this is more a tasting area than a club, but Moychay's club theme is an interesting subject

The online group case is more interesting to me though, because then it's reduced to being abstract, having more to do with self-definition and text message discussion contact than real life.  Or the "main" Discord group, Communitea, is big on voice / audio based meetups; I guess that's more in the middle.

In a podcast comment discussion someone once mentioned being "on team Xiaguan," not just saying that they like Xiaguan, but emphasizing how that put them in a group.  To me that's odd, even though that form of expression comes up more and more now.  Podcast creators tend to lean into this social dynamic, making their audience feel like part of a group, by establishing specialized use of slang, or even a nickname for group members (as "teaheads" is used).  Theo Von and Chris Delia are good examples of comedians using this form.  Oddly on one Reddit subforum Joe Rogan podcast followers connect and unify related to seeing Joe Rogan as an idiot, reveling in dumb things he says, or making fun of him for using steroids, for being short, or for his anti-vaxer position.  It still works, I guess, it just seems backwards, unifying as fans connected by partial dislike.

Vendors could make use of this, the positive part, right?  That's essentially what the Discord groups represent.  It's not negative really; to the extent someone wants to feel like they are a part of something for liking Don Mei's teas, or those from Yunnan Sourcing, Moychay, Farmerleaf, and so on, that's fine, and it really is also about sharing information.

Next more experienced and older tea enthusiasts might look down on all that, and see it as silly how younger and newer participants cling to odd forms of association.  But it happens in more subtle ways across a broad spectrum, even when people don't feel a need to formalize the link.  If someone loves Essence of Tea, Teas We Like, Tea Encounter, or Hou De you won't tend to hear about it, but there's no reason why someone couldn't value "being in the know" in a similar form, just with less post comments for interaction.  Without even taking up the external role as an elite, experienced, "higher" form of tea enthusiast the more subtle social role as isolated participant may still be regarded as meaningful.  Not joining a group or talking about it could be seen as just following a different code:  those who talk don't know, and those who know don't talk.

Let me pass on a thought that ties to this, that might clarify it.  To an extent I get the impression that some more introverted expats--foreigners living abroad, somehow implied as higher in status level than "immigrants"--like the social role because it defines them as different, and as being a certain way, without any need for setting that up or interacting.  Just being white is a stereotype, where in the US you need to pair that with class / economic status to make a start, and then it still doesn't go far, and you also have to add political affiliation.  Here in Thailand, where I live, foreigners are respected but also disliked a little, seen as quirky and odd but likely to be intelligent, and interpreted as probably having questionable morals, related to paying for romantic relationships.  It's not quite that simple, but basically you are a type, just for being white.  Let's set aside how that would go for other races; that's not the point.

The point is that stereotyping, and to some extent group inclusion, is almost freely granted, and some people seem to value that.  In tea groups you just need to adopt shared perspective, which isn't quite as easy, but which may not be very difficult.  

Tied to Mei Leaf support expressing or just feeling that "I love Don" is more than enough; you're in, even without buying the tea, as that guy explicitly stated in that post.  As a Yunnan Sourcing fan you just need to have placed one order, and to have liked one tea version, and to express intention to keep going.  If you want to feel at home among 10+ year experience tea snobs on Tea Forum--no offense intended; those people are nice--it's not quite so simple, but parroting what others say goes a long way.  In the Gong Fu Cha Facebook group you just need to buy a gaiwan, and to be looking into yixing, or post any photo of drinking tea outside.  R/tea on Reddit isn't a unified social group, but posting a picture of a half dozen boxes of grocery store tea-bag tea in a cabinet will draw at least 100 upvotes.

Why are we like this, group oriented to a strange degree?  With me included, surely.  An online contact put it well in a Quora answer about how social interaction is evolving: 

There's a broad emphasis on smaller and more detailed clustering, which in turn relies on people having a firmer sense of self and on them defining themselves in certain ways. We assign ourselves to many categories which are smaller and more specific than perhaps they've been in the recent past.

Right! A half dozen years ago people might group together in relation to tea interest, but that has pushed down to which teas people like now, or how they brew and experience them, and on further to which vendor sources of those teas they prefer.  Embracing or rejecting someone with a high profile online as an information source, or sub-culture leader, is just an extension of that.  

there's nothing wrong with combining being charismatic and informative, as So Han does

People can even now unify, to an extent, in relation to shared dislikes, not just personal associations and likes.  So this seems to be the last component of the negative mixed feelings related to many tea vendors; it's attractive to dislike a lot of things, and even to identify through that.  It automatically places you above that subject or person, for looking down on them.  If you dislike Dave Chappelle for making transgender jokes that identifies you as more sensitive to minority perspective than him.  If you can criticize the people who make that criticism, for being "woke," then you are implied to have a broader view of how social commentary works than they do.  Even not liking a movie can place you socially.

Never taking up these kinds of connections and oppositions would be a very reasonable and functional option.  But then there wouldn't be that much to talk about on social media, so that perspective would tend to not be expressed, or wouldn't seem interesting if it was.  There's normally a strong inclination to like or dislike things, to agree or disagree with ideas, so remaining neutral isn't so simple.  It's natural to react, and to place yourself in relation to that kind of perspective.

William Osmont of Farmerleaf

Tea blogging life cycle

First published in Tching here

It feels a little like I've written about this before, in considering a tea enthusiast quitting tea in this 2016 post.  Looking back that was about pros and cons of a developed tea habit, about caffeine concerns and expense, with only a little on exploration playing out a natural course.  My favorite tea blog author just gave up blogging, Geoffrey Norman of Steep Stories, making it a good time to revisit that theme.  To add context, his current blog page is 10 years old, but he had been doing tea reviews and writing in different forms before that.

In between that earlier post on a tea interest lifecycle, in the past five years, I've written a lot more than I ever had prior.  I switched from mostly oolongs and some black tea to mostly sheng pu'er.  Maybe more relevant, over the last year I've questioned why I keep writing, for many of the same reasons Geoffrey mentioned in that final sign-off post.  It just gets old, writing similar thoughts over and over, and even covering new tea-range exploration feels like repetition.  In general the audience shrinks as platforms like Instagram draw more attention, with pictures with moderate caption text easier to browse through than reading text.  Facebook now focuses more on showing people ads than private blog link posts.  I could pretty much end this post there; all that is the crux of it.

But of course I can say more.  There would always be ways to add new dimensions to a long-standing interest that you aren't completely burned out on (tea scope, not just tea writing).  Geoffrey mentioned that he will dabble more in making related videos, and he has been making memes about tea for awhile.  Last year I was part of a small social circle / meetup group related to tea interest, along with three friends, and this year we extended that to talking to a number of tea specialists.  I should summarize how that has went here in a post, beyond posts covering individual details, since we didn't broadcast or edit and publish that video.  Even that series sort of felt like it ran its shorter course, since it was hard to set those meetings up, and it worked better as a late covid wave replacement for other social contact, with the pandemic finally easing up a bit now.

Long ago I started taking tea more seriously than would be typical for a beverage interest, and to some extent it's that part that isn't sustainable.  Learning and experiencing new things has been great, and making contacts, even friends, but it would help if it felt like it was leading somewhere.  

This is probably a good place to explain why I even started:  about a decade ago I started exploring social media more and used tea as a subject theme as a basis for that.  Just joining Twitter might be interesting, but connecting Twitter to a subject interest makes sense, not that I ended up liking Twitter.  The same applies for writing a blog, trying out joining and then co-founding a Facebook group (this one), starting a Quora Space, and so on.  A new form for social media channel interaction hasn't clicked in awhile, beyond the meetups.  And it's a little harder to keep learning now, having already encountered so many ideas.  

I'm writing more about other subjects, an activity that isn't new, but that I've only started including in my tea blog over the last year or so.  I guess that started here:  Calhoun's Universe 25 mice experiments; overpopulation effects related to modern social themes.  It's uncertain that this is the "writing on the wall" for quitting blogging about tea; maybe balancing different interests would work well.  Since then I've written about foreigner / expat perspectives on culture in China, Dissociative Identity Disorder (the multiple personality theme), on how social media groups define and reinforce perspectives as distinct subcultures, and on Buddhism as it relates to rejection of a real internal self.

None of this really relates to any broad movement in tea culture or awareness.  It's not that I think the subject itself loses steam, or ceases to renew cycles of discussion.  It just seems natural to only talk about an interest like tea for so long, and then to just drink it.  As one Tea Chat forum veteran said he felt "tead out" after awhile, or to paraphrase Alan Watts (about another subject) after you get the message it's time to hang up the phone.

But then I don't see my own interests, goals, or experiences as the boundary of what I communicate or discuss, or else I wouldn't have stuck with it for this long.  Helping others can be pleasant.  Even then declining interest in text content definitely offsets that as a motivation for writing a blog.  It doesn't matter if 50 or 500 people read posts, but at some lower threshold it somehow seems to make less sense.

people do still read the posts but not as many

I'll probably keep writing, and slow down review pace, and keep diversifying themes.  Asian culture  has been a longstanding interest, related to living in Bangkok for 14 years, and I've not really said as much as I might have about how perspectives are similar or different, which should eventually tie back to tea.  Not in blogs at least, but I did also start a second Quora Space about that.  Other things could come up too, interactions or tangents.  I met with tea producers from five different countries this past weekend to talk about industry perspective and some processing background; things like that.