Tea shopping in a market in Shenzhen, China

First published by TChing in three parts, this one and two entries just prior.

I visited a wholesale tea market in China not so long ago, in Shenzhen, and this is about how that went. More than the actual outcome being positive it was an interesting theme, seeing how picking up tea would go differently in China.  Beyond buying it at the grocery store, I mean; selection is slightly better there in that country but the end result would typically still be kind of similar.

cheap pu'er in a Shenzhen grocery store; different (one reviewed here)

To be clear this isn't really about how people make tea in China, how it is experienced.  That subject just came up in a Reddit discussion (here), and there are two good answers to that.  Some people are tea enthusiasts, and they are using gaiwans and clay pots to prepare better teas, similar to Western tea enthusiasts.  Many more others use very simple brewing techniques to drink lower quality level basic teas, or don't drink tea at all.


I'm no authority on Chinese culture since I've only visited that country three times, never to a tea producing area, or with that subject as a main vacation theme. The first time I was there for work, and while waiting for other project members in an odd version of an old local shopping center I hung out in a tea shop. That wasn't exactly my main entry point to tea interest but it was a main step.  A few months after a second visit to China I started a tea blog; maybe that wasn't a coincidence.

Luohu area railway station market; it was near here

I'll back up; a more senior tea blogger I  respect very much passed on advice about shopping for tea in China. His advice, as I took it as a summary: if you don't speak Chinese, and know tea well enough to already know what you want, and to know when you're experiencing it, then local shops won't work out, and you may as well visit overpriced major chain outlets. That actually works, in a sense, but a lot of this will end up touching on possible exceptions.

On that initial shop outing way back when I didn't buy interesting teas (as experienced enthusiasts would judge), or get a great deal on what I did buy. We visited Beijing and Shanghai on that next vacation outing, a year or so later (about 6 years ago--the time flies), and visiting local markets was really interesting. Again I didn't buy tea that was as exceptional or as good a value as basic online sources would sell. Except for running across an unusual green tea version (which I never will reliably identify) that's different. I think explaining how it went in the Shenzhen wholesale market will cover what I mean more clearly.

Visiting the Shenzhen Tea World Terminal Market (location covered here)

Language was a problem in that market, for sure. On the next subject of tasting reliability, I can't blind taste teas for identifying a narrow type or quality level consistently, but given how much tasting I've done over the last three years I'm probably above average at trying to. It hardly matters anyway, because if you can't communicate clearly with a vendor it's only going to work out so well. Vendors would start by assuming that you have little idea what you want, and limited exposure, and talking past that and their own sales expectations wouldn't work well (for general type preference and the next levels of specifics, and price range, whatever it is).

There's a story about someone selling a horse that tries to explain why you need to justify to a Chinese tea vendor that you should even try above average tea, but the parallel never really does make a lot of sense.  The short version:  that one horse wouldn't be the right horse for everyone, so people who don't know tea should drink low quality tea.  Maybe it works, except that they really can't identify expectations through a language barrier, any more than someone can intentionally communicate them.

It was still interesting trying. I was with my wife so I wasn't going to spend any realistic amount of money to buy upper medium level quality tea anyway (the vendors were right, just not for the reason they probably assumed), so the idea was to hack through making the best of buying iffy and cheap tea.  The irony was that I had a good bit of tea either recently on hand or on the way from Western facing Chinese vendors, so it's not that I wasn't spending money on tea, but that part is a longer story.

My wife had spent a bit over half a year studying Mandarin, going to a class one full day a week; it was interesting finding out how far that would go. It barely helped in restaurants; it went how you'd expect it would go.

dim sum in the restaurant beside that market was nice

Of course tea shops are selling tea, and communicating a general type is definitely possible, oolong or sheng, etc. Finding, trying, and buying something is simple enough, and if that process is interesting--and it should be--then it's as well to not focus on the senses in which it doesn't work out.  We walked out with tea.

You would think that tasting teas would make all the difference, that spending countless hours browsing tea groups or vendor sites could fill in lots of levels of background, but not about what you like, but taking a sip would. I'm not at the level of wondering if I like rolled oolongs, Chinese black teas, or sheng pu'er, and to some extent the existence of a broad range of styles and quality levels of any of those throws off exploration being simple.

I find that the more familiar and comfortable I am with a shop the easier it is to get a good read on teas.  Struggling with communication issues came into play there, of course. Initial starting points for expectations or preferences hardly came across at all, but just isolating broad tea types did work. It would be nice to have tried a dozen different teas, or more, to get a feel for what I liked there, but in practice--under those specific limitations, and my wife wanting to leave before we walked in--I didn't taste much.

Again tasting a sample should have indicated what I was getting (unless the vendor trick of swapping out that final purchased product came up), but beyond that risk it's hard to reliably taste on the fly. Slight changes in preparation method and even water used shifts a lot, and mental context is something else altogether. It would be familiar trying teas in random settings after awhile, factoring out some variables, adjusting for randomly trying lots of versions, but for most all that would probably throw things off.

so much 90s sheng for sale seemed a little suspicious, but who knows

Oddly the few teas we bought seemed fine. Not ideal based on preference and what was there, but definitely close enough. Probably if I'd tried to buy teas presented as better versions some of the background on what the teas were wouldn't have been accurate, but leaving off at the "buying something" level cut that risk back.  Two seemed interesting in style and good buys, with potential to improve through aging.  One was just a bad decision; the taste wasn't a favorite range (like mushroom), but the odd feel structure should have been more of a red flag.  Two unusual bundled tea samples were interesting, a Da Hong Pao oolong and a sheng pu'er, and I bought a cheap pu'er pick.

sheng top, Da Hong Pao below (the second wasn't bad, reviewed here)

So in the end the advice to go into a more Western facing outlet and accept paying well over best local shop rates works. Except for the part about dropping out the experience of exploring, the random shopping activity itself, and the mixed-results benefit of buying some moderate quality teas. All that could be pleasant, with unusually positive results, or frustrating, leading to making bad purchase decisions, but beyond the results it should be interesting. It doesn't work reducing a goal to only relating to what you buy, without considering the value in hacking through the unproductive part of the early learning curve. It was nice, all those times.

I'll let some pictures here highlight what turned up, and show how things looked, since all this cuts that short.  Reviews spell it out in painful detail, but as a summary it was cool looking around that market, even if I did buy better tea versions online at essentially the same time instead.

an IT electronics sales area; perfect for buying knock-off tablets