Visiting with friends at my favorite Bangkok Chinatown shop

I met up with friends at my favorite Bangkok Chinatown shop yesterday, at Jip Eu (which is here).  Those owners feel like visiting family; it would be nice to hang out there even without having any tea, or buying any.

I'll break this into a short account of what we tried, and general guidance on how visiting a Chinatown shop might go.  There are different pros and cons to tea shopping at different kinds of shops, and the typical range of Chinatown shop experiences is unique.  Potential is great for finding good tea at great value, or things that are hard to find elsewhere, even compared to online, since sorting is a problematic issue, and the option to try versions changes everything.

I've been to a lot of Chinatowns.  We live in Honolulu part time now--I just got back from three months spent there--and I've visited NYC's a couple of times.  Honolulu's Chinatown has issues with homelessness and crime, and tea selection there is all but nonexistent.  Chinatowns are interesting in Japan, and I've been to a related neighborhood in Seoul, I just don't think they called it that.  We've visited Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan multiple times too; in a different sense those are just Chinese cities.

Bangkok's Chinatown is unique for being huge.  I think I've heard that San Francisco's is on the same size scale, but that it may not be quite as extensive.  There is a lot of Chinese influence in Thai culture in general; it can be hard to identify where it leaves off.

That visit

We tried a tea presented as a Bing Dao (that Kittichai, the owner, was drinking, making it grandpa style for himself in a brewing cup), and CNNP (Zhongcha) and Dayi (purple label) aged sheng versions, both around 20 years old.  

In the middle the subject of green tea came up, and we tried an exceptional version of Longjing, kind of odd for tasting form.  I love Longjing (Dragonwell); it's the only kind of green tea that I seek out and buy.  I'll buy fishhook style Thai Nguyen Vietnamese tea if I see it, because it's pleasant, and typically a good value, but Longjing is my favorite, the only green tea that I like as much as other types range.  That version you could essentially "taste" by smell, as dry leaf and while it was brewing.  It tastes like toasted rice, it seems to me, although you can isolate that main flavor as seeming like nuts or floral range, if you see it differently, and it even resembles boiled egg a little.

The CNNP version was intense, with really heavy earthy flavors.  It became milder and balanced better and better across infusions.  I own half a cake of that same tea, and 1 1/2 of the Dayi, and 1 1/2 of a Xiaguan 8863 version from there, all around 20 years old.  I could look back through review posts here and identify ages better, but they're all from 2004 to 2006.

It's odd how the Dayi purple label version looks so transitioned by age in comparison, with dark oil spots, and even a hole here or there in the paper.  I asked the one shop owner about that, and she said that paper thickness makes a lot of difference.  Of course a producer using a second interior paper sheet also would.

that Dayi cake; both are pretty dark

The Dayi / Taetea version was much milder, with intense, complex, and even slightly challenging initial infusions giving way to very balanced, nuanced, and pleasant rounds after that.  It's hard to express any of it as a flavors breakdown.  I see CNNP as tasting earthier (with all expressing lots of warm mineral base), then the Dayi as leaning towards spice or fruit range, and the Xiaguan (which we didn't taste) as tasting like leather, or how an old barn smells.  In a good sense, I guess.

Breaking up a cake for those two friends to share; I've not seen this before.  I've bought a cake all broken up like that before, a Wawee Thai origin cake from 2022, I think it was.  It aged quite fast and drank well even though it was relatively young.  That technique seems to let the leaves break naturally, versus how a tea knife might fragment them if you aren't careful.

It was pleasant trying the teas over a couple of hours, chatting a lot about tea experience, and drawing on expert input from Kittichai.  He explained how the numbering system for pu'er cakes works, and mapped out general character differences from more Northern and Southern growing area ranges in Yunnan.  As generalities, of course; the variation is distinct at a very local level, with lots of other inputs factoring in.  For those main types of factory teas, from main producers, the higher level generalities probably work better, and we could compare his input from what we tasted just then.

The CNNP seemed to need another 5 years to fully transition, even though it was about 20 years old, and had been stored in hot and humid conditions.  That's per my impression and what Kittichai passed on.  The Dayi is ready now, or really any tea is ready whenever you prefer how it tastes and feels.

I bought a 2012 Xiaguan tuocha, and a spare gaiwan; my tea budget is a bit crashed from ordering so much Vietnamese sheng recently.

Shopping in Chinatown shops

The main difficulty in shopping at Jip Eu is a common one; if someone they don't know walks in they'll ask what kind of tea that person wants.  If you answer that you are interested in lots of range, and want to know what they have, it all breaks down.  They have some of lots of things in there, and no summary list of any of it. 

That shop is primarily an outlet for oolong, for business to business sales of low cost, limited quality blended Shui Xian, and then they also carry high end Wuyi Yancha.  They have some exceptional versions of aged sheng, which they tend to sell at great value, or in some cases at a standard market rate.  I've bought pretty good Dan Cong oolong in there before, a few times, upper-medium quality tin versions that sell at moderate pricing.  That's a rare find; the two extremes come up more, for that tea type, expensive and very good versions or so-so lower elevation plantation tea.  I've tried local Thai teas there, have bought jasmine green tea, tried Anxi Tie Guan Yin rolled oolong versions, and even bought an aged cake of silver needle style white tea once.

Of course there is no price listing, or other written reference; it would be impossible to get a clear feel for everything that they have.  Other local shops focus more on tasting lots of things, and it varies how that might go there.  It's not their typical sales approach, for random people to come in and try lots of things.  You can try teas for which there are already package versions open, and the more you know them the better tasting experience will go.  I've tried plenty of tea there they don't even sell, what they happen to be drinking just then, or some exceptional version they ran across samples of.

Sen Xing Fa works as an example of the other kind of outlet, where it's set up for people to come in and try lots of teas.  They carry more Thai oolong range, and sell teas from the typical large plastic bins, which does work, but that isn't ideal storage conditions.  

tea meetup at Sen Xing Fa; they're good visit hosts

There's a trade-off related to this kind of shop style; the cost of extra sampling ends up being built into sales pricing.  Value is exceptional at Jip Eu, either just fine for market rate or else a very good deal, depending on how they purchased the teas, how direct their producer connection is.  Value is either in a normal market range or on the high side at Sen Xing Fa instead.  For people not watching per-unit cost closely it may not matter, if they spend 1 1/2 times as much for the same amount of tea.  Novelty of what is available and broad selection can amount to different kinds of value.  

Jip Eu definitely sells rare and novel teas too, but the selection range is less consistent, and it's harder to find the exceptions when they aren't sitting out in large jars.  Less than optimum storage conditions, like that, are a real issue for tea enthusiasts, with good reason.  Sen Xing Fa does keep their Longjing well-sealed in a refrigerator, which makes a lot of sense in a hot and humid place like Bangkok.

Sen Xing Fa carries some factory sheng range; that's nice to have available

A third type of Chinatown shop it's harder to find examples of in Bangkok, the general market environment.  This turns up in the NYC and Honolulu Chinatowns, and probably elsewhere.  Selection of tins of tea would be far more common in such places, and some of those would be quite pleasant, and others of moderate or low quality.  

New Kam Man Chinese market in Manhattan, NYC

Buying teas from large plastic storage bins would work out even worse in places where shop sales volume is more limited.  And quality level could be very inconsistent; I had a uniquely bad experience buying an artificially flavored Lapsang Souchong from a market in the Manhattan Chinatown.  I had to throw that out, but not before it contaminated my clothing smell, through a sealed bag.  No matter how busy you are when tea shopping, or how thrown-off by external factors like a hot day, or heavy snowstorm, it helps to focus in and at least give the dry teas a smell while you are buying them.

Without trying teas it can be hard to get a feel for quality level in shops.  One comes to mind in NYC where the shop looked like a standard curator theme, where everything might be very exceptional, but instead everything was quite passable, decent but not great.  

This kind of outcome can be common in corporate chain shops, where they are selling very high production volume versions of standard teas.  Even when they present something as more novel, higher in quality, and rarer, they may still buy that in very large production lots, versus smaller scale vendors being able to curate small producer, limited batch size teas.

Price doesn't necessarily help as an indicator.  Any type of vendor can use a higher than average mark-up, and extra descriptions of how exceptional teas are to justify that.  One name in particular comes to mind related to this, not in the countries that I've already mentioned, but I'll omit naming them here.

How would one work around that initial problem I described, the exchange that ends with no answers to "what kind of tea do you like?" and "what is best from this shop?"  Tasting helps.  It can make a lot of difference if a customer can communicate starting points, to explain a few kinds of ranges of teas that they already know that they like.  Plenty of people appreciate lots of tea range, but they also know their own favorites.

In some cases one visit to a shop won't do it, and working through it all as best you can only works out better when you buy some teas, then return again later.  That's not helpful for tourists, where the one visit may be all there is to work with.  Another strategy may also not be helpful; if you can connect with a local and get input they can pass on favorites.  Locally oriented Facebook tea groups may help with this, if you prepare ahead; you can contact a lot of people that you'd never get to know in person that way.  People might "gatekeep" their absolute favorite versions, not putting that out there online, but they might mention helpful generalities.

Oddly none of what I've mentioned is helpful for buying the kinds of teas I like most, like good Thai Wawee origin sheng.  It's not in Chinatown shops, or even in shops of any kind in Bangkok.  It would work better to find decent Vietnamese sheng in Hanoi shops, but even there you might have better luck just buying it online, from an outlet like Viet Sun.

I actually visited a Chinatown in Japan, in Yokohama, without putting it together that I'd be there only to buy Chinese teas, that it related only to that local theme.  That was kind of silly, looking back on it.  

You can find Thai rolled oolong in the Sen Xing Fa shop, Jin Xuan and such, but there aren't many other exceptions, that I've ran across.  Jip Eu would sell very inexpensive and limited quality Wuyi Yancha style oolong, or maybe something like jasmine green tea, but tea enthusiasts would tend to seek out a different range.  I've had great luck with buying 100 baht ($3) 100 gram folded paper packs of blended Shui Xian there in the past, but that kind of thing is inconsistent.  

Given that very moderate expense level it might be good for even a more discerning tea enthusiast to gamble on a little of that inexpensive range while there, to see how it goes, and to seek out much better tea through more discussion input and tasting exposure.

the Ju Jen shop in Paradise Park mall; there are decent shops outside Chinatown, but not many