Chinese Tea Time Oriental Beauty / Dong Fang Mei Ren

 

I'm reviewing a third tea sent by Chinese Tea Time for review (many thanks to them), this time a version of Oriental Beauty / Dong Fang Mei Ren.  

It's from China, so not conventional in background right away, since that's a Taiwanese origin oolong type.  Typically it's relatively oxidized in style, more so than most oolong range, twisted in dry leaf form, but in a looser, more curled form than Wuyi Yancha, Dan Cong, or sheng pu'er maocha.  Typical flavor profile includes citrus, bergamot or orange, warm tones, cinnamon, or dried fruit.  Even the leaf appearance of this version doesn't match the standard look, the twisted leaf preparation, so this may be a little off a standard form range.

a Thai Oriental Beauty version that I reviewed last year

This version, one produced in Thailand, shows that typical appearance.  Not only is the leaf twisted in a more open, coiled style color variation often includes dark brown and light tan colored leaves, sometimes with lighter bud content, as this includes.

I can't find a good product description of the Chinese Tea Time version I'm reviewing.  Here is a very general one on their Instagram page:

Dongfang Meiren or Oriental beauty tea is a semi-fermented tea with a mellow taste, easy to drink, and a beautiful bright yellow color. It is suitable for those who love to eat meat. It is rich in many benefits, such as...

Who knows about that kind of thing, attributed health benefits; you can click the link to check if you want.  Their Shopee sales page had included more details for the green teas that I reviewed, but it seems to be out of stock now, so there is no listing to reference.  After talking with the main business owner and contact it's unavailable, at least through that Shopee outlet, and they would only sell directly from China just now.  That earlier Instagram page probably works as a contact link, as well as any other.

To be clear their specialty is probably green tea.  Those earlier two versions were fantastic.  In discussing this with the business owner more input on that background came up:

I think the tea looks different because it wasn't made from a Taiwanese version of a tea plant, but from the plant used to make Xinyang Maojian instead.

Xinyang Maojian from Shangcheng (local area) has a unique smell and taste, which varies by origin location.  Shangcheng tea is unique and positive in taste because natural mineral water is used to grow the tea, and the air is clean (very little pollution).  Shangcheng is near the high mountain (Dabie Shan), and the highest point in those mountains.

I like the taste and smell of the tea from Shangcheng better than from the rest of the Xingang Maojian from other places.

Some of the tea we sell is made by Mr. Sun Wen Shan, a well-known tea master, whom I can say has golden hands.  He loves to make many kinds of tea, not only green tea, but white, oolong, yellow, and black tea.  He has always received awards in events he has participated in the event, this year receiving a gold medal in a local contest.  

Growing location is also a factor, a main input.  I sometimes like other green teas even more than his when they are produced from high mountain tea material sources, because these can include even more floral aspects.

All that is clear enough.  It's interesting to note that tea types can be made from plant types, cultivars, or else plant versions with naturally varying genetics, that have different names than the final tea types, or there might not be distinct plant names.  Either way this OB isn't made from a Taiwanese oolong plant, instead one more often used to produce green tea.

Maybe oxidation level is lower, as I've more or less guessed in this review, or maybe a lot of the difference is from plant type input and and minor variations in processing.  It sort of doesn't matter, how the causes sort out; the end effect is what it is.  The tea is good, just not a close match for conventional Taiwanese Oriental Beauty style.

Review:

Infusion #1:  this is different, not in the normal style range for the type.  Oriental Beauty is almost always about 80% oxidized, or at least that's how it tends to be presented.  Accurately identifying that as a percentage level might not work.  This is much greener, or at least it looks to be so, and flavor character suggests that.  It may work really well, it's just odd trying it in a different form.  

Flavor character is interesting.  There is a greenish / vegetal edge, and then other warm and complex range.  It's a little closer to how some Dan Cong comes across, just not exactly a match for that either.  I'm looking for conventional OB range, citrus, or bergamot, with cinnamon or other spice, and warm and sweet tones in general.  It's sort of like that, but I'd not describe it as such without seeking that out, being biased to find it.  It might be as floral as any of that.

#2:  I brewed this light; often that helps with identifying flavor aspects.  I'll try it brewed stronger next round to see how that changes things.  It's more complex than it had been, including an interesting flavor set.  Some warmer tones pick up, but it's still in a relatively medium range for warmth versus lighter floral or vegetal character.  Sweetness seems to resemble honey, and there is some citrus range, just not as pronounced as OB often includes.  From there it seems more floral to me, not really also including spice as much as that.

Judged in relation to quality this is clearly quite good.  Fullness is pleasant, general character is refined, and complexity is good.  As a match to standard OB style it doesn't work as well.  Someone really into that tea type might absolutely love this, or could be disappointed.  It would depend on the other range that they also like, and how they take this character not being the other way, more oxidized, warmer in tone, including citrus, sometimes dried fruit, even more sweetness, and some spice range, towards cinnamon.

People often want to guess if a leaf material input was really bug bitten, and for this it's more a question of what set of inputs is different.  Is it tea plant type, harvest period, terroir or processing related, or the bug-bitten part?  The oxidation level seems lower than is most typical, so that's a likely part of it.

  

[Later edit]:  per input from the vendor this oxidation level isn't really below medium range for oolongs, and the leaves look darker in the final wet version than I would expect.  But flavors match more lightly oxidized teas, and the brewed color is fairly light, dark golden yellow instead of on towards redder.

second infusion of that Thai OB; I'm using "redder" here loosely

As a separate aside, it's also possible that there had been some original range of "Oriental Beauty" style that is broader than we are now familiar with, that this type evolved later to become closer to black tea than it had been earlier on.  We now just assume that what is fairly consistent from Taiwan is how that tea type had originally been, but it's normal for preference for oolong types and how they are made to shift over time, even time periods as short as a decade.  Wuyi Yancha were more oxidized in a more traditional style, I've heard, and it's even clearer in relation to Anxi (Fujian) Tie Guan Yin, which have evolved to be hardly oxidized at all, often with little or no roast input in processing.  It's commonly mentioned that a more traditional TGY form was nothing like that in the past.

More likely this is a modern interpretation, based on the current OB form, but adjusted from that, more different in relation to a number of inputs varying than just one.

#3:  I'm not describing the vegetal input clearly for this.  It tastes like flower plant stem, that characteristic odd astringency, touch of bitterness, and light edge.  From there fullness of feel, clean flavors, and complexity identify this as good quality tea, but again the style is unusual.  Not just for Oriental Beauty, really; it's in an atypical range in general.  

I had said that this seems to share some common ground with Dan Cong, related to it being lighter (less oxidized), floral, complex, and refined, but it's not a close match.  That vegetal input isn't so familiar from any other tea type that comes to mind.  Any vegetal range overlaps most with green tea as a broad category type.

Feel is a little unusual too, more noticeable when brewed stronger.  It has an unusual form of the astringency.  I guess that matches what one might expect tying to the vegetal flavor, what might result from biting a flower plant stem, a mild puckering effect, versus other conventional fullness or roughness.  That part isn't necessarily positive, but not so negative either.  It just makes for an odd experience for so many parts being unconventional.  It's as if this is more connected to a tea type that I'm not familiar with, instead of being an example of Taiwanese-style Oriental Beauty.

#4:  citrus picks up; that's positive.  Warmth increases too, with the honey-like tone standing out more.  This is more like conventional OB than it had been.  If the plant-stem input was swapped out for something richer and deeper, like cinnamon or raisin, this would be a perfect match.  As it is these aspects work well enough together; it's pleasant.  

It's quite refined, a vague term I use to mean that it's clean, complex, and balanced in a way that's hard to describe.  Since this isn't transitioning so much I'll probably just do one more round of notes and let that go, even though this might only be half finished.

mixed oxidation level, per this color range

#5:  more of the same.  Depth may pick up just a little; this is evolving positively, even if it's not changing much.  That's a good sign for the quality level.

  

Later rounds, which I tried later and didn't take notes for, tasted distinctly like pine needle.  So much so that I wondered if I hadn't missed an obvious flavor interpretation, or if instead it had evolved to change, shifting from a different vegetal tone to that.

Conclusions:

Someone's experience of this tea would depend on how they relate to the atypical aspects set, if that seems positive or off-putting.  Often you can tie that to other types preference, for example concluding that a green tea or sheng pu'er drinker might love it, while a black tea drinker wouldn't.  Maybe that's it, setting aside the sheng part, since this isn't as intense, astringent in the same way, as bitter, or as complex across floral or other typical sheng range.  Someone would need to be open to a range of different green tea styles to appreciate this.  

A Dan Cong drinker may or may not completely get it; it overlaps with that type as much as any other, but still not so much, kind of in between that and green tea character.  That one vegetal flavor range and edge is different.  Anyone who mostly loves the connection between typical OB style and black tea range might be disappointed; it lacks the warmth, depth, heavier tones, and towards dried fruit sweetness and flavor, versus lighter honey.  Citrus is moderate, and in a different form than is typical for traditional OB, not the heavy bergamot / richer orange tone.

I like it; that may or may not have come across in the descriptions.  But then I'm also a black tea drinker, and love warm and rich oolong versions, so I might like a more basic and flawed conventional OB version as much as this one.  It probably matches preference better for people who drink green tea and also oolong, versus a sheng pu'er drinker who also likes black teas.  I like oolong too, lots of range of it, and it had been my main preference for years, but once you get swept up in sheng it's hard going back, and I use black tea as my main range for alternating experiences.

One last aside, that Chinese Tea Time vendor mentioned that direct sales from China are still possible, of course varying in relation to Spring green tea availability, with the 2024 season pretty much over now.  They were selling teas in a conventional diverse volume range through Shopee, the local Thai Amazon equivalent, but their sales from China would need to be higher in volume for that to still make sense, more like 500 grams per version instead of 50 or 100.  Their Instagram profile should work as a contact.

That list of health benefits, and the Instagram page appearance.  It's interesting that their Tik Tok page has good following, shown in a post citing that profile's high level stats.

completely unrelated, a cute little girl wearing a beanie

Left-over Americans; dating and marriage problems explained

 

I've been watching some "men's content" lately, about dating and other perspectives from conservative men on Youtube.  Sure it's a little annoying in some ways, the biases and assumptions, but they make some good points.  I think most of it even works, but of course not in the form most typically presented.  It's all interesting to me as a set of social trends, even though it's not personally relevant.

One main point is that feminist women ruin dating experience for both men and women by sleeping around in their 20s and 30s, instead of seeking out committed relationships.  This shrinks the pool of prospects for typical men, and some end up going through life single, as some women also do.  Many men then "go their own way;" they drop the dating or long term pair bonding theme entirely.

Does this work though; is this really what is happening?  Sure; it's partly that.  Maybe the part that works best is that on dating apps 80% of all women select 20% of all men (or maybe it's 90-10, this is just the generality), and then 80% of all men select 80% of all women.  It still doesn't go well for most people, beyond the 20% not getting matched, because most women can sleep with the smaller set of most attractive guys using the app, but there's no need for them to actually date anyone, because they are matched so often.  It ends up working for hook-ups.  To be clear I've never downloaded or used a dating app; I'm passing on the take I'm seeing described, generally relatively consistently, but as summarized here expressed from a narrow and biased perspective.

All this extends to relationships, per this repeated shared understanding, not just to casual physical encounters.  Most women are trying to date a smaller set of more desirable guys, who are more attractive, wealthier, and to a lesser extent with a decent personality.  The "hook-up" theme repeats in a different form; there is no need for those guys to settle for one relationship partner, so they can serial date.  The women can too, just in a broader proportion related to who can participate.  

The cycle--as described--doesn't end until those most desirable guys finally decide to settle down, and then the medium level of desirable women need to settle for whoever else is still around.  Of course this is never presented as a theme everyone experiences; the traditional model for people just dating someone they like still works for many people, someone who has shared interests, without overriding concern over looks or wealth.  Then these people can marry at any age, not just in their late 30s.

One more aside on this "desirability" theme, and I'll get to the details they propose, and how their model may be wrong.  This type of content really embraces that use of a 10 point number scale for how attractive someone is, as if "a 6" might be a 5 or 7, but it's that clear, that you can objectively tell.  I think that doesn't work, but still the general points don't change; physical attractiveness is a real thing, a main input to people choosing who they date or partner with in a longer term.  

Judgement about attractiveness is consistent, just perhaps not that consistent.  Then any of these content creator / influencer types allow that personality enters in, beyond wealth also being a factor for men, so they're not setting up a completely unreasonable model.  They just overemphasize some patterns, and I think in the end they're missing one main one.  It's easiest to specify by citing an example from a different culture.

Left-over women in China

This theme has been discussed for years, of how there is a large set of wealthy, attractive, desirable women in China who are left without marriage partners past the ages of 30 and 40.  Why?  Sources interpret this differently, but the main theme seems to be that women can date and marry up a level related to social hierarchy, or at their own level, but not "down."  Attractiveness, the main emphasis in this Western social media commentary model, also enters in, but there is more focus on finding a relationship partner to solidify social role and position, and to start a family.  This ties more to social status.  

As a result there are more higher level social status women than can pair up with the equivalent higher social status level men, and some lower status men remain single as well.  This is where all this is headed; I think this pattern underlies what is happening in the US much more than is recognized.

It's hard to describe what that social status issue is like within Asian cultures.  I live in Thailand now, and have for 16 years, and it's completely different from the US here.  Let me give an example:  you use different terms of respect for people of different social levels in Thailand, or even change formal language use slightly with different people.  It's as if there would be three different words for "sir," and you would use whichever relates to that social connection, depending if they are on your social status level, or above or below it.  The lower or even level term of respect might translate as closer to friend, dude, or bud, or to mate in British or Australian English.  I can't describe how it all works, or how judgments work out on the fly, or at least it's too difficult and tiresome to offer examples, so I'll leave it at that.  Social status is more important, much more immediately relevant in terms of daily interactions, and clearer to everyone.  Then it also means more for who you should or can date or marry.

In the US there are the three classes defined by wealth, low, medium, and high, and those are a bit flexible related to potential for moving up or down.  It's not the same thing.  In the US as well someone could be born into a good family and not pursue wealth, and others would (or could) still recognize that they are from a different background, and placed higher, in a very rough sense.  That's an odd exception.  The same can happen in relation to "new money;" people can come from modest means and more common (lower) social level and never take up the status, perspective, and practices of the traditional higher class.  No need to name names or types; you get it.

To me it works to set all that aside though; in general wealth defines social level, in the US.  Or looked at a different way there just isn't the same emphasis on social status levels, even though to some extent it still works.  There are sub-cultures, and even different language forms, that divide poor people from urban areas and wealthy people born into more affluent circumstances.  

The language form social level marker is especially interesting.  At my second engineering career job in Baltimore I met with forklift drivers who I literally could not understand, even though they were speaking English.  The owners of my company were clearly "old money;" they could easily slip into speech patterns followed by NPR announcers, although one of two owners generally didn't, out of preference.  My roommates there were "new money;" they were well off, and made a point of showing that off, often excessively, but it wasn't about being raised in a higher social level sub-group.  They used the same generally neutral form of English I did.

Back to the Chinese left-over women and men theme (higher status women, and lower status men), from a distance it looks like these women are not appealing because they are too independent, or too wealthy, out of reach for too many people to date or marry.  Some of that could apply, but it seems the main root cause is this underlying imbalance, that women "marrying up" leads to gaps at the two related ends.  Then whether any one person remains unmarried or not depends on lots of circumstances and inputs.  The women tend to be urban, living in developed areas, and the men rural, retaining lower status roles in those places.  

And that's it, the whole model and interpreted pattern.  Here I'm going to claim that's part of what is going on in the US too, that it's one input.

I haven't supported this with any references.  This runs long focusing on the Western social media commentary examples, the main theme.  Although it applies to men and women Google search for the women's side turns up the most related content.  This Wikipedia article on this "sheng nu" theme covers the basics:

The National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China (NBS) and state census figures reported approximately 1 in 5 women between the ages of 25-29 remain unmarried.[1] In contrast, the proportion of unwed men in that age range is much higher, sitting at around 1 in 3.[4] In a 2010 Chinese National Marriage Survey, it was reported that 9 out of 10 men believe that women should be married before they are 27 years old.[1]...

...A study of married couples in China noted that men tended to marry down the socio-economic ladder.[4] "There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women," says Huang Yuanyuan. "The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men. So if you are a leftover woman, you are A-quality."[1] A University of North Carolina demographer who studies China's gender imbalance, Yong Cai, further notes that "men at the bottom of society get left out of the marriage market, and that same pattern is coming to emerge for women at the top of society".[20]

That's not what these "men's content" guys are saying at all; it's not even cited as a related input.  They don't completely set aside this potential trend but it's not part of a main cause and effect, in that same form.

Note that there are many more Chinese women than men (related to birth selection by identified gender); that enters in.  The proportion for people remaining single implies this is not even close to being a single main cause.  The rest of that Wikipedia article unpacks all that.

Reconsidering US culture

What if it's mostly this that is occurring in the US, instead of these individual behavior and perspective themes these social media content producers are proposing?  We would expect the main people left out of finding long term partners to be higher status level women, which in the US probably really does translate back to looks more than wealth, or social image tied to family background and such.  On the male side we would expect less desirable men to also suffer from this pattern, the "1s, 2s, and 3s," using their terminology and attractiveness ranking system.  

Maybe this describes the pattern as well as what all of these content producers are proposing.  At the end of this review it seems to need to be shifted a little, because the form is different.  The range of women being left out includes more middle-range level of appeal potential partners, and then again more men at the lower level are left taking the hit, but also plenty in the middle.

It wouldn't need to apply only to people in their 30s and 40s, past the threshold of normal earlier life dating and mate selection.  The same pattern would occur in everyone's teens and 20s; less attractive men would almost never date, and more attractive women mostly all would, but in the latter case it wouldn't work out as long term relationships for all those women, and also for few of those men.

These are already the basic points that I intended to make.  So far I haven't cited any references, any sources describing these two sets of patterns, and of course I can do that.  On the Chinese side interpretations can vary, so I've filtered those to a simple summary that rings true to me, with others focusing on other themes (eg. more independent women aren't as appealing within that cultural perspective).  

I don't follow so much of this "men's content" that I can say that it's all consistent, but I have watched a good bit of it, and what seems to be 3 or 4 representative examples are all unified in perspective.  

To be clear these are not related to the extremist "incel" theme perspective; that's something else.  That does seem to translate these personal problems over to misogynist perspective range.  More misogynist; these other guys are blaming women for the problem, for sure, often loosely tied back to "feminism," which isn't really one narrow theme, and people can interpret that however they like.  A couple of related female content producers overlap with those themes, sharing related but different ideas, but I'm not getting into that here, or how a broad range of online discussion groups relate to all of this.  It doesn't develop the core of what I've expressed further but I'll clarify the ideas by citing examples.

Men's content theme summary and citation

A fairly clear summary of the pattern I've described, the common model these guys promote, is presented in a commentary on a video of a woman describing dating problems here, on the Hoe Math" Tik Tok channel.

To be clear I'm not accepting this as a universal, completely accurate model, or accepting these interpretations directly as offered.  My point is that there is something to this.  In this chart that guy explains how women can "date up" in relation to attractiveness and desirability (wealth + other factors), but then would need to "settle" for a longer term partner on their own level, or close to that.  That women describing these same problems in the video he is commenting on really is just framing them in a different way, but seems to be covering the same issues.

Isn't this take misogynistic, since the channel name includes "hoe," and it's a critique of women's dating related self-awareness, putting all of the blame for these issues on women, when men are also involved?  Sure, to some extent.  That alone doesn't make it wrong, but I think it only partly works anyway.  The parts that work better are interesting.  It's too much to explore as a tangent here but some of this related framework seems insightful (explained here):

A second related channel is called Better Bachelor, with typical content summarized in this image and caption:

Setting aside if these ideas completely work, or if they are misogynistic (both of which I already addressed), it's interesting that people would choose to watch this kind of content regularly.  The main point is pretty simple:  women have ruined dating, and all the more so marriage, and many men have turned away from it.  Then why watch a video saying that every other day?  It's not to get new information, although the graphic summary and breakdowns in the "Hoe Math" reference could work for that, it's to feel a connection to others experiencing the same thing, by way of viewing repetitive content.  Eventually a new idea or extra twist would come up, but almost all of the content by all of these guys is nearly identical.

To clarify by adding one more detail, a common theme covered, these guys blame women for over-emphasizing their attractiveness (a little odd, really; that is somewhat universal Western culture now), and not showing modesty in clothing choices, and for sleeping with too many guys, the "body count" theme.  Again the standard idea is that the most attractive guys, described as "chad" types, are sleeping with these women, serial dating or just hooking up, and these other guys are feeling left out, not participating in either.  

This Better Bachelor content producer, who goes by the nickname Joker, admits that he dated a number of women when younger, and then all this pattern either dawned on him or set in as relevant (excluding him from being selected), once he reached a certain age.  Or both, it seems.  I don't doubt all that framing; I accept his take on his own background and perspective shift as genuine and accurate.

These two examples don't seem overly conservatively biased, or negative towards females in general, beyond blaming them entirely for a lack of awareness and the existence of these identified patterns (which probably is quite unfair, and is negative).  The more desirable guys who sleep with them are related, of course, but for them--these guys offering the analysis--that's a natural choice for those guys, that the women should be avoiding.  How?  Dressing more conservatively, not sleeping around, and seeking out committed relationships prior to their late 30s.  If the same guys saying that dated and slept with lots of women in their 20s it kind of doesn't work.  Or I suppose it still could, just in a more limited form.

Rich Cooper works as an example of a more conservative and slightly more negative perspective, covering some of that in discussion in this group discussion video on male and female roles related to hookup culture, who is to blame.  That particular video wasn't interesting, so not a great example; the point is to mention someone on a different part of the spectrum.  He makes conclusions like "never date a single mother," which can work as a personal preference mandate, but he offers it as good universal advice to all men, which I don't think applies well as a universal directive.  The ex-girlfriend that I cared for most was a single mother, and caring for her daughter made it hard to accept the end of that relationship.  It was a career focus and a move on her part that broke us up, as much as any one factor did, nothing to do with her status as a mother.

Take-aways

There is no point in considering all this unless someone is a part of those dating concerns.  That excludes me, but I still find it an interesting cultural sub-theme.

I think the generalities those content producers identify all work, to a limited extent, but they require some placement.  The ideas are generally offered as absolute truths and directives, when really they're just part of a broader range of causes and effects.  I think the emphasis on blaming women for problems with men and women dating is essentially wrong; individuals need to sort out those issues as individuals and couples, both men and women.

They seem to never really pull back to the broader scope that the review of Chinese "leftover" single people often does; these broad patterns are going to cause some individuals to remain single, not just related to individual perspective and choices in single cases.

I see this as comparable to a game of musical chairs; plenty of men and women do date and marry in their 20s, and plenty date around in their 20s and 30s instead.  By around 40 many seek long term stability and family life, and some people are left out of that pairing up process.  Men might date women a little younger, in some cases, but still the same pattern occurs for both in roughly the same age range.  

What these guys are missing is that the people not pairing up, equivalent to those left standing in a musical chairs game, relate to a range of individual circumstances, only some of which they identify, but there are surely also general patterns in who is excluded.  It doesn't work perfectly well to say that on the men's side those guys will be "1s, 2s, and 3s," and on the women's "9s, and 10s," but something like that could be happening.  Or maybe it's not just that?

In the Hoe Math and Better Bachelor videos they thought the woman offering related commentary was attractive (the one cited and shown in an image here), probably a 7 per their judgment (or maybe an 8; she is pretty), so the pattern doesn't seem to completely match in this case.  It seems like the form is different in the US problem, an outcome from everyone not trying to find a life-partner in their 20s.  As those guys summarize women who are medium level attractive (6-8) can sleep with very attractive men, just not marry them, so on the US culture side that's the range that's experiencing even more problems, an even more vicious scramble "once the music stops" in their late 30s.

I don't know which inputs actually work as the main broad generality.  Even following these "men's content" producers analysis men can "marry down" to an extent (again related more to attractiveness than social level as in China, with wealth more a factor for men), so it would seem plenty of the most attractive women would also end up remaining single.  

To me all of this works better as food for thought than as a model for how relationships and dating patterns really work out in practice.  It would all vary too much by individual experience.  People can date whoever they want, and marry a partner for their own reasons, on their own time-table, with or without all this emphasis on appearance and wealth.  Common interests, perspective, and values are being set aside too much in all this.  But it's still interesting to consider.

Visiting a Bangkok Chinatown shop

 

Kittichai and Gerda

I've written this basic post a number of times, about visiting my favorite Bangkok Chinatown shop, Jip Eu (on FB here), so next it comes up how to vary that, or why to write at all.

I recently visited to meet an online tea contact, Gerda, who wanted to explore local tea options, which is the main repeating theme.  I've met some of my best tea friends under exactly these circumstances, most notably Huyen, Suzana, and Ralph, that covid-era online social group.  It's always nice having an excuse to do an extra shop visit, and I'm always considering buying tea to give to local monk friends anyway, since they can't go out shopping on their own, due to a restriction against that.

I'll cover how this visit went related to someone being new to tea learning about types, exactly what happened.  That will naturally overlap with concerns about why it could be difficult exploring teas in this way, especially related to visiting Chinatown shops, which are a singularly good resource for tea enthusiasts, but there can be problems to work around using such a source.

It was interesting seeing that visit posted as a Tik Tok edited video, here, showing that shop, the owner Kittichai, and I'm briefly in it.

That visit background

That new tea friend is another American also living in Bangkok; we met through mention of potential for meetups (tastings, as intended) in a local Facebook tea page I started awhile back.  I might clarify that I'm living between Bangkok and Honolulu these days, since we moved to Honolulu so my son, who is now in high school, could experience that education system.  I'm still based in Bangkok for work, and my company very generously let me work remotely for over 4 of the last 10 months.

That visit started with asking her about her favorite tea type, which is rolled oolong, along the line of Tie Guan Yin, so that's what we tried first.  The owner, Kittichai, who feels a bit like an extra uncle here (which I have a few of, between Bangkok and Oahu, a real blessing) started showing us a more roasted version, and based on her preference we switched to a greener version.

blending modest quality Shui Xian at that shop

I was familiar with Kittichai having family in both Anxi (in Fujian where TGY is produced) and in Wuyishan (where "rock oolong" comes from), but had lost track of him having a brother in both areas, both of whom make and sell tea.  So nice!  That doesn't necessarily mean that everything he presented from those areas is exactly what it's described as, but it bumps the likelihood quite a bit.  I take everything I hear related to tea as a generality that's either very likely or unlikely to be true, or indeterminate, not that I have a suspicious nature, but most sheng pu'er sold is described as gushu (old plant material), growing under natural conditions, and a lot probably isn't that, and definitive sorting is problematic.

The Tie Guan Yin was good.  Good is all relative; to me the best versions of that type are sweet and floral, perhaps with some vegetal base tones, clean in effect, with good intensity, good mouthfeel, and some aftertaste carry-over. It was like that, positive and pleasant.  Then saying all that reminds me of a discussion recently when use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers came up, with that discussion participant claiming that the valued typical character of much Taiwanese rolled oolong, which are like that, with pronounced mineral tone base added, comes in part from use of lots of chemicals.  

How to place that?  Any gardener knows that if you bump nitrogen and other inputs, maybe even including the plant equivalent of steroids, compounds that trigger growth, and pesticide protection for the plants, you can max out plant growth and robust produced fruit or flower character, but all at a cost.  One cost is that you're consuming at least some of the residual traces of that.  Since all of this is a tangent here lets get back to what we experienced that day in that shop.

Next we tried a Rou Gui presented as from within that park area in Wuyishan.  If it is that it's definitely an organic tea (per my understanding, which is always limited to some extent), because inputs of what can be brought in that area are controlled through checkpoints.  What are the odds that the tea wasn't what it was described as?  Impossible to judge.  Authenticity is much higher given the background context, that sourcing occurred in connection with well-connected and trusted locals there, but again I tend to take it all as probabilities, and not sweat the uncertainty.

one is Kittichai's brother, pictured on elaborate packaging he showed us

Rou Gui brings up an unusual "trueness to type" issue because it's a translation of cinnamon, and versions tend to taste like cinnamon, but not all do.  Some can be absolutely amazing while tasting nothing like cinnamon; apparently a set of inputs including plant type genetics and growing inputs can bring out citrus or even peach notes.  This tasted a good bit like cinnamon, which of course is also nice.  Roast was moderate; often very high roast can ruin such teas, although that should be an input relating to error, or an intentional step used to mask flaws.  Or some people prefer heavily roasted tea versions, of course.

High quality Wuyi Yancha versions can be made in a range of different styles, and this was in that range.  It's tempting to point out which I see as most traditional, since hearsay input would link to such claims, but who knows if that even makes sense.  50 to 100 years ago there was probably a good bit of variation in styles, so claiming one style was quite universally regarded as optimum in an earlier golden age probably doesn't work.  Or maybe the opposite is true, but it may be impossible to find great sources to settle this point for you, even there "on the ground" in China in that area.  Beyond only mostly believing stories about production inputs I tend to focus more on the experience of teas than stories about history or version changes over time.

Kittichai wasn't telling such stories anyway; he was describing character related to how good versions tend to be, back more on starting points, because that was relevant for that audience, for someone who needed to become clearer on what rock oolong and Rou Gui are first.  We talked a little about an aging issue as an exception, with me explaining to her that my preference related to this style is that there would be no point in aging it, since freshness, quality, and pleasantness all came across well just then, which Kittichai agreed with.  It was interesting how with him also minding the store a bit (his wife was missing that day; kind of a shame) he said the same thing separately, a few minutes later.

Kittichai really does know teas, in a sense better than me.  I can't make tea, produce it from fresh leaves, and he can, and has.  That brings up an odd point we discussed; he described these teas as hand-made.  Per lots of discussion with another tea friend in Wuyishan (Cindy Chen, of Wuyi Origin) it's just not practical for people to be making very high quality tea completely by hand, because it takes too much work input, so it really comes down to using different kinds of machines for different volumes of tea production.  For some artisan out there making a few kgs a year of some special version maybe, but it's harder to imagine someone replicating that tight ball shape for Tie Guan Yin.

I never did describe that Rou Gui.  The other TGY description was general enough it works, just swapping out some flavor description:  it was pleasant related to lacking flaws, having a decent full feel, with a nice mineral base, good intensity, and pronounced aftertaste.  For flavors some cinnamon joined other earthier range, not heavy at all related to roast level being a moderate input.  Pronounced aftertaste and structured feel really stood out.  I described how a mineral range not completely unlike how some pen ink smells can work as a quality level marker, and that was included.  Flavor intensity wasn't full-blast, but aftertaste experience really lingered, all of which works.

The nicest part of getting tea in that shop is that there's an uncountable range of variation in there, maybe too much, since finding exactly what you want might be easier from a list of 25 or 30 versions, versus hundreds of types being stashed away.  Kittichai showed us a novel bud and fine leaf version from Fuding (also Fujian), which looked great, a lot like good Bai Mu Dan or Nepal white versions, but we didn't try it.  Someone just walking into that shop might not ever hear about that white tea version, or end up trying the two teas we did, or learn that there's plenty of aged sheng pu'er in there as well (it's not their specialty, but it's a good place to buy an old Xiaguan, Dayi, or CNNP cake, or even better versions, just from a limited selection).  They tend to ask guests what types they are interested in, and that's what they would hear about, and perhaps try some of, and maybe only that.

To keep the visit description moving at the end I bought some inexpensive Shui Xian oolong for the monks I often visit, and she bought some of the TGY.  It's a good place to buy inexpensive jasmine green tea too, to add another recommendation to that.  

Kittichai gave us samples of a Fujian white tea and a Rou Gui, which he said wasn't as good as the other we tried, but is pleasant.  That's too much, really, for a vendor to share samples when your purchase is so limited, and you've been tasting top shelf teas there, but that's how it goes visiting a vendor who feels like visiting an uncle.  Sometimes I bring him tea too, I just didn't that day.  He mostly only likes the conventional Chinese style range, extending out to appreciating sheng pu'er, so bringing him Thai sheng versions that don't completely match, or Assam or Darjeeling or whatever, he can appreciate as novel but they're not what he likes.  Fair enough.

Walking back to the MRT station we passed another local well-regarded tea shop, K. Mui Tea, not more than a long block away from Jip Eu.  I pointed out the tea stuffed oranges that many people find interesting, and she bought a white tea version, and I bought two shu pu'er versions for monks (I've got tea to drink; I might buy a cake to set aside once in awhile but I don't tend to buy 100 grams of this or that for me). 

That shop owner greeted us (warmly; I'm sure that he's a good guy, from that and prior contact), and we tasted a shu version and some Mi Lan Xiang Dan Cong, even though we were mostly just passing by.  The Dan Cong was pretty good for the price range, the rare type-typical, slightly above average range quality selling at good value that doesn't always come up for Dan Cong.  The shu was good for an aged, medium quality version, a 2006 tea that I remember selling for $40 or so per cake pricing.  You don't get best of the best of anything for that modest pricing, but pretty good shu can be nice, and good value, and that's what it seemed to be.  I mentioned to my companion that it's regarded as the gentlest for your stomach, aged shu pu'er.

that is about $40

different stuffed citrus and pu'er dragonballs (shown) are good for a quick impulse buy

And that was the outing, quite pleasant, with a lot of ground covered in a short span of time.  Randomly visiting Chinatown shops can actually be unpleasant instead, at times relating to not getting much attention from vendors, or not tasting above average tea versions selling for low prices.  What you might try in a visit can be random, depending on what you communicate, and how a shop owner interprets that.  What we tried in Jip Eu was at fair pricing; it was more a concern that neither of us was really in the market for buying much volume of above average quality tea.  

The better Wuyi Yancha in Jip Eu has tended to sell for 1000 to 1500 baht per 100 grams in the past, $30 if it's just good tea, and $45 if a background condition relates to rarity and higher demand, as with that Rou Gui version, described as from within the natural park area there.  It's awkward comparing that to how inexpensive what I bought was; their main market is for selling low priced related oolong versions for very little, more like $3 per 100 grams.  It would take a lot of sales volume to keep a shop open, selling teas like that, and shop overhead in the US or UK would prevent it from being possible at all, even with moderate better income stream from the other better teas.

at a recent religious event at Wat Pho

visiting there with a family friend from China exactly 4 years ago

visiting with that girl this past weekend, a bit grown up now