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

Tea and illness 2: masala chai and chen pi

I'm sick again!  The short version:  I drank a lot of tisanes when I was sick recently, and trying out variations of masala chai worked a lot better this time than any single tisane or mix of those had then.  A chen pi (shu pu'er stuffed tangerine / orange) didn't seem to have much effect.

I probably pushed it related to getting back out running in moderately bad pollution within a week of recovering from that last sinus infection.  The levels had spiked to quite severe a day before the last run and partial clearing of that smog probably wasn't enough.

at the worst; I ran when the text balloons were yellow and orange

A doctor said that I'm fine, that I just need to drink fluids, rest, and wait it out.  I think this pollution may be too much for us, since my wife and kids have been sick too.  We've been using air purifiers at home, so we get a great break from it at least one third of the day, or more than half if we're around the house a lot past sleeping, but apparently it's not enough. 

We have masks to wear.  They're the special versions that filter a lot better than the green or white ones you can pick up in a hospital, surgical masks, but it just doesn't work to live in those.  It seems like your body can handle a moderate degree of pollution well enough, until it can't, and then you become much more sensitive to it.

back in February, the last pollution spike

The tisanes I wrote about drinking in an earlier post didn't seem to help in any medicinal sense, but it had been nice drinking a lot of hot beverages, and going easy on caffeine.  I speculated that masala chai blends, maybe even made with tisanes instead, might work even better, but I felt a bit wiped out to spend 20 minutes mixing inputs and simmering tea during that first round of illness.  So I tried it this time.

It seemed to actually help.  On the third day or so--hard to pin down the exact day you get sick, since you can just feel a bit off at first--I prepared masala chai, Indian spiced black tea, made with half black tea and half willow herb (aka fireweed / Ivan Chay).  For spicing I used clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg, not exactly typical but it sounded good.  Drinking two large mugs of that, prepared with sugar and milk, brought on a heavy sweat, and I seemed to feel better related to illness symptoms within an hour.  I drank a second round with lunch hours later, adding ginger and fennel seed to that blend, and again sweated quite a bit.  Within those hours the output from blowing my nose ran much clearer.

Still, could be a coincidence.  I hadn't eaten much at all the day prior so I was wondering if the spicing wouldn't be a bit much for my stomach, but it wasn't.  The next morning I made another batch, and went a little heavy on the dash of salt I usually add, throwing off results a little, but then my sense of taste isn't great anyway.

Chen pi

Being a little tired of masala chai I tried brewing a shu stuffed orange / tangerine with a lunch.  I couldn't read any of the label but it was clearly shu, not a variation made with black or white tea.  One of the vendors in that Shenzhen tea market threw three of those in with what we bought and I'd not tried one yet.

before tearing up the peel a bit

As to approach I brewed it in a tea bottle.  With my sense of taste still on the limited side a flavor-list theme review wouldn't work, and optimizing that never was the point.  It tastes like citrus and shu.  At a guess the flavor would be positive if I wasn't sick, but it's hard to be sure with blocked sinuses.  The second round was brewed for a long time (I wasn't really controlling proportion or timing), ending up tasting nice enough but a little metallic.  Water might potentially taste metallic now, since beyond the illness more or less plugging my nose other symptoms do apply. 

I'm not even sure if the traditional Chinese wisdom / medicine claims say dried (and aged?) orange peel cures sinus infections, or colds, or whatever else.  It's said to have some medicinal properties, I thought, but most likely the list that turns up in discussions and marketing content is broad.  Why wouldn't it be, regardless of the truth of the matter?  Personal effects probably do vary anyway, and there is no simple, singular truth of the matter.


Back to the masala chai instead, there seems to be a lot of potential in using modified spiced tea blends for the same purpose.  Sage and black tea sounds like a potential contrast in character but mixing in a bit of rosemary, or whatever else, and shifting the masala blend part to match might work.  Adding some citrus might be good, since shifting off the original flavor profile would be the point anyway.  It's hard to get that warm, earthy character back though, without black tea, which really ties masala chai together.  I don't completely avoid tea or caffeine when I'm sick, I just try to moderate it, since it doesn't pair well with lying around.

This part is more about talking crazy than a real suggestion, but tied to making roasted pumpkin recently toasting the seeds to a medium brown then grinding those as an input might work.  No one is going to roast pumpkin in the middle of being sick, although I just did since I feel better five days later, and there was a Japanese pumpkin no one was using in the kitchen.

roasted pumpkin with spices and ice cream is nice

Let me know what you think, if any of this rings a bell, even though no one ever does.  Or if it sounds awful; whichever way that goes.

Compressed teas and tisanes beyond pu'er

First published in parts by TChing, with the last post of three in sequential order here


This subject is familiar to most related to sheng and shu pu'er; both have long since been pressed into cakes (bings), tuochas (dented ball shapes, kind of), bricks, "dragonballs," coins, and other shapes.  This will focus on scope outside of pu'er, since those are more commonly encountered.

The common understanding is that this form related to ease of transport from condensing the size.  Teas from Yunnan could be shipped across the Tea Horse Road to all sorts of regional destinations, processed to be easier to ship, distribute, and later store (with further reading about the modern forms of that history here).  Same for Hunan brick teas, and at some point the same compression process was also applied to shou mei white tea.

More recently compressed black teas and others have become somewhat fashionable.  Why press these, though?  We're at the stage now where modern packaging solutions can cover a lot of the same functional concerns with the tea still in loose form.  Pu'er needs air contact to ferment (to change over time), and to some extent that could apply to other tea types as well, even though the same storage approach and concerns are most typically only extended to white teas.  Compression isn't essential for aging but it does work well to store teas in that form and it helps moderate level of air contact at a suitable level.

Cakes of other tea types seem cool; that's a good reason.  To a limited extent the reshaping could also change tea character slightly, it seems, so there's a functional aspect.  For other teas "designed" for storage and aging it still makes sense on that first level.  Most recently I've tried two versions of this approach applied to tisanes (herbs and fruit), which I'll cover at the end.


shou mei (white tea), or other white teas pressed in different shapes:  really this form is common enough too, but it can be hard for one person to explore even the considerable list of most standard types.  Those teas can be mild but rich-flavored, including caramel or toffee tones with aging transition, evolving to include dried fruit or spice tones.  This post reviews two versions that seemed relatively standard, one from 2008 and 2012, along with a gong mei (same thing, different leaf grade), and candy-bar style pressed white.  Comparison reviewing four white teas together in that account turned out to be a bad idea; not so many rounds in I was blasted on all that caffeine.

Gong Mei cake, a Dayi / Tae Tea version

candy-bar style compressed white tea

a unconventional white tea cake described as pressed Moonlight White (details here)

Hunan region / Fu brick teas:  these seem kind of standard too, potentially very pleasant, flavorful, and typically relatively inexpensive compressed teas that are distinct in character from sheng and shu pu'er.  I've not experienced enough versions to generalize, but of that limited set I have tried pre-fermentation was either not used or not nearly as evident as in shu, and the teas didn't have the same intensity that younger sheng possess.

Then again I've not really tried new / young enough versions of compressed hei cha to really place starting points, related to typical use of a pre-fermentation step.  This Yi Qing Yuan factory version I reviewed with "yellow flowers" was produced in 2009, and this 2007 Xiang Yi "Hei Cha Zhuan" didn't have that version of mold present in it.  That general fungus category and specific "yellow flowers" input is identified in this reference passage:


...The genus Aspergillus is a group of filamentous fungi consist of more than 250 species, which is the most economically important of the fungal genera.  Many species of Aspergillus are used in biotechnology for the production of various metabolites, such as antibiotics, organic acids, medicines or enzymes, or as agents in many food fermentations. The fungal genus Eurotium, which is the teleomorph of Aspergillus, has been proved to be a rich source of novel bioactive metabolites. 

...species formerly included in the genus Eurotium  [a yellow-flowers related reference] are displayed with their Aspergillus name.. it is considered to be safe under low- and high-osmolarity conditions...


The typical hearsay account is that the various types of fungus are generally good for you rather than potentially harmful, not exactly confirmed in that research article passage but to a limited extent supported by it.

Hunan Fu brick tea with "golden flowers"

shai hong / Yunnan black teas:  now we're talking.  I first ran across a version of those and tasted it without reviewing what it was first two years ago, back in 2017, covered here.  Yunnan black teas / dian hong (or shai hong, a reference to versions of that being sun-dried) can vary quite a bit but the range is nice.

That version reminded me a little of those Hunan brick teas for character, beyond being compressed, for being so mild, and for including pleasant dried fruit, rich sweetness, and other earthy complexity.  I've tried a couple of other compressed Yunnan black teas since and they just vary.  This other version was pleasant, and included a bit of tartness, which can be nice in the right balance.  The two main US pu'er vendors are now producing versions, Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea, with one of the latter's versions boasting the catchy name of Natural Redhead, and the former's branded "Drunk on Red."  The marketing factor being an input seems to show up in the product names.

This video interview with a Yunnan black tea specialist (conducted by William Osmont of Farmerleaf, a Jing Mai based producer and vendor) sheds light on the processing differences in various types of black teas, it just doesn't get into the factor of pressing those.  One take-away from that matching conventional understanding:  Dian Hong, the conventional Yunnan style black teas, are oven dried, and Shai Hong are sun-dried versions, which are milder in fragrance and said to possess the potential to improve with age.  I've tried the same versions across a broad span of time before (a year or more), and they did seem to gain depth and intensity.

chunk of compressed Shai Hong (sun-dried) Yunnan black tea

compressed oolongs:  I had heard of these long before ever trying one, and did get a chance to in the form of a Moychay (Russian vendor) Da Hong Pao roasted oolong bar.  You could tell it wasn't the refined and subtle style of Wuyi Yancha that leans towards an aromatic liqueur or perfume-like aspect range, more flavor-forward and roasted to include sweet, rich caramel flavors instead, positive in character but limited due to being comprised of relatively broken material.  It worked well for me.

I have no idea if the unusual character in that product is somehow common to other compressed oolongs, if others are as flavor-intense and distinctive as that version was.  Some are probably great and others terrible, and all probably vary in taste and other aspect range; that's how that usually goes.  This looks like an interesting version of one (that I haven't tried), a 2006 pressed Da Hong Pao brick from Wuyi Origin, a well regarded producer who sells directly.

one chunk (square) of the Moychay DHP oolong bar

tangerine or orange peel stuffed shu pu'er or black teas (chen pi):  I don't want to add too much about these versions because they really deserve more background discussion and description than I have space for here.  I've tried shu pu'er and black tea versions (and have a white tea stuffed citrus peel at home yet to try), and the were nice, unique and pleasant.  And supposedly very good for health, bordering on a form of Chinese medical practice input.  I'll leave off at citing a reference to claimed health effects, framed in Traditional Chinese medicine terms.  The tea could have positive effects without that description framework being the most accurate model, or some of the benefits could be valid and accurate even if some others aren't:

Actions: Regulates Qi; adjusts the middle Jiao (acrid lifts the spleen Qi, bitter descends the stomach Qi); dries dampness; resolves phlegm; helps the spleen to transport; relieves the diaphragm; directs Qi downward.

shu pu'er stuffed tangerine (I think; could be a mandarin orange)

compressed tisanes:  a final frontier not everyone even wants to venture into, or would have heard of.  Again I tried two completely different tisane bars from Moychay (they sent me quite a few samples to review last year, and I've even started contributing some review-article content to a their website).  One was compressed fruit that seemed to contain a bit of spice, really far from standard tea in character, but pleasant.

One was a pressed version of willow herb, which also goes by fireweed, and is also called Ivan chay.  This herb is really unique for being able to oxidize, in a way similar to tea (Camellia Sinensis), although the couple of versions I've tried wouldn't get mistaken for tea.  The other was a pressed version of dried fruits, definitely different.  A version I didn't try is made of rose petals and cherry leaves.

If the way it works out similar to "real tea" versions pressing the herbs would only change loose material character a little.  They're not the same as Camellia Sinensis but the wider range of materials input enables a different range of potential.  Any herb, flower, or fruit blend could be combined and pressed that way, in theory.  Or mixes of teas and other inputs, which is a popular theme in Western markets now.  One potential down-side is that there's no current market demand for such a thing (pressed tisanes and blends), since it seems to have just started existing, but in a different sense that only increases the potential.

compressed willow herb bar (aka fireweed or Ivan chay)

compressed fruit bar

I think the compressed tisane theme was more appealing to me because trying the one local shop white tea bar and Moychay Da Hong Pao (roasted oolong) were such positive experiences.  Both of those could be brewed Gongfu style, prepared in a gaiwan using lots of short infusions, or they worked well made Western style, and probably just as well prepared "grandpa style."  That's a reference from a well-known tea blogger to a very common Chinese brewing approach, adding tea into a tea bottle with hot water and drinking it together, unstrained, re-adding water after finishing each round.  I most often use it on road trips, and wrote a post about trying out results on different tea types awhile back.

The fruit tea version would even work well simmered with black tea, perhaps with a bit more spice added, to make a fruit-oriented version of masala chai.  Or these could be added to a thermos and left to brew that way, over any length of time.  That would seem to involve committing a thermos to the practice since cleaning after something that aromatic might be problematic, maybe even if the liner was made of glass or steel.  Tisanes have the potential to be even more flexible than teas to brew, with the exception of tea types that aren't astringent and work well at any infusion strength, versions like shu pu'er or shou mei.


Really there are too many types of tea to get to among standard types as it is, but all of these make for interesting tangents and additional range to explore.