As I wrote last time, it’s hard to sleep after reading (and that’s why the wake-up call was at about half past 10), so Tomáš and I didn’t sleep much…
Today we „calmed down“ a bit – after rice porridge for breakfast we went to a specialty shop with puerhs, liubao and heicha teas (very dark types with specific taste) – after xxxxth try we even found a teapot (originally teapots) which we finally bought.
Basically, Tom and I independently picked out the same pieces that matched the one the owner had fed us with the fantastic tea – first the Liubao, then the dark (more like green) Puer, and then a 10 years older version of the same tea.
In the end we ordered half a kilo of Liubao and one of the black beans = going to be hilarious.
We went through a few more selected tea and scented stick shops, but we learned from friends of Thomas that the problem with substitutes and fakes of quality products is not only with teas, but with about 99% of scented sticks and powders (I didn’t even know these existed, yet monks have been using them for hundreds of years in the form of large emptied screens at temples, which they then let slowly smolder and smell…).
Interesting fact for tea drinkers: teas in China (at least as far as I’ve had the opportunity to know) are usually poured with 100 degree water straight from the kettle – here they don’t play at cooling the water to 80-90 degrees – oolongs, dark teas like heicha, puer, Chinese reds = all 100. Many also pour green or white at this temperature (not all though). Why is that? So the warm water reveals all the qualities (positive and negative of the tea) = it is the ideal way when tasting and selecting teas for trading…
We had arranged an afternoon with a friend of Thomas who owns a tea school in one of the skyscrapers in downtown Huangzhou. In classic fashion, the whole event was long, we sampled (finally after x number of dark ones) lush green teas, watched the ritual of creating a fragrant „symbol“, enjoyed local desserts, and took a taxi all the way through HZ (for about 50 yen) to our hotel…
We had a great dinner – I’ll probably dedicate a special part to the food later 🙂 Enjoy!
