Iron Heart IH-634S - World Tour 2010 - 2013
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Let me give you a brief introduction first…
This is the house where our appartment is situated
this is our living room & kitchen
this is how the day started - we actually live in the city and look down on the Pearl River from our appartment. Most of our expat colleagues live a bit outside of town with their families & kids
a glance out of the windows facing to the back
after getting up and seeing my wife off to work I started with taking some day light pictures of the jeans and reviewing the shoes and belts situation…
these are the shoes & boots I plan to wear over the next couple of weeks
my Tricker's and Alden's
my Camper's
my Viberg's
and maybe my wife lets me borrow her Viberg engineer boots…
here are the belts
I will go through the tees, shirts and jackets tomorrow - the idea is that if you want to see the IH-634S paired with certain items from my wardrobe I would give it consideration.
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After lunch I tried to get a new mobile phone (contract) since I had to return my business phone
things here in China are a bit tricky, nothing works as expected. you can't just go in and buy something. be prepared to entertain a lengthy discussion and an actually overload of paper work when settling the bill.
long story short: I will have to come back tomorrow in order to file for an international telephone number (why woud one want to have international calls in China seems to be beyond everyones comprehension) with internet access and data download (for taptalk). -
next destination: tea market.
calling it a tea market is an understatement of some sort. in the case of Guangzhou it is an entire wholesale district - tea is serious business here in China…
street after street - picking out a trustworthy dealer seems to be a random choice at best…
most wholesale tea dealers will specialize - here in Guangzhou the more popular teas are Chinese green teas and Woolong or Oolong teas, teas that are considered half-fermented and somewhere in between green teas and black teas. -
meet Bo and his family, my local tea dealer
buying tea in China is an interesting experience and will follow a certain routine not unlike drinking tea in any of the still exisiting tea houses.
a small porting of the tea will be brewed in a cup - water quality and temperature is key - we will start with cleaning the cups with boiling water.
the actual tea will be brewed next - in our case we start with Tieguanyin (Iron Goddess of Mercy) from Fujian - the current season is the spring harvest which is considered second best after autumn. this has an impact on the prices - they can be high, but not as high as some for autumn teas if the harvest was good.
the first infusion will be used to clean and unravel the intact tea leaves and clean and heat up the drinking/tasting cups again. usually, from the second infusion onwards one starts drinking the tea. with third or fourth infusion you start to get a notion of the specific character of the tea.
a tea dealer will start with lower qualities and will lead you to the more expensive qualities - tasting/buying tea can take quite some time…
prices are quoted in RMB by the Jin (500gr) - we went through 800RMB, 1600RMB, 2200RMB and 2800RMB today - after a good autumn harvest the prices can go up by more than double.
these are melon/pumpkin seeds served as snacks
Tieguanyin is usually kept sealed and in the freezer at the whole sellers
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next on my list was another famous Oolong tea - Da Hong Pao (Royal Red Robe) from Fujian as well
we tried 600RMB, 2500RMB and a different variety for 1600RMBKeemun Mao Feng - Qimen - this is a black tea
we tried 1200RMBDian Hong - Jin Jin Mei - Red tea
we tried 1200RMB
sometimes I go for dinner with Bo after business, but I was running late and had to pick up my wife this time.
