Iron Heart IH-634S - World Tour 2010 - 2013
-
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
-
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.
-
after picking up my wife we went to a Canadian pub and ordered a wasabi burger
that's half of it…
on the way back home we dicided to take a stroll and took a few pictures ilustration some of the night time attractions.
and coming to a full circle please let me conclude with the same view from our balcony only at night time…
tomorrow we do something very Cantonese: we will go for Dim Sum at breakfast.
-
Foxy, INCREDIBLE LEG!!! You have really revived this tour. Keep it up sir. I feel like I am traveling with you, and it is great!!! Cheers
-
Foxy, INCREDIBLE LEG!!! You have really revived this tour. Keep it up sir. I feel like I am traveling with you, and it is great!!! Cheers
big +1
-
Lychee as big as tennis balls? Damn. I've never seen them bigger than golf balls.
And dim sum for breakfast/brunch is always a good thing.:)
-
Beautiful - and I'm not just talking about all the lasses that pop up as I click on your pics…
haha…. yeah that knock me off my feet a bit while i was at work....
Sorry about that, but it's one of the few international picture hosting sites which work from China.
And I though they meant something else when I classified my pictures as family safe…For all others, for good quality and reasonably sized pictures please use the web instead of tabtalk - only downside: currentl, the picture hosting site is running some ads of decently claded pin-ups.
-
Lychee as big as tennis balls? Damn. I've never seen them bigger than golf balls.
And dim sum for breakfast/brunch is always a good thing.:)
watch the bottom and middle row - these are Lychees - the styrofoam box contains the big ones…
the top row has wampis which are grapes shaped and sized.
-
Good pics and place.
How's is communication with the taxi and local , can use English ?You better grab a business card of the place you want go..,
Took Mandarin lessons s while ago, but there is a number of problems involved:
Business is all in English - so no practise
Written language is a drag
Grammar is easy, but intonation is hard
GZ is a melting pot - everybody is coming from some part of China with different language or dialect
Sometimes people pretend not to understand you in order to avoid dealing with you/the white devilI forgot most of my Chinese, not that it was any good. The English on the streets is getting better but far from making thongs easy…
