Yixing Gaiwans

I've been using mostly ceramic gaiwans to brew as it's the easiest way to gongfu allowing me to drink puerh even at work.  Recently I smashed a gaiwan lid and needed a replacement.  For variety, I thought I would look for a cheap replaceable yixing gaiwan.   A bit of yixing clay would help diffuse the basement taste on my budget wet-stored pu and I'm not one to waste a precious teapot on such teas.

I spotted this simple $10 zisha clay gaiwan from an ebay vendor who sells the oddest mix of teaware,  cosplay wigs, erotic anime pillows,  Tibetan "babao male enhancer" pills, and quilted doggy tents.  If you are a tea drinking anime addict with a small dog and a potency condition, this might be one of the few one-stop shops to cater to your exact needs.

Despite the suspicious mix of goods, I saw some mica and silica content on the surface closeup of the gaiwan so I pushed buy.  It's most likely low quality yixing clay but I'm willing to give it a go as my plan B is to use it as a tea caddy if brewing doesn't work out.  It will take another week or so to reach me.  At the higher end, there is the Di Cao Qing gaiwan on ebay but for $38 with shipping, this purchase defeats the purpose of having a cheap breakable gaiwan.

The other yixing tea set which did arrive today is this hybrid contraption which is more like a lidless houhin than anything else. I initially didn't want to buy it because the aesthetics is butt ugly and I wanted to maintain some self respect.  But it's functionality appealed to my sense of practicality - side knobs to prevent finger scorching and a slotted lip to keep those wiggly tea leaves back.  But my better judgement was absent as this thing pours much slower than expected and I may ask my husband to drill a few more holes.  He has enlarged holes on ceramic and yixing teapots for me using a special drill bit before and he really owes me after what happened next.

My husband fingered the curve of the attached demi-top quite suggestively and asked me if it was a miniature chamberpot.  You can't see it from this angle but the demi-top curves perfectly as if it was designed to accommodate a seated pair of buns. You can imagine how such a comment will flavor my tea sessions.

Ebay Vendor in a Time Warp

The world of internet tea buying is never so straight forward.  Good vendors can often have very good teas but also some mediocre teas and occasionally insipid teas.  Bad vendors can have overpriced mediocre teas and blatant fakes, but still give a good bargain from time to time.  No single vendor has predominantly consistently fantastic teas that will match your palate- and at least not for tolerable prices.

I've been circling around this Hong Kong based eBay vendor for quite a while now.  Their ridiculously low prices on aged cakes should pump your suspicion glands to bursting but can 3000+ happy customers(99.7%) be so wrong?   Repeat buyers pithily tout the soundness of this vendor with glowing testimonial such as "AAA+++". I had to restrain myself from loading up my shopping cart, but I know better not to be too hasty.

Since I could not find any blog or forum discussions on this vendor, I've been trying to sleuth out any signs of suspicion.  For starters,  do you see what I see? 

 

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Is it coincidence so many neifeis are so occluded? Also I remember that Keyixing was meant to be drunk young so it's probably stale beyond consumption. But this does not mean that this vendor does not carry some worthwhile cakes.  I'm mainly looking for a mid-range youngish cake that had it's early life in humid storage. Young big factory cakes appear to match market prices but they have an abundance of pre 2006 cakes for time warp prices.  The trick to finding the wothwhile fake which is all roulette.

Luckily, the vendor offers a dirt cheap 15 sampler pack(9g each) spanning 1990s-2013;  $13 including shipping is my ticket to ride. Just this list is not for real at $13.

• No.1  1990s Zhongcha Red Seal Pu'er Tea Ripe  
• No.2  2000yr   Zhongcha Red Seal Pu'er Tea Raw  
• No.3  2005yr    Zhongcha Green Seal Pu'er Tea Raw  
• No.4  2006r   Changtai Group Lion Cake  Pu'er Tea Raw  
• No.5  2012yr   Glutinous rice fragrant flavor Pu'er Tea Raw 
• No.6  2013yr   Yiwu Mahei Pu'er Tea Raw  
• No.7  2008yr Yunnan Yuechenyuexiang  Pu'er Tea Ripe 
• No.8  1990s Yunnan Aged Pu'er Brick Tea Raw Brick 
• No.9  1990s Yunnan Aged Pu'er Brick/7581 Pu'er Tea Ripe Brick 
• No.10 2001yr Yunnan Changtai Group Pu'er Brick Tea Raw Brick  
• No.11  1990s Yunnan Xiaguan Tea Factory Frist Grade Pu'er Tuo  
• No.12  2009yr Yunnan Menghai Tea Factory V93 Pu'er Tuo Tea Ripe Tuo  
• No.13  2000yr Yunnan Zhangxiang Flavor Pu'er Tea Ripe Loose  
• No.14  2004yr Yunnan Laochatou Pu'er Tea Ripe Loose  
• No.15  2006yr Yunnan Pu'er Tea Brick/7581 Pu'er Tea Ripe Brick 

We'll see how this all pans out. The tea has arrived in the San Francisco mail facility last night from last week's order so I'll be brewing up all weekend.

Ebay Temptations

Some days the only thing one is capable of doing after a long hard day's work is mindless tea surfing on ebay. I used to do this back in the day when you could browse all pu selection in one breezy sitting but now the field is crowded with all manner of foreign pu-erh vendors- some of them verging on downright bizarre.  Without much effort, I found this 2000 Purple(bud) Shu Brick for a mere $20 which includes shipping from China.

Dare I buy pu-erh from a vendor who also specializes in breast enlargement creams, a Magic Butt-Shaping Cushion as well as dried wild black ants?  Despite such warning signs,  this vendor has a 100% satisfaction rating from 6160 transactions.
(Despite the natural temptation, I recommend readers not to click on this tea vendor's "Breast Enlargement" Category- at least not at work or in front of young children.  It boggles my mind that this vendor has sold 78 bottles of "Must Up" B.E. Cream but only 2 beengs of 1997 Commemorate the Return of Hong Kong Tea)

Even stranger still, this vendor also carries an "intellectually gifted" shu.  As the vendor boasts:

" It is made meticulously by traditional craft chosen in national grade intangible cultural heritage and special blending technology."

I feel bad for most of my shu which weren't endowed with such intellectual gifts.

Can such a vendor actually carry decent tea? Or is this yet another obvious sandpit in the world of internet pu-erh buying?  Dare I waste another perfectly good $20 bill out of sheer curiosity? If things go badly,  I dare not complain to a vendor who sells such novelties.  I think I should still start a coin driven fund to check out such vendors as a public service.

The censor who would not let me use a certain rude but perfect phrase involving nuns yesterday absolutely insisted today that I include this final item. As he said to me, "It's a jungle out there."

Looking for an Internet Vendor for Aged Sheng

My eyes were glazed over various vendor websites in an effort to find a decent aged sheng for purchase when I found this gem on ebay:

Semen Cassiae Seeds Mini Tuo cha Ripe Pu-erh Tea ...Relaxing Bowel

Is semen and relaxing bowel a cracking way to sell tea? I put it on my ebay watch list to find out.  I definitely know many people who would benefit from relaxation of the bowel.  Back to my original task at hand,  I ended up in steepster.com which I am not familiar with.   I noticed that verdanttea.com is one of the most commented vendors for pu-erh. Then I ran across this bit of crazy price inflation from their website for a YongMing 2006 Star of Bulang Cake:

1 oz. $16.50

4 oz. $56.00
8 oz. $105.00
brick $156.00 (actually they mean cake here)

$156 for a 2006 cake from the low-end Yong Ming Factory of the double elephant trunk logo?  My eyes popped because $156 for a 2006 cake means it is one of the most premium cakes in the world on the ranks of Yan Qing Hao and Xi Zhi Hao! However they do not show the front wrapper for the Star of Bulang.  The fact that a Yong Ming Bulang Yinhao cake which sold for $9.50 by yuncha on Ebay recently makes me wonder how this supposed premium "Star of Bulang"  blend from Yong Ming factory compares to the $9.50 version. Normally when a factory tries to introduce premium versions, they can charge only so much above their current offerings. (Update: I found the said premium tea for taobao for $17.)

 

The reason I even wrote this post to begin with is the fact that at a glance I found Verdant Teas to have some of the most expensive prices I have ever encountered on the internet.  I have posted the explanation given by

vendor David Duckler of Verdant Tea for the hyper-inflated price of his Star of Bulang in the comments section of this post so you can decide for yourself.  He says his cake is premium and "Our markup is extremely low."  However MarshalN confirms for me that YongMing is a low-end vendor and their 2006 cakes don't go for more than 100RMB(~$15) in China.  Regardless, $156 for a 2006 sheng would make it probably one of the most expensive in the world, esp. for a Bulang which does not have the market hype of Lao Banzhang or Yiwu coming from a factory which lacks any premium brand recognition.  Is this $150 Yong Ming Star of Bulang  really 10x times better than the $10 version? Just as a comparison, Essence of Tea is selling 1998 Heng Li Chang Bulang for ~$180.

Down memory lane, I almost bought a YongMing Bulang cake from tuochatea and I am embarrassed to say I went for the Wild Elephant Valley beeng instead because it had a way cooler looking elephant wrapper than Yong Ming. (Actually I had been looking for a Chun Ming cake  because who doesn't love two x'es on an elephant butt but I had to settle in the end.)

So I am back to the conundrum of looking for aged sheng on the internet. I would buy from Guang of Hou De but his "Aged Puerh" section is a little thin with four entries right now so Essence of Tea is my next best bet. I do have a friend visiting San Francisco from Hong Kong so this would be a last resort.