A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries categorized as ‘Objects’

Potheads

October 2, 2007 · 6 Comments

It’s an interesting thing going to a store that focuses on its pots, rather than its tea. Yesterday there was a crowd of potheads gathered around the table with the owner sitting there, casually brewing some aged oolongs in a big well made pot that I’m sure is a few thousand dollars, at least. The discussion (to the extent that I could understand when they spoke in mandarin — most of the conversation was in Taiwanese, which is hopelessly difficult) was all about pots. Who made what, which one’s nice, if it’s a real one, how much, look at that nice clay, the good calligraphy, etc etc

Connoisseur pots are, of course, not quite the same as our everyday stuff. For one, they’re big, usually around 500cc, which is only really usable when you have a bunch of people. A 300cc one is already too small, and the stuff we usually use — around 100cc, is not for them at all (although some do like to play with a few of these as an aside). These people are often not too knowledgable about tea. One man thought the aged oolong we were drinking was a puerh at first (it should be immediately obvious). They tell me they just drink tea, but they really, really love their pots. They get custom made brocade boxes for them that are shaped just for the pot, so that it is safe. They take them out, carefully wipe them, put them back, take pictures…. you name it.

And they are expensive. The few nice ones that were being passed around yesterday were ten or twenty thousand USD, per pot. Even the “cheap” ones are a few thousand dollars. There are ones that are even nicer, but those, I gather, are rarely taken out for show. They hide them in the house.

One of the guys who were there, a man in his late 50s, I think, said he’s been collecting pots for a few decades now. I’m sure he’s got a nice collection, as you can tell everybody in the group respects him. He then tells me something which I find a bit startling — he can’t tell a fake from a real, at least for the “masters” pots which he generally collects. “Masters” (mingjia) pots are the ones that are made by living or recently dead pot masters, and are not usually antique. This stuff has a high rate of fakes, and when a guy who’s got a lot of experience playing with this stuff doesn’t know for sure if something is real or fake, there’s something wrong.

The owner of the store said that for them (the dealers) it is possible to get a sense of whether something is real or fake, but even they cannot be 100% sure and sometimes have to hunt down connections to find proof. They know, generally, because they’re the ones who sees the most out of anybody in the pot-food-chain. The makers don’t really know each other’s works. The buyer/collector only knows what they are told by the dealers. The dealers see both sides, and see each other too (as they trade stuff). So, a pot from Master X might have certain characteristics…. this they know.

But then, you have fakes. Fakes are really good these days. Fakes are also a parallel industry, apparently. Pot makers in Yixing have specialities — this guy specializes in fake antiques, that one fakes Master X’s pot really well, and this woman fakes Master Y’s to perfection. These people have good skills, obviously, and sometimes even better than the so called masters. But… they’re not famous. They can’t sell pots for thousands of dollars, not until they’re famous anyway, which is never a sure thing even if you have talent. If they fake somebody else’s though, they can.

So unless you have a dealer who you can absolutely trust and whose knowledge is impeccable… finding a real pot (antique OR masters) can be a real challenge, especially when starting out. The owner of the store says her customers don’t have to pay tuition, because all her stuff are real. While there’s always a bit of advertisment in these proclaimations, I do think the stuff I’ve seen there are better than most. Maybe I can learn a few things from these people…. from simple issues like how they season pots to clay quality to everything else. Here’s hoping, anyway. Meanwhile… I’ll just drink my tea using my inferior teapots.

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Old teapots

August 13, 2007 · 1 Comment

Today I had a lesson in older teapots. I went to the Best Tea House today, as my usual haunt in Hong Kong after doing some errands. Tiffany was there, along with some other tea drinkers who frequent there and whom I’ve met before.

What’s different today is that somebody brought with him two teapots he recently acquired, both with claims to old age. He brought it for another tea drinker to evaluate, since he’s known as an experienced collector of particularly zhuni pots. It was really an eye opener for me, as there were things that I didn’t previously know that he told me about how to check for older teapots. For example, he thinks (from all the pots he’s seen) that the clay and the way the clay behaves under fire is really important. It’s interesting that he brought with him a 30x magnifying glass — the kind jewellers use to evaluate precious stones. He uses it to examine the surface of the pot and to see how, semi-microscopically, how the teapot reacted to the heat. By looking at that, he thinks that both pots are of an older age — one being a late Qing pot, while the other one being an early Republican period one. It’s difficult to explain everything he said without having a real life example, but it goes to show that much of it has to do with simple experience and having seen a large number of such things.

The other thing interesting is that we talked about the art of making tea — or the lack of an art of making tea. After all, what we’re doing is to make the best out of every tea we’re presented with. So, for example, with inferior quality tea, you want to use lower temperatures with longer steeping time, because if you use high temps with short infusion time, the tea won’t behave well — it will become bitter, astringent, rough, etc. Whereas with a good tea, you want to maximize the good qualities by pushing it as hard as possible. Using lower temperatures and longer steeping times is simply wasting the leaves — you’re not getting the most out of them.

So to illustrate, one of the tea drinkers talked about how one time he tried a tea made with a 12 minute infusion in a small yixing pot. 12 minutes… is a long time. It was, as he said, a brew of a really low grade tieguanyin, but that doesn’t matter, because the resulting cup was excellent. The long time, the relatively low temperature, and the expert manipulation by the brewer made sure it was a good cup.

That’s something we can all aspire to — again, it’s all about experience and knowing what to do with what you’ve got in your hands.

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New teaware

May 1, 2007 · 3 Comments

I got some new teaware today…. since I have tea guests coming tomorrow, and I didn’t even have anything to serve them with!

I opted for the nicer looking stuff.  I could’ve bought dirt cheap cups, but they really do look nasty.  Now in contrast, my gaiwan looks awful… but oh well.  I’ll survive, for now anyway.

I also got a teapot from L

He kindly gave it to me as a gift.  He made a few dozen of them (special ordered) and gave me one for free.  I appreciate that 🙂

It’s even got his own chop on it

 

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Teaware dilemma

April 30, 2007 · 3 Comments

It’s been more than a week and half since I got to Shanghai, and yet I still haven’t properly brewed tea at home.  I have a tea tray, a water heating unit, and a gaiwan now, but I lack a cup and perhaps a fairness cup.

I finally opted for the cheapest gaiwans there are.  Most of the gaiwans available here are very nice Jingdezhen ones.  They are those hand painted ones (or allegedly hand-painted ones anyway) and they look quite nice.  For a while I was rather tempted to buy one here, but if I do, it would have to be brought back as I don’t want to leave it here.  With this 5 RMB gaiwan… I feel no qualms about just leaving it here so whenever I come, I’ll have a set to use.

The same problem is there for cups, and to an even greater extent, the fairness cup.  The issue is that with a cheap fairness cup (the cheapest I’ve seen is around 10 RMB)is that the pouring is poor.  The spout is shaped like a semi-circle, and those generally pour very poorly, with the thing dripping all over while you try to pour.  Ideally, the spout should be long and tapered.  The fairness cups that have that nice spout, however, are expensive and generally well decorated.  It seems rather stupid to buy an expensive fairness cup to go with the dirt cheap gaiwan (and the dirt cheap tea tray).  It just doesn’t match.

The same is true for teacups.  I can buy the cheapest thing, but they don’t look so nice.  Anything slightly nicer is expensive.  I also want one where all the contents of the gaiwan will fit in one cup, eliminating the fairness cup all together (unless I’m serving guests), so that limits my choices.  There just isn’t much middle ground here, as opposed to Beijing.  Mind you, even the expensive stuff clock in at under 100 RMB, but when a gaiwan can be had for 5…. it seems like a lot.

What to do, what to do??

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New teapot

April 6, 2007 · Leave a Comment

This is a new teapot I got for my girlfriend. I got it in Beijing, and we’re doing the work to season it for the first time today.

This thing is destined for cooked puerh… so now it’s simmering in a slow cooker with a lot of cooked puerh smell going around the room….

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Gaiwan purchase

December 4, 2006 · 2 Comments

I went back to Maliandao today, mainly to get this

Two sets of idential teaware, tiny gaiwans with cups that are big enough to take one infusion. This is so that I can conduct taste tests of two things against each other without overdosing myself on tea. Ideally, I should also have an electronic scale, but I didn’t get one today :(. It’s good enough anyway…. for now. I also got the puerh knife on the right. I never had one.

Then I stopped at a puerh store, and got stuck there.

The owner is quite a character, a Northeast China guy who went to Yunnan some years ago (probably got sent there during the Cultural Revolution) and stayed there for quite a while, and started dabbling in the tea business more than a decade ago, so he claims. A chain smoker who probably goes through at least two packs a day, he was pretty excited to have someone to babble to, i.e. me, and I stayed there for something like three hours.

When I walked in, there were already two customers there. They bought 1200 RMB worth of goods (two cooked bricks, and two raw cakes), which will come out to…. something like 300 RMB a piece. I honestly don’t think any of those things are worth that much. They got screwed, especially on the raw cakes which are worth at best 100 RMB a piece. But these are the people keeping all the businesses on Maliandao alive, I suppose.

The raw cake they had, I also tried ,and I thought it was not very good. It claims to be Yiwu, but it can’t be. I then tried another much better looking (and tasting) cake, but it’s also not pure Yiwu. I didn’t even ask for a quote — it’s not bad, but not that great. I can find much better stuff, so why bother with this?

The cooked brick, however…. is quite interesting. I ended up with one at home. I think I paid a little too much, but it’s 1kg, and per gram, it’s very cheap for what it’s worth. Since I never buy cooked puerh, I think it says something about this brick 🙂

It’s got none of the nasty cooked taste. Instead, the taste is an overwhelmingly sweet, mellow, and with a dry date aroma that I really liked. I figured it’s not a bad thing to drink when I feel like something more mellow. It looks quite nasty in appearance, but what the heck…..

So that was my afternoon at Maliandao. I didn’t even make it to one store that I wanted to go. Oh well, there’s always next time.

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