Of Teas, Khajiiti, and Teanos
The сhina tea shops became trendy in the past decade, being way more of a niche earlier. While they were more or less honest with goods at the start, the global enshittification soaked them hard. I’m not even talking about gong fu this time — the tea itself has dropped in quality. I mean, an average tea connoisseur (myself included) has barely tasted something of truly top premium grade so exquisite that the price per ounce goes like $30/oz plus (I’m crazy but ain’t that wacko). So the first few batches an abstract seller is really trying and sells exactly what he promises for a reasonable price… but the temptation is stronk when you see a noob with wild money.
Everything is whispering “I know a few fancy words and have no idea how Keemun should be prepared and taste, take my coins, kind khajiit”. You need balls of dragonwood plated with 1 inch of AISI 304 steel AND a heart of gold to resist that. Well, so no one does. The noob asks for Keemun — sell him “fresh spring Keemun grade AAA+ right from the heart of Anhui mountains from a family farm”, that is in fact grade 2 non-smoked lapsang souchong from… uhm… hell if I know what those hooks and patterns mean. At least it goes for $4/oz when it barely costs a buck, and makes the noob happy, makes the khajiit happy and makes the sneaky straw-hat happy too, because it’s in fact 5 years old grade 3 which nobody sane would ever buy. Cut the costs, raise the prices. If the noob is suspicious of the khajiit pulling his leg, there’s an incredible list of things to put him in his place. That’s a special terroir, a cold spring, the season too wet/dry/cloudy/sunny, Yangtze was too low, the water was too hot/cold/mineralized, damn the solstice, the kettle was of [improper material], the Chi was spoiled by asking ridiculous questions, because FU, that’s why. The noob blushes and retreats in tears to study The Wise Tea Bloggers some more. Damn right, son, your ancestors are so displeased with your ignorance you can hear their loud tsk-tsk-tsk.
Thing is, you can’t be taught only by reading about the tea, like you can’t be a deaf music reviewer. You have to taste different batches of the same name to get the baseline. And the best way is to shop at the Chinese-owned marketplaces. Not on your Amazon. The Chinese marketplaces are way more hardcore when it comes to the tea, while Amazon and the likes just don’t want to hear customers’ major complaints. The Chinese won’t tolerate uncertified or blatant counterfeits, again, when it comes to the tea, because that’s one of their industries they’re exceptionally proud of, and “losing face” in this area is something despicable. National treasure, sure. I’m not saying they’re all of those dragonwood balls, if they could sell pu-erh of 2023 like it’s 2003 — they might, but at least it’d be a reasonbly safe pu-erh, while westerns could sell you poo-ewrh and dissolve into fogs.
If you’re tryna buy an elite grade or rarity, or rarity of top grade, on the marketlace, you actually deserve to be scammed, on that opportunity khajiiti will put their balls away under the counter. Da Hung Pao, Mao Feng, ye trewe olde pu-erh, Dian Hong Jin Luo AAA — for $2/oz, sure, come, buy, deer laowai, very quality cheap. It actually looks like you’ve just switched a local khajiit to a straw-hat khajiit, and yet still being fooled. Yup, but with fewer losses, and the straw-hat will sell something safe. And now we’re coming to an ultimate power-move. Pick a good-rated straw-hat khajiit and browse for the factory-made products. How?
Most of smaller tea manufacturers can’t afford to have their own packaging production unit. There are hundreds of factories doing that for the cooperatives and infamous family farms. So if you see the same package over and over, the tea inside might be from, well, anywhere and of any quality (still good, if you paid attention and found a good-rated straw-hat). The difference is a sticker with details, like 3x2 inches in size, including SC[14 numbers] and GB/T [some other numbers]. SC is a license which actually guarantees that it is a real, existing manufacturer/packager, and the mention of GB/T means they follow the standard of producing this exact tea. And the standards are harder than those balls. No SC or GB/T — no buy, bad khajiit. Any number of A’s they’re putting on the sticker are a white lie, there are grades but they are numerical from Grade 0 to down below, but it doesn’t directly reflect the quality of tea, it’s the quality of leaves. Like, for example, grade 0 is with tips/pretty rolled leaves, grade 1 is neatly rolled leaves, grade 2 is rolled leaves but older and might include a stick or two — which totally isn’t a bad thing for some varieties. Personally, I’ve drunk Grade 1 and Grade 2 and while the second has a few thin leaf stalks, I wouldn’t find any difference unless you’d pay me for that.
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But these are still not the mammoth factories tho. The big guys can afford their own packaging, most likely made by themselves. If you see a box of tea, or a solid zip-packet, and it’s not flooding the search result, and the price are above the average — google that pic and ask if that’s a brand or stock packing. Feeding the pic to Deepseek works too, sometimes better, sometimes worse, I’d advise to ask both. If they say stock packaging for anyone, you’d better pass for now, if they find the factory — there’s our dude. And then… whatever, actually. Since it’s a factory, it has some weight and history in the industry. Deepseek can dig up some info on them, being able to access the “inner parts” of Chinese internet. Usually I’m just asking how big and famous they are, and if they’re “a solid mass-market brand for everyday tea” — that’s a bingo. If you see the COFCO sign on the packet, that’s it, that’s the damn mammoth or at the very least it’s mammoteen, cuz no one screws with COFCO, COFCO screws anyone it wants to, for COFCO is the State. Seriously, that’s a state leviathan of all things edible, maybe they aren’t diving into the golden depths of unique farmer teas, but the quality has the sturdiness of celestial jade. There’s also quite a few factories that are highly respected even by COFCO itself, like Baishaxi Tea Factory (1939), and long lists of those sorted by overall sales, online sales etc.. What, the competition is still there, especially online — Efuton/Yifutang has made a major cash over a few years on T-Mall, sometimes dominating 11.11 and CNY. They all great in some specifics and just fine in other varieties, but you just can’t go wrong with these. Again, ask Google/Deepseek for details, learn about the market, if you want to drink something authentic and not a bunch of hay from a blank bag with big 肥料 on it.
The factory mass-market tea is stable in taste and quality. The fact they’re a factory is a sign of their solid ground. They’re selling the tea to their own, not to the laowais, so they can’t sell bullshit and stay in business. There’s a government control with a damn big assortment of hammers to play whack-a-mole with their missteps, they don’t mind breaking some of the less sturdy or/and throwing the guilty in jail. Some of really big guys are authors of those GB/T, or have enough of influence/importance/both to direct their development. They make tea that you can and should drink to set the bar, to be a solid neutral Zero on your scale. If you drink their Keemun a few times, the local khajiit won’t screw you up with smelly outdated Diang Hong, ’cause now you know what’s what. “Your Keemun smells of smoke. You know what, your whole shop smells, I’m outta here”.
Just don’t fall for the marketing. If it screams about “exquisivity” and costs too much, it’s not exquisite but still costs too much. Besides, to feel that “exquisivity” you should have been into teas for years, and why you’re reading the basics… you weird. Ew. The whole point of this shopping is building a scale. You buy a factory tea, that’s a Zero. Then you buy the same tea from another factory. Then you could take a chance and buy a noname, which by all means could be even better than an industrial product. You could even track backward from some noname to factory, tho it’d be a little confusing if the noname would beat the industry. “Wait, so that’s a baseline… *a panic kicks in* JFC, I have to recall where did I buy that noname, god have mercy!”.
Again, there’s a few teas that are highly, extremely prone to be a fake. Examples? According to markets: If the amounts of Da Hung Pao being sold on markets were real, all of China should be planting a whole country with that instead of any other tea; Tie Guan Yin seems to be growing all the way to Mongolia, it would grow further north but the horses start choking on the lilac aroma; Dian Hong doesn’t grow leaves at all — it lives solely in tips. Okay, maybe it has an occasional first leaf but that’s a disgrace to the whole terroir, and Fangorn Ents do their tsk-tsk-tsk for especially long. So it’s not that deadly if you buy any of them for a reasonable price. Da Hung Pao might be close to the original one (NEVER original, EVER), Tie Guan Yin from the right factory would smell of something pleasantly flowery, and Dian Hong would contain a few fluffy tips. Just 1) tone down the expectation, 2) ramp up the scepticism, and 3) keep in mind prices too high or too low are red flags for the casual tea drinker.
As always on the market, refuel your scepticism tank and read some reviews from both sides, negative and positive. The Chinese are frowning upon exalted reviews, because they suspect a paid promo. And the contenders aren’t that fluffy to skip the opportunity to throw some poo-ewrh piece at their colleagues. In fact, the average review score 4.7 and up, plus a thousand+ reviews in total are nice metrics of a nice product: the promo/downer bots are being shot on the place, so even if a few managed to change the big score, it’ll be watered down by more realistic scoregivers. Funny thing, the sellers are scared AF of the overly positive reviews of an honest but moderately good tea. “I’ve seen Buddha while drinking that tea!” — “Why are you doing this to me, laowai!”. Because if the next buyer won’t see Buddha, he blames the seller. Anthropology at its finest. Homework: calculate how many of 5* reviews should the seller get to 4.7 rating if someone gave him 5, and then 1. “Nice tea for everyday, neat leaves, almost no fannings, tasty, no shame in sharing, good luck seller” — use simpler words and true facts, and the guy will pee himself with joy like a poodle that gets his skritches after a long abstinence due that squirrel incident (“oh come on, not again, I told you it was a huge squirrel, menacingly chewing on an acorn, I was just excited… too much… *sorry waggle*).
The seller must specialize in tea, period. If he sells an assortment of teas — good, it means he has been doing this for some time and for a living. If he sells powerbanks, polyether T-shirts, anti-squirrel electrowoofers, towels, agates and some pu-erh, he doesn’t know what he is selling, he just found something so cheap that he hopes to flip it asap, and then follow the fog. The professional stays on the market for years, and after you bought some teas a few times and are happy with the quality, stick to him and seek similar guys.
By the way, now if you’re in, you can’t just settle on “favourite brand” and be done with the game. The quality may differ, the khajiit goes out of business, the factory might screw up with pesticides, the contenders (and there’s a swarm) might release something better, cheaper and faster in delivery. But don’t let it feed FOMO. After all, a Keemun 1 is a variation of Keemun 2. You lived most of your life without either, and if you can’t find your favourite Keemun 1 anymore, drink Keemun 2 until you find Keemun 3 that will show those suckers who’s the real Keemun around here. And even if some shitty-grade Teanos snaps his fingers and erases Keemun as a whole — hey, pssst, khajiit has yummy Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong if you have coins.
