Taobao Tea. TOPIC MOVED FOR REVIEW

[puyuan]

Plenty of unnecessary and, for a seller, quite suspicious vitriol here, but unlike you, I'll try to keep this grown-up, not answering anything on my behalf. I trust the seller on three accounts: I trust Mark, who's personally acquainted with him, I know the quality of the cakes, and the conversations I had with him. He and his products never gave me reason to mistrust any claims. I would never expect him to show up in a chinese tea forum with broadly sweeping statements trying to stop beginners from buying from western sellers, for instance.

You know, I would 300% understand skepticism with my claims, but these statements here suggest, to say the least, something else:

I never saw any Chinese person in tea mountains and can not recommend any of them and say 100% these teas are pure gushu.

Not even the farmers? Are you lost in a Twilight Zone episode?

If you talk and visit many villages and tea farmers or "maocha sellers" you can only listen foreigners are totally honest and fair idiots who watch every step of their small productions of their puer.

Only foreigners like yourself are honest and reliable, you mean, and all chinese are scam artists or lazy bums? Was this post your idea of good publicity for your business?

[honza]

Farmers and Chinese sellers are two different groups.

Is nothing with me and nothing with my business. I am mark as vendor here because I am, but I talk here as private tea drinker and I am not hidden in any nick name, my real name is Honza. Hope here is not some limited to say opinion as personal drinker, or it is ?
And my opinion and experience from few springs I spend in teamountains is what I wrote. If your experience come from talk with some seller then I only can say, chinese tea sellers can nice talk about their tea. I personaly only know two or three Chinese sellers who can say "this tea is fine, but this tea is crap" on their teas they offer.

Is nice to see you belive your laoban but I say here is a lot vendors like Tea Uruchin, Pu-erh.sk or some not online foreigner sellers which I can say their tea is 100% gushu and I know the tea is often cheaper than Taobao these days for real good stuff.
Peace

[Tead Off]

No, you can express your opinion freely. Perhaps your English is a bit hard to understand. I had difficulty understanding what you were trying to say.

[honza]

Sorry for my English, yes is bad.
I want to say that is hard to agree what Puyuan said about the seller. For many reasons which I tried to tell.

[JakubT]

Puyuan, the sort of sentences as "Only foreigners like yourself are honest and reliable, you mean, and all chinese are scam artists or lazy bums? Was this post your idea of good publicity for your business?" is exactly the type of non-constructive remarks that tend to end up in unnecessary hostility. Since Honza did not even suggest such a thing, it might be good if you calmed down and thought a bit more on what you write.

Second - the claim about people who supervise everything closely, meticulously, etc., is quite widespread, even about people who do 10 different cakes (or more) - supervising everything is quite impossible without a teleporter. I think that a certain skepticism about such claims is understandable (especially as many chinese makers tend to exaggerate in many ways).

[honza]

"all chinese are scam artists or lazy bums?"

Nope, not all Chinese are like that, such as Chinese collectors who come to tea mountains and personaly care about every gram of their teas. One of them I met who pressed cakes in the same Yiwu factory in 2012 his 120 cakes spend 2 weeks everyday from morning to evening with farmers and pick with them some dingjiazhai and wangong and pay nearly 50% higher price than normal gushu price in these places to be sure all big trees tea will be sold to him-and not mix with any small tea trees. He was Chinese rich man who never sells his tea to nobody, only shares with tea friends.
But this was tea collector and if you know and personaly see any tea Chinese seller who do this, and offer these teas with acceptable price, please tell me.
Sorry for this off topic

[shah82]

I get the sense that such collectors are only successful at doing that at the margins. Some people get good tea, other people get expensive tea. You have to be very experienced and knowledgeable to get anything good by visiting farms in Yunnan.

If there's one thing I've ever noticed about puerh, it's that the distribution of good puerh is not open. You can't outbid anyone. You can't get it at the source. Virtually everything that's any good at this late date is locked down among people with very firm connections to each other. You have to insert yourself into one such web in order to get anything truly good.

Even with things like the Baohongyinji Bingdao that has samples being available, I just think back to the Baohongyinji ZhenRenYuFeng sample I've had before, which was pretty good, but not tops in the way TIM's GFZ can get, or like the DTH 2008 Yiwu that OriginTea can procure if needed. So I presume that this Bingdao will be pretty good, but not quite tops. Just on the basis that people can only have access to a selection of teas of similar quality/price ratios in their network.

[MarshalN]

Plenty of unnecessary and, for a seller, quite suspicious vitriol here, but unlike you, I'll try to keep this grown-up, not answering anything on my behalf. I trust the seller on three accounts: I trust Mark, who's personally acquainted with him, I know the quality of the cakes, and the conversations I had with him. He and his products never gave me reason to mistrust any claims. I would never expect him to show up in a chinese tea forum with broadly sweeping statements trying to stop beginners from buying from western sellers, for instance.

You know, I would 300% understand skepticism with my claims, but these statements here suggest, to say the least, something else:

I never saw any Chinese person in tea mountains and can not recommend any of them and say 100% these teas are pure gushu.

Not even the farmers? Are you lost in a Twilight Zone episode?

If you talk and visit many villages and tea farmers or "maocha sellers" you can only listen foreigners are totally honest and fair idiots who watch every step of their small productions of their puer.

Only foreigners like yourself are honest and reliable, you mean, and all chinese are scam artists or lazy bums? Was this post your idea of good publicity for your business?

I'm Chinese, and I'm sometimes skeptical of the claims of some of the foreign tea makers in China (not all, some) just as much as I'm skeptical of Chinese tea makers. Now...

Is it really possible to offer up a 320 RMB cake of gushu Youle in 2013 spring?

I suppose it's probably just possible... but the maker of it wouldn't be making much money, if at all. With maocha at Youle, for example, selling for over 700 RMB a kilo, selling his cakes at 320 a bing is... pretty much zero profit, maybe even negative profit given all the other costs involved. Why would he do this? To benefit mankind? Or, much more likely, it's not good gushu as he claims.

It doesn't really matter what the laoban is like. I don't care if Mother Teresa is selling me tea - it doesn't make my tea better. If the tea is good, great. If not, I'm not going to buy it. And the prices of the teas here don't suggest something I really would like to gamble on.

[Tead Off]

I think most of us who understand the selling game played by many vendors can by-pass the spin and get right down to the look and taste of a cake. Puyuan is vouching, in a sense, for the integrity of this seller. If I understand correctly, he has bought and enjoyed the teas from this seller. That's a start. I'm pretty sure that if a cake from this vendor were shared by 5 or 10 drinkers here, the opinions would vary quite a bit. What is good puerh to Puyuan may be mediocre to Shah or someone else. I've been at tables where everyone is raving about a tea and I couldn't agree with them. The importance of samples becomes relevant in cases where you are buying online unless you personally share the same taste as the seller. I've never found a seller where I shared all their tastes! Not being able to taste the teas before buying, is a sure recipe for wasting money. And, not having the experience to know what is a good tea is another way of wasting money. But, people love to waste money.

[puyuan]

Plenty of unnecessary and, for a seller, quite suspicious vitriol here, but unlike you, I'll try to keep this grown-up, not answering anything on my behalf. I trust the seller on three accounts: I trust Mark, who's personally acquainted with him, I know the quality of the cakes, and the conversations I had with him. He and his products never gave me reason to mistrust any claims. I would never expect him to show up in a chinese tea forum with broadly sweeping statements trying to stop beginners from buying from western sellers, for instance.

You know, I would 300% understand skepticism with my claims, but these statements here suggest, to say the least, something else:

I never saw any Chinese person in tea mountains and can not recommend any of them and say 100% these teas are pure gushu.

Not even the farmers? Are you lost in a Twilight Zone episode?

If you talk and visit many villages and tea farmers or "maocha sellers" you can only listen foreigners are totally honest and fair idiots who watch every step of their small productions of their puer.

Only foreigners like yourself are honest and reliable, you mean, and all chinese are scam artists or lazy bums? Was this post your idea of good publicity for your business?

I'm Chinese, and I'm sometimes skeptical of the claims of some of the foreign tea makers in China (not all, some) just as much as I'm skeptical of Chinese tea makers. Now...

Is it really possible to offer up a 320 RMB cake of gushu Youle in 2013 spring?

I suppose it's probably just possible... but the maker of it wouldn't be making much money, if at all. With maocha at Youle, for example, selling for over 700 RMB a kilo, selling his cakes at 320 a bing is... pretty much zero profit, maybe even negative profit given all the other costs involved. Why would he do this? To benefit mankind? Or, much more likely, it's not good gushu as he claims.

It doesn't really matter what the laoban is like. I don't care if Mother Teresa is selling me tea - it doesn't make my tea better. If the tea is good, great. If not, I'm not going to buy it. And the prices of the teas here don't suggest something I really would like to gamble on.

I was going to leave this topic be, as this very type of bickering is why I never post in tea forums, but since I like your blog... Although I'm more than happy to help and share tea with anyone, I'm not even minutely interested in converting anyone to anything - the less people buying tea I like, the better. I was commenting on a link that someone found heavens knows how - and regret it. For everything else, videant alii.

[MarshalN]

Well, I'm just commenting on the teas based on basic business deduction - if the cost of the tea (what he claims he's selling) is X, and his price is Y.... how is it possible if he probably has to lose money on the items, especially given the that he can probably easily sell them for a lot more in person at his store?

The only logical conclusion, given the tea business environment in China, is that the goods are not what they claim they are.

Now, the tea can still be a good bargain for 320 RMB a cake - I didn't say anything about the quality for the price. I'm merely commenting on that he claims it's gushu but the prices don't seem possible for gushu material (or at least pure gushu material, maybe that's the catch). There's a bit of a sleigh-of-hand there, regardless of what's going on.

I am one of those people who think the "oh, the owner of X shop is a great person!" is never a good reason to buy tea from that person. People say that about the guy who owns Verdant Tea, but god help me if I ever get near that place.

[puyuan]

Even with things like the Baohongyinji Bingdao that has samples being available, I just think back to the Baohongyinji ZhenRenYuFeng sample I've had before, which was pretty good, but not tops in the way TIM's GFZ can get, or like the DTH 2008 Yiwu that OriginTea can procure if needed. So I presume that this Bingdao will be pretty good, but not quite tops. Just on the basis that people can only have access to a selection of teas of similar quality/price ratios in their network.

I'm no baohongyinjigologist but I'm under the impression that these runs are very different in purpose. I remember someone telling me the Zhenrenyufeng is Yishanmo. I estimated that it's from a range of the nationally protected areas that is close enough to there. It's Yiwu tea that passed Zhou Yu's scrutiny. I don't think it's meant to be this premium thing that will surpass any other Yiwu tea. Yiwu is very diverse and so is GFZ, which is geographically a very, very, loose apellation. I don't know about the GFZ Tim pressed, but it might be a case of comparing any number of distinct "GFZ" areas (Baishahe, Baichayuan, Chawangshu, or Tongqinghe Wangong and other places) with something completely different. With the Bingdao the idea probably was getting some of the more rarified material, since it's one of their productions supposedly meant for internal consumption only, which makes that sample very interesting.

[puyuan]

Well, I'm just commenting on the teas based on basic business deduction - if the cost of the tea (what he claims he's selling) is X, and his price is Y.... how is it possible if he probably has to lose money on the items, especially given the that he can probably easily sell them for a lot more in person at his store?

The only logical conclusion, given the tea business environment in China, is that the goods are not what they claim they are.

Now, the tea can still be a good bargain for 320 RMB a cake - I didn't say anything about the quality for the price. I'm merely commenting on that he claims it's gushu but the prices don't seem possible for gushu material (or at least pure gushu material, maybe that's the catch). There's a bit of a sleigh-of-hand there, regardless of what's going on.

I am one of those people who think the "oh, the owner of X shop is a great person!" is never a good reason to buy tea from that person. People say that about the guy who owns Verdant Tea, but god help me if I ever get near that place.

I have no qualms with this line of thinking, but are you sure 700/kg went for every single plot of land in Youle, including Yanuo/Longpa? I asked around for an estimate of the autumn maocha there last year and I could not get a steady figure.

[MarshalN]

Fall maocha is also cheaper...

There's probably slight variations in prices, but his maocha cost needs to be lower by a lot for him to have a reasonable profit margin. It's hard to see where that can come from other than blending in lesser leaves.

[puyuan]

Fall maocha is also cheaper...

There's probably slight variations in prices, but his maocha cost needs to be lower by a lot for him to have a reasonable profit margin. It's hard to see where that can come from other than blending in lesser leaves.

I'll ask.