Anyhow, by wandering into various Chinese Medicine stores, I found two that had some pu'erh worth buying. The first was actually a Vietnamese store, they had a pretty good selection of all sorts of teas, as well as these two Xiaguan tuochas. They were $2.99 @, and the are a shu and a sheng. The bottom of the sheng is stamped 2006, so it is already been aging
The leaves are not the best, lots of twigs and bits, but for $2.99, I think it is a pretty good deal. Certainly drinkable. Certainly less than I have paid for a 2006 Xiagan toucha before -
The real find was a 250 g bag of loose tea. I asked for pu'erh, the tea is labled pu'erh, but when the english speaking manager called out to the assistant to bring the tea, it was clearly "bo lay" I heard.
This was the real deal. I did not open it in Canada (I did not want to try taking a bag of leafy stuff through customs) - so when I got home I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was shu, as it was dark. It smelled more like chinese medicine in the store, so I did not really know it how it would be. For $2.99 - It is definately aged sheng. Not quite worth flying back to toronto to pick up lots more, but a very happy surprise.
Overall, a fun diversion from business and though most of the stores had nothing i was interested in, it was certainly worth spending a few hours wandering around.
