Kunming

[kuánglóng]

The Chinese tea business is a dirty one...

Not only the chinese part. Just like in any other business an alarmingly large part of the tea industry reeks of some of the very finest traits of human nature and many teabiz folks I've met over the years don't seem to care too much, if at all for the safety, health and welfare of their workers. customers or the environment.
Last year more than two thirds of the tea that I bought was certified organic and I'm more and more motivated to exclusively buy my tea and other goodies directly from organic farms or from folks or businesses that have a set of values similar to mine and focus on safe products from organic or at least sustainable farming, like Jun Chiyabari, William of Bannacha or puretea (to name but a few).

[jayinhk]

The Chinese tea business is a dirty one...

Not only the chinese part. Just like in any other business an alarmingly large part of the tea industry reeks of some of the very finest traits of human nature and most folks I've met over the years don't seem to care too much, if at all for the safety, health and welfare of their workers. customers or the environment.
Last year more than two thirds of the tea that I bought was certified organic and I'm more and more motivated to exclusively buy directly from organic farms or from folks or businesses that have a set of values similar to mine and focus on safe products from organic or at least sustainable farming, like Jun Chiyabari, William of Bannacha or puretea (to name but a few).

This is true...the tea production side of things is almost always in less economically-developed countries, where the room for fudgery is much greater than in more developed nations with stricter rules on production and processing. I too feel like only buying tea from reputable sources, especially with pu. You can't trust all of the places that claim their tea is organic, or certified organic, even. The tea shop in Chiang Mai airport claimed many of their teas were organic and had framed certificates to that effect...that expired last year.