2002 Yiwu Bamboo-Wrapped Zhuancha

I was at an interview two months ago, and the sage old professor presiding over the interview panel gave me a mischievous look (after I had just given a science-based presentation) and said,

"How important is it, do you think, to be able to communicate and discuss your work with new people, rather than just researching? That is, what importance would you place on the 'soft skills', such as discussion and conversation, in comparison to your scientific skills?"

It's a bombshell question, which interviewers sometimes like to drop and then walk away from, to see what manner of carnage is caused after the detonation. I blagged my way through, to the panel's seeming approval (got the job!), but remember using the dreadful words "proselytise" and "evangelise" with a straight face, much to my later embarrassment.

While digesting the interview in retrospect, I realised that the most successful people I'd admired before (academics, industrialists, or otherwise) spent a lot of time emphasising the "soft skills". They were very smooth, in dealing with everyone from the nurse on the hospital floor to the CEO of a national body. The soft skills aren't explicitly taught at university, excepting the odd random little course, and instead they slip in unnoticed by other means. What other means?

My university attracts quite a lot of criticism for being what the critics call "nothing but a dining club". To an arguable extent, this is based on truth: the social aspect of academic life with people outside your discipline is emphasised, with most members of the university having formal dinners at least once or twice per week during term. It's good fun, and you get to talk to people who aren't engineers, which is great. Engineers are nice people, but when you've spent all day with them, a change is welcome.

It's at the dining table that I reckon you get a surprisingly large amount of practice at the "soft skills" to which the old professor was alluding. The more you speak to people - particularly new, interesting people that you've never met - the easier it becomes, and it builds confidence. Most importantly, it knocks the rough edges off you. It helps you to get on with strange people. It makes you less of a pain in the backside.

(N.B., I'm still a huge pain in the backside, but greatly reduced from the enormous pain in the backside that I once was.)

It's not so much about the food.

We recently had the "Going Down Dinner" at my college, which celebrates those who are leaving the college ("going down") this year, including your humble correspondent. We have loads of Americans with us, and so the name "Going Down Dinner" is understandably very amusing to them, given its modern meaning over there.

Sniggering aside, it's a great opportunity to see all your old chums from the past 3-5 years, and wish them well in their lives after leaving. It's a long old event, followed by speeches from various folk in various states of inebriation, concluding with the college Master wishing us all the best. The Master is a lovely old chap, a near-retired geography professor, and I happened to be sitting opposite him this time, with a few other doctoral students.

At the end of the dinner, as we've done each week, we rose and stood behind our chairs ready for the concluding Grace. The Master, after hitting the table with his gavel:

"And now, the Grace. This time, it will be read by a departing student, who is defecting to another college*."

*Which is about 200 yards away.

The drunken and burly crowd, superbly intoxicated with port, shouted "Boo! Traitor!" And then the Master passed me the Grace.

One and a half paragraphs of Latin.
Written in heaven-knows-what script.
While inebriated.

Ouch.

You must be joking.

The next morning I was in dire need of a cure. The mighty ST came to my rescue - thankyouthankyouthankyou.

It's as black as your proverbial hat.

This dark little fellow is from 2002, and comes as a pair of zhuancha [djoo-an cha / bricks] wrapped in bamboo. ST grabbed them for Singapore$40, which comes to about US$27. The "bargain" radar is lighting up.

Tight! Tight, tight. The compression is old-school Xiaguan, and constructed of tiny leaves, as pictured above. It has a superb woody aroma - clean and sharp, and indicative of good* storage.

*I say "good", but I mean "dry". I like wet-storage, too, as I'm sure you know.

'Tis mighty woody for a 2002.

That woodiness comes out in the aroma, which is clean and sweet. Shown above, the soup already has a decent orange tinge to it - presumably not achieved through a late shaqing, given the cleanliness, sweetness, and lack of malty "redness" in the flavour. Good stuff.

I'm convinced, where do I sign?!

I love the spicy, woody flavour, which swells to a very decent huigan. ST called this "quite a mouthful", and it definitely packs a lot in. Sweetness above, plenty of goodly scents left behind to dwell in the nose. Again, the tetsubin has complemented the tea very well, with noticeable notes from the kettle smoothing out the edges and making it almost creamy.

"This is very clean and smooth - can we get some?" sayeth She.

No roughness, just plenty of smooth wood, lasting well out past the 15th infusion. At $13.50 per 250g brick, this is a real bargain. Many thanks to ST for sending this my way... hopefully to be joined by a few of their brethren!

A real soother after a torrid, yet highly enjoyable, Going Down.

2009 Mingxiangyayuan - Hailanghao "Zhang Jia Wan"

Reasons to go to Dublin:

i. Real Guiness (see below), not the black water we get in the UK
ii. Irish stew
iii. "Irish Breakfast" tea
iv. Hordes of tourists from the USA

Amusingly, "Dublin" means "black water" in Gaelic

Trinity College is beautiful, too. I've never seen Georgian architecture on such a scale, without mixture of other architectural styles - it's as if it has been lifted out of the past, and perfectly preserved, without later addition.

Critics of the city would say that this is because investment in Dublin promptly halted after the Georgian era (approximately when we were scrapping with our colonies in the New World) - I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to glimpse a bygone age. What Georgian examples exist in Oxford, Cambridge, and London, for example, live shoulder-to-shoulder with Regency, Victorian, Edwardian, and modern buildings, and so the sheer homogeneity of Trinity College's main quad is unique. And very pretty:

What is in fact a Tudor university appears remarkably Georgian...

The UK academic community in my field is fairly small, and so the same faces keep cropping up at most conferences, which is nice. Most people are connected to one another through two or three steps, which makes for a friendly atmosphere.

Enjoying the peace of being back at home, Lei and I decided that the only real benefit to going away is to remind you how much you love your home.

The quiet joys of home

Huge uberthanks to ST for providing this sample of Hailanghao's "Zhang Jia Wan", sold by Yunnan Sourcing for the heady sum of $74. It is part of an unholy trinity of limited-quantity Hailanghao cakes, including a Manzhuan for $64 and a "Gao Shan Zhai" tea for heaven-knows-how-much.

The price is a big sticking point, and obstructs my approach to the tea. Ordinarily, I like Hailanghao teas (as you've probably guessed from my numerous previous articles on the subject), because they are low-maintenance, enjoyable, and inexpensive. I wouldn't have thought that the quality of Hailanghao could ever aspire to the "serious cake" prices attached to these cakes, but I'm willing to be proved wrong!

Chums have looked at the prices and commented "I won't be buying those." I guess these cakes are for the real Hailanghao fans out there. I consider to be myself a card-carrying fan of Hailanghao, and so I hope for great things, despite my suspicions.

The extraordinarily high price means that the tea comes under a bright spotlight - much moreso than, for example, the inexpensive Hailanghao of previous years. Can dear old "HLH" make the jump into the big leagues of expensive cakes?

Sweet and smooth, it's all a bit wulong

Those leaves shown above are dark and appear in large fragments. They are leathery-sweet, and darkly grapish - very young and clean, but certainly very "green".

Perhaps it doesn't come out in the above photograph, but the soup is a melon-orange colour suggestive of sourness. Indeed, it is a bit sour - particularly in the throat, where it seems rather abrasive.

Most obvious is a great big pile of buttery sweetness in both body and aroma, which rather reminds me of a Dayuling wulong I had from Teamasters some years ago. This heads nicely into a savoury, grainlike character. I could believe it is Yiwu, but it seems a touch unusual in its butteriness (in a decent way).

I have two primary concerns about this cake:

i. it's a bit harsh in the throat, and has a sourness back there that I don't enjoy; and,

ii. it is lacking in content, and I had to add more leaves than usual, and brew harder than usual, in order to get much out of it.

It is a very difficult cake: its thinness means that you need to push it quite hard, but it doesn't stand up to stress, and rapidly becomes sour and rough.

Noting the extreme price of this cake, I couldn't recommend it. It has the usual flaws of Hailanghao, being none-too-potent, and none-too-smooth. At the ordinary Hailanghao prices, these are entirely forgiveable, and I have bought many solid performers of this brand over the years. At $74, this tea simply is not up to par. It's high price must surely be a function of its rarity (YS listed 13 cakes) rather than its quality.

Thanks again to ST - I can understand your disappointment!

Many conference presentations don't tend to generate positive audience responses

(Facebook chums can see the remainder of my infantile sketchings from Dublin.)

2005 Menghai Pengcheng "Yuanyexiang"

Phew! This tea has so many incidents of what a tort lawyer might call "passing off" that I don't know where to begin. Let's start at the top.

A wise man once said, "I won't buy anything from a factory with 'Menghai' in its name, unless it's Menghai Tea Factory." This is sound advice. There are approximately 6.022 x 10^23 tea factories with "Menghai" in their names, and 1.0 of them produce good tea.

So, let us consider "Menghai Pengcheng" (Menghai Peng Chen, at Puerh Shop), a factory so rare and obscure that it isn't even in Babelcarp (at the time of writing!).

Before we consider the name further, allow me an apostrophe. I have much for which to thank my school (probably what would be called a "High School" in American), but of particular note is the fact that they made us read quite a few of the Chinese classics (in translation - we were just babies). This came in particularly handy when strolling on the beach at a conference with a lovely lady who would eventually become suckered into being my wife.

We studied a bunch of great texts that I honestly believe that most people would benefit from reading (Laozi, Liezi, Mozi, Kongzi/Confucius, some of the Yijing), but my favourite was Zhuangzi, the Daoist chap who wrote really witty material, following the Daodejing. I'm frivolous by nature, and Zhuangzi appeals to me. Near the start, he describes a huge, mythical bird-like creature called the "Peng", which travels bazillions of miles with its huge wings. There is a phrase in it, "Peng cheng wan li", meaning approximately "The peng journeys 10,000 miles". This has come to be a synonym for describing success in Chinese, perhaps a bit like the English "He's come a long way", or "He'll go far".

So, the two characters "Pengcheng" refer to this common saying. I instantly became impressed that the tea factory would name themselves after a phrase in the Zhuangzi, given that my prior assumption is that all tea factories are run by oily merchants with little interest in the classics. (Harsh, but fair.) However, my dear wife brought me down to earth, saying that the phrase "Peng cheng wan li" was in such common use that it would be like someone using a common Shakespearean phrase, probably without knowing its origins.

It's minutiae like this that divert me for hours.

So, the tea.

So far, so good.

This has been labelled "yuanyexiang", translated characterwise as "primeval wild aroma" by the mighty Babelcarp. I think this time, I'm with the Puerh Shop translation, which has "prairie bouquet", noting that "yuanye" is a compound, which refers to open country, the champagne or campania. My Chinese language book wisely states, "Ask not how many characters a person knows in Chinese, but how many compounds." So, I would translate "yuanyexiang" as "Open-country aroma" or something along those lines. It's the scent of the great, unkempt outdoors.

This is the second instance of passing-off for this tea, because it cannot be coincidence that it refers to an appelation made rather famous by Shuangjiang Mengku, and others.

Finally, in the centre of the bing, we have the ubiquitous characters: pu'er wang [pu'er king].

Before we even look at the leaves (above), we have a whole mountain of prejudice, bias, and a priori assumptions to overcome. It is overwhelmingly likely that this tea is poor. I would be happy to be proven wrong... but Ouch's Menghai rule (see above) is seldom wrong. Let's find out.

Brutality in a glass.

"A true exciting pu'er experience!", writes the product web-page. "One thing we are talking about a lot is the aging potential if a tea is worth keeping, you can be sure this one got it, and it shows." (sic)

The leaves are small, with compression typical of a machine-pressing. They are a touch dark, and the few tips present in the blend have turned a beige colour, placing it around the 4-5 year mark, which may not come out too well in the photograph. The aroma is decent: full sweetness, with a body of grain. It has some spicy greenness about it that I usually associate with cheaper teas.

The first infusion is cloudy orange. The aroma is generically sweet, but in the mouth it is instantly and aggressively green. The product page notes that the leaves are from Bulang, and I can believe it, because this tea is heavy going. It isn't punchy, clean, and fresh, like the 2009 Nadacha "Bulang Qiaomu", instead being the brutal harshness of the plantation. It's raw, and it hurts the throat.

Ware the leaves.

There is a sweet, grain character that was in the dry aroma, but not too much else. It reminds me of regular production Xiaguan, rather than their specials. At $23, it isn't too expensive, and Puerh Shop deserves credit for that.

Is it good for aging? Well, it is brutally astringent. If you believe that's what ages well, then go for it. I tend to look for some content and complexity underneath the brutal power, and this tea just seems too raw, too rough, too nasty, and with too few other contents.

After five infusions at home, I tire of its one-dimensional agony, and take the remainder to work where it serves as a low-maintenance background tea. Thanks to GV for passing this one on to me, as it's nice to sample from all ends of the spectrum.

Remember the "Rule of Menghai" and you won't go far wrong!

I contend that this tea has absolutely nothing to do with the bouquet of the great outdoors,
unless you happen to live next to a chemical plant

2007 Shi'er Xiansheng "Yiwu"

I've been getting reacquainted with my 2007 12 Gentlemen "Yiwu", after a year in storage. The new article has been appended to the original post, to keep my notes in one place. See you there!

2008 Haiwan - Laotongzhi "8808"

I continue to supply propaganda concerning my plans for a garden tea-house to my dear wife. I've found some beautiful little hexagonal wooden structures that look suitably rustic and chunky. We could tuck it under our willow tree, which acts as a sweet little hideaway - a perfect place to avoid it looking too showy and naff. I still haven't found that ultimately convincing argument justifying its purchase, though! Any ideas?

Haiwan. I usually steer clear of Haiwan. Walk around Beijing's huge Maliandao districts, and you'll see that every single shop window contains (i) CNNP and (ii) Haiwan "Laotongzhi" [LAOW TONG DJER]. This isn't a mark of quality, given the immense mediocrity of most Maliandao shops' offerings. That said, I've had some decent Haiwan, such as the 2006 "Mengpasha Organic" that has been doing the rounds of most of the on-line vendors.

My overall feeling with Haiwan, though, is much like my feeling to, say, Mengyang Guoyan, 6FTM, Nanjian, or even the mainstream (non-Muyechun) releases from Shuangjiang Mengku: the occassional nice one, but mostly mediocre filler. (I place modern CNNP below these.) Maybe you've found some particularly nice examples from these producers - they do exist, and I've enjoyed each label from time to time. Overall, though, I've felt that they're a bit disappointing.

Shelf space is far too limited to expend on middle-of-the-bell-curve cakes...

So how about this 8808?

It sells for $14 at Yunnan Sourcing, and the leaves look rather nice (shown above). The product description reads "ultra-premium", referring to the '0' grade number in '88-0-8'. These grades should only be taken as a broad description, as there is no standardised meaning - nor does a low number (and hence smaller leaf) imply better quality; I prefer a range of leaves in a blend, from tippy small numbers for sweetness and smoothness, to bigger basis leaves to provide a chunky, flavoursome, undercurrent.

What does "ultra-premium" mean in this context? Who knows - the leaves are small, and fairly well handled, but there is quite a bit of breakage, as you can see above. It looks like it's mostly a marketing point rather than a real process indicator. C'est la vie!

What is important is the content of the tea. This is most definitely a plantation tea, as you could assume from the price, and it's very good to see that the product description doesn't make any claims to being old-tree. I'd put this down as a decent daily tea: it has some decent character - general sweetness, some mushroom, a fairly solid body - and is priced quite low.

The real question is - would I buy any? Even at the bottom-of-the-league price of $14, you can get a lot more for your money, I think. If you're after solid plantation teas at a low price for daily, low-maintenance drinking, I prefer the old staples: Xiaguan or Menghai.

If you're after a tea for storage, I don't believe that this tea contains enough interesting content. What's going to happen to a $14 cake? The power is... OK. The flavour is... OK. The sensation in the mouth and throat is... OK. It's an "OK" tea. I can imagine this tea becoming bland over time, rather than anything beefier and more interesting - but only time will tell. Your guess is as good as mine.

In the end, this tea didn't change my mind about Haiwan, and I will continue to avoid them unless someone finds a gem. The "ultra-premium" status is obvious in neither the leaf nor the brew, and as my sample comes to an end, I won't miss its passing. It gave me some nice infusions in my office, though, while I got on with something else.

I prefer peonies to Haiwan

P.s. Lei and I are off to a conference in Hibernia, so we'll see you in a week's time.