2003 Menghai "Big Green Tree" (Fake)

The beauty of simple things. The wabi, in wabi-sabi. Something that is quite an important force in my life.

To see a world in a grain of sand
and Heaven in a wild flower

Auguries of Innocence,
Blake

I have a voracious appetite for reading about tea, for all my cautions to others about how real learning comes from experience, and not text. That said, I am quite picky in my reading: I have little interest in grandiosity (and have wasted quite enough money on tea-books, most of which are good for nothing but improving my compost heap), and I prefer the trenchant reporting of individuals' experiences. I love reading tea-blogs, tea-fora, all that body of work that others call "disposable", but which I find indisposable. There's nothing more fascinating to me than small words written about their passions, and perhaps that's why I spill so many of them here.

This tea came about from such reading. It was quite some time ago, and I can't remember whereabouts it was written, but someone was reporting that they had bought some fake Big Green Tree, and that they liked it nonetheless. This caught my attention, I was impressed by their open-mindedness, and have come across some fun "fakes" myself. It is very much like finding a world in a grain of sand.

So, I clicked away approximately $20 for this assumedly fake cake, from Royal Tea Garden. It looks like they still have it in stock at the time of writing, though maybe the price has risen in past months.

The packing was absolutely atrocious. Really, really poor. At least one quarter of the cake had been battered out of its loose compression thanks to the lack of padding. C'est la vie - maybe that adds a little "sabi" (knackeredness) to the "wabi" (simplicity)!

The wrapper was very loose, as if badly re-packaged, and I was heartily amused to see that the neifei had just been placed loose on top of the cake. Presumably, someone has obtained (or copied) a bunch of old neifei and seen fit to include them, rather than bother with all the trouble of inserting it into the cake.

The great thing about not expecting much from a tea is that your expectations are liable to be met, and perhaps even exceeded. So it was with this fake: it was rough, brusque, and passingly similar to the actual 2003 Big Green Tree (thanks again to CB's tea library for that sample), but actually rather nice.

The brew was thin, and it wasn't a technically sound cake in terms of huigan [returning sweetness], kougan [texture in the mouth], or yunxiang [after-aroma at the back of the throat], but it was fun. Tough, aggressive, unrefined, and rather good fun.

Much more interesting than, for example, the 2008 Xiaguan XY copy.

I wish I could remember where I read about this one so that I could thank them. Though one cake is enough (and heaven knows, I don't want to risk that bad packaging again), it's always enlightening to try fakes - especially fun ones, as this turned out to be.