Thoughts on Aging

Like the ouroboros, I am turning in on myself and drinking a lot of my own cakes of late.  This seems almost indecent, after a recent lifetime of continually trying new tea, and continually buying new cakes.  However, sufficient time has passed that the game is afoot!  Changes are apace.

This article is about two things: (i) cash money, and (ii) aging cakes.

If you've been here since the very beginning, Gentle Reader, or if you've read some of the older articles in the archives, you might remember that I started out writing articles for this humble site when I was but a graduate student.  In those benighted days, when my every waking hour was lived within the shadow of The Thesis, I was being paid a "scholarship", which is to say, I was not rolling in disposable income.  My university likes to trade on its name, which means it's almost preternaturally disposed to paying far below the going rate at all career levels.  You might have experienced the same.

It is ab-so-lutely striking to read some of my old articles, in revisiting my teas, to learn what I considered to be quite a lot of money in those days.  For example, check out the two teas below, which I have updated with recent tasting notes:

2007 XZH Longfeng
2006 Douji "Dayeqingbing"

These are cakes that were super, super cheap back in the day, at £23 and £13, respectively, for the 2007 XZH and the 2006 Douji.  Taking the more expensive (!) of the two as an example, that £23 in 2007 is now approximately £28 in 2018, via inflation.  Back then, as I take great delight in reading, the price was a matter of huge concern.  These days, that gets me approximately 30 minutes of swimming class for one (not both) of my young children.

This is not to say that I have become entirely profligate, but merely: how our expectations have changed when it comes to tea-prices!  How great is the distance in price between a "solid" cake at £13-£23 pounds and the modern equivalents!

(Note also the important fact that these are proper 357g bingcha, rather than the cheeky xiaobing that are now commonplace, such that vendors can reduce somewhat the effects of the enormously high "sticker price" for a 357g cake.)

Now, I'm not here to punch vendors in the metaphorical ganglia.  As with all of us who've been around a little while, it might come as a surprise to learn that vendors are human beings, and that some of them are not (entirely) douchebags.  Most of the time.  Probably.  (Love you, vendorchums.)

I used to take it as a personal insult that someone might want to be remunerated for sweating into their grey knitted underwear up a mosquito-laden mountain in Yunnan, etc.  These days, I'm happy to see these folks turning a profit; after all, tea businesses need to be sustainable (i.e., making bank) otherwise there won't be any tea businesses.  Heaven forbid we return to the dark days of Houde being the only place to buy tea (love you longtime, Houde).

However, expectations have changed, that much is clear.

The irony is so very, very sweet!  When prices were at their most affordable, my budgets were at their least amenable to purchase.  Now that personal circumstances have changed, well... you know the price of modern bingcha as well as do I.  It's not bad, it just is what it is.

So, prices are higher than they were, such is the outcome of a developed China (always a good thing) and a maturing market for pu'ercha (likewise a good thing).  There's not much to be done on that front, except enjoy older tea when we have it.

Hence onto the second aspect of this article: the introspection of a tea writer, disappearing up his own proverbial collection.  This is dangerous.  I am thus writing about cakes that are quite probably not available any more and, if they are available, might be murderously expensive.  Of course, half the fun in the teasphere is the shared experience of trying out cakes together, picking up tips on which one might buy next, and so on.  That simply can't happen if some dude starts vanishing into his own shelves.

However, I hope it might be helpful.  It's certainly turning out to be extremely instructive for me.  The last time that I revisited cakes in any number was around half a decade ago, in 2013, typically much earlier even than that.  So, we have a good number of years now from which to make our observations, form hypotheses, and maybe even draw a tentative conclusion or two.

From the above two articles, we might conclude that even quite basic teas (as those above) can do nicely with age.  £23 and £13 are not objectively high prices, and the teas were almost certainly from plantations, in my opinion.  That plantation character exists within the aged versions, but, like rancid ol' 7542 (which I adore), it has come out well.  The raw strength of the early days has smoothed, mellowed, and become elongated into a very substantial sweetness that just continues on and on.  The texture is much improved, too: these teas are thick, viscous fluids and they are rewarding.  They are not dark teas, but they have the rounded character of sanded and varnished wood, in a good way.  I like 'em.

I am also able to draw some conclusions about English storage: as you might have read in the articles above, the sheer dampness of England, and Oxford in particular, is great for keeping these teas "fed" with moisture, such that they don't die.  I believe that a lack of humidity is the death knell for pu'ercha, which I understand is commonly-received wisdom.  However, British climates are not tropical: we don't have searing heat for much of the year (almost no houses have a.c., for example), and we get high(ish) temperatures for a short part of the year.

(Climate change might have something to say about that!  As with most of the world, we're experiencing an unusual heatwave at the moment.)

The cooler temperatures mean that the teas, while staying nicely alive in the humidity, are not accelerating towards redness.  Such is the price of not aging one's tea in the tropics.  This is something that you can also see from humid-yet-cooler regions of China.

Heresy incoming: I did not choose my place to live based on its capacity to age pu'ercha.  I know, what a newb!  Thus, I mus live with the consequences.  Happily, those consequences seem to be reasonable for tea, in that it's not dying and that it's getting somewhere - albeit slowly.  If we are being generous, we might wonder if this is a similar effect to compressing one's tea extensively: tuocha age much more slowly than loose bingcha, of course.  As with the prices, it is what it is.

A final conclusion concerns the "black" character beloved of some "house styles", which seems to originate, as far as I can tell, to the mid 2000s.  Think of, for example, the recognisable house style of Xiaguan, as typified most clearly in its "FT" range, or, in the extreme, its "Baoyan" products for Tibet (from which perhaps the style originates, given that Baoyan is very much older than the mid 2000s).  Douji cakes have a similar, but noticeably different, house style.  There is processing afoot such that these teas start a little darker than they might otherwise - and, in the case of Xiaguan, very much more dark.  This brings smokiness, richness, and, sometimes, a "tobacco" association.

When these cakes were being processed in this "black" manner, there was not a huge amount of evidence to say how they would age.  We have older Baoyan, of course, but most of the FTs, Doujis, and the like come only from the mid 2000s.  So, how do they do, after some 12 years?

I rather like the result.  The power of youth has smoothed into the sweetness noted before, and the blackness lends a fragrant afterscent that is most complementary, in my opinion.  The smokiness has gone, almost entirely, and we are left with dark fruits, old summerflowers, etc.  Grab one for yourself and see if you agree.

P.s. Holy smoke: more than 7,000 views for recent articles suggests that the teasphere is very much larger than once it was.  Hordes of drinkers, unite!

Ahoy There

Avast, Gentle Reader!

Good grief, it has been a long time, has it not?  To be precise, it has been, checking the sidebar, at least one year since the previous post here at the ol' Half Dipper.  Perhaps it is not long in the life of a cake of potent, pugilistic pu'ercha, but it seems significant in duration for mere homo sapiens.

It's been so long, in fact, that I received a message the other day asking, "So what's up with your blog these days?"  As you might accurately conclude, the author was from the Americas.

I am writing from a breezy place on the island of O'ahu, which is apparently part of the USA, but which does a very good job of seeming like a lovely little island. I promised myself that I'd set aside a few hours to write to you, Gentle Reader, before I left to rejoin the real world.

So what IS up with my blog these days? I mulled over the question for some time.  I fermented and steeped and brewed over the question.  I thought it high time that some explanation might be necessary, for any old friends that still inhabit the digital nethers of this strange Interweb, and for newbs alike.  After all, are we not all newbs, in the greatest sense?

It took me a while to find my bearings. In the recent year, after swearing the darned things off (successfully) for nearly a decade, I caved in and bought a smartphone, as has become necessary for one part of my life (on which later). The switch from feeds to apps was difficult at first... but now, and I roll my eyes as I write this, I would find it difficult to function, professionally or socially, without my little iProduct.

One of the first baptisms into this brave new world came when I registered for a service that I had, like the smartphone itself, managed to avoid to date:


Instagram seems to be the new teaworld. I like Reddit very much (Mondays would not be complete without gratuitously browsing prequelmemes for half an hour), but this IG thing really seems to be the heart and soul of whatever remains of the teasphere.  I like it!

It has its downsides.

I found friends old and new in the IG multiverse, but then came to feel a certain unease. The ephemeral nature of the beast means that something comes and goes before you know it. There is little permanence, by design, of course. This means that, in order to communicate, I observe that one has to be an absolute slut.  As in, really very slutty indeed.

Many of my favourite vendors are there, and some new favourites (Crimson Lotus and Bitterleaf Teas seem like tea shops I should visit soon, among others).  However, in order to maintain a presence, the level of sluttiness involved is quite substantial.  These guys are posting all day, every day - it must be exhausting.  Every time I check, there are a few new stories (short videos) and a few new posts from each vendor.  The blood pressure on these guys must be sky-high by now!  That's some admirable, full-on sluttiness right there.

Perhaps the master of this medium, in the nicest possible way, is the King of Sluts (you knew it all along), Miss Lin at white2tea.  It's like late-90s MTV in there as far as I can see, with Miss Lin bestriding them all like a rubber-clad, titanic colossus.  There are plenty of challengers for the title, too, with sluts coming out of the woodwork from all angles.

Now, a pro like Miss Lin manages to keep up the quality, because he's been pimping for many years now.  However, the intense sluttiness seems to take its toll on those sluts closer to the median on the distribution of digital promiscuity.  It's simply very difficult to maintain any level of quality when one is pimping quite so hard.  Thus, we have to wade through an infinity of cat videos, dudes attempting to pour tea one-handed (are they gripping their phone in the other hand, or something more sinister?), and so on.

It's not pretty in there.

It is great fun, of course.  Never one to shy from a challenge, I found it a medium of good fit for that substrate of strangeness that you have tolerated here for so long: my haiku (or more properly, my haiga, in their combination with an image).  It was said of a previous president of the European Union that he was "worryingly professorial, in that he seemed to compose haiku for leisure, and read Shakespeare for fun".  This was intended as an insult by the journalist behind the piece, but in me it met with high-fives and exclamations of "my man!" I do both of those things, proudly.

So, come and join me on IG, by doing the clickings of the link below, or by finding half.dipper therein.


So, in the "ghastly private details" part of the post, as promised for my old friends, a quick update to explain the howling abyss that once comprised a pseudo-regular stream of ASCII making its way from my cortex to yours.

It's been brutal, but in a pleasurable way. Kind of like being punched in the face, but with a beautiful boxing-glove, lovingly hand-stitched from silken fibres collected by hand from the polished backsides of selected Chinese silkworms.

These last two months have seen me open a second laboratory in China, funded by the Chinese government (working on AI - are we building Skynet?!), which has been great for acquiring tea, and great for my airmiles balance, but not so great for updates here at the ol' Half Dipper. If you're ever in the Shanghai area, look me up, as there's a relatively high chance I'll be mooching around there with a bunch of similarly pasty "recently escaped from the basement" techie types. Or facedown in a bath of Tsingdao beer, one of the two.  This required the smartphone - you can't buy or sell there without the mark of the beast, or at least a smartphone, equipped with a Chinese bank account (which I now have, after a battle) and WeChatPay + Alipay.

My two dudes are now Big Dudes (being 5 and 7 years old, with better Mandarin than their ignorant father). I'm just about to finish a Research Fellowship, have moved into being an Associate Professor ("Ass Prof"!), and was last month offered a Chair. You know academia is an ancient business when a good job is named after a piece of furniture. Finally, the AI company that was set up last year is about to go through its IPO, which is an education in itself.

I'd like to get back to writing you, Gentle Reader, but I must be realistic with my own aspirations. I manage to drink tea (a lot of tea, in fact), because it seems that 95% of my job these days involves sitting in meetings and talking science. This means that I am, more often than not, in close proximity either to my own gongfucha setup in my lab, or near a temporary equivalent that I've snuck into a meeting. My ability to drink is fine - but my ability to write about it is not forthcoming. So let's proceed on that basis.

Come and join me on IG for the interim, and we can take mutual pleasure in watching all our old favourite companies dancing for our delight.  And it's not a nice dance, but rather something like a rough, abrasively grinding lapdance.

Encore! Encore!

Wuliang Clan

Gentle Reader, before we get down to our mutual camellia sinensis addiction, it would probably be helpful to give you the background to how I approached today's tea.  The one informs the other, and it would be giving you a partial assessment were I to attempt to separate the two.

Imagine, if you will bear with me, that you have been born and raised in a cold country.  Imagine childhoods spent playing in snow, long winter months of darkness, being wrapped up in heavy clothes for most of the year, and having a runny nose for about 75% of that time.  This is what it is like to be English.

You think the darkness is your ally; you merely adopted the dark.  

I was born in it, molded by it.  

I didn't see the light until I was already a man; 

by then, it was nothing but blinding!

-- Your average Englishman

Your entire life is predicated on the fact that (i) winter is dark, rainy, and cold; and (ii) summer is, at best, "quite nice".  A good summer of memory will hit the low-to-mid 20s, in degrees Celsius (i.e., in the 70s, degrees Fahrenheit).  You spend most of your life dressing in "proper" clothes (inc. cardigan), and you might slip into short sleeves for one or two months in the height of summer, to try and cope with those temperatures in the 20s (70s Fahrenheit).  Your entire childhood was spent playing sports on frosty ground, acclimatising yourself to being constantly cold.

There is very nearly no air conditioning in the entire country, because it would be unused for most of the year.  This fact alone causes tremendous amusement to people from overseas, but there really is very little use for it here.

Now, if you're still with me on this imaginary train of thought, I would like you to imagine what it would be like for temperatures to jump from being 21 degrees C (70 degrees F) on a Tuesday to 32 degrees C (90 degrees F) on the following Wednesday.

Imagine your cold constitution suddenly exposed to this heat - the hottest that it has ever been (since records began 200 years ago) in England at this time of year.

Now imagine yourself wearing a black woollen suit ("subfusc").

Now imagine yourself wearing a white bow tie, tightening around the neck.

And, finally, imagine yourself wearing heavy, scarlet, woollen robes that weigh 10% of your body-weight*.
*At your correspondent's rather lardy 75 kg.

All without air conditioning.

This is Encaenia 2017, and it is f***ing deadly for all concerned.

It is the university marking the end of the academic year, before we go our respective ways for the summer.  200 or so dons assemble in an old, pretty building designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and we sit there for an hour or so while awards are presented in classical Latin; the Professor of Poetry delivers a short homily; and the Public Orator does what seems to be 15 minutes or so of (academic-related) stand-up comedy.  Which typically corresponds to taking the p*** out of The Other Place.

Except this year, the temperature.  The temperature.

I'm amazed that there were no deaths.

This was the background to cracking open the proverbial cold one with the proverbial boys: the 2017 "Wuliang Wild" from Essence of Tea.

I very nearly don't need the kettle to heat the water today.  It is hot, like your mother.

On disrobing my sample, I am struck by what are very red leaves.  I am instantly reminded of the recently-described 2017 "Secret Forest Wild Really Secret Wild It's Actually Very Secret".  Both cakes are "red".  The Super-Secret cake comes from an undisclosed location; today's cake comes from Wuliangshan.

I invite you to check out the cake below where, even under these photographic conditions, you can see redness.  Of course, the leaves have the delicious scent of purple fruits.

As ever, this is exceedingly clean and sweet - it is definitely "sweet wild", as Mr. Essence writes, rather than "bitter wild".  (I was unaware of the distinction in descriptions of wild trees, but it makes some sense.)

Is the fruitiness from the "sweet wild" nature of the tree itself, or of the manner in which the leaves are treated?  My suspicion is that it might be latter (the leaves are red, after all), but this is speculation.

Mr. Essence shows a photograph of a huge tree, reproduced below, which the locals tend to avoid picking in favour of their tea-gardens.  We read that aforementioned locals were convinced to climb this extraordinary tree to obtain the leaves for this cake, making it a rather special production.

There is initial fruitiness in the soup, of course, which is not unlike the "Secret Forest Wild" (as linked earlier), but this is much more cooling - it is almost Bingdao in its chilliness.  At £76 / 400g, this Wuliang cake is also substantially less costly than the Secret Forest Wild.  £76 for a rare picking, with the usual clean panel of lab results, does seem like rather a bargain.

Given the roaring heat, it is charming (and greatly relieving) to drink this now.  This is precisely the tea that should be consumed after Encaenia in the heat.

Would it age?  It might not be strong enough to age in chilly, damp England, where we need sheer potency to see us through.  This is a "sensations" cake, and is almost entirely absent any bitterness.

This is not to say that it is not full - the colour is a solid orange, and the texture is quite chunky.  It's a perfect cake for summer, and really energises my tired, fatherly frame.  There is a very positive effect on the constitution.  Somehow, even though it is not big ol' pugilistic pu'ercha, it makes the mouth water with its payload of mature-tree contents.

I am attempting to avoid likening tea this to the quality of lactation of the more senior age of lady, and will surely spare you the comparison for the sake of decency.  You get the idea.

As with the Secret Forest Wild, I will defer in favour of a more orthodox pu'ercha, but will always remember the manner in which this 2017 Wuliang Wild saved me from admission to the Intensive Care Unit, through cooling my constitution and chilling me back to the temperatures that nature intended.

Addendum: for the past week, it has returned to 18 degrees C (65 degrees F), and I am back in my cardigan.  This is "summer" as I have been bred to understand it.

Fructis Ventris Tui

...the figurative Tea-Womb of Mr. Essence, that is.

Let us indulge in a little exercise in tea obstetrics.  Let us part the tea-labia of Essence of Tea, and deliver the fine pu'ercha from within.  Thence, quivering and perhaps still covered in (figurative) amniotic fluids from the birthing process, we examine this fine, new-born cake.

This is the 2017 "Secret Forest Wild".

There is substantial and obvious fruit here.  Mr. Essence's tea-womb is fruity to the max.  Merely exposing the leaves to air causes the (Dancong-style?) scent of purple oxidation to assail the nostrils.

Some of the leaves are red, as one might expect.  "Elegant" appears twice in two sentences, on the product's web-page, and it is.  Elegant, that is.

The charming flavours gently blow away the sweet exertions of the morning, after getting my boys to school and pre-school.  In the warmth of summer, the cooling nature of this tea is obvious: cooling on the breath and of the body.  It is internal air-conditioning.

Coffee can be like a shot of adrenaline injected directly into the myocardium.  Coffee wakes me up, but it does leave me feeling as if I've just been brought round from a particularly ungallant overdose of opiods.  By comparison, this tea does it right: it gets the juices flowing, and cleanses the doors of perception, and yet it does so without giving your cardiologist something to complain about.  It is, for want of a better word, a tonic.

Now, for some trees...

I could quite happily walk up to those trees and chew on the leaves.  In fact, merely looking at the photograph causes me to move my jaws like a ruminant.

Mr. Essence writes that these are the same trees as were picked for a 2016 cake, but that the 2017 version has used bigger leaves, rather than focusing on buds.  This suits me just fine, as I never find "white" teas especially exciting, and prefer a bit of oomph. as the larger leaf might deliver.

Does it do so on this occasion?  This is a fine, fine tea.  It really is "elegant".  Given the grim near-30 temperatures of summer, the fruity drink-it-now appeal is immediately satisfying.  The price (£110/400g) is good, I think, for something (i) as clean as this (in terms of soup, and in the lack of cadmium) and (ii) as "wild" as this - its provenance is excellent.  I trust Mr. Essence to deliver the goods in these two categories, these days.

All that said, there is perhaps not enough tea for me.  I am forever in search of a violent, aggressive tea, and this petite little lady is, to my tastes, not quite there.  I cannot deny its quality, but my tastes run to the more chunky end of the spectrum, perhaps.  This might well age properly in a humid-and-hot climate, but a humid-and-chilly climate such as England requires something a little more rancid, a little more deadly, a little more elegant, I fear.

Going Out with an Yibang (2017, EoT)

Greetings, Heroes. How's 2017 treating all y'all?

Trump (hnng), Brexit (hnnnrghn), Theresa May (hhrrrnnnngghh) - everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.

*Sith lightning*

After all of the (really) bad news, I was super-thrilled to be in correspondence with Mr. Essence, who offered me a ray of light. And a mighty package.  Never one to shy from a mighty package, I was delighted to read of Mr. Essence's recent forays into hitting the pu'er farms.

Naturally, on prising open the aforementioned package, I went straight for The Goods which are, in this case, the 2017 YIBANG GUSHU.

This is the first use of the "2017" tag!  I had to type it out explicitly.  Exciting times...

The deluxe editions in the 2017 line-up of cakes from the Ol' Essence seem to be wrapped in Japanese-style headbands.  They convey the feeling of human male perspiration as I check out the image, which is surely a positive association when one is about to drink a tea.  Tie-dyed, like your mother's hippy trousers from the 1970s.  I dig it, man.

On breaking open my sample, I am overwhelmed by the beauty of this cake.

It's been a long time since a sample aroused so much arousal in my arousal-prone zones.  It is, at the time of writing, pushing 30 degrees Celsius here in England, which is the hottest it has ever been for this day in June.  Like Trump, I believe that global warming is a Chinese conspiracy.  I also believe that Theresa May is a credible politician, with a commanding wit and impressive ability to handle complex situations.  I also believe that the Earth is flat, like a pu'erbing.

Even before this little number slams into the palate, the scent slams you upside the head, in a disrespectful gesture of defiance.  There are so many volatile organic compounds in this sample that I begin to wonder if it has not been engineered by an elite corps of scientists, who have been kept in virtual captivity in a research lab, on an inhospitable planet, led by a hard-nosed R&D type.  Its power is truly enormous.

I am supposed to be somewhere, crammed into a small walnut-clad room, dressed in Elizabethan academic dress, in 30-degree temperatures, along with 50 of my peers (Governing Body), perspiring heavily.  However, all that can wait.  Right now, I am having a hot and tempestuous love affair with a sample of pu'ercha, and her name is 2017 YIBANG GUSHU.  She is a demanding mistress.

This is the cleanest, most pristine cake I have had in quite some time.  Mr. Essence goes out of his way to ensure minimal cadmium deposits make it into his teas, and that the bare minimum of radioactive waste seeps into the leaves.  This is admirable, and is a sentiment that I can totally get behind.  I read the .pdf results of his lab tests the way that other men view pornography.  It's almost lustful.

There are so many false claims in the world of pu'ercha that a table of lab results reminds me of the misrepresentations that are so common in tea.

Grain - there is so much grain here.  Grain, like greed, is good.

Yibang always maxes out my grain-sensors, with its sweetness and, when done right, just that tempting lilt of the wok remaining in the background.  It stops time.  It chills the roof of the mouth.  It brews, and it brews, and it brews - the sheer density of VOCs just never gives up.  It far surpasses the hour of time that I have set aside for it, and begins to eat into the rest of my day.

It is almost impossible not to buy this cake.  I look at the price, which is 300 Big Ones.  Back in the day, as a student, I would have not been able to get over the pricetag.  Through the passing of time and fate, I am a little more inured to such things... but it still seems as if it wouldn't be quite right to take the plunge.  I came so very close...

A thing is beautiful because it is transitory.  Both the Buddha and Darth Sideous taught us this.  I look into the remainder of the box of samples, attempting to convince myself that there will be other pleasures within, and that I was doing The Right Thing not to buy a cake of the 2017 Yibang Gushu.

All the while, as I attempt this self-justification, my conscience pesters me...

---

Day Two

This is the second day running with the 2017 YIBANG GUSHU.  As I commence primary ignition, I am struck by the enormity of them there huigans, as they begin to emerge.

This is a very friendly cake.  It is not a beast, waiting to strip away the lining from the inside of the mouth, but, instead, a complex and enjoyable reminder of how potent a leaf can be if it's grown nicely.

Monsignor Essence writes that this is from "ancient trees" (naturally) of "the small leaf varietal" from Mangong village in Yibang.  (I particularly enjoy browsing photographs of the trees!)

The leaves are small, 'tis true.  While the leaves in some cakes seem empty, easily-depleted, and over-farmed, this cake strikes me as being diametrically opposite.  They are crammed full of contents, and I like the result very much - it's friendliness is a great virtue, and it is an immediately drinkable treat.

Over the past few months, I've been drinking from my collection, and in a stochastic, scatter-gun manner.  I'll delve into a stack that looks untouched and see if I can find something that I don't recognise (which is getting easier as the years pass).  Not every cake in my collection is actual gushu (heh), and the contrast with the EoT Yibang Gushu is marked and obvious: the former can be quite aggressive, certainly in terms of caffeine, while the latter just seem to go down more easily.  It isn't at all aggressive - which is not to say that it is weak.  It's just friendly.

Sometimes, friendly is good.

Everybody Darths, Sometime

I've heard people talk about me, when they think I'm not nearby. "He's more machine now, than man", they'll say, with a wistful tone and a distant gaze.

You may fire up the kettle when ready, commander.

Is it because of my Sith chamber, pictured above?

Perhaps my favoured drinking spot could be considered to be a little austere, but I think that it's a comfortable place to take my tea - and I like the controlled humidity, which makes an excellent environment for aging a few tong of one's favourite cakes.  Every now and again, someone approaches while I'm in the middle of a particularly tricky brew, but they don't tend to come back too willingly after a force-choke or two.

Plus, it's far easier to brew tea in a Sith chamber than it is in my bacta tank, in my lava castle on Mustafar.  (Very low humidity, bad for storage.)

Padme and the Younglings

If ever there were a tea-provider who feels the full power of the Force in every brew, it must surely be EoT.

If you read the small print on the web-site, you'll see claims about how their products surround us and penetrate us, and how they bind the galaxy together.  I've also noticed that their teas are tested for midichlorian counts.

You were supposed to bring balance to the shengpu, not destroy it!

The Wuliang-B is, as you might expect, rambunctious.

I don't know if EoT has a "house style", but this must be getting pretty close to it: the compact nature of the sweetness reminds me of a tight formation of TIE fighters, while the pleasantly rough finish leaves me with a raspy throat, as if voiced (for example) by James Earl Jones.

Good tea sessions are built on hope

Even before I heard the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, I've always been a big fan of Wuliang teas.  This intersection of a favourite zone with a favourite supplier makes for an interesting combination, a little like asking a famous actor from the Hammer horror genre to play the Regional Governor of the Outer Rim.

As expected, this Wuliang-B disappeared from our long-range scanners some time ago, and is no longer available for purchase.  I therefore anticipate hiring my usual crew of bounty hunters to track some down.

At least IG-88's fees are lower than those of Taobaonow.

Congregation of Vapours

I have of late, but wherefore I know not... lost all my mirth.  Foregone all custom of exercise.

And, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me... a sterile promontory.

However, what better way to desterilise one's promontory than with some EoT?

This little baby has been sitting in a box, on a shelf, in my office, calling to me.  Every day, I come into the lab, and it starts its siren-song.  DRIIINK ME.  Every day, I bustle around pretending to be busy on something or other, and, before I know it, the end of the day is upon us, and it's nursery pick-up time.

But not today!  Today, we stand and fight.  Today, we are all Kunlu!

OK, this isn't the Kunlu, but it's a nice recent (Darjeeling) tea all the same

It looks as if the old addage "You snooze, you lose" is true yet again; as I peruse the EoT web-site, I learn that many of the 2016 cakes have long since been vanquished by a ravenous public, starved for affection and good tea.  Thus it ever was, and rightly so - it's good to see the ol' Essence pimping its wares effectively.  Long may the pimping proceed.

If there is one (just one) thing that bothers me about the charming, dazzling white of the EoT website it's the fact that every cake seems to cost between £0.08 and £0.40, judging by the main page.  "What a great price!", thought no-one, ever.  Instead, we ceaselessly have to click through to each individual page to determine the actual price of each cake - presumably, this clicking is the point.  It rather feels like putting the milk at the far end of the supermarket, so that you have to walk past shampoo and haemorrhoid cream to reach it.  It feels like those shops that put chocolate bars next to cash tills, on the hope that some poor child will convince their tired parents to buy them a package of solidified diabetes while they queue to leave the shop.  It really sticks in my craw - and, Gentle Reader, if there's anything I don't like, it's a sticky craw.  I keep my craw glisteningly clear of all such nonsense.  It's a source of pride.

So, this cake doesn't cost "£0.20", which is the price shown to me by the product page, as it lies to me through its fetid teeth.  The cost is, in fact £32, which is a rather larger number than £0.20, but which is a more accurate number than £0.20.  Also, this cake is "Out of stock".  I believe I may have whispered "MOTHERF*CKER" to myself, at that stage of the proceedings.

The tea.  As the description on the EoT page reads ("Perhaps not for girls, or for people who are girlymen cowards"), this is rather a bitter tea, and tastes like KUDINGCHA - bitter tea, of the astringent kind that puckers not just one's lips, but every single last sphincter that is physiologically available at the time of consumption.  However, it's a nice bitter.  It's long, strong, and thoroughly absorbent.

In form and moving, how express and admirable: the sweetness is enduring and potent, like the irony of a reality-TV host being elected president of a third-world country somewhere out west.  It has the bittersweet tang that stays with you, like the economic consequences of half a country voting against its best interests to leave a large socioeconomic union of nations.

Which is to say, it's challenging.  If you like a challenge, then drink it today: let's make shengpu great again!
He quoth with irony, for the literal-reading folk amongst us.

Twenty Sixteen

I
drinking my coffee
before the interview
making it last

II

buying a ticket

to buckingham palace -

yes, a return please

III
the old lady's dog
watching the ambulance
drive away

IV

kneeling in chapel

before made my offering

were those lamps lit?

V
there goes a cupboard -
old kitchen burns quickly
in the garden stove

VI

surprise visit -

coming home early to

the armadillo

VII
school interview
holding his rubber duck
the three year old

VIII

the englishman lost

asking directions from

budapest pigeon

IX
returning home
cold and wet on my cheeks
dog dribble
(from a dream)

X

twelve boys

twelve waterpistols

father has the high ground

XI
before opera
the opening movement
waffles, beer, ice-cream

XII

dementia book

lists things he has forgotten

front cover - goldfish

XIIb
the open door
welcomes to Midnight Mass
my drunken self

Today's Agenda

Today's agenda: got the shengpu up in the Sentra.

Go to room 1-12, 

tell 'em Miss Lin sent ya.

Please make your brewings clean, rinse up in between.

Rule #1 about me: I am pathologically contrary. If you tell me that I have to like something, or, even worse, that it is cool to like something, then I will almost certainly dislike it, on principle.  This is not something over which I have conscious control.

So, when the (super-cute, "Mister Scruff") wrapper of "Poundcake" tells me that it says a lot about you if you not feeling us, then I am almost preternaturally indisposed to find the cake undrinkable.  Without intervention of any decision-making process, that's just how it is.

On the bright side, this cake ($50/200g) was green and fruity; Miss Lin described it as being "outlier Yiwu", which is accurate.  There is a hint of sourness at the back, which terrifies me, because it has a leafy green-brown flavour that tastes a lot like everything I try to avoid in shengpu.  The opening infusions were much better than the tannic later infusions.

"This is quite ordinary", notes my dear wife, as she offers an opinion in passing.  I silently rejoice, wondering if I might not be mad, after all.

Calm as possible, make the deal go through

$38/200g is, on the grand scale of modern tea, reasonably affordable.  I love the way that the wrapper says "Will this do?", as if Miss Lin ran out of time or ideas.  You couldn't say that about some of the 2016 cakes with their plush wrappers!

The leaves are rich, and dark, and spicy.  The pale yellow soup is thick, and comforting, and very sweet.  I appreciate the beefy, almost meaty, aftertaste.  The dry opening is so dry that I am half-expecting to find grapeskins mixed in there with the leaves.  It chugs on nicely, with the buttery scent of a clean wok'ing.

It is a solid little drinker, but the background has a hint of sourness that terrifies me; those of us in cooler climes ware the sourness like a werewolf fears silver.  "Nice, but not for me", I hurriedly conclude.

I got a hundred bricks, 14.5 a piece

Now this one - this one is a bad boy.  You know I saved the best until last, and it's absolutely true in this case.  I totally dig 200% the cheesy old wrapper that looks like a leftover from the 1950s.  This is real Communist space-race tea.  Admittedly it's from 2005, but the ambience is very "planned economy".

This is another White Whale, and old Captain Ahab knows total embargaination when he sees it.

Like the Whale, this is clean orange in its brew.  Like my purple-wrapper Dingxing (inexplicably prized from the hands of the dodgiest Taobao seller imaginable), it is sweet in its rustic Yiwu stylings.  Unlike either of those two, it has a complexity in its scent, with floral summer-flowers.  Hell, it even leaves an explicit cooling sensation in the nose.  The nose!

So good is this tea, that it even managed to see off the cold that I had incurred recently, after hitting some deadlines.  It cured the common cold, you read it here first.

The first half-dozen infusions are the best for this tea; while remaining clean, sweet and robust, it fades a little after that.  For $88/400g, I think it has earned to right to do so.  Complaining about this later infusions of this tea would be like complaining about the colour of the leather interior of a classic Jag that someone sold you for 10% market value.

The tongs, they are a-purchasin'.

2015 Green Shroom (w2t)

Nothing helps a situation like a serious cup of tea.

Looming deadlines? Cup of tea.

Student trying to convince you to let them submit an unready doctoral thesis, while their primary supervisor has disappeared to South America? Cup of tea.

Electricity and water not working while the builders try their hardest to destroy what little remains of your sanity? Cup of tea.

No, you're right: functioning electricity was an aspiration, not a requirement.

Much of this last year, I've enjoyed tea in one of two places: (i) feet up back at Chez Moi, huddled over my teatable, while children bounce off the walls; (ii) sitting in my lab, huddled over my computer keyboard, while researchers bounce off the walls.  Both of these seem to work well to a surprising degree.

I've noticed that I've developed an unexpected ability to enjoy tea at the unlikeliest of times - by setting up my secondary teatable in my office, it's genuinely surprising how much enjoyment I can get out of even the most mediocre tea when it's brewed right.  And by "right", I mean "strong".

Mediocre tea is no short supply: much of the intake has been "gift tea", provided by generous colleagues as they come back from China and India.  Gift tea looks nice, and is characterised by being, let's say, "accessible".  It needs to be inoffensive, by definition.  Good tea is rarely inoffensive, however.

Wimpy wulong?  Just double the amount and perform a "flash brew".  Humdrum hongcha?  Crank up the amount of leaf in the pot, and enjoy the tippy first infusions.  Dodgy Darjeeling?  There's little that maximum amounts can't overcome.

"If in doubt, just overwhelm them with violence."  It's a family motto that I like to like by.

Rarely, I get to drink outside, but that's another great way to improve even the laziest leaf (pictured above, in that "sweet spot" between the students leaving at the end of the academic year, and before the tourists arrive in their bazillions).

Thankfully, w2t has made a tea that (i) I love so much that it seems too big to fail, no matter how it's brewed; and (ii) is unavailable, naturally.  Perhaps the latter is part of its appeal - the one that got away.

When you're making tea that looks like something from Super Mario, then "you had me at hello".  If this were available, my entire life would be filled with such cuties.  Perhaps it is good, then, that (as ever) I got to the party too late, and this had sold out before I got around to drinking the sample from "MISS LIN" (chortle).

As the kettle fires up, I find myself humming the theme-tune to Super Mario Bros.  At one point, I'm sure that I even said, "OBEY WARIO - DESTROY MARIO" to my youngest son.

Dubs (i.e., w2t) has morphed from being super-cheap-and-cheerful into a more premium outfit, and that's entirely fair.  Miss Lin (chortle) makes great tea, and if she wants to charge a living wage on top of it, then I'm not going to whine.

I realise that this makes me a massive hypocrite: the Hobbes from nearly ten years ago, back when the ol' Half Dipper started off, would have been vociferous in condemning a vendor for charging for their tea.  Now, I'm more laissez-faire.  If the tea's right (and w2t's tea is right), then I'm fine with Miss Lin making her margin.

As a thought experiment, I asked myself if I would be equally content with another vendor doubling their prices.  I concluded that I would not be content.  Why, then, am I content for w2t to charge thus?  Perhaps it's personality: personality goes a long way.  The cakes are great, and they have personality.  Additionally, and I think this is the crux for me, there is always a bargain available for sale.  You can grab a huge stack of Elephant Cakes, or Rocket Yiwu, or whatever it might be, for a good and fair price.  That helps a great deal, and discriminates between "ripping off customers wholesale" and "offering something for everyone".

This is, by far, the best tea that I've had for some time.  It is Menghai to the max, but it has a hint of complex darkness.  It  has the heavy scent that matches its dark leaves.  It is green, and especially violent, because I used the whole sample.

This is my kind of town: strong, dark, and unexpectedly fragrant.  The fragrance won't last as it ages, I suspect, but it is a consequence of the complexity of the leaves.  If I wrote "it tastes like a bizarrely-delicious broccoli" you'd be forgiven for thinking it was dreadful, but, really, it is a complex mixture of fruits and vegetal tones that thrills me.

On checking my notes, I was amused to see that this was the last tea that I drank before the builders pulled one side of our house off, in a process that has only just completed, some 11 months later.  The memory of this tea stays with me, and I sorely wish that I'd bought at least one tuocha while it was still available.

Drink 'em while you've got 'em!

Strange Days

Warriors, poets, and warrior-poets: I bid you welcome.  I trust that all is well, with you and yours.  These are strange days indeed, but first, let's fire up the trusty ol' tetsubin before we get down to business.

I'm up before the dawn chorus, this morning, which gives me the opportunity and the means: we have a 2010 Mansai cake from Essence of Tea (nee Nadacha) on the table.  The sweet thrills of this cake rather take me by surprise; I wasn't expecting to be thrilled, at 4 a.m., and yet thrilled I appear to be.  Apricots, dried fruits, humidity, sweetness - I am enthused.

It is my ambition, in the coming months, to write up some of the (copious) notes that have accumulated, as accretion is wont to do, in my journals.  I beg your patience, with respect to their arrival, and your tolerance, with respect to their quality; there is a certain rustiness in my ability to write, but rust can be worn away with sufficient elbow-grease.  Let us grease together.

To say that these days are "strange" is not quite to do justice to the batsh*t craziness that seems to typify life at the moment.

We have come a long way together, you and I, on our respective warrior-poet journeys, have we not?  When the Half-Dipper was started, I was a humble graduate student; I was subsequently a humble post-doc; then, father to two mighty warriors (one of whom has just finished his first year at school!).  I remain humble.  As of ten days ago, I am "tenured", which is to say "sufficiently knackered so as to be put out to pasture".  My colleagues refer to me as "professor", which is both extremely unnerving and simultaneously alienating.  Even my old boss uses the title, although, it must be said, not without irony.

A few days later, my countrymen voted themselves out of the European Union.  Much ink has already been committed to this subject, and I will not bore you with my own opinion, suffice to say that literally every single person in my life (personal, professional, adversorial) is of the same mind on this subject, which appears to be on the other side of the argument from the majority of people in the country.

Imagine the Republican Party and the Democratic Party suddenly having no leaders, nor firm idea of what should happen next, and you have some insight into the substance of these recent times.

Balliol lunch

after the referendum -

sauerkraut noodles

Friends, let us shoulder our lances and our quills. It is time to drink some tea - surely, this is the only cogent response to these Strange Days.

Travel-Worn Satchel, I-VIII

I
safety video
plays while I watch
the jet of steam

II

phonecall from Shanghai

hello - I think your wife

took my suitcase

III
toddler chooses
the next track for our journey -
God is a DJ!

IV

all the questions

are provided in advance

Chinese press meeting

V
flapping in the breeze
the hem of her summer dress
caught by car door

VI

england, nether-lands

separated only

by clouds

VII
no! no! not ours!
she squeals as I point at the
yellow ferrari

VIII

fat loud abusive

learning new words -

beijing taxi

Cambridge Snow, I-VIII

I
cambridge snow
melts on contact with starbucks
and james brown

II

bacon espresso

orange clouds winter sky

train to cambridge

III
woman carefully
applying her eyeliner -
train hits a bump

IV

the speeches begin -

alone in the garden

with tea and scones

V
five miles of tunnel
the traffic jam hides my voice
singing Guns & Roses

VI

pines mountains snow

calm Lake Tahoe untouched

pines mountains snow

VII
aeroplane window
are those tiny cricketers?
howzat!

VIII

under a jumper

dreaming of thunder and rain -

my college sofa

Academic Year, I - VIII

I
on my bicycle
from classroom to lab
eating my lunch

II

winter rain

running past another don

our gowns tangle

III
the New Year's eve
college quads are silent -
except for my boys

IV

governing body -

fifty gowns flapping

fifty opinions

V
on easter sunday
one does not simply walk
into Balliol

VI

teapot for two

beneath the old buttery

pear tree

VII
under the table
in my college office
we play hide-and-seek

VIII

singing responses

in the college chapel

to my sons

Beef and Cheese, I-VI

I

mealtime again -

massachusetts institute

of beef and cheese

II

changing timezones -
more tired at 8 a.m.
second time around

III

old cigarette ends -

disused flower garden of

the cancer ward

IV

never waste a snowdrift -
english footprints made deep in
american tyretracks

V

looking down on

the English, I take my place

among them

VI

two thighs

makes plenty of room
for two boys

---

Notes have been added to the 2006 Yiwu from 12 Gentlemen - after ten years, this has become a very tasty cake.  Many thanks to Shah for the suggestion.

Catching Oneself

every moment

is an opportunity -

turn it all around

sit up, back straight

shoulders back, head up -

pour the tea

when you brew yourself,

pour yourself, drink yourself -

this is zazen

I catch myself

writing about zazen -

steam from the teapot

Be Careful What You Wish For

Gentle Reader, as we look back at 2015, I am forced to conclude that one must be careful what one wishes for.  You will notice that updates here at the ol' Half Dipper have been sparse since August.

Like many of us, I live my life according to the teachings of the films of Jerry Bruckheimer.  For example, in the Parable of the Top Gun, we are taught that

"Losers always whine about their best.  Winners go home and **** the prom queen." 

I take this as being an allegory for the life of an academic.  I have therefore attempted never to whine about my best, and always to go home and **** the prom queen (figuratively speaking).

What they don't tell you is that, beyond a certain level in academia, a shocking truth exists: it is insufficient merely to go home and **** the prom queen (figuratively speaking).  In fact, to succeed beyond a certain level, one must be ****ing the prom queen all day, every day (figuratively speaking).  It is probably even true that the quality has to stay consistently high - on a long-term basis, you are pretty much only as good as the last ****ing administered to the proverbial prom queen (figuratively speaking).

As you will agree, with all of this (figurative) activity, life has changed somewhat, and my ability to write articles here along with it.

Erratum: it turns out that the above verse is from "The Rock", by Michael Bay.

Now, these are not negative constraints that I am whining about.  For indeed, was it not the very same parable that taught us that only losers whine?  Rather, these are examples of (to quote another gospel) "making you an offer you can't refuse".  It is good busyness, but it is busyness nonetheless.

Combined with the never-ending Sisyphean thrill which is childcare of a 3-year-old and 5-year-old (which is itself a tremendous benefit to the spirit), time is scarce - in a good way.

croc-a-boodle-doo!

it's time to wake up now!

it's morning, daddy!

- 5 a.m. Fatherhood

This leads me on to consider a recently-identified pet peeve: people with one child.  Specifically, academics with one child.  I know quite a lot of such people - this is because childcare is quite expensive, education can be expensive, and having more than one child is a big commitment.  What bothers me is not the fact that an academic might have a single child - more precisely, if you are an academic and you have one child you are absolutely forbidden from telling me how tired you are.

If you have one child, you don't know real tiredness.  You are a dilettante at parenting.  You are wading in the shallow end.  You are a part-timer, who can always hand off the child to your spouse.

While I am rocking my dual-child credentials and dreaming of spending some of my conference travel budget, my single-child academic colleagues are kicking it in the Caribbean, or are off on jollies to the People's Republic of Jaegermeister.

If a substantive part of your academic year is spent on a beach supping coconut milk from the tanned cleavage of nubile natives, and is not spent up to your elbows in soiled nappies and bedtime stories, then you are playing at parenting.  You are subsequently disqualified from complaining to real parents about your lack of time, tiredness, hangover, venereal disease, etc.

So, then, to tea.

I have one-and-a-half books of notes that I look forward to writing-up in due course, which have focussed on a QUADRUPLECTIC whammy of care packages sent by the respective proprietors of white2tea, Essence of Tea, Bannacha, and Yunnan Sourcing.  We laughed, we cried, we drank some decent tea.

However, at our vantage point looking back over the peaks and troughs of the passing year, I would instead like to describe a few teas taken away from my tea-table, which struck me as being variously significant in one way or another.

---

Tea #1:  The Interview in Brussels

one hundred pages

half-an-hour interview

my first EU grant

The tea was a Darjeeling, served by the quiet Fortnum & Mason outlet in London St. Pancras.  This is the last outpost of civilisation before an Englishman takes the Eurostar train to the continent.  I was heading to Brussels, to face down some Eurocrats for a grant interview.  I had written one hundred pages for this monster, and the EU grant scheme has a 6% success rate.  As I sipped my very decent Darjeeling, I contemplated the 94% of applicants who were objectively wasting their time by writing all those pages.  This is a hugely inefficient process, designed for the convenience of the reviewers, and neatly summarises the EU's approach to science.  As it happens, the interviewers barely let me finish a sentence, with constant (often incorrect) interruptions to my answers of their (often bizarre) questions.  Needless to say, I was one of the 94% on that occasion.

On the bright side, I resubmitted the functional 8-page core of the 100-page monster to a UK governmental agency, which funded it for more than the EU was offering, and with a fraction of the bureaucracy.  It's all about the prom queen, don't forget (figuratively speaking).

---

Tea #2:  After the Chapel Service at School

from the thin briefcase

the school chaplain produces

the large basketball

My eldest son, Xiaohu, who is now five years old, has left pre-school and started at proper school, in one of the colleges of the university.  Every Wednesday, they pile into the chapel for their weekly service.  Every Wednesday, after chapel, the parents gather in the hall for tea.  Institutional, long-stewed hongcha, of course, but tea nonetheless.

Over those cups of tea, parents exercise their "getting-to-know-you-chit-chat" gland, mindful of the fact that their sons will be in the same class for at least the next eight years.

One week, a guest chaplain gave the sermon, whose past had included being a professional member of the "Magic Circle"; that is, he used to be a professional magician.

As his sermon proceeded, expounding the need to pay careful attention to one's daily life to see the evidence of the divine in the detail, he placed a thin briefcase on the lectern and then produced a full-size basketball from it.

He bounced the basketball off down the aisle, towards the awestruck choir.

Said choir has been travelling, including taking selfies with the Pope, and singing in his local chapel (pictured).  Truth is stranger than fiction.

---

Tea #3: Shupu in my Parents' House

I leave you with a haiku that recounts a recent conversation between my youngest son, Xiaolong, and his mystified father over a cup of dense shupu, in the house in which I grew up, back in The Other Place.  With this, I wish you all my very best wishes for the Christmas season, and look forward to further correspondence in 2016.

Daddy, my drawing
has a tail - do you know
what it is?

a platypus? no!
a spider monkey? no!
a beaver? no!

then I don't know -
which animal has a tail?
an ambulance!