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Clairelie, the two photos u posted here are of very nice handcrafted workmanship. They look like nice tea ware. However, the two links you listed carry only factory made products, most of which are widely available in most cities in Mainland China. Many factories make them.
While there are nice handcrafted tea ware made in Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and jiangxi, they are not as commonly seen in internetshops. I am not too familiar with the overall picture though, hope some other readers could help u out on this one.Caffeine is diuretic, so it encourages excretion of water through the bladder. However, that is only one side of the picture.
Green tea may encourages urine, but it is not loaded burnt carbon like coffee is, so it is not TCM hot. Coffee is TCM hot so it encourages the fire energy while lowering your yin energy. You feel hot at the lis and tongues, sometimes maybe the eyes too, feel energetic sometimes, but down very easily.Although most teas are diuretic, but not as many can help to dissipate humid toxins. To facilitate the body to dissipate humid toxins in a person who has been affected through exposure to TCM hot intakes, such as coffee, it’ll require some substances that helps the cells to expel water and/or unwanted lipids mistaken trapped in or near themselves. Only Phoenix oolongs or Wuyi dried with low fire (but really completely dried) can do the job.Sorry I have not been attending to this forum for a few days. The link to the picture you posted is not working…
That’s philosophical. However, I do think it is time the industry in China think clearly of a way forward.
While domestic consumption is able to sustain a rising price for now, this is not going on for too many years. Export will be taken over by productions in other regions, though not the same quality. I have been thinking about the issue for some time and think that a rising salary for the worker is only reasonable. We don’t enjoy our fine taste basing on exploitations of others.However, the hard truth is, there are many production countries where the pickers are still paid less than 2 USD a day, when there is job. I have an article the month before last on that:A couple of days ago, I had a very nice dinner with a friend from Switzerland who is an appreciator of fine wine. He ordered a 150 USD bottle and it’s gone just between the two of us. We were thinking if tea could have the same market acceptance, or even just one quarter of it, many people in the trade would be much better off.If this is to happen, are we, however, further financing the slave drivers in the majority of tea production countries? While it is free economy and the workers free to choose their work in tea productions in China, Japan and Taiwan, the situations in most others are less than humane.Where are we standing in this? I really don’t know.I think so too. Especially if the initial infusions are normal length, ie a few minutes. I think the liquid changes its alkalinity by the third or fourth round. Not good for weaker stomachs, nor as tasty anyway.
Rebaked oolongs, black and puer teas stands a bit better than white, green and green oolongs in this respect. Gongfu style infusion, where each infusion is much shorter, there can be a lot more rounds.Finer Dianhongs do have an innate floral aroma in them. However, there are also many black selections in the market that the merchants have scented naturally or with additives.
If it comes on too prominently, then it is likely scented.Whether a tea is “drying”, if I understand what you mean, how the whole body feel after the consumption, is dependent not only on whether the tea is high-short fire or low-slow fire, but also on the amount of caffeine, and the strength of the infusion. If you have the need for reducing the strength of this “drying” effect, brew your tea at a lower strength. Or switching to a tea with lower caffeine content and that can be infused in a shorter duration while still good taste.
Most normal baked style green tea is cool to cool-neutral in TCM nature, while a green style tieguanyin can be cold in TCM nature. I consider it “cold-dampness” evil rather than damp qi. Some green looking ones are fired extremely lowly and slowly so they are not so much that, but those that are really fresh and fragrant, and fired just lowly and shortly, are very much in that description.TCM warm ones may be dampness causing too and cooler teas can be great for dissipating dampness. The warm-cool nature is not related to the damp-“drying” nature.You should be very proud having been able to arrive at such observation by yourself.The understanding of the different TCM properties of different tea is a developing knowledge. Most old school TCM doctors used to think of tea as two to three different categories and very broadly described them in one or two vague characters.Relatively few TCM professionals are studying the matters with seriousness, so there would be some disagreement amongst different individuals.It so happens that I am quite interested in TCM and have made some observation of the varieties of tea that I have came across that I have established some observations for a number of teas.I am thrilled when I read pancakes’ observation note. More interest and a feel for the subject matter will eventually push the study forward.Establishing a broad brush type of description saying green > lighter oolong > darker oolong > black tea etc is good for establishing an elementary idea for beginners. It is rather like saying all teas are made from the same plant. We all know in reality that the truth is a lot more complicated than this, but it is important for the general public to know that non-Camellia sinensis plant products are not tea.Pancakes is right that some green teas are “warmer” than others, but the difference lies not through whether they are roasted or baked, but rather the steepness of temperature through which the tea is cooked. For example Dinggu Dafang (roasted) is warmer than Kaihua Longding (baked), but Mengding Ganlu (roasted) is not as warm as Huangshan Maofeng (baked).However, and this is a big “however”, there is also a huge discrepancy between different makes of a same varieties. For example, in the article that mbanu cited, where they describe Wuyi Rougui as warm, for successfully treating a “cold invasion”.Firstly, there are in existence a wide range of fire finishes for Rou Gui. The maocha of Rougui itself is actually one of the coldest kind amongst all Wuyi oolongs. Passing it through a different fire turns it into a tea name that can describe a range of “cool” to “warm” character, as Chawang has described. This phenomenon is not unique within the material kingdom of TCM. For example, the popular ingredient licorice root can be of different cool-warm nature dependent on what kind of heat-treatment it has undergone.Driving a so-called “Cold-invasion” can be achieved by almost all traditional style oolongs (ie Wuyi, Phoenix or old style Paochong) cool or warm. It is rather more dependent on the “foundation” of the patient for using a warmer or cooler, rather than on whether it is a “cold” or “heat”- invasion. Basically it is the “dissipation of surface-invasion” function of such tea that is working. Most of the time it is the neutral but slightly cooler oolongs that works better in such capacity. A very warm oolong, such as an old style, high fired type rougui would be too “warm” that there could even be a “surface heat” that is further trapping the “cold-invasion” and thus hindering the dissipation of it.That is why it is a traditional wisdom that when an old style Wuyi is used, it is preferred to be a matured one, which warmth is toned down or even neutralized through maturity.Going back to pancakes’ point, so there really is not an order there if it is based on the color of the leaves in terms of “TCM” progression. It is all dependent on the make and nature combined. This is particularly true when there is more personal and micro-regional styles arising in recent years. Similar thing can be said of for puer and black tea, and the relationship amongst all these. In another word, the degree of fermentation/oxidation is just one element affecting the result. It works with the firing style, maturity, and the very nature of the raw tealeaves ( as dependent on the cultivar and leaf maturity) are some other variations that I have observed to have contributed to the final result.I know that is confusing. Theoretically blacks and oolongs are oxidized through the catalytic actions of the leaves’ enzymes. However, fungal spores exist all around us. Their activities on the tealeaves basically cannot be avoided. No one has (as far as I know) done any quantitative study of the amount of biochemical changes caused specifically by these spores. However, the same thing can be said of almost anything that happens not in a totally sterilized environment. That should be 99% of human activities.
Fungal content and bacteria in tea are tested by a standard almost as demanding as vegetable used for your salad, so there should be no worry about it. A customer of mine used to eat oolong leaves (before steeping for tea) like potato chips as she watched tv. I worry more about caffeine overdosage for her more than anything else 😉I followed up:
Hello (Participant A), very nice of you to respond. For us in the tea community to quote so called scientific reports with responsibility, it is important to understand the nature and details of each: where it is published, how it is studied and data arrived, who is sponsoring the study etc. The one you quoted has not been published in any respectable scientific journal and it is only one study done in vitro with quite an elementary setting.Cross referencing datas and different findings from different sources is an important job for us if we are to advocate tea against this trend of bottled beverages and instant glorification. Or else it just back-fires at ourselves, our business.If you read related articles and the referenced materials in the articles in the Tea Guardian site, you’ll find the answer as to why thearubigin is not established as an effective antioxidant. If there is anything more effective in black tea, it is the theaflavins. The vast majority of tea produced in Sri Lanka is low on that, while those from Darjeeling, some from Assam and some from other Chinese regions are much higher in that.I’ll realign this discussion with the title of oolong here by citing an example of oolong study to illustrate how fragile it is to quote only one vitro study for making a conclusion for us to promote tea:Angela Li was very interested in oolong tea because of where her parents came from it was oolong country. When she was in F4 (equivalent to grade 10 or 11), she did an experiment using extracted cancer cells from rodents and tea liquids from various tealeaves she bought in the local market. She found that oolong is most effective in reversing the growth of the cancer cells esp under certain drinkable strength.She won a first prize in an international youth science competition and a distant star has been named after her.I, for one, would not use her report to tell my clients that oolong tea is the most effective in fighting cancer. You can read how I quote various reports in the topic at the Tea Guardian site: https://www.teaguardian.com/health/defending_against_cancers.htmlI’d like to be even more academic and responsible than what is there, but there is also the need to balance popular reading. I hope now you see my point.
