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Both white tea and green teas that are called Silver Needles are not quite suitable for people with cold TCM body type, the green tea more so. If you do not want to waste the tea you already bought, drink it in the early afternoon, say around 3 when the bodily heat is higher after lunch is pretty much digested.
White tea White Peony (again there are green tea varieties of White Peony) is a better choice as a white tea for health benefits for people with cold TCM body type. Matured ones are the safest, so are those from Zhenghe, which are more oxidized than those from elsewhere. White Peony is cheaper than Silver Needles too.Sorry I missed out on this one. In case you do not mind going over to the Hong Kong side, I have a few teashops to recommend. They are all in Sheung Wan, quite near the MTR station:
嶢陽茶行, 林奇苑茶行, 顏奇香茶莊 all on or near 文咸東街 (Bonham Strand East). The second one is most recommendable for their wider selections.I hope if you have explore shops in Zhongshan, you have got some quality selections. Normally shops where tourists have access in China are really not too reliable, but there always are exceptions. I do not personally know of any there though. Have just seen ridiculous ones.Good luck shopping!Yes, any society is a mix of good and bad, but it is the prevalent behaviour that defines the culture of the time. The general lack of morality and self-justification of crimes in the Mainland is beyond epidemic level. They are more common than colds and flus. The horrifying incident of Xiao Yue Yue a couple of months ago in Foshan Guangdong, if you have heard about it, is a truthful reflection of what I said: 18 individuals walked passed a two year old knocked down by a van could be ignoring the dying little girl. Some just stepped over, one even rolled over with his van, twice. There maybe a thousand reasons that one can tell to justify this cold-blooded collective behaviour, and this is not the only incident happening in the past few months that people just ignore the others, but the condition is clear: there is no morality, no feelings for others in this single most massive population on Earth.
It is the prevalent social behaviour that marks the fault of a culture. The greatness of the dissidents or the scavenger old lady who attempted to save Xiao Yue Yue, or the other low profile good people in the Mainland that are the minority are not going to bring about the change you wish for, until a momentum of social behaviourial change is set. Until that day, I am not optimistic about the rotting culture that is contemporary Mainland.Hi Herendil,Basically any container that holds heat for a while can be used as a “teapot”. I have used ordinary mugs, water jugs, bowls, drinking glass, saucepans, and even those glass candle holders to steep tea in. They are far from ideal, but those that allow good convection and holds heat well can be surprising effective in rendering acceptable infusion quality.If I use a bowl, the one thing that I need in addition to it would be a lid, not an infusing bag. The one that you have posted the link of looks like one of those used in Hong Kong style diners for making Ceylon fanning grades in a tall tin teapot. It’s an understandable solution for the setup for a few reasons, one of which being that the tea bar tender can make use of the length of the cloth to squeeze out the strong infusion by twisting the bag.In a bowl, however, I think it kind of interferes with the much better convection pattern the inside of a bowl offers. I rather put the leaves directly into the bowl and strain them during pouring with a lid or a strainer. It’ll take some practice, but not that difficult. The most popular teaware in gongfu infusion style is a gaiwan — lid bowl — after all. If you use wholeleaf tea, that’s definitely the way to go.You wouldn’t know how poor I have been and the kind of bad situations that I had to make tea in. Deprivation of materials sometimes can be seen as a fortune: you are rich in opportunities to understand the nature of things and to improvise. And to understand who you are. Enjoy the moment.Happy holidays,LeoThis is a very good question. The processing of maocha under the sun is rather like that of white tea, during which some degree of “fermentation” takes place. Therefore, a maocha is not a green tea. You can read more about this in the related Tea Guardian page: https://www.teaguardian.com/nature_of_tea/Puer_cooked_or_raw.html
A sun dried green tea requires certain criteria for it to maintain the status of being a green tea: little or no fermentation.To do that, the producer has to work with a very hot sun and very thinly laid tealeaves. That said, I have not really witnessed this being done in any green tea production. All I have understood about sun-dried green tea is from the books and a tasting of it years ago. I do not belief any sun-drying for green tea is executed nowadays.The exact process with which the chemical nature of tealeaves changes from a maocha to a matured puer is yet to be studied by the scientist, but yet it is empirically understood that this would not happen to a green tea but to a maocha. Some studies exist though and I have it presented in this article: https://www.teaguardian.com/health/Health_Shengcha_Puer&ShuPuer.htmlSorry we have missed to respond to this. Yes you are right; there are some teashops doing that, but I cannot agree that it is a good method because some others are practicing it. Let me cite an example:
You know the thing that they call “bird nest” that the Chinese make tonic soups with. You know they are not cheap. They easily go for a couple of hundred USD for less than 40g. For as long as I could remember, there is a kind they called “blood nest” that is red in colour and that is even a lot more expensive than the rest. It has been publicized that the nest contain the blood from the parent birds and is mush more potent than the white ones. For many years it was almost a must for almost any herbal and b.n. specialty shop. An Indonesian producer received an interview earlier this year said that there is no such thing. All people in the trade put red colouring into the nests. Now only shops in tourist areas and those in worn out neighbourhoods carry blood nests.Not all those things that everyone else is doing is right.Puer “cakes” change more rapidly under humid conditions, but the kind of changes happen to them may not be as desirable as you think it would be.Thank you for the kind flattering. I only want the real TCM experts do more researches on the topic. The effectiveness of tea as a preventive and convenient measures against many ailments needs to be better understood for the welfare of everyone of us.
Putting a piece of paper between the tea and the container is a very traditional way to deal with the problem and is still practiced by many older respectful retailers. I am so delighted to read that you are doing the same.
Immediately after production, a green tea should be about 5~6% water. However, improper subsequent handling often cause higher moisture content at retail. Protecting your buy is a smart thing to do.In old style packing for Longjing, two layers of paper wrap each 0.6 kg of tea before putting in a tin lined crate. A same size pack of dehydrated gypsum is put in the centre of the crate.You are right that after refridgeration the tea changes a bit. One way I always do to minimize that and quite successfully is never to open even the first layer of protection after the tea is taken out from the fridge. I let it stand for one day or so to make sure the whole mass is return to room temperature to avoid moisture condensation on the surface of the leaves.Unless the tea is purchased immediately after production, almost all green tea producers, including tiny family operated ones, put their stock in the fridge before the ambient temperature turns 30. That is why some green tea in the market has been subjected to refrigeration without even the retailers themselves knowing it. Lower price green tea, such as meicha or gunpowder are exceptions.I think water definitely has a part in this, but I am suspecting the home freezer type of gradual temperature change may cause actual chemical changes in some of the less stable materials in the tealeaves. I am still lacking time to look into this aspect so I can not point a finger at anything.
Fine tea holds so many different substances in it to make it fine and so many of them are so delicate. They give us the subtlety in the experience and yet they can be gone so easily. So much the same in that many other things in life.
