{"id":7631,"date":"2013-03-22T18:15:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T10:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/?p=7631"},"modified":"2013-03-22T18:15:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T10:15:26","slug":"buying-tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/buying-tea\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Buy Tea in Chengdu"},"content":{"rendered":"
We always hear about the countless teahouses in Chengdu and how everyone here is too busy sipping tea and playing cards to do anything else. Everyone in China refers to Chengdu as the leisure city, and Chengdu reinforces the stereotype by trying to nudge out the other cultivated cities – like Suzhou and Hangzhou – as the teahouse capital of the country.<\/p>\n
But what about buying your own tea? Does anyone ever say: \u201cMan, you sure can buy some awesome tea in Chengdu!\u201d<\/em> I haven\u2019t heard anyone say that. In fact, back in a past life when I thought myself a budding tea merchant, I remember telling Cantonese traders that Sichuan had some of the best green tea in the world.<\/p>\n They looks on their faces reminded me of black people watching a white person trying hard to be black. Bemused liptilt, slightly astonished eye-widening, sigh, and a shake of the head to cap it off. They almost called their friends over to let them hear me go on about Zhuyeqing and Ganlu teas.<\/p>\n This actually happened to me again last night, in Zhengzhou of all places. I mentioned Mengding Teas (from Mending mountain in Sichuan) and a tea guru from Fujian didn\u2019t just shake his head at my ignorance, he verbally smacked me down in front of a group of people.<\/p>\n \u201cIf one drinks Longjing, it must be from (some obscure gully behind a temple) outside of Hangzhou,\u201d he declared. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to have Huangshan Maofeng, it can only be from the eastern peak, where the sparrows congregate in spring. If one drinks Taiwanese oolong, it can only come from Lishan, everything else is to be dismissed out of hand.\u201d<\/p>\n And so on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So maybe you have some Cantonese buddies – or worse, Fujianese – coming into town talking big about their tea and sniffin\u2019 at the local stuff and you want to avoid being publicly ridiculed. I am uniquely positioned to help. Not only have I experienced the blunt end of a tea guru\u2019s wrath, but I have also bought and drank tea in Chengdu for almost 10 years.<\/p>\nAnd Now<\/h2>\n
Who Sells Tea in Chengdu?<\/b><\/h2>\n