Page 103 - #58 English

When it comes to buying tea, we usually wonder how to read labels to understand what exactly we are buying. Not to men-
tion there are various kinds of tea being sold on the web, it can simply make you feel dizzy when you just look at the labels. It’s
true that the method of searching by keywords becomes a disaster when it comes to product information. For example, if I want
to buy Gold Choice black tea, the search results will come out “Tong Mu Guan all yellow buds gold choice black tea Sauchong kind”,
this won’t be the one that I want and the information is incorrect. Inside of Tong Mu Guan, there are no tea with all yellow buds,
the Gold Choice black tea needs single bud and the Sauchong needs one bud with maybe two or three leaves, the materials are all
different, how can it be the gold choice black tea and the Sauchong at the same time? As we can see, this keyword search is doing
nothing but putting some interesting words together and mixing them to increase the chances of views.
Once you drink tea, you want to know more about it. It is fun to know the origins of the tea leaves, that’s where the essences
lie. If you want to buy tea, you should at least know some of the language, in order not to get tricked easily when doing business.
First things first, what you need to know is that Tie Guan Yin is not a green tea, Dahongpao is not a black tea and the Gold
Choice black tea and the Sauchong tea are different teas.Once you clarify that, take a look at the information on the labels again,
and try to understand the connections between this information and the prices.

1. Genuine Yuqian West Lake longjing / 正宗雨前西湖龙井

Picking Time: Before the rain (雨前), which is around April 5th
Origin: West Lake (西湖) region
Type: Longjing (龙井) green tea
The prices of green tea vary differently basing on its picking time. The
prices reach the highest before April 5th, then it gets lower and lower. No
matter it is before April 5th or before the rain, once the green tea is over a
year, it becomes worthless. The West Lake means the West Lake district in
Hangzhou, if the tea is not from this area, it can’t be called the West Lake
Longjing. It is wrong even if the name says West Lake Longjing but the origin
is from Xiaoshan, Shaoxing or any place other than Hangzhou. However,
Longjing is a word to describe the appearance of green tea, once it matches
this appearance, it can be called the Longjing green tea, even if it is not ex-
actly from West Lake region.

2. 2016 fall anxi tieguanyin orchid smell tea
/ 2016年秋茶清香型安溪铁观音兰花香

Picking Time: Fall 2016 (2016年秋)
Origin: Anxi (安溪)
Tea: Tieguanyin (铁观音) oolong tea
Type: Soft, mild

For most of teas, the price for spring kinds is higher than for other seasons, how-
ever, Tieguanyin is the exact opposite. Well, it depends on your choice, either spring ones
or the fall ones, some people like fall kinds because of the enriched aroma, others pick the
spring kinds because they like the taste. The genuine origin of Tieguanyin is from Anxi.
Other places such as Nanan, Zhangzhou, Putian and Sanming also produce Tieguanyin,
but the qualities are not guaranteed, they can’t be called the genuine ones except the ones
from Anxi (it’s the same reason as the West Lake Longjing). Orchid means the Tieguan-
yin has a natural floral type smell, “Golden Osmanthus” is an oolong tea with an osmanthus
smell, it doesn’t mean that someone literally adds orchid and osmanthus in the tea. This
type of orchid smell appears mostly in the mild kinds of Tieguanyin. There is another type
of Tieguanyin which has a stronger roasting smell than the mild floral kind. If you like to
drink green tea, you can try the soft and mild kind, on the other hand if you like drinking
black tea, the ones with the strong aroma are more suitable for you.

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