By Andy
2010/05/28 — 35km
After a rushed breakfast of baozi (not noodles, finally!), I walk Devi to the bus station to see her off to Dali, where she’ll spend the night before flying to Kunming and then Shanghai for her summer internship at the consulate. It’s sad to see her go, but I’m sure glad she extended her ride with us for as long as she could! If my finances look okay, maybe I’ll even get to fly to Shanghai for a weekend at some point during the summer to see her. If not, she’ll hopefully meet up with us, along with some other friends (everyone’s invited) when we get to Chengdu in mid-July.
After her bus departs, Evan and I hit the road again. It’s not long before we’re following another river the wrong way — up into the mountains.
Today’s ride is short though. We had modified our original route to Baoshan through the mountains of western Yunnan on back-mountain roads in order to get Devi to Yunxian where she could catch an easy bus to Dali. Our new route to Baoshan is on provincial and national roads, and there are two county seats on the route. Since we didn’t have Internet in Yunxian, and we didn’t get enough rest due to birthday shenanigans, we decide to hit both of the county seats and get a hotel with Internet in each.
In no time, we’re pulling into Fengqing, the hallowed home of some of Yunnan’s best black tea, Dianhong (滇红茶). With the early arrival, we plan to do an afternoon of tasting and then ship some back to Shanghai.
We stash our stuff in the best hotel we’ve stayed in for weeks (it even has a sit-down toilet!), grab a bite to eat, and head to a teahouse/shop that we saw on the way into town. The upstairs has private rooms, so we head up there, intending to spend the afternoon drinking tea and writing for the blog.
But as fate would have it, there’s a 160 kuai ($23.43) fee just to sit upstairs (not including whatever you drink!). We walk back down the stairs in a huff. On the wall as we descend, there are four framed, black-and-white photographs of tea-making back in (real) communist times, including pictures of inspections of the tea-making process by party leaders.
“I bet it’s all officials that come here — that’s why the charge so freaking much,” I tell Evan.
When we get downstairs, Evan pokes his head into the main tea tasting room and asks bluntly, “Is your clientele all party officials or something? It’s too expensive up there”
Strangely, we get an honest reply of, “Yep.” Right on. Then the sales manager, taking pity on us we assume, asks us to come in and taste some tea.
Immediately, I notice the wall-display of expensive baijiu to the side of the tasting table. Yep, this is the place where officials come to throw around The People’s money.
We sit down at a large tasting table opposite a young man in charge of the tasting. In the usual fashion, he sets out tiny cups for us, boils water, steeps some tea leaves, and then pours the deep red water all over the cups, tea utensils and anything else in the vicinity that looks like it could use a bath in boiling water. Then he steeps the leaves again and gets down to business, pouring us cup after cup of delicious black tea.
Evan keeps plying the little guy with questions about the tea we’re drinking, the tea-making process and all variety of other tea-related topics, but it’s quickly apparent that he doesn’t know a thing of any value.
“The largest producer of Dianhong black tea is Dianhong Group,” he tells us.
Are they state-owned?
“Yeah, they’re state-owned.”
Are there private producers too?
“Yes.”
Is their tea good?
“Dianhong Group is the largest producer of Dianhong black tea.”
Yeah, but wouldn’t the little guys be better since they’re private and probably care more?
“Obviously Dianhong Group’s tea is the best because it’s the largest producer.”
Okay…how much does the tea we’re drinking cost?
“Umm…” he stammers as he looks around and thinks for a bit. “Three hundred sixty I think. Yeah, three-sixty per kilogram.”
At this point I pick up a bag of green tea on display behind me and see “Dianhong Group” written on the back. It’s the same on all the others.
No wonder this guy doesn’t know a thing about the stuff he’s selling! He’s just an hourly employee of a giant, state-owned company!
This is the first such tea experience we’ve had. Most of the others have been with owners of small, independent shops who know their trade as well as most anyone in mainland China could (much of the art of tea was lost in the years of pure state production, quotas, and all those wonderful things from about 1949-1981), and are just happy to have the opportunity to pass on their knowledge to a couple curious foreigners. The remainder of our tea experiences have been with the actual producers of the stuff.
Evan stands up and begins looking at the teas in the shop and is quickly approached by the sales manager. She’s about a hundred times more knowledgeable than the guy at the table and introduces us to some teas it sounds like we’d like.
Can we taste them?
“No problem!”
I’m a real fan of black tea (in addition to tieguanyin), so it was a real treat for me when they invite us to taste a broad range of their tea (in terms of price point), ranging from 40 kuai ($5.85) per kilo to 590 ($86.39). When our taste buds are finally burnt out and we start to worry about our ability to fall asleep that night, we find we’ve both settled on a tea the company calls Golden Chrysanthemum (金菊紅), and each buy two 300g bags at 56 kuai ($8.20) a piece to send back to Shanghai.
As we turn to walk away, the sales manager says nonchalantly, “And another 100 kuai ($14.63) for the tasting.”
What? You didn’t say anything about a tasting fee up front!
“But you two drank so much tea!”
We go into defensive mode and tell her she’s cheating us.
“Sit back down, drink some more and talk,” she says, I guess hoping that if we drink more we’ll feel like we’re getting a good value out of a 100 kuai tasting fee, which is 50 percent more than you’d pay for a wine tasting in Napa Valley.
We don’t want to sit anymore! We didn’t come here, drink your tea and then leave — we just bought four bags of it!
We run through the whole litany of reasons why it’s insulting and dishonest to slap a tasting fee on as we’re walking out the door. Eventually, she relents a little, saying, “Okay, then it’s up to you,” probably assuming we’ll agree to hand over a 50 or something.
Fine, we say angrily and walk out, the whole experience ruined in a matter of two minutes. There’s the customer service Chinese SOEs are known for!
For days, we can’t stop ranting about the woman and the whole sour experience. That’s the last time we go to a tasting room owned by some behemoth SOE group!
