On the way home from school I stopped at a very nice tea shop only a block or so away from our apartment to ask about their pu-erh, a dark aged tea that's supposed to aid digestion, among other things. Terry thought he might be interested in getting some more, after using up what some young Chinese had helped him get at a tea market last year. However, if he does get some, it won't be from this shop. It's not that they don't have good tea. The problem is that it's too good. The least expensive cake of pu-erh was $HK450, which is almost $60. It was a good quality tea, the young fellow in the shop explained, but it was only 5 years old. Normally you're supposed to let pu-erh age at least 20 years before you drink it. So you wouldn't even think of drinking this tea for another 8 or 9 years. The least expensive cake of tea that had been aged for 20 years was $HK1800, which is over $230. So buying a cake of 5-year-old pu-erh and holding it for another 15 years until it's ready to drink is an investment, just as some people buy wine and hold on to it for years. This tea shop fellow probably would have thought that the last cake of pu-erh Terry had from a tea market in Shenzhen was dreck.
It seems a little unusual to have this fancy tea shop in our neighborhood, which is sort of a plain-folks place. For example, when I came home this afternoon the aquarium maker next door to our apartment building was squatting on his haunches on the sidewalk in front of his store, unshod, nail clippers in hand. He was taking advantage of the warm and humid weather today to bare his feet and trim his toenails.
It seems a little unusual to have this fancy tea shop in our neighborhood, which is sort of a plain-folks place. For example, when I came home this afternoon the aquarium maker next door to our apartment building was squatting on his haunches on the sidewalk in front of his store, unshod, nail clippers in hand. He was taking advantage of the warm and humid weather today to bare his feet and trim his toenails.
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