Regional preferences

I have been meaning to reply to this thread for a couple of days, mostly because it gives me a chance to rant about tea chauvinism. As I live in China, I have a few things to add to William's excellent summary as well. Of course China has the oldest tea culture, and produces thousands or at least hundreds of different teas, so it's hard to create an accurate picture in just a couple of hours or days of description.

Tea Chauvinism
I mentioned on my weblog meeting with a Tieguanyin salesman. I was asking him what teas he liked to drink besides TGY. He explained to me that in China, everyone drank TGY who knew anything about tea. Whenever I made any comment about any other tea, I was shut down. People in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing all drink TGY unless they know nothing about tea. In my opinion, the opposite could be a more defensible position. People who don't know much about tea drink TGY. At the risk of sounding like a tea chauvinist myself, I will argue this position.

Chairman Mao identified oolong tea as the centerpeice of Chinese tea production. In areas of Fujian where the great majority of oolong was produced, there was lots of available land in agricultural areas, also oolong gardens are more productive. You use about 4 leaves of a shoot to make oolong, only one bud and maybe a couple of leaves when making green tea. I would say that Anxi and TGY received the most attention from Chairman Mao, and tea production was increased.

Today, we can find TGY all over China. It is a very famous name, and production is high enough that it is available everywhere.  Modern qingxiang TGY is about halfway between an oolong and a green tea, and the taste and aroma is acceptable to a wide range of palates. For this reason, often TGY is a prestige product. Business men as well as others brag to each other about how much they paid for their TGY. This is why I say people who know nothing about tea drink TGY. If you have never heard of a tea, you won't be willing to pay a lot for it especially if you're rich because your friends won't have heard about it, therefore when you brag about how much you spent on it your friends laugh at you.

Green tea and flower tea does seem more popular in the northeast, from my limited experience there. Jiangsu and Zhejiang (the provinces to the north and south of Shanghai) are major green tea producers, so in general these types of teas are popular. Fujian and Guangdong people seem to drink a lot of oolong, but fujian produces all sorts of teas including white tea, jasmine green tea, other green teas, even a compressed oolong tea cake in Zhangzhou.

If you leave the big cities, all of these generalizations become less useful. People from smaller cities and towns usually drink their local teas. Tea is produced all over China I have read 18 provinces and municipalities and 21 provinces and municipalities, so you would be hard pressed to name an area which does not produce tea. Many local teas are not famous. Often production is low, and all of the tea is consumed locally. Often teas in less famous areas are processed to imitate famous brands and sold cheaply to retailers who will sell them at large marks ups as Xihu Longjing, etc.

Sometimes there is an intense local pride, and the local tea is seen as the best in the world. This past weekend I visited a tea garden where organic Wuniuzao is grown. The owner told me she doesn't drink anything but Wuniuzao produced in her own gardens. She admitted this was habit, she was used to drinking this tea and likes it. She also said TGY hurt her stomach. Wuniuzao is made into green tea similar to Longjing. I don't think the varietal is as good as some of the famous Longjing cultivars, but its not bad. It is also not often found outside of the city of Wenzhou. Wenzhou also has two other teas. Yandang Maofeng and Taishun Sanbeixiang. Yandang Maofeng was a tribute tea at some point, but production of this tea is so low today that it is rarely found outside of the county of Yueqing where it is produced. These local teas often fetch very high prices locally. The best batches of the most tender buds sell for over a thousand USD a pound, and are a status symbol among local business magnates. You may never drink these teas without going to the area of production and buying some personally, as the outside market is not developed, and sometimes there is no supply even if there was a market.

Interesting! I had heard of some of the others, but I didn't know that they still prepared tea that way. Thanks chrl.

I was also starting to get the impression that oolong was starting to be drunk just about everywhere, in addition to the traditional regional preference. Then again I think I got that from "The Time of Tea" (book), which seems to be wrong about just about every "fact" it presents, with exception to some of the history.

It's good to hear you guys bring up the topic of tea chauvinism.  I think it's a shame that some tea lovers (or tea "merchants") have an insecurity or a complex that leads them to belittle others that disagree with them.  I see it on some of the other tea forums and it really is not in the spirit of cha dao.

TGY is very enjoyable, but the modern trend of it going greener isn't quite my style.  I think that a lot of the tea uses the tea's fragrance (or dare I say in some cases an additional floral additive) to mask the weak body of the product.  A traditional TGY takes many days to roast.  The master I met said that it takes 3 full days to do one roasting, during which time he must taste the tea at least once every hour.  The really good product can undergo as many as 4 roasts, although I don't know how much time goes by between roasts.  TGY should be the most labor and time intensive of all Taiwanese teas to make.  Since the production quantity is limited, the price of a good product is higher.  I believe that the Chinese market, unlike the Taiwanese market, cannot sustain such high tea-pricing for oolongs (at least not at the wholesale level).  The modern TGY from China takes much less time to produce and much of what I find that is marketed as being Anxi TGY is in fact not, and from tasting it and looking at the leaves, a lot of it looks to be a blend from several different crops or different farms.

Tea diversity is very good!

Regarding the Tibetan tea, I've had it before.  It's not just regular salted butter, but it's often rancid, salted butter that is used.  That stuff is likely more effective than dieter's tea in cleaning out your insides!!!

i know for a fact that here, most hong kong folks love vegetal variety of tky.  i detest that stuff.  they love it. 
i asked my tea seller and i think that tea is very very regional.  that's why when you say oolong or tky, we are dealing with a very complicated tea in terms of roasting/level of oxidation/taste.  the ranges are huge and it also depends on the tea roaster too.  i have to try samples now or taste the actual tea itself before i commit to buying certain tky or oolong.  even taiwanese oolong.  not popular in hong kong at all.

I have this impression too. Anxi TGY (I heard local government facilitate the advertising and marketing of the tea, which was very effective), Wu Yi Tea, and lately Dan Cong are occupying the market very fast and all these mainly happen in recent years (10-15 years?). I've seen more and more people starting to like Taiwan oolong too (but it's not as affordable as other oolongs, since it's almost American price sold in mainland China). Good thing is the teas triggers revival of local cultures (or the other way around), and tea techniques are improved with stimulation of market (I suppose oolong and puerh we have nowadays are much better than historical average level because more raw tea leaves are used to make mid-upscale teas).

The downside is, some historically inexpensive teas have got so expensive nowadays. I think tea farmers are generally doing well in China's economy (or I've main heard from those doing-well ones), but I am still curious to find out how much profit goes to the middlemen and commercial operations. I kind of suspect that's a very large portion.

-Gingko