Late to the party, but I'm so glad to learn the term 'di wei'. I'm annoyed at all the French wine terminology being grafted onto tea drinking, like the people who've been drinking tea for thousands of years don't already have words for these things.
I wish you can make a season 3 of this series. Maybe you can talk about specific skills you can learn with gongfu cha like pouring techniques, tasting tea, feeling the chi, or whatever cause i just love these.
We certainly will be making a Season 3! Other tea house stuff and general life stuff has kept us busy, but we will definitely produce more of these. Sorry it's such a slow process!
@@noname-vp6vf we are having to put the documentary on hold, because this spring (when we were thinking of going to China), we have to move the tea house out of the current location and into a new one. The spot where the tea house is currently is getting demolished as part of a highway expansion project in Austin. So that's a whole to-do.
A good friend, who is Chinese, recently gave me some tea he brought with him from China. So, I thought I should take some care in preparing it. I knew nothing about tea really, so wanted to know at least how to prepare it. Looking online I discovered at least how, minimally, to prepare it.The tea was marvelous. The text on the tin is Chinese, so i don't know what tea it is, other than that it's a Green Tea, and I've fallen in love with it. This prompted me to try more tea, and to learn more about tea. So, in continuing to look into tea, I discovered your videos. I cannot express how grateful to you I am. You have helped me, not only to learn a little bit about teas, but have been a source of delight. If I'm ever in Austin, I will most definitely stop by, both to have some tea and to say hello. Thank you bundles!
Wow, your videos are like ASMR in fancy tea style :) Keep making them, I´m a fan! Would you consider making a video with Taiwanese oolongs? That would be awesome!
BTW most of the Oolong teas sold at Japanese convenience stores which come in plastic bottles (not cans) are based on _Shǔi Xiāns_ from the _Mǐn Běi_ (閩北, northern _Fú Jiàn_ , including the _Wǔ Yí_ mountains) region.
My local teashop is owned by a woman that grew up in a wuyi tea farming family. She poured tea and I dumped the wash and she drank hers and I was so confused and embarrassed haha
Hi fellow tea-geeks! How're you all doing? Great videos Ho San, I'm always amazed at how little views high quality videos like yours have. If I shot myself having a terrible teabag Lipton trash with a bad camera and stupid music I'd have 10 000 views. It's kinda sad really. But thumbs up for Gong-Fu!
6:12~ Sometimes Bàn Tiān Yāo (半天腰, Halfway Up Heaven's Hip) is included, and called the _Wǔ Dà Míng Còng_ (五大名欉, Five Famous Cultivars). I've drunk _Bái Jī Guān_ (白鶏冠, White Cockscomb), _Shuǐ Jīn Guī_ (水金亀, Golden Water Turtle), and _Tiě Luō Hàn_ (鉄羅漢, Iron Arhat) before: White Cockscomb, as said in the vid, has a sweet, egg yolk/custard taste behind a warm, toasty _yán wèi_ (岩味, Rock Taste), based on a light and lively _qì_ , kind of like sailing on a fluffy cloud on a sunny spring day. Golden Water Turtle has a slight _kombu_ kelp stock-like savoryness with a light, throat-cooling _yán wèi_ , that comes from a chill-out aspect of its comfortable _qì_ , like taking a water bath on a hot summer day. Iron Arhat has a thick sweetness and cinnamon-esque spiciness behind a strong, robust _yán wèi_ , deriving from a very strong, heavy, massive _qì_ , that makes you feel like taking down a huge unit of foot soldiers singlehandedly. Halfway Up Heaven's Hip has a stock-like savoryness but with a peppery fragrance, with a viscous _yán wèi_ sticking to the throat, deriving from a diverging _qì_ , making you feel like you're being pulled upwards, while having your feet (and bottom if sitting) pulled downwards.
rewatching this while drinking a wuyi oolong that i picked up form your shop when we were in town for sxsw last week. the man up front was super friendly and eager to answer any questions
Great video as usual. Watched it while drinking Lost Robe - Bei Dou Yi Hao. Was a toss up between that one and Aged Big Red Robe. I have not tried Bai Ji Guan yet, so next on my list then :-)
Thanks Gavin! Glad you like the show! You can email teamaster(at) westchinateacompany(dot)com to see if So Han can hook up one of those tea trays for ya.
Had/brewed my first Wuyi Oolong (and by extension my first Oolong) gong fu cha style today, it just so happened to be Da Hong Pao/Big Red Robe. Gotta say I'm not 100% sure if it was genuine, but even if it was a knock-off it was deliciously caramelly, smoky, had a nice, smooth mineral character, gave me that cooling effect in the back of the throat. Delicious.
烏龍 wulong does indeed mean "dark dragon" - characters in Chinese can have multiple meanings, so you may see the characters translated with different meanings, but in this context, dark dragon is what is meant.
When you guys go to China to visit these places and get tea, what all kinds of things are there to do? Hot springs? Hiking? Mountaineering? Does it make a good leisure and ecotourist holiday? Where are your gong dao bei from? The justice/fairness cups. There's a few cool ones, wondered where you got them from.\ I had no idea Big Red Robe was so sought after... I tried it for the first time almost a week ago and really enjoyed it. I was thinking in my head that it would be hard to ask much more from tea than that.
Perhaps a late answer, but the Wuyi mountains is a nature reserve and has some great hiking trails. If you love nature, hiking, tea and teaware it is definitely worth a visit. There's also a river rafting thing (which I didn't have the opportunity to try, but supposedly gives amazing views of the canyons), and a big show about the 'tea story' (which I was skeptical of first, but is really a must see). Never mind the food such as rock tea fried chicken (yum!). Even if you have a very intense schedule, you can easily spend 3 days there. There's enough trails there for a whole week without getting bored. Especially when the weather is drizzly, cloudy and moody it is stunning. Truly 'mountains in the mist' straight from an ancient chinese painting, whilst walking among the tea farms hidden between rock crevasses, creating their own little micro climates. The 'expensive' big red robe he mentions in the video is mostly from the original 6 mother trees (which are no longer harvested), and their close derivatives. I was told by a tea shop owner of a fairly large tea brewery(?) that da hong pao sold to the public is almost always a mixture of up to 6 different cultivars, carefully blended by tea masters to achieve a taste as close as possible to the original. If you want to dive a bit deeper into rock teas, shui xian 水仙 and rou gui 肉桂 probably fill out the top 3 most famous/consumed rock teas, and are single cultivars. They are most easy to distinguish in intensity, where shui xian is more subtle than most regular da hong pao teas, with rou gui being more intense. Although afaik they are introduced from the outside (at least rou gui), unlike the 4 cultivars described in the video.
Great video! I was fortunate to visit the Wuyi mountains in 2014 with a friend who sources tea there. Such a magical area - by far my favorite place I visited while in China.
@@michellelamm-faries3054 Guan Yin Tea House was a tea house owned by So-Han and 3 other owners. Those three other owners left at the beginning of 2020, and myself and others formed a new team with So-Han to open West China Tea in the same location (West China Tea was the name of So-Han 's tea importing company that he started before ever opening Guan Yin). We've been operating there for the past four years, but we're about to move to a new location on East 7th St. in Austin, and the new place will still be called West China Tea.
Apologies for my translation, but I believe you're asking something like "how many times should I take tea?" And I'm not precisely sure what you are asking? If you mean: "how many times can I steep this tea?" I would say prob 8-12 times, sometimes more If you mean "how much tea can I drink in one day safely?" I would say listen to your body
Hi, so I was in China and hunting for the besaid si da min cong. I fell in love with them. I bought a da Hong ni chahu and raise it with the si da min cong. Is this a good idea since they are quite familiar or should I rather use it for da hong pao only? Atm I'm sitting here enjoying the bai ji guan and figure it's quite different to the other 3, does it influence my chahu in an unfavorable way? I'd love to hear your opinion on this (this video brought me to hunt these 4 to begin with). Cheers and as always, thank you for the awesome videos. I love them!
I'd say that it's a matter of preference. Yes the si da Ming cong are distinct from each other, but the benefit of getting to use the tea pot four times as frequently might be worth the loss in specificity. There's definitely nothing wrong or incorrect about using the pot for four different yancha or even 10 different yancha, it's just about how big of a nerd you want to be (and how much you want to spend on pots) -So Han
@@TeaHouseGhost thank you for your quick reply and opinion. I won't hesitate to use all four for my teapot then. Thx for the constant inspiration. BTW my 3yo loves these 4 as well and just like in your other video, we enjoy it immensely. Have a good one!
I've heard that _Shuǐ Xiān_ (水仙) and _Ròu Guì_ (肉桂) are good _Yán Chá_ choices for beginners. Am I right, or are there any other choices that are better?
I think those are both great choices for beginners of Wuyi oolongs. I also love Haunted Plum as an intro, but it's hard to find these days. Iron Arhat and White Cockscomb are both great teas but can be a little more elusive as far as getting that perfect flavor/fragrance out of them.
That's true.The local people always say:香不过肉桂、醇不过水仙。It means the tea liquid of 水仙 is most mellow and thick,the smell/flavor of 肉桂 is complex and best.Good quality 水仙，the water is smooth and bright，you can feel the flavor of wood，moss，and the smell of orchid. For 肉桂, the tea liquid is much stronger, the smell and flavor changes after different times of brewing. It's hard to describe，the main flavor is cinnamon，the smell varies like flower,fruit,peach.岩茶 includes many different kinds of different tea trees and processing.Personal recommend,u can also try 大红袍 and 白鸡冠/水金龟。大红袍 is blend tea,mixed of several kinds of tea leaves ,so it has more good points and features of 岩茶.But all the 岩茶 have poor cost performance,because of commercial publicity stunt.In local shops, good quality means price 350~800$/kg, 200$/kg is only entry level.
@@TeaHouseGhost Thank you! 🥰 Can I ask one more thing? Normally it takes my yixing teapot (200mL) around 10s to pour out the tea + initially it takes me 10s to pour in the hot water = it means it always takes me around 20s for steeping 🥲 does it affect the taste of wuyi tea? I tried to brew it with my yixing teapot yesterday and it turned out bitter than when I used gaiwan
@@vespeur at that size of vessel, if you find that it's taking pretty long for you to pour in and out of it, you could try experimenting with using less tea leaves to keep it from becoming so bitter
Late to the party, but I'm so glad to learn the term 'di wei'. I'm annoyed at all the French wine terminology being grafted onto tea drinking, like the people who've been drinking tea for thousands of years don't already have words for these things.
I feel at peace when I watch your videos. Thank you!
I wish you can make a season 3 of this series. Maybe you can talk about specific skills you can learn with gongfu cha like pouring techniques, tasting tea, feeling the chi, or whatever cause i just love these.
We certainly will be making a Season 3! Other tea house stuff and general life stuff has kept us busy, but we will definitely produce more of these. Sorry it's such a slow process!
@@TeaHouseGhost Oh that's exciting to hear. Also i hope you can also get funding for your documentary.
@@noname-vp6vf we are having to put the documentary on hold, because this spring (when we were thinking of going to China), we have to move the tea house out of the current location and into a new one. The spot where the tea house is currently is getting demolished as part of a highway expansion project in Austin. So that's a whole to-do.
It’s here already 😍 and it’s going great.
Waiting for the second episode ❤
Great video as always! Learning so much from each video. Looking forward to the next.
My favorite kind of wulong and only 14 mins short? Not fair compared to the others 😅😅😜
A good friend, who is Chinese, recently gave me some tea he brought with him from China. So, I thought I should take some care in preparing it. I knew nothing about tea really, so wanted to know at least how to prepare it. Looking online I discovered at least how, minimally, to prepare it.The tea was marvelous. The text on the tin is Chinese, so i don't know what tea it is, other than that it's a Green Tea, and I've fallen in love with it. This prompted me to try more tea, and to learn more about tea. So, in continuing to look into tea, I discovered your videos. I cannot express how grateful to you I am. You have helped me, not only to learn a little bit about teas, but have been a source of delight. If I'm ever in Austin, I will most definitely stop by, both to have some tea and to say hello. Thank you bundles!
What a lovely and kind response! We're so glad you love the show!! ☺️
@@TeaHouseGhost I just ordered some tea from you too. I'm sure I'll enjoy that just as much. Gratefully.
Wow, your videos are like ASMR in fancy tea style :) Keep making them, I´m a fan!
Would you consider making a video with Taiwanese oolongs? That would be awesome!
Taiwanese Oolongs is an episode we have planned for this season!
Great video ! Very chill and informative. Excellent tea content thank you
BTW most of the Oolong teas sold at Japanese convenience stores which come in plastic bottles (not cans) are based on _Shǔi Xiāns_ from the _Mǐn Běi_ (閩北, northern _Fú Jiàn_ , including the _Wǔ Yí_ mountains) region.
My local teashop is owned by a woman that grew up in a wuyi tea farming family. She poured tea and I dumped the wash and she drank hers and I was so confused and embarrassed haha
Hahaha it's all good! There are different ways! That's so cool that your local shop is owned by someone who grew up in Wuyi!!
Another great video! Rock tea is probably my favorite too.
Thank you very much 🙏! Really interesting video as usual.
I absolutely love your videos! I have been making much higher quality tea since I started watching you.
My black friday order from YS just came in and I'm binging all your videos to learn as much as I can before tasting.
Hi fellow tea-geeks! How're you all doing? Great videos Ho San, I'm always amazed at how little views high quality videos like yours have. If I shot myself having a terrible teabag Lipton trash with a bad camera and stupid music I'd have 10 000 views. It's kinda sad really. But thumbs up for Gong-Fu!
6:12~ Sometimes Bàn Tiān Yāo (半天腰, Halfway Up Heaven's Hip) is included, and called the _Wǔ Dà Míng Còng_ (五大名欉, Five Famous Cultivars).
I've drunk _Bái Jī Guān_ (白鶏冠, White Cockscomb), _Shuǐ Jīn Guī_ (水金亀, Golden Water Turtle), and _Tiě Luō Hàn_ (鉄羅漢, Iron Arhat) before:
White Cockscomb, as said in the vid, has a sweet, egg yolk/custard taste behind a warm, toasty _yán wèi_ (岩味, Rock Taste), based on a light and lively _qì_ , kind of like sailing on a fluffy cloud on a sunny spring day.
Golden Water Turtle has a slight _kombu_ kelp stock-like savoryness with a light, throat-cooling _yán wèi_ , that comes from a chill-out aspect of its comfortable _qì_ , like taking a water bath on a hot summer day.
Iron Arhat has a thick sweetness and cinnamon-esque spiciness behind a strong, robust _yán wèi_ , deriving from a very strong, heavy, massive _qì_ , that makes you feel like taking down a huge unit of foot soldiers singlehandedly.
Halfway Up Heaven's Hip has a stock-like savoryness but with a peppery fragrance, with a viscous _yán wèi_ sticking to the throat, deriving from a diverging _qì_ , making you feel like you're being pulled upwards, while having your feet (and bottom if sitting) pulled downwards.
I love your videos! The best I’ve seen so far with regards to teas. I love your setup and style. Please continue making videos☺️
I love your channel!!!💗☕️💗☕️💗☕️🍵🍵
Thanks for watching!!
Drinking the rinse, at the end, cold... Mind blown!
A blue and white Jingdezhen style (or actual Jingdezhen) Gaiwan, with a pattern of bats , now i am thoroughly envious .
You have exquisite taste .
Danke...
Loving these vids! Can we expect a white tea lesson soon? :)
You sure can!!
@@TeaHouseGhost thank you!!
rewatching this while drinking a wuyi oolong that i picked up form your shop when we were in town for sxsw last week. the man up front was super friendly and eager to answer any questions
Glad you could stop by!!
wonderfull!
Great video as usual. Watched it while drinking Lost Robe - Bei Dou Yi Hao. Was a toss up between that one and Aged Big Red Robe. I have not tried Bai Ji Guan yet, so next on my list then :-)
Petra Andersen nice selection!!
Awesome videos! I love that tea tray, would you be able to give me a link to where you got it?
Thanks Gavin! Glad you like the show! You can email teamaster(at) westchinateacompany(dot)com to see if So Han can hook up one of those tea trays for ya.
Awesome
Had/brewed my first Wuyi Oolong (and by extension my first Oolong) gong fu cha style today, it just so happened to be Da Hong Pao/Big Red Robe. Gotta say I'm not 100% sure if it was genuine, but even if it was a knock-off it was deliciously caramelly, smoky, had a nice, smooth mineral character, gave me that cooling effect in the back of the throat. Delicious.
Yum!! ☕
Nerd question: Does wu long tea really mean dark dragon? Because the characters mean something different.
烏龍 wulong does indeed mean "dark dragon" - characters in Chinese can have multiple meanings, so you may see the characters translated with different meanings, but in this context, dark dragon is what is meant.
When you guys go to China to visit these places and get tea, what all kinds of things are there to do? Hot springs? Hiking? Mountaineering? Does it make a good leisure and ecotourist holiday?
Where are your gong dao bei from? The justice/fairness cups. There's a few cool ones, wondered where you got them from.\
I had no idea Big Red Robe was so sought after... I tried it for the first time almost a week ago and really enjoyed it. I was thinking in my head that it would be hard to ask much more from tea than that.
Perhaps a late answer, but the Wuyi mountains is a nature reserve and has some great hiking trails. If you love nature, hiking, tea and teaware it is definitely worth a visit. There's also a river rafting thing (which I didn't have the opportunity to try, but supposedly gives amazing views of the canyons), and a big show about the 'tea story' (which I was skeptical of first, but is really a must see). Never mind the food such as rock tea fried chicken (yum!). Even if you have a very intense schedule, you can easily spend 3 days there. There's enough trails there for a whole week without getting bored. Especially when the weather is drizzly, cloudy and moody it is stunning. Truly 'mountains in the mist' straight from an ancient chinese painting, whilst walking among the tea farms hidden between rock crevasses, creating their own little micro climates.
The 'expensive' big red robe he mentions in the video is mostly from the original 6 mother trees (which are no longer harvested), and their close derivatives.
I was told by a tea shop owner of a fairly large tea brewery(?) that da hong pao sold to the public is almost always a mixture of up to 6 different cultivars, carefully blended by tea masters to achieve a taste as close as possible to the original.
If you want to dive a bit deeper into rock teas, shui xian 水仙 and rou gui 肉桂 probably fill out the top 3 most famous/consumed rock teas, and are single cultivars. They are most easy to distinguish in intensity, where shui xian is more subtle than most regular da hong pao teas, with rou gui being more intense. Although afaik they are introduced from the outside (at least rou gui), unlike the 4 cultivars described in the video.
@@tHaH4x0r Thanks for the reply, better late than never haha. I've been enjoying tea so much in the past five years and am now living in kenya!
Hi So Han great videos! Just wondering where you get your teawares from? I am looking for a similar tea tray and tea cup coasters.
Great video! I was fortunate to visit the Wuyi mountains in 2014 with a friend who sources tea there. Such a magical area - by far my favorite place I visited while in China.
Jake Knapp Soo cool!! So Han has been there a few times now but I've still never been! I wanna goooo!
Awesome Video where to buy some
www.westchinatea.com - I think we're out of a lot of Wuyi oolongs ATM but will get some soon.
😪😪😪😪😭😢
Guan Yin Tea House is permanently closed??? Where should we go for a Chinese tea ceremony?
@@michellelamm-faries3054 Guan Yin Tea House was a tea house owned by So-Han and 3 other owners. Those three other owners left at the beginning of 2020, and myself and others formed a new team with So-Han to open West China Tea in the same location (West China Tea was the name of So-Han 's tea importing company that he started before ever opening Guan Yin). We've been operating there for the past four years, but we're about to move to a new location on East 7th St. in Austin, and the new place will still be called West China Tea.
Quantas vezes eu devo tomar o chá red tea love
Apologies for my translation, but I believe you're asking something like "how many times should I take tea?" And I'm not precisely sure what you are asking?
If you mean: "how many times can I steep this tea?" I would say prob 8-12 times, sometimes more
If you mean "how much tea can I drink in one day safely?" I would say listen to your body
How much tea do you use in this video to steep? It looks like quite a bit?
Usually about 5g for a 100-120mL gaiwan.
Usually we put 8g tea for 110ml water,that's the standard of oolong tea appraise.
Hi, so I was in China and hunting for the besaid si da min cong. I fell in love with them. I bought a da Hong ni chahu and raise it with the si da min cong. Is this a good idea since they are quite familiar or should I rather use it for da hong pao only? Atm I'm sitting here enjoying the bai ji guan and figure it's quite different to the other 3, does it influence my chahu in an unfavorable way? I'd love to hear your opinion on this (this video brought me to hunt these 4 to begin with). Cheers and as always, thank you for the awesome videos. I love them!
I'd say that it's a matter of preference. Yes the si da Ming cong are distinct from each other, but the benefit of getting to use the tea pot four times as frequently might be worth the loss in specificity. There's definitely nothing wrong or incorrect about using the pot for four different yancha or even 10 different yancha, it's just about how big of a nerd you want to be (and how much you want to spend on pots)
-So Han
@@TeaHouseGhost thank you for your quick reply and opinion. I won't hesitate to use all four for my teapot then. Thx for the constant inspiration. BTW my 3yo loves these 4 as well and just like in your other video, we enjoy it immensely. Have a good one!
I've heard that _Shuǐ Xiān_ (水仙) and _Ròu Guì_ (肉桂) are good _Yán Chá_ choices for beginners. Am I right, or are there any other choices that are better?
I think those are both great choices for beginners of Wuyi oolongs. I also love Haunted Plum as an intro, but it's hard to find these days. Iron Arhat and White Cockscomb are both great teas but can be a little more elusive as far as getting that perfect flavor/fragrance out of them.
That's true.The local people always say:香不过肉桂、醇不过水仙。It means the tea liquid of 水仙 is most mellow and thick,the smell/flavor of 肉桂 is complex and best.Good quality 水仙，the water is smooth and bright，you can feel the flavor of wood，moss，and the smell of orchid. For 肉桂, the tea liquid is much stronger, the smell and flavor changes after different times of brewing. It's hard to describe，the main flavor is cinnamon，the smell varies like flower,fruit,peach.岩茶 includes many different kinds of different tea trees and processing.Personal recommend,u can also try 大红袍 and 白鸡冠/水金龟。大红袍 is blend tea,mixed of several kinds of tea leaves ,so it has more good points and features of 岩茶.But all the 岩茶 have poor cost performance,because of commercial publicity stunt.In local shops, good quality means price 350~800$/kg, 200$/kg is only entry level.
7:44~
R.I.P. Rooster
Loving Father of Chick
A Heroic Soul of Pure Bravery
and Self-Sacrifice
Should I brew wuyi rock tea in yixing teapot and how much steeping time for it when brewing with yixing?
Wuyis are great in an Yixing teapot! I'd start with like 5-8s
@@TeaHouseGhost Thank you! 🥰 Can I ask one more thing? Normally it takes my yixing teapot (200mL) around 10s to pour out the tea + initially it takes me 10s to pour in the hot water = it means it always takes me around 20s for steeping 🥲 does it affect the taste of wuyi tea? I tried to brew it with my yixing teapot yesterday and it turned out bitter than when I used gaiwan
@@vespeur at that size of vessel, if you find that it's taking pretty long for you to pour in and out of it, you could try experimenting with using less tea leaves to keep it from becoming so bitter
What is that gourd laying on its side to the right? It looks like it's on a stick or rod.
It is an instrument called a hulusi. A flute made from a gourd.
Thank you :)
7:06 I don't want to know what that is dude.... Oh no.... I was forced to hear it.... I'm... scarred for life
佛说，每个武夷茶农上辈子都是造咖啡的。
Every coffee farmer was a pu er farmer in a past life