My pu erh purchase in Guangzhou

This is the Pu erh tea that I bought from Guangzhou while I was there last month.  This purchase is made up of 7 tongs of pu erh (6 tongs ripe).  You can imagine the sight, not mentioning the challenge as I lugged the tea from Guangzhou to Hong Kong before heading back to Singapore.  I find that commuting between Guangzhou and Hong Kong is best through the express rail which takes about 2 hours.  Its an extremely comfortable ride with both rail stations in the heart of the cities.

I had not planned to buy this amount of pu erh as I just wanted to explore the Fangchun tea centre and planned to visit the tea centre again next year.  I found the Haiwan wholesaler in Fangchun and was given an extensive tea tasting session.   I was given a wide range of Haiwan's 2009 range of pu erh to drink and I was surprised by the quality  offered by the dealer there.  The 2009 pu erh which I was impressed were labeled 'No.1 ripe - 老同志一号熟饼'  and 'our home's pu erh- 我家的普洱茶' .  The tea did not taste like new ripe pu erh and was, in my own opinion, very good.  The dealer had only 2 tongs of the No.1 ripe and offered them to me together with a carton of our home's pu (4 tongs ). 

But I digress - I would like to highlight the excellent research of Nicolas Tang's tea website

 

http://www.nicolastang.com/tea/ 

where he gave an expert study of fake Menghai tea.  He compared the fake and real Menghai with pictures and advised buying Menghai only from authorized distributors even if it costs more.  It was interesting that fake Menghai was also sold in Guangzhou.  

I had also stopped by an authorised Menghai distributor and got myself a tong of 2009's 7542  that completed my pu erh purchase in Guangzhou.