nyc Chinatown herbalist with Pu-erh

Quick business trip to the Big Tuocha this week to discuss sticking the
world together. Aside from obligatory sipping (pre-high-roast TGY) at
Tea Gallery and giving a Chinese lady advice on oolongs at Kam Man, only
interesting tea experience came poking around herbalists in Chinatown. I
try to look into a few each visit, in generally vain hope of finding
salient treasure - un-buried and on open display, as they often profess
not to speak English or understand the terms Pu'erh, pulay, bolay,
bonay, tuocha or beengcha. (My accent could not possibly be at fault.)

On this occasion, I was interested to see how Kamwo has moved tea to the
front of the shop, with fancier and more marketing-oriented packaging.
But saw nothing of compelling interest.

Better luck (perhaps) at Yue Fung at 53 Elizabeth St., head office among
nine stores around town. Nice-looking place, plenty of dried lizards and
trepang. And around the back, a generous display of Pu-erh in several
forms: about ten different bings, tuos and fangchas, each available
singly or in larger bundle/stack/tong.

Prices per item ran $4-20 or so; only over-$10 items were a CNNP-label
bing and one other. One of these had a yellow mold I've only seen on a
1960s PRC heicha cake, and scared me off. Other smelled odd and looked
weird in a bleached kind of way. I bought most of the others, including
a Xiaguan and one of those universal red-on-white 250g black fangchas of
variable quality that smelled quite nice. The greens smelled too much
like fresh hay for my taste, but the blacks seemed more fragrant and
less musty than usual. Might take a while to taste them all. In the
meanwhile, thought I'd mention this in case any locals want to have a
peek. Proprietors seemed nice enough, but no English at all. A customer
spoke just enough of same to help me make the purchase, but not enough
to gather more info on the offerings.

Hope that's useful to someone-

DM

P.S. - While enjoying stewing beef tendon and knuckles, I again failed
to try the braised pork bung at a native eatery. We all have limits...

> Prices per item ran $4-20 or so; only over-$10 items were a CNNP-label
> bing and one other. One of these had a yellow mold I've only seen on a
> 1960s PRC heicha cake, and scared me off. Other smelled odd and looked
> weird in a bleached kind of way. I bought most of the others, including
> a Xiaguan and one of those universal red-on-white 250g black fangchas of
> variable quality that smelled quite nice. The greens smelled too much
> like fresh hay for my taste, but the blacks seemed more fragrant and
> less musty than usual. Might take a while to taste them all. In the
> meanwhile, thought I'd mention this in case any locals want to have a
> peek. Proprietors seemed nice enough, but no English at all. A customer
> spoke just enough of same to help me make the purchase, but not enough
> to gather more info on the offerings.

Ya, the Cantonese living in Hong Kong, not as avid tea drinkers as
mainlanders across the water, mainly drink shu pu'er for an upset
stomach. The average Hong Konger doesn't take to tea as much as they
used to.