Recently I decided to try my hand at buying pu’er at the Jade Market in Taipei. Mostly just out of a curiosity to know, is it even possible to find something good here?
The Jade Market is a touristy weekend attraction in the center of the city and has a reputation for being filled with wares of questionable quality. It’s not the first place I’d go to buy tea. It’s not even in my top ten. But, there is a very large amount of pu’er here. Which got me wondering.
The Jade Market is one of three related markets that run along the same stretch of Jianguo Road. This also includes a massive flower market, and something called the Artist’s Corner, which is like the Jade Market proper but smaller and more focused on individual artisans (and also has tea).
I’ve always been suspicious of the pu’er at these markets. Most of it looks pretty low quality, and the storage history is unknown. Plus there’s issues of authenticity — there’s plenty of knock-off pu’er in Taiwan, and I get the sense there’s a particularly high concentration of it here.
So last weekend I set out to take a closer look, starting with the Jade Market. I was generally pretty disappointed by what I saw. For one thing, it’s mostly very small quantities. Rarely more than 7 or 8 different teas to a table. Which might be fine if all the tea was vetted and excellent quality. But most of it was either completely anonymous old teas, or lesser-known factory cakes, like Xiaguan 8613, which may or may not be genuine. And as far as storage history, who knows.
It was basically a bust. Not a good place to look for any kind of higher quality more reputable pu’er. Maybe an ok place for souvenir tea, but that’s about it.
The Artist’s Corner however was a different story. Right as you enter, there’s several vendors selling large amounts of pu’er. Mostly of the no-name variety I tend to avoid, but still, more promising. As I continued in, there were quite a few more pu’er-focused vendors.
While pu’er was my main focus, it’s hard not to get distracted by all the teaware too. Most of the Yixing at these markets is pretty low quality, but then there’s vendors like this one who sells modern Yixing pots made by famous potters. Some of it’s really nice. I don’t think there’s any great deals here, but it’s fun to look around.
There are also quite a few Taiwanese artisans selling their own teaware. Some are thick-walled and clunky, with that overly shiny appearance from wood-firing (which is very popular with Taiwanese ceramics). But some are pretty special, and clearly made by experienced potters.
The tea in the Artist’s Corner basically falls into two categories: Taiwanese tea (mostly oolongs), and pu’er. A few months ago I met a woman from Yunnan here who was selling a variety of dian hongs that were quite good too.
I checked out 5 or 6 vendors. Similar to the Jade Market, there were a lot of the less popular factory recipes, mixed with the typical anonymous red mark, green mark, etc. And most of what was on display was priced suspiciously low. For instance, a small factory Bulang tea from 2009 for 600 NT ($19 USD), or a 2003 Xiaguan teji iron cake for 800 NT ($25 USD). This particular Xiaguan cake is very common, especially in unexpected places like fruit vendors and outdoor markets. It’s also frequently faked.
Eventually I did find one vendor that was pretty interesting though. The husband and wife have a brick and mortar store in Zhonghe District (New Taipei City), and come to the market on weekends. I noticed a cake on their table that looked a lot like a famous Lao Banzhang cake from Chen Sheng Hao. It’s an expensive tea (typically well above 60000 NT / $1890 USD) and not the kind of thing you typically see in a market like this.
Truth be told, there were a number of red flags. For instance several teas labeled Bingdao, which along with Lao Banzhang is one of the most sought-after and highest-priced pu’er producing regions. It’s a pretty common sales tactic to throw these names on cheaper teas, just to move more product.
But still, I was intrigued by some brand names I hadn’t seen before. And their teas looked generally cleaner-stored than most of the competition. We chatted for a while and drank tea. They had some cakes from a smaller Taiwanese boutique, single-origin style teas from well-known places like Yiwu, Pasha, Mengsong, Bangdong. We drank the Yiwu (Guafengzhai) and the Mengsong (Baotang). Both made from good enough material and with decent body feel. I strongly doubt they were the gushu that was claimed, but they weren’t entirely the cheapest taidicha either. Ultimately though they were all a bit young for my tastes, nothing more than 5 years old.
As far as slightly older, semi-aged teas, they didn’t have much. It was all cheaper options like mid-2000s Changtai and the ever-present Kunming Tea Factory 8668 iron cake. The 8668 had a pretty strong geosmin wet storage note. Not great. In general this excursion confirmed my suspicions that you are very unlikely to find well-stored good quality semi-aged teas at these markets. Younger boutique teas might be a bit better.
It was still fun to talk with these vendors though. As we drank, we got into a pretty detailed discussion about differences in pu’er regions within Menghai county. I think they weren’t expecting to have such an in-depth conversation, and started warming up a bit. Then at one point the husband let drop that the Chen Sheng Hao Lao Banzhang cake was actually a fake, and only worth 800 NT ($25 USD). I wasn’t looking to buy it in the first place, but found this pretty amusing. And if you looked closely at the wrapper, it’s clearly not Chen Sheng Hao at all, just an imitation of that wrapper design. I guess the lesson here is that it’s always better to talk to people and build up some rapport. Or, that you just shouldn’t buy tea at a jade market.
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