I count myself really very lucky and blessed to be able to savour and enjoy premium grade Long Jing tea year on year since we started to cultivate the tea drinking habit 7 years ago. One type of tea which I thirst to try is the Bi Luo Chun. This green tea is supposed to be very fragrant and was Emperor Kang Xi’s favourite tea. However, it is quite rare and premium grades never even get to reach the retail shelf for sale here in Malaysia.

Imagine my excitement when I arrived in Nanjing and found top grade Bi Luo Chun selling in the tea shops there. It was early spring and the best time of the season for top grade Long Jing and Bi Luo Chun. However, tea tasting is a definite must to ensure the quality of the tea. I immediately asked the shop assistant to prepare those 2 types of tea for tasting. The Long Jing was just great and I confirmed my order. Unfortunately, there was no time for me to try out the Bi Luo Chun due to time constraint. (You know how rush it is when one’s on a packaged tour.) Anyway, the tour leader insisted that I should wait to get my tea at the tea farm in Hangzhou where both top quality and reasonable price is ensured.

Well, I was in for a great disappointment. The tea farm produced only one type of tea - Long Jing and after the tea tasting session, I found that the quality was no where near the one I bought in Nanjing nor those I’ve drunk so far back home. There was no time left to shop around for what I wanted so badly. This was the last leg of our tour and due to depart for KL the next day. Honestly at that very moment I was rather pissed off with the tour leader for trying to be “smart Alex” when she actually did not have any notion on tea drinking, let alone what’s Long Jing or Bi Luo Chun. No knowledge on tea at all is not a sin but pretending to know and misleading me definitely gave me a poor impression of her as a guide. Anyway, on second thought, I told myself that if something is not meant to be yours don’t fret over it. So, it’s just not my luck to try this special tea.

In life, many things happen with a purpose. For years, we have patronised our regular teashop and they never had Bi Luo Chun. In fact, we were told that this tea is very very rare and only their boss had tried it here.

A week later, we suddenly received a call from the teashop informing us that their boss just came back from China with only a kilo each of special premium grade Long Jing and Bi Luo Chun. It would be made available to only few key customers on first come first serve basis.
Of course, we immediately rushed over the following day. It was such a rewarding trip. My first experience with Bi Luo Chun - the fragrance was just astoundingly sweet and refreshing. Maybe it was meant to be that I should try this tea back home. If I were to buy it during my trip to Shanghai, I might end up with a more inferior quality and high priced because I had no comparison basis to work on.
All’s well that ends well. We finally get to try premium Bi Luo Chun PLUS very good Long Jing and Tie Guan Yin. May not mean very much to the layman but share this with a tea connoisseur and he can relate to this experience!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2003 at 10:13 pm and is filed under General.