Shao Dahen the man

There is a teapot made by the legendary Shao Dahen during the mid-Qing dynasty. In the County Annals of Yixing, it was written that teapots by Shao Dahen were rare and priceless as there were very few of his teapots left behind in this world. He was considered the best potter ever lived in Yixing. Even the grandmaster Gu Jingzhou had deep respect and admiration for his works.

Figurine of Shao Dahen

Shao Dahen's famous Duozhi pot is now on display in a Shanghai Yixing museum, a privately owned museum owned by a teapot fanatic.

Shao Dahen's Duozhi pot

The legendary Gu Jingzhou considered Shao's teapots to be the best in this world. He often imitated Shao's work in the 60s.

Gu Zingzhou

Shao was a great potter not only because of his excellent skills, He was an upright person not intimidated by power and authority. There was a story that he was beaten up and jailed  for refusing to make teapots for the corrupt magistrate in the county where he lived. But there was an even more interesting account of him for showing humanity and passion for innocent people.

The legend had it that there was this magistrate in the Yixing county. He liked to drink tea and also collect teapots. It was told that he ever owned a teapot made by Shao Dahen. Even during that time, it was not easy to own a teapot made by Shao. Hence, Shao's teapots were considered precious and priceless. This magistrate was deeply in love with this pot due to fine workmanship. Everyday he would instruct his servant maid to brew tea with this teapot. He would sip tea while enjoying the beauty of the pot made by Shao. Unfortunately, one day the servant was a bit careless and dropped the teapot. It smashed into pieces on the floor.

The magistrate was furious when he saw his favourite teapot broken into many pieces. Out of anger, he demanded the death of the servant to pay for the loss of this precious pot.

The maid must die for breaking this precious teapot

When Shao Dahen heard of this incident, immediately he brought some of his teapots to see the magistrate.

He pleaded with the magistrate not to punish the servant and he was prepared to let the magistrate choose any teapots he liked in exchange for the maid's life.

The magistrate took a look at Shao's teapots and they were all professionally made and were of the highest quality. Then he remembered that Shao's teapots were indeed hard to come by. He agreed to Shao's request that he would spare the maid's life in exchange for one of Shao's teapots.

Then Shao Dahen let the magistrate chose the teapot he liked from all the pots he brought along. After the magistrate had chosen a teapot, Shao then packed the rest of the teapots and was about to leave.

Then suddenly the magistrate stopped Shao from leaving. He told Shao that he liked all his teapots and wondered if Shao could sell all the pots to him. He told Shao to name a price for all the pots. He thought that Shao would be very please to this transaction as Shao could receive a fortune by selling these teapots to him.

 On hearing that the magistrate wanted to buy all his teapots, he immediately put down the teapots. Without saying a word, he started smashing his teapots with a stick. All these beautiful and precious teapots became broken pieces of clay on the floor.

The magistrate was shocked by this sudden change of event. He could not imagine these beautiful and precious teapots all smashed up in front of him.

He wanted to know why Shao would smashed all his teapot rather than selling them to him for a fortune. Do you know why Shao did what he did in front of the magistrate? Do you also want to know what Shao had spoken to the magistrate or the reason behind his action?

Shao told the magistrate, " If I let you have all my teapots, I don't know how many people would die because of all these teapots that I made."

Obviously he was telling the magistrate. Teapots were nice to have but nothing could compare to the lives of innocent people. The magistrate, powerful he might be, could not just let innocent lives to be lost because of his love for the teapots.

After Shoa had broken these teapots, there were very few of Shao's teapots around these days. No wonder they are very precious indeed. They are precious not only because of their fine workmanship, it is because of the person who made them. A potter who treasured life more than anything in this world. No wonder the legendary Gu Jingzhou had such high regards for this man.

There is a lesson to be learned. We may have passion for certain things. But we cannot let this passion hurts the people around us.

Black tourmaline and quartz

Recently I bought a huge tourmaline stone with quartz in the middle. This huge stone weighed a whopping 6 kg and is truly amazing.

I have collected quite a number of black tourmaline stones with size ranging from a few grams to several kilograms. But this one is the biggest I have ever collected.

Tourmaline is a pyro-electric material which comes with many different colours. The best gem quality tourmaline is the light blue stone which commands a price higher than that of diamond. The pink and green stones are equally attractive and pricey.

The cheapest tourmaline is of course the black stone. However, these stones are known to have a quality no other stones can match. That is, they can ground negative energy that surrounds you in your everyday life. For instance, in the office, we have computers, internet, smart-hones, etc. These devices work by responding to the waves and signals they received in the cyberspace. When we are out in the open air, we are bombarded with all sorts of radiations. Our cyber space is all but polluted with different types of waves and radiations (some from the sun and some we created). We need to have some devices to ground these waves and radiations, or else our bodies will surely absorb them. You don't want to know what these waves and radiations can do to your body if you are continually exposed to them. The best device to do the job is actually the black tourmaline. It has been proven that black tourmaline is able to absorb all the negative energies surrounding you. It provides a shield to protect you from harmful radiations. What more it does not need a power source to do the job.

It is a good practice to place some black tourmaline stones in your house, in the rooms or near your work space. You can also carry some smaller stones with you wherever you go. Not only it absorbs the negative energy surrounding you, it also turns some negativity away from you. For instance, you may be in a happy mood, suddenly your friends may utter some negative remarks. This will definitely change your mood and upset you for the rest of the day. Don't worry, if you have black tourmaline with you, it will turn this negativity around, it may even send it back to the person who started it.

Most people use the black tourmaline when they practice meditation. As you are meditating, the black stone will help you to stay calm and focus in your meditation. This will improve the flow of energy in your body. What a way to relax after a day of hard work and all the stresses and negativity of everyday life will be grounded and disappeared.

Some people like black tourmaline with smoky quartz. Quartz is a pizo-electric material and it is able to amplify signals. Hence black tourmaline with quartz is able to amplify the negative energy in its vicinity and ground it all at once.

Life is short, do protect yourselves with some black tourmaline stones.

Restaurant business and puerh tea

Even as old vintage puerh tea is in short supply today, ever wonder why there are still a sizeable amount of old puerh cakes around these days?

Old puerh tea cakes

Prior to 1970s, there was hardly any demand for old vintage puerh tea. Even in places like Hong Kong and Macau where morning dimsum type of breakfast was very common, most people if they ever drank puerh tea, they would only order loose puerh tea form the restaurants where they patronised their dimsum. In those days shops would only put on sale ordinary puerh tea usually artificially fermented in their warehouse under moist environment. As raw puerh tea was the only tea type on production, it was both harsh and undrinkable, most shops would store the tea in moist warehouse where the high humidity was ideal to age the green tea. This gave rise to the characteristic unpleasant (like decay wood) smell of puerh stored and aged under the wet and moist environment.

Assortment of tea in a tea shop

Restaurant owners in Hong Kong all the while knew that people of Hong Kong would always favour dimsum with Chineses tea and they needed to keep a large stock of puerh tea in their warehouses. As they knew that puerh tea was in a way like the old mandarin orange peel (skin of the  mandarin oranges), the older the thing the more pricey it was. Hence they had confidence in ordering large quantities of puerh tea and kept the tea in their warehouses. Mean time the people in Taiwan also ordered their puerh tea from Hong Kong with the unmistakable decaying smell (due to wet storage). Hence it was obvious that puerh tea was not popular among tea drinkers in general. The tea was considered sub-standard when compared to the fragrant green tea such as the Goddess of Mercy.

I also remembered in the early 1980s when I was looking at some puerh tea in a supermarket, my friend met me. He looked surprisingly at me and remarked that why I drank such a tea that tasted like decaying wood. I put on a smile and just said the tea was fine for me. This friend of mine liked the Wuyi mountain tea and he had often demonstrated his tea drinking skills to audience in major tea promotion events. Years later I met him again and he was complaining about the high price in aged puerh tea. He said he should have followed me in buying the tea when it was still unpopular in those days. When he finally realised the difference of really good puerh tea, the price had rocketed so much that it was beyond his ability to acquire such rare aged tea.

The early tea merchants in HK

In the 1980s, things began to change for the better for puerh tea. People began to appreciate good old puerh tea aged in proper dry warehouses where conditions favoured the natural ageing process. When people realised the big difference in quality between genuine puerh tea as compared to the one aged in moist environment (which picked up the decaying smell from high humidity and wetness from the warehouse), puerh tea was then accepted as a tea comparable to the famous goddess of mercy or the Wuyi mountain tea. At that time the price of vintage tea cakes was still high and most shops dared not order large quantity to sell as turn-over rate was too slow. One shop owner commented that he ordered some bundles of the Red Label puerh tea cakes and the order costed him hundreds of thousands of $HK. This amount of money could buy him a property in high end district in Hong Kong. Being raw puerh tea, the Red Label tea was till very harsh in taste and flavour. After one year he was only able to sell a few cakes. It is unthinkable now as each Red Label puerh tea cake can cost as much as several hundred thousand dollars. But again in the early 1970s, the tea was really too green and harsh to be accepted as good tea.

Red Label tea cake

Towards the end of the 1980 era, people generally appreciated good puerh tea from the aged old vintage tea cakes. But now the Red Labels had turned into a mature puerh tea with excellent taste and flavour (don't forget these tea cakes were made in 1950) after so many years of storage. Most of the Red Labels were shipped to Taiwan as they commanded a better price there. Taiwanese people had deep pockets those days due to their achievement in the electronic and computer industries.

What about the restaurant owners? If you remember, these were the people who partly helped the old puerh tea to gain its popularity as they had a very large quantity of raw puerk tea cakes stacked up in their warehouses. They kept the tea solely for their business model as dining in HK was inseparable from tea drinking. They could not comprehend the fact that their years of hard work in hoarding the puerh tea (again strictly for their restaurant business) could finally pay off. They were actually sitting on some huge fortune they previously could never imagine. Some restaurant owners began unloading the aged puerh tea in their warehouse and reaped huge profits. Other owners stopped their restaurant business and started selling also their stored puerh tea. They were astonished to find that the profit from the sale of the puerh was very much more than the restaurant business and the premises they sold. They were actually the people that hoarded such precious puerh tea of the past and kept the tea through these past decades. Most of these aged puerh tea cakes are now in Taiwan as the Taiwanese people were very acute in their business sense, With deep pockets and tea-drinking culture, Taiwanese people just cleared most of the aged puerh tea from the warehouses in Hong Kong. Now, as the Chinese people become affluent, most of the aged puerh tea cakes again find their way back to mainland China. Very previous old tea even find its way in auction houses in China. This is the craze for good aged puerh tea in China.

Aged compressed puerh tea

Aged puerh tea cake

Ancient puerh brick

Old stone mould used to compress puerh tea

A tribute to tea produced from Qing emperor

Ancient puerh tea factory

Tea bricks

Since 1967, the making of compressed tea developed into a new phase. The shape of compressed puerh tea eventually took the form of a brick weighing 250 g.  The reason to have the compressed puerh tea made in the form of bricks was simple. It was all about stackability. Just like in an aircraft, things have to be designed with stackability in mind due to space limitation. For maximum storage capacity, puerh tea is compressed in the form of bricks so they can be stacked easily. These tea bricks can be easily put in boxes for transportation or storage.

In the 60s which was the period of Cultural Revolution in China, there was a batch of puerh tea bricks made entirely from green tea processed into the so-called raw puerh tea. These tea bricks carried the inside sticker bearing characters of the Cultural Revolution Committee. This particular tea type is really a gem in the eyes of the collectors. However, there are plenty of fakes in the market.

In 1973, Menghai Factory introduced the formula to make cooked puerh tea. The factory successfully produced cooked puerh tea where the ageing of the tea was remarkably shortened by an artificially controlled ageing process. Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, Menghai Factory produced another famous batch of puerh tea bricks where a mixture of raw and cooked puerh tea leaves were used in the recipe. This became what is known as the 7562 tea bricks. This tea type is highly sought after by tea collectors due to its excellent quality.

Yet another famous tea bricks produced by Menghai Factory is the 1973 thick-brick (due to the thickness of the slab) where mixture of raw and cooked tea was used in the recipe. These bricks were bundled in a brownish rope. The 73 thick-bricks are considered very good tea due to the success of blending raw and cooked puerh tea to make them. It has a deep soothing flavour and a fragrance resembling age old herb with the characteristic of Chinese medicine. Unfortunate such good tea is in short supply due to heavy consumption by tea drinkers over the years.

A rare gem of the puerh tea

Bricks made in the late 70s

With success in making cooked puerh tea, Menghai Factory continued to experiment and make large batches of puerh tea bricks using blended puerh tea leaves and improved methods. Puerh tea bricks will continue to be a force in the puerh market.

500 g puerh brick

I personally like puerh tea bricks as it is easier to stack them in my store room for long term storage. The size of 250 g is also ideal for consumption.