Why is Mei Leaf so controversial?
From browsing tea forums, I have understood that Mei Leaf is very controversial with a lot of people. You either seem to hate Mei Leaf or love them. I was wondering why this is?
I understand there have been two controversial episodes: one about the proclaimed age of the trees for one of their pu-erhs and one about a racist sticker they produced. The latter one seemed like an honest mistake, while overestimating the age of tea trees seems like a widespread problem in the tea world that almost everybody is guilty of.
Also, some people seem to think there teas are terribly overpriced. However, it seems to me that comparing prices in tea is very difficult unless you really A/B-test the same types of tea from different vendors. I was wondering if anybody has actually done this? While I myself have only just started exploring tea and so I do not claim to have any expert knowledge by any means, I have had a few teas from Mei Leaf and they seemed quite reasonably priced compared to similar quality teas from other shops.
Just to be clear, I am not trying to promote Mei Leaf here or anything, I was just wondering whether I am missing something or I have just been purchasing tea from the wrong shops.
on the whole i think the tea mei leaf sells is fine, and you mostly have got your facts straight about why folks hate them. I’ll add a little. Lying about tree age IS a widespread problem, though for a boutique seller like mei leaf it’s a lot more unusual (and some of thei exaggerations have been truly insane), they have entered the arena with sites for whom accuracy and transparency is a business model, and especially when they have the largest “tea education” platform on youtube. They are far and away the biggest, and its a real shame.
And the racist sticker. We can call it an honest mistake, but i would content that anyone who could honestly mistake that sticker for inoffensive must not have a very open mind, especially coming from Britain aka King Shit of Colonization Mountain. The real issue, i think, was that the apology for that sticker was bad, and did not own or apologize for the error in any significant way.
Finally, the dude runs a Chinese medicine and beauty product racket. Drinking tea for medicinal qualities is different than selling tea as having medicinal qualities? If his record was perfect and then came out with a skincare line i would still be wary but idk the dude just seems like bad news to me and a lot of people.
Wait, so Mei Leaf is BAD??? I’ve been watching their Tea Education videos on youtube and It’s been a big reason for my recent interest in quality tea. Should I not be watching this? Do you know any better tea ed courses? I am so lost here, I thought Mei Leaf really had their ish together. Maybe I was wrong and I’m just looking at it from a really uneducated point of view.
Its one of those yes and no things, while alot of what they say is very accurate, and generally beneficial. They have been known to make exaggerated claims on tea.
So if you are watching their guides to help brew better green tea, go for it, it will certainly help. Or for the difference between sheng and shou puerh again, their videos are right on track.
But if you are buying tea from them, beware high prices, not completely their fault as England has a currency conversion issue now, but their prices are a bit high. And take any claims of age on their puerh with a grain of salt.
You can try Tea DB as an alternative for tea info. They dont sell tea just taste and review it.
Well to be honest, I’ve mostly been using their videos as a guide on how to brew proper tea. For basically forever I though that all tea was the same. Didn’t help that I was limited to grocery store tea. Now by watching their videos I have found a whole world awaits me. Also, their videos have got me hankering for some quality teaware in the worst way. Right now I’ve been using my Brevelle one touch pot w/o basket to heat water, and a two cup with hand strainer system for brewing. I want to get something specifically for brewing tea so I can quit wasting paper cups. The Mei Leaf vids have me wanting a Gaiwan (Spelling??) but I am so scared I will drop and break it. I still have so much to learn.
As an education channel there’s a lot me leaf gets right I guess, but it’s because of what they get wrong that I consider them untrustworthy. Because if you don’t know, you’ll come out with some wrong ideas. Mostly I can fault the channel for oversimplifying in a way that is misleading and serves the seller but not the buyer.
Stuff like: exaggerating age of leaves, exaggerating the importance of age of leaves, the importance of elevation, and of mountain. And by exaggerating I mostly mean… Taking guidelines are rules and using those phony rules to sell tea. Tea isn’t as simple as finding high elevation gushu from a good village
Take everything with a grain of salt. There has been a lot of stuff on here and a lot of controversy over similar discussions. I think if you enjoy what you drink and are happy with what you paid then most of the rest is secondary
There is a bunch of marketing to old tree, gushu, hand picked by ladies in their 80’s and such. I tend to believe very little until it hits my cup. Winners and losers out there so exploration and brewing are the keys.
I agree wholeheartedly with mrmopar – in my opinion taste trumps all else when it comes to tea; as much as it can be REALLY COOL to drink a tea that’s older than you are or with an interesting story/background/processing technique/etc. that shouldn’t be the ONLY reason that you’re drinking it. Drink it because you love the taste, not because of the story attached to it…
Like I said in my earlier comment, I think the people who enjoy Mei Leaf’s products should be able to do so peacefully – though hopefully they’re making that call as someone knowledgeable about all the areas of doubt in his assertions, and not someone blindly believing all Don’s claims. The misinformation that Don spreads is a reflection of him, and not the people who actually genuinely get something from the teas he carries.
(Hopefully that makes sense.)
The thing is you can’t test A/B same tea to price check. Teas are very different if they were the same (storage conditions). Even if it was same region maocha, the processing can be different. Only way is if we find the teas were rewraps.
That said, it’s back to integrity of the vendor. I rather buy off a vendor that is honest with their products. Being caught being false about one’s products makes me think they are lying to make money or they don’t know tea as well as they say they do.
But yes. The recent cringe I saw was their travel backpay for $100+. It’s a camera bag which you can get on Amazon for $20. There’s a lot of marketing garbage going on.
There are a couple different Mei Leaf threads going, if you have the time to dig through the posts in them. The first one covers the bulk of the two Mei Leaf controversies pretty well, but it’s also much longer. Here are the sort of main two, so to speak:
1. https://steepster.com/discuss/14690-mei-leaf-slash-chinalife-1600-year-old-pu-erh (Contains a good deal of the tree age controversy, as well as the racist stickers)
2. https://steepster.com/discuss/22030-mei-leaf-chat (Created as a response to the first by Mei Leaf fans, and a little bit more positive…)
I’ve never been a customer of Mei Leaf, and personally I’ve always felt like everyone who truly enjoys the teas Mei Leaf sells for the taste of the teas should be allowed to do so in peace, just like the people who want to criticize Don for the wild claims he makes about his teas should also have the right to do that. It does frustrate me how a lot of his more hardcore and outspoken “followers” blindly accept everything he claims in his videos as true though and are often close minded when it comes to people explaining otherwise; as others have already expressed the blind acceptance mixed with some pretty inaccurate information taints what would otherwise be quite a lot of helpful information in his Youtube videos.
I will say that I also find it very immature of him to dismiss any criticisms of himself or his business practices as simply “haters” (as he has often claimed). Plus as someone who WAS pretty offended by the awful sticker debacle, I found his apology woefully lacking. It followed that same trend of basically claiming anyone who was hyper fixating on it was basically just one of “the haters who never want to see him succeed”. I can’t find his exact statement right now, and I’d rather not spend my time digging for it, but it was generally dismissive of the people who were offended. A sort of “I’m sorry you’re upset” and not a “I’m sorry I did something wrong” kind of apology. I remember feeling like it just lumped everyone together into a pile of baseless criticism, when that simply isn’t true…
for anyone in this thread who has been watching the mei leaf youtube videos, i think it would be nice for folks to throw in some alternate channels to check out? i personally really like the series Tea House Ghost has been doing, though I haven’t tried any of the tea the host sells
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ_7sfEf9-8&list=PLgnB2QJGjqNrSlcxWiKuIA8b66xr3wfqN
Which vendors would you recommend as more trustworthy than Mei Leaf? Pretty much all sites I’ve encountered contain questionable claims about origin, ‘cha qi’, exaggerated tasting notes, number of infusions, etc.
Everybody talks about qi and such. This affects some but maybe not others. I have had tea that gave me the sweat factor but they are far and in between for me. I try to drink what tastes good and if there is an effect it just adds to the experience.
There are loads of good vendors out there that I think are transparent. I don’t fault anyone on the qi wagon in their marketing so Mei Leaf is in there too.
Yunnan Sourcing
White2Tea
Crimson Lotus
Mandala tea
Chawangshop
Yunnan Craft
Essence of tea
Tribute Tea
Liquid Proust on Etsy
Thanks for the suggestions. Most of those seem pu-erh focused and/or based in the US. Since I’m not a big fan of raw pu-erh and live in Europe, do you happen to know some good stores in Europe or that ship directly from the country where the tea is produced?
I’ve already come across these shops: What-Cha, Teabento, Taiwan Tea Craft, Hibiki-an, Cha Dao, Thee van Sander, Ippodo, Eco-Cha.
Would you consider those shops more trustworthy than Mei Leaf?
I’ve already ordered from Yunnan Sourcing once, and quite frankly I wasn’t too impressed with their quality. One tea was very good, one was okay, and two were pretty disappointing. Small sample size of course, but in my experience the teas from Mei Leaf were better for a comparable price point.
Can anybody explain to me what is exactly story with those stickers? I look at those 2. The little baby holding cakes. Indian head, I used to have similar stickers when I was kid, we were collecting those , I cant remember exactly but I think they were advert. on something as well ( wasn’t it on jeans as well ? ) …so is that copy right problem ? Sorry if awkward question, maybe cultural differences or lack of my history knowledge? Please no flames, just constructive answer.
British and french colonialism and American/Canadian domestic policy led wars and intentional genocide against the native people of America. We are at a point now where I think many people understand that taking and repurposing native iconography for uses OTHER than showcasing native iconography is bad. Basically we killed them but decided their stuff was “cool” enough to use and that’s not okay. Very basic answer but I hope covers it.
Additional note that North American domestic policy is still really hostile to native people, from whom all the land under our feet was stolen, so the issue is not even just about past transgressions
thanks for explanation. I put “Indian head logo” term into the google.us and got tons of heads there. Vapers Club or Chicago Blackhawks…is it a baseball team? Or Pontiac . I understand the history point but not sure if “native iconography for uses OTHER than showcasing native iconography is bad”…sound quite radical to me, but that’s probably just me. Also I don’t understand what is the fuss about that Wa Zu or La Hu Zu baby holding the puerh tongs? The puerh they got is , I suppose , from one of the villages were natives are Wa or Lahu people, so promoting that is also bad?
imagine if you killed someone and started wearing their favorite shirt around town. its like that, but with whole cultures boiled down to a single idea
it might sound radical to you, but at the end of the day the native people have said to please stop using that imagery. if nothing else, it is at the very least a rude thing to do
I understand your point of view. It’s like as a German vendor would send stickers with head of Rabi without being Jewish him self. But as I mentioned above, the Indian head feature has been used by many other before as marketing / logo , not like the Rabi though. So the German vendor’s case I would see it as a “message” or rude ignorance, but can’t see the same with MLF.
I believe they used it just because “cool” feature ( as u mentioned ) without realizing that it might go that wrong.
“imagine if you killed someone and started wearing their favorite shirt around town” ..yep, u r right, it does sound quite radical to me, not sure if Don or his ancestors are directly responsible for any killing of native Americans.
“but at the end of the day the native people have said to please stop using that imagery.” …I haven’t heard of this one, nobody told me :-( so how should I know that, right?
I don’t live in US , so I don’t know what is the sensitive topic in matter of native Americans there. But seeing famous brands using it as logo no problem and some small tea vendor makes a sticker which lunches an avalanche of complains……
I’m not lover neither hater ( although I’m criticizing them for their way of marketing ) , and that’s the way I see / observe as 3rd person.
I guess baby issue is the color, but Wa or Lahu people have dark skin , so I still have no clue where is the problem?
Just want to toss it out there that the Chicago Blackhawks logo that I think you’re referring to IS highly controversial & seen by many, many people as deeply racist. There have been numerous petitions for the team to change its name and logo because of the inherently racist nature of it.
The same is true for many other sports teams (Cleveland Indians/Washington Red Skins), Universities/Colleges, and clothing companies – among others. So it’s simply untrue to say that famous companies are using it as a logo ‘without problems’. Also, just because someone may potentially use that iconography without a huge uproar doesn’t therefore mean that it’s suddenly acceptable to do so. That’s like saying “Why are you yelling at me for stealing from the candy store!? Brady stole too and you didn’t yell at him!”. Well, maybe no one realized Brady had stolen until right now and that’s why no one scolded him for it. It still doesn’t make the fact that you stole any more ok.
And, as stated in above comments, even if Mei Leaf was COMPLETELY oblivious to the inherent racism of the stickers – a lot of what people were upset by was the complete LACK of remorse over the situation and really shoddy apology where they dodged any sort of onus for their actions.
EDIT: Also to add, within the first Mei Leaf thread is commentary from people who are actually Native American/First Nations who expressed pretty explicit offense to the stickers, as well as a link to a (now locked) reddit thread with quite a great deal of explanation from multiple people as to what the offensive nature of the content is.
Also, since it being a copy right problem was brought up in an earlier post I believe that someone DID call attention to the fact that the images appeared to have been stolen from another artist within that Reddit thread as well…
besides, the haters are the best marketing. I have’t heard of MLF until 1600 Bingdao thread showed up :-)
As YS is probably the ultimate tea vendor , the MLF is the ultimate Tea Youtuber. If u r ultimate in anything , there are always lovers / haters groups, it’s unavoidable. It keeps balance as some of their claiming do need corrections.
I do respect opinion of others, but the stickers issue seems to me a bit bloated. Just my opinion.
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