Beijing - tea exploring and other things?
I figured I’d start things here to see if anyone has any thoughts/recommendations for things to see and do in Beijing, tea related or otherwise.
I “have” to go down there for work in 3 weeks and i’m hoping to have at least 2 or 3 days to explore the area and 1 or 2 evenings. So any suggestions or thoughts that anyone has will be greatly appreciated since I’ll also have limited time between now and then to actually research much.
Thanks in advance :)
I recommend reading through this thread:
http://steepster.com/discuss/2425-beijing-tea-travel
Which includes my followup post on my own travel. Theres a lot of information in there. In short, you should take a trip to Maliandao (the tea street) where you will be completely overwhelmed but it will be awesome anyway. I had more fun there than in the chain tea shops, where there weren’t any tastings and more pressure for sales. Most sellers want you to come in and taste their tea, and I did leave at least one without buying anything, and I didn’t feel pressured. Also I was afraid initially of being “taken” and being sold lower quality tea because I was a foreigner or the tea shop I went to didn’t have super special teas, but the teas I bought in Maliandao are so much better than I could dream of (and so much better than 90% of the teas I’ve bought elsewhere) and I wish I had more of them.
Not sure how your chinese is… PM me your email address and I will email you my “tea flash cards” with names of different types of teas on them that you can show to tea sellers if you run into language problems. I put the PDF on my iPhone but you could print them out too. The iPhone is also useful for various Chinese apps where you can show words onscreen.
Also feel free to PM me if you have any other questions… I was there last March for 3 weeks. Hope the air is ok for you (unfortunately it nearly killed me and my sensative lungs)!
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