A Search for Qimen

I stepped out of the cab and was met with familiar sights, sounds and smells.

I was standing at the end of Tunxi’s Old Street, a corner I have stood on countless times in my 5 years in Huang Shan. Most of it was exactly the same. I slung my bag on my back and started down old street toward the same hotel I always stay at.Old Street is lined with shops selling chili sauces, local snacks, tea and small toys. I walked past these shops almost feeling as though nothing had changed.

I was in Huang Shan to build a Qimen Expansion pack. In the past I had sold these tasting boxes meant to expand the drinker's understanding of the Qimen. Qimen, as I see it, offers a wider range of flavors than most people don’t give it credit for. These boxes were meant to show people the range of flavors available in Qimens and thus get them more interested. These boxes in the past were met with a warm response and recently there were requests for another box so I was in Huang Shan for that sole of building another box.  I was feeling confident that all the time I spent in Huang Shan would allow me to seamlessly cruise Tunxi’s tea shops, getting my hands on the best teas Tunxi had to offer; in particular Qimen red tea (black tea).



I took a turn down a side street and came across a fermented tofu seller. Not just any tofu seller. This tofu seller was also the maker of a Huang Shan Mao Feng and of a Qimen red tea. He saw me and his jaw dropped; it had been a few years since we saw each other. He gave me a slightly awkward hug and we sat down behind his tofu stand to drink tea and chat. It was in this conversation that I began to see that things had changed.



I started by asking him how he had been recently. I was caught slightly off guard when instead of smiling and saying something along the lines of “pretty good” he took a deep breath and sighed. “Not so good. It turns out times weren't as good as they use to be for a local merchant. Huang Shan, a tourist city, was hit hard by Covid and never really came back in the same way. Money was harder to make and people were more careful with their buying. He told me that even the way people bought tea was changing. Before it was standard to buy in pounds, even if you were buying tea for the first time. “These days younger drinkers” He explained “Want to try it first. They don't care about the price, but they only want to buy a few servings at first saying they will buy more if they like it.” While not necessarily a bad thing, it was a major change in the market and this new type of buyer was bringing him uncertainty. We then talked about all the people who left since I moved away. Many left for financial reasons, a few moving abroad. The atmosphere became a bit heavy as we both sat in nostalgia for a while. A few doors down from where we sat was a bar where we used to sit late into the night drinking, laughing and talking. The bar, like many of the people who sat with us, was now gone.

The silence was broken by him taking a video of me saying he was sitting with an old friend. When I asked what that was for he said his girlfriend was asking what he was doing. “You have a girlfriend!” I said with a smile. His face lit up and he scrolled through his phone to show me a picture of his new girlfriend, the first in the years I have known him that he had a girlfriend. This lightened the mood a lot and he also talked about his idea to sell vacuumed packed Huang Shan dried tofu along with packs of his tea. As we finished the tea I thought about how this was just the nature of life.
Times change and people leave. But new times come bringing along new people. I told him I’d find him later and went on to my hotel.

The next day I set out to find the tea.


I started at Tea Street. This is a street of wholesale tea shops. The shops on that street are a bit older and less glamorous than some of the newer shops in Tunxi. You can find some hidden gems but they are just that, hidden. The first shop I ever went to back in 2017 was on this street and it had always been my favorite shop.. When I reached its door though I found an empty shell of a store, gutted and being turned into a packaging store. I walked down the street passing an array of stores until I got to the shop I had in mind.

I had maybe been to this shop one time, but I knew the store focused on Qimens and therefore it was the perfect place to start. I went in and asked for a Qimen. She showed me a Qimen that looked cheap and it was, only about 150 RMB (20ish dollars).  I asked if she had anything better and she reached for the box next to her. As she was pulling out the tea I asked how much it was and she said around 200. Before she could even take the tea out stopped her. “Whats your best tea?” I asked with a laugh. She then went to the other side of the store and pulled out a Qi Mei, Qimen Jin Mei. By just smelling it I already smelled the difference. This tea’s dry aroma contained aromas of fruity berriness. I then did something I've never done before, I bought it with out tasting it.

From my experience, in Qimen at least, when looking for exceptional tea the aroma will tell you a lot. If you smell a tea and its smells normal, no unique notes that really stand out, it will be just that…normal. Meanwhile if you smell a tea and there is a note in the dry aroma that is clear  and separates it from the rest, that note will more often than not show up in the brewed tea. To play it safe I bought half a pound. I later would grandpa style that tea and the full fruitiness of the tea was vindication that trusting my nose was a good way to go.
Off to the next shop.


I tried to visit my friend Xiao Qiao (Sh-ow Ch-ow) but her shop was closed so it was off to Man Fu’s. Man Fu is another friend whose shop Ive been to many times and from him I have procured a number of amazing teas. I was confident that Man Fu had good teas. While not qimen maker himself he had a good understanding of tea and knew quality. I met him on the street where he was standing in front of a store under construction. “My new shop” he smiled and said when he saw me. His old shop was still there and we went in to have tea. We started with a very old Qimen, a Qimen gong fu from the early 200’s, that had that damp attic taste. From there he pulled out a wild Qimen. The smell had me intrigued. It was familiar in a way that I couldn't put my finger on. I was disappointed when I saw the liquid color was a bright golden yellow. From my expirence teas that are a golden/yellow color tend to be focused more on aroma and dont have much substance. I asked him about it and he explained some of the science behind it, but then also added that Chinese culture allows Chinese people to understand tea and basically I couldn't appreciate this tea because I was a foreigner. I grit my teeth a bit and remembered the last time I was in he had made similar comments.

After asking for something a little different, he brought out a Qimen Mao Feng. This one too, bright yellow. I asked him to brew it strong with no avail, still yellow. I asked him if he had anything with a fruity flavor. To my shock he told me that all Qimens have a fruity flavor. This left me a little baffled. A previous Qimen seller that the fruit aroma was the hardest achieve because there is such a small window. When you under process a Qimen its bland. Process it a bit farther and you get floral aroma. Go a bit farther still you get the hightly sought after fruit aroma. But if you go too far you lose everything and are left with a Qimen that has a yam like flavor. This is considered over processed. Along with the very clear fact most qimens infact do not have a fruit flavor I was surprised he had said this.  I think my face was starting to show my increasingly negative feelings toward ther session. With a shrug he said he may not have anything I’d like. We shook hands with a smile and I left.

To be honest at this point I was a bit thrown. I had really expected him to have a
Qiimen and walking out of his shop empty handed left me off tilt. There had been another shop I went to before that I also came from empty handed. I was now three shops in and where 

I was also a bit surprised that all the teas this trip were coming out a yellowish gold color. This trip wasn't going the way I imagined and I wasn’t sure how to get it back on track. I passed Xiao Qiaos shop again and it was still closed, though there was a jacket on her chair and some lights were on.

After taking a break at the hotel I found Xiao Qiaos shop to finally be open. Xiao Qiao and Jason, a Qimen seller I have also known for a while, were sitting on the table. I went in and was greeted warmly as an old friend. We sat down and they brewed a qimen that once again came out golden yellow. But this time I didn’t think about it. Xiao Qiao was my oldest friend in Huang Shan and was probably the one who knew me best, I was here mostly as a friend rather than a tea buyer.



We sat, talked and reminisced a bit. Jason (his english name)  is a more recent friend and so every now and then we had to explain a joke. I ended up buying the tea, not so much out of sourcing but more out of supporting a friend. This tea would end up being the best tea from this trip. I left the shop and ended the tea buying for the day.

On my way home though I stopped by a beer bar. This beer bar was a favorite hang out spot when i was living in Huang Shan and had been closed for many years but was now open. I went in and saw another old friend behind the bar. He poured me a drink, sat with me and once again we began to talk about old times. Similar to the conversation on Old Street this conversation centered around the people who had left and the things that had changed. While I tried to lighten the mood by asking about his family, this friend didn't bounce back as fast as my tofu friend. Our conversation ended when another patron entered the bar and he shuffled off to talk with him. I didn't stay too long but before I left I snapped a picture of the seats me and my old coworker used to sit in when we came and sent it to him with the message “wish you were here”.


The next day I checked out of my hotel and went back to tea street. I popped into a shop I knew and grabbed some An Cha, a hei cha, and picked up a Qimen that smelled like honey. This tea was also bought blind but will less success than the first tea.

I stepped out into the street and looked around. What was I going to do next? I was not fully confident in my Qimen sourcing and felt that a little more time could yield better results. Just one more Qimen would make me feel better, but could I find one more Qimen? This trip had humbled me a bit and showed me that tea sourcing is never the same twice. Just cause you found something before did not mean it would be there again. Did I want to continue to look for tea spending more time and money with the risk of continued disappointment, or did I want to call it quits and work with what I had? I chose the second option. I ended up sending Xiao Qiao a message and buying another tea from her to add to the box. The box now includes one Qi Mei, one Mao Feng and one Xiang Luo.

This trip felt like a turning chapter in my life living in China and sourcing tea. Huang Shan had been the first chapter. Five years of sourcing the local teas and feeling the excitement of living in a new country in your 20s. But it's been four years since I left. The friends I drank with in my 20s have now moved on and to be honest the initial excitement is also gone. But both of these have been replaced. Friendships once based on going out and having fun have been replaced with friendships that are based on time known and surviving feelings of closeness. The initial feeling that I have a full understanding of Huang Shan teas is replaced by the understanding that teas change and I will always have to work to find good teas. I will obviously go back to Huang Shan, but I will go back with a more curious mind. I will go back looking to try new places instead of only relying on my favorite places from the past. I have thrown out my previous notions of Qimen to be more open to new ones.  When you focus too much on the past  and what you previously new, you don't give yourself the opportunity to appreciate how things have changed.