Today I was invited by a friend to drink tea. We also met with a friend of his at his company. He is also an avid tea drinker. My friend brought an authentic 2022 Lao Ban Zhang. My friend's friend also invited us to drink another Gushu Lao Ban Zhang. This is the sixth time I drink authentic Gushu Lao Ban Zhang. Its quality lives up to its reputation. But whether it's worth its high price is up to one's pocket and desire to pursue such big-name tea. It has all the traits of a good Gushu. Excellent Huigan, mouth feel and Cha Qi. And contrary to the popular understanding of this tea, at least the Gushu material. It is very sweet. If you drank a very bitter one, it was not Gushu or it was tea from another area. These two Ban Zhang were really good. Same aroma and taste. Slightly different in processing style. The one I took the picture of was the one with better processing. But it was only evident in the appearance of the leaves and perhaps the tea soup colour. There were no flaws when drinking it.

I apologized to the customers who placed a pre-order for the delay. But the pots are nearly ready. After attaching the spout and handle, they will go into the kiln. Don't be scared of the size in the picture. Zitao clay has a contraction rate of nearly 20% after firing. Here is a short link of the pre-order: https://bit.ly/3OeENQj Instagram is not allowing me to tag products. Not sure if it is because I'm using a VPN.

A few tongs of old Shengpu, on their way to a local customer. It is decent and inexpensive tea with no storage flavour. It is on a transition from a semi-aged tea to getting that particular old age taste.

After our trip to Jianshui we worked hard with a few studios to offer some nice stuff. Custom ordered a few products that haven't arrived yet, but we already uploaded them to our shop. And also put a lot of effort to write in-depth about Purple Pottery. Here you can check all of that: -New Zitao teapots: https://bit.ly/39cCjSn -Info about Zitao in our blog: https://bit.ly/3NJC29l -Brewing comparison between Zitao, porcelain and Zisha: https://bit.ly/3K7o6nt

F1 brand new Hei Ni （black clay) teapot . Still has the original sticker. It is from 1990. It is for one person only, in my opinion, 42 ml. Not sure if I will upload it to my website so if there is anyone interested please send me a PM. SPECIAL OFFER, LOW PRICE, under 100!!! It has a small firing defect on the lid (check 3rd pic), here they call it 跳砂，like a piece of clay jump out during the firing. It is not that obvious unless you zoom in with your camera.It doesn't affect usage though.

Today it is a special date so my girlfriend and I went to celebrate to a good restaurant. Had some classic local dish from Mengzi in a peaceful environment, 90% plus restaurants here are very noisy. Something I don't particularly enjoy. But this place have few private rooms, meaning very few customers. Therefore we could enjoy the calmness and have a chat.

Forgot to add some more pictures of the tea in my previous post.