My question is did you observe Keemun is loosing its original taste?
My friend also informed me it is getting very difficult to collect
good Golden Monkey now a days. I am planning to try some other vendors
GM because I need 5-6 cups of GM a day. Could you please advice me
some American or European sources you like. I would like to do a
random tasting session on Golden Monkey. I am totally addicted with
this tea now.

Thank you advance,

Ripon
Arlington, VA

My pragmatic answer:

Most people are moving away from drinking teas such as these. The tea
market in China is fickle and immature; it mostly follows fads and
speculation concerning where the most work will be put in tea
production. Qi Men for instance, you CAN NOT find down in these
parts, as well as most of the other most famous teas besides Pu'er and
Tie Guan Yin. There are but a few dealers that sell other teas. For
instance, in the city I live, the only place you could get Dancong was
to buy it off some people from Chaoshan like it were some kind of drug
or something. "Hey man, you got any good Dancong?" A few shops have
opened up sporadically and closed soon after around here, though.

It's just following the law of supply and demand. In Guangdong, you
can find tea shop owners driving cars into work, but in Anhui many
still ride bicycles. In Hangzhou, the farmers have 2 or 3 storey
houses and cars in the driveways, but in some more remote parts of the
country, people sleep in the storage areas of their shops. Shop
keepers and wholesellers are more interested in trying make money and
less interested in the ramifications of a tea losing it's power/
flavor. In China, integrity almost always bends down to cashflow.

That's what I see, at least.

As for myself, I bought a box of the pu'er Sheng tea that I enjoy;
have just enough Shu to go around if I want a change in palate; I get
fresh Sichuan greens from local friends n the tea trade in a few
different places; and I am really enjoying exploring teas from the
deep countryside locations in Guangdong which are turning out to have
fresher, nicer aspects that many famous brand greens I've seen in most
shops. I ain't doing so bad but I do miss good Longjing from time to
time.