Hi Space Cowboy,

> I see the Chinese characters. I see the Japanese character for KIN
> but nothing for PUER (at least the MS CJK unicode set is free).

It's not in "characters" but in katakana, the phonetic writing Japanese use
for foreign words (the second character of puer is not in the standard
Japanese fonts, they can't input it). To see it an additional set of fonts
is needed. You can probably live without it. That writing is necessary if
Mike wants to see the frequency of the puer+kin Japanese pages on google.

> I'll also take the
> picture from the recent Tie Guanyin post and see if I can find that
> particular brand with it's sexy leaf. If I can't find that brand I'll
> try some other expensive version and see after all these decades it
> was my wallet causing the dislike and not my tastebuds. My local tea
> vendor got some expensive TG I like about $10/100g YOWZER!!! I've
> been converted and damn the 5th infusion tastes like the first ;-).

I have never regretted buying teas that were relatively expensive or even
frankly not in my means. It's sure a good product, storage, freshness, and
everything has a cost. But that makes a real difference in the cup.
Especially for Oolongs that have been mass-produced in abysmal quality. That
can be night and day.

I've made a strange bargain in Chinatown-shopping. I've found at a discount
store Lotus tea in a nice wooden box (with "cha" or "tra" ? pyrograved in
Vietnamese calligraphy). It was a old, I knew it, it didn't cost more than
an empty box. When I opened it, it looked like and tasted like unflavored
cheap black tea, no lotus flavor. Forgot it, but last week I intented to
re-use the box for pencils, so I gave a try to the leaves in cold infusion.
There was a little miracle : in cold water, the leaves take back their green
color and flavor and the lotus fragrance is also revived. It's very
refreshing. Great for this season.

Kuri