hi! im starting a thread of these to catalog stuff i do at the tea stores around town, uh, because, i guess i can. i will be giving this the somewhat sarcastic tag #tea saga so you can mute it that's not your... cup of tea.
anyway.
there's this cute loose-leaf tea shop run by an old chinese lady and who i belive is her nephew in international district. i stop by there somewhat frequently cus they have dirt cheap loose leaf tea that's pretty decent quality -- not as good as the stuff up the road, but they're a) cheaper and b) much nicer and also c) the lady will happily sit with me for hours on end and chat while serving me cup after cup of tea, and will let me sample literally every tea they have for sale
so today i stopped by and after a few cups together i noticed this super cool yellow tea set with, like, qing-dynasty style dragons all over it.
i was waffling on whether or not to purchase it cus it was, like, $90 all together, and her response was, i kid you not, "Pah! I don't care if you buy it. I just like drinking tea."
i might be in love
also we started chatting in mandarin after we both realized we spoke it (i thought she was cantonese lmao) and she said my name was pretty so she wrote it out in nice-ish characters and gave me two free pucks of pu-erh to sample.
anyway if you're in seattle go check out vital tea leaf



