Today's Agenda

Today's agenda: got the shengpu up in the Sentra.

Go to room 1-12, 

tell 'em Miss Lin sent ya.

Please make your brewings clean, rinse up in between.

Rule #1 about me: I am pathologically contrary. If you tell me that I have to like something, or, even worse, that it is cool to like something, then I will almost certainly dislike it, on principle.  This is not something over which I have conscious control.

So, when the (super-cute, "Mister Scruff") wrapper of "Poundcake" tells me that it says a lot about you if you not feeling us, then I am almost preternaturally indisposed to find the cake undrinkable.  Without intervention of any decision-making process, that's just how it is.

On the bright side, this cake ($50/200g) was green and fruity; Miss Lin described it as being "outlier Yiwu", which is accurate.  There is a hint of sourness at the back, which terrifies me, because it has a leafy green-brown flavour that tastes a lot like everything I try to avoid in shengpu.  The opening infusions were much better than the tannic later infusions.

"This is quite ordinary", notes my dear wife, as she offers an opinion in passing.  I silently rejoice, wondering if I might not be mad, after all.

Calm as possible, make the deal go through

$38/200g is, on the grand scale of modern tea, reasonably affordable.  I love the way that the wrapper says "Will this do?", as if Miss Lin ran out of time or ideas.  You couldn't say that about some of the 2016 cakes with their plush wrappers!

The leaves are rich, and dark, and spicy.  The pale yellow soup is thick, and comforting, and very sweet.  I appreciate the beefy, almost meaty, aftertaste.  The dry opening is so dry that I am half-expecting to find grapeskins mixed in there with the leaves.  It chugs on nicely, with the buttery scent of a clean wok'ing.

It is a solid little drinker, but the background has a hint of sourness that terrifies me; those of us in cooler climes ware the sourness like a werewolf fears silver.  "Nice, but not for me", I hurriedly conclude.

I got a hundred bricks, 14.5 a piece

Now this one - this one is a bad boy.  You know I saved the best until last, and it's absolutely true in this case.  I totally dig 200% the cheesy old wrapper that looks like a leftover from the 1950s.  This is real Communist space-race tea.  Admittedly it's from 2005, but the ambience is very "planned economy".

This is another White Whale, and old Captain Ahab knows total embargaination when he sees it.

Like the Whale, this is clean orange in its brew.  Like my purple-wrapper Dingxing (inexplicably prized from the hands of the dodgiest Taobao seller imaginable), it is sweet in its rustic Yiwu stylings.  Unlike either of those two, it has a complexity in its scent, with floral summer-flowers.  Hell, it even leaves an explicit cooling sensation in the nose.  The nose!

So good is this tea, that it even managed to see off the cold that I had incurred recently, after hitting some deadlines.  It cured the common cold, you read it here first.

The first half-dozen infusions are the best for this tea; while remaining clean, sweet and robust, it fades a little after that.  For $88/400g, I think it has earned to right to do so.  Complaining about this later infusions of this tea would be like complaining about the colour of the leather interior of a classic Jag that someone sold you for 10% market value.

The tongs, they are a-purchasin'.

Rolling the Dice, Playing Croquet with MJOLNIR

Every time drink the pu'ercha, you're rolling the dice - let alone before buying the darned stuff with the hope of it aging nicely.  We are, therefore, no strangers to risk.  We are not risk-averse.  Indeed, there can be little chance of reward without risk.  It's all about playing the probabilities.  You gotsta play the numbers, as the wise man once said.

I've been through the 1980s "Yiwu Maocha" from Teaclassico in the past (notes here).  That was in autumn of last year, in which I concluded: yum.

Sometimes, when you've time for a tea session and that time is becoming ever more scarce in its availability, you simply wish to minimise risk.  You wish to set aside learning and experience, and just get down to some tea that is THE MIGHTY THOR.

In this wise, I opted for low-risk 1980s maocha.  It is a Mjolnir among teas.

The photograph really emphasises everything we need to know about this tea.  It is so very good, and so very dependable, that it completely satisfies my desire to avoid risk.  The only hazard in such a session is to one's wallet.  Seriously, this one is wallet-critical in terms of risk.

It is instantly (INSTANTLY) dark, and even the first infusion is smooth and gentle in its texture.

It reminds of one of family heirlooms, of sorts: a wooden indoor croquet set, made for very young children, which belonged to my mother, when she was a girl in rural Anglia.  It then belonged to me, in due course, and its dark woodiness left a lasting impression on me - the scent of the dark, sweet wood in particular.  This croquet set really made an impression on my growing senses.

This 1980s Yiwu Maocha is almost the perfect recreation of that wooden croquet set.  It is a state of remembrance in which I dwell for the entirety of the session.

---

...and some days you wish only to roll the dice, and let the chips fall where they may.

I do not know where this cake comes from - Gentle Reader, if it is from you, then please accept my thanks.  Let's roll the d6...

This cake looks good, does it not?  The wrapper suggests that it is "Simao Cuiyun Wenhua", where Cuiyun is a town in Simao prefecture, and where "wenhua" is (very approximately) "tradition".  It also has a stamp tha reads "huaxing", which "means that the company is traditional", according to my dear wife.  Experience suggests that I rather like random Simao cakes, and so I am optimistic.

This cake dates from 2005, and its darker shade of leaf, along with the quite well-preserved maocha, suggests that we might even have something of decent "artisan" status on our hands.

Oh boy, does this cake suck.

Suck.

Suction of a manner that I have not experienced for some considerable duration, in fact.  There is real, true suction on offer here.  It has the sweet, sticky character of red pu'ercha with a very low ceiling indeed - its processing has left it almost nowhere to go, and its dry storage has not been kind.

It is aggressive on the tongue and lips, and I do not mean that as a compliment.  This is agrochemical all the way.   The sensation persists for some minutes, and I have only had two small cups from the first infusion.

My poor, poor tongue.  I nurse it back to health with some of that 1980s Yiwu Maocha with which I started this article.

What did I learn?  I learned that not every roll of the dice turns up the goods.  This stuff is as [insert derogatory adjective] as the [insert name of body part] from a [insert name of continental European country] mother.  Like, for reals.

---

after our meeting

only one of us, minister

will scrub nappies

Be'elzebub and Aged Fish

When in 1816 that great Romantic poet, Lord Byron, wrote his famous verse

"I've got a love-Jones for your body and your skin tone"

he may well have had the 2014 Laochatou from Dubs in mind.

Laochatou [laow-char-toh] is the crystallised evil that is left over after the composting process for making shupu has completed.  They are, perhaps, the kidney stones of Be'elzebub.  Happily, when you brew those little badboys, they can produce some really satisfying tea.

Rock-hard and with a distant scent of shupu, they are almost comically inexpensive.  Such is the profile of by-products from making shupu.  The cost of these at Dubs is listed at $5.50 / 50g.  Paul writes that these are, in fact, made from springtime Bulangshan - we are thus primed for some tea with potential for power and endurance.

This is precisely what they deliver: power, and endurance.  They really do last forever.  It is cooling, and strangely smooth - the flavour of a pebble that has been eroded on the ocean floor for aeons.  It combines the activity of good leaves with a slug of pure molasses.   It tastes almost exactly like gloopy molasses syrup.  At $110/kg, the lab might well benefit from such a mighty and potent little fiend.

You should try these, if you like shupu, and if you like your teas dark and heavy.

---

The main event today is the 2005 "Gaoshan Qingzing".  Aren't they all gaoshan and qingbing?

At $40, this amusingly-wrapped cake could be a bargain.  It is cloaked in a wrapper that looks a lot like "big green tree", which it obviously is not.

We have fragments of smaller leaves, pictured above, with a most welcome aroma of aged sweetness.  This is a decade old!  2005 is a strangely long time ago.  I was just starting out into the second year of my graduate degree, and was married to my dear wife in the same year - after meeting just one year before, as it happens.

The soup is clean, clear orange and its first impression is: AGED FISH.  This particulary fishy note is one that I associate with sub-CNNP, and it not something that I have come to appreciate.  (Note to self: this is a whole different class of fish to the almost-pleasant Dayi fish.)  It is cooling, and clearly caffeinated.

Thankfully, the second and subsequent infusions lose the fish and gain a strong, pine-like sweetness.  I can take pine, in preference to aged fish, any day of the week.  The sharpness is rather appealing.  I interleave brews of this cake with the Laochatou (started the day before).  The Laochatou continues to be powdery and sweet.  By contrast, the 2005 Gaoshan seems to be rather unsettling on the stomach, which is not a sensation that I typically receive from tea.  The fishy character eventually returns, and I finish the session after some four infusions or so.

AGED FISH: just say "no".

---

I have altered the

bed time - pray that I alter it

no further

You Can't Choose Your Parents

There I was, whining extensively about a long-standing illness of some insignificant magnitude.  Then, during the middle of drinking the tea described below, my youngest son developed laboured breathing, and we whisked him (i) to the GP / family doctor, and subsequently (ii) onto the Emergency Department of our nearby hospital.  

The sight of my dear little chap connected up to nasal cannulae and pulse oximeters was heart-rending.  I stayed the night and the next day, handing over to my dear wife for the second night, before returning for my "shift" the night after.  The little fellow recovered from what was diagnosed as a grim chest infection that aggravated an atopic reaction inherited from his father (sorry, my son).  That's genetics for you.  I have always maintained that parents suck.

Happily, after two days, my Little Dragon was entirely recovered; the Children's Hospital kept him under observation for a further day-and-a-half due to "risk factors on the father's side" (sorry again), by which time he was (almost literally) bouncing off the walls and ready to be discharged.  Nothing can **** up a hospital ward like a recovered infant ready to go home.

I took this episode as a reminder to (i) be thankful for every day of good health, for both me and my family, and (ii) whine less in the presence of minor ailments that pale in comparison to a two-year-old dude fighting genetic disadvantages (sorry again).  You really cannot choose your parents.

Surely packages such as this must have difficulty getting through airport Customs

By the time I got home, having not slept for two days, the sight of unfinished tea from Teaclassico (thx, Neil) was welcome - but not as welcome as having everyone back at home once it was all over.

All hairy tea is good tea.

Drinking this 2005 CNNP "Nannuo Mountain Wild Raw" was, therefore, rather an emotional affair.  The cake was made as a special order, with all cakes bought from by just two dealers from the original instigating party.

Pictured above, no tea would be complete without thick, black Chinese hair embedded in the maocha.  It's what makes pu'ercha GREAT.  If you're not drinking some crusty tea-dude's body by-products along with your tea, then you're just not living.

For added bonus crustiness, the neifei had fragmented to the point at which it was embedded (along with the hair) in the surface of the cake, as shown above.  Again, if you're not drinking manky label-paper printed with probably-toxic Chinese inks then you're really not doing it right.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.  Unless it introduces comorbidities that you could without.

Gentle Reader, you already know that pu'ercha is the rancid, Satanic backend of the tea-world, and so I know you're OK with the introduction of manifold pathogens in your tea.  You knock this stuff back daily, so this is not news to you.

The cake itself is darned green, it must be said.  Its colour is actually green - the colour of gangrenous flesh.  I know, this just adds to the appeal.  You're insatiable.

After ten alleged years of storage, it has a heavy yellow-green colour and a soft, warming character.  There is strength aplenty, and its truly green nature makes me wonder if it has been stored in a dry environment; I would not have guessed it was from 2005, to be honest.

It is soft and fruity, and that's just fine when your little dude is recovering from time in hospital.  There is "spring meadow" character that reminds me of Nannuoshan teas gone by.  Apricots, dried fruits, a husky edge - it is CNNP, playing nicely.

-- 

Frankly, it was a bit weird being in the Emergency Department where I do some of my research, and yet experiencing the place as a "customer", rather than being in my usual place, on the other side of the arrangement.  I must say that I prefer the latter, but am grateful for the rocking standard of care that the university hospital turns out - the UK National Health Service is universally supported by all British folk for a reason.  With national elections coming up, the various parties compete to demonstrate how they will protect it, and, after my trip with Xiaolong, I'm very glad that they do so.

---

Ganymede, Haumea

which is bigger

Ganymede, Haumea

or a blue whale?

Greatest Hits

You might remember the 2005 "Daxueshan" from Shuangjiang Mengku.  I liked it, back when it was $30.  You just cannot (cannot!) argue with prices like that.  I recall that Apache and I didn't argue with prices like that, when we got our collective purchase on.

These days, Dubs is selling it for $70.  You might like to give it a try - that price is looking very nice, for the sheer density of trouser that is on offer here.

Now, in 2014, it is sweet and honey-like.  (I'm talking about the Dubs version here, by the way, not my own English-storage version.)  I love the storage characteristics of this cake, where it is both sharp and mouth-watering, in a fine manner.  It is pungent, long-lasting, and I love it.  I don't think it's possible to have too much of this cake - it'll always go down well.

"Greatest Hits" indeed, and not one to pass by.  What was straightforward power back in the day has mellowed into a depth and complexity that far exceeds the asking price.

---

I had to Google the name of this cake: the 2014 "Apple Scruffs", also from Dubs.

It turns out that this is the name of an album (of course), from George Harrison, which refers to the post-Beatles groupies who pretty much stalked the ex-members of the group.  I haven't heard the George Harrison album, but feel as if I have a good idea of its qualities, based on the other albums that have been turned into cakes by twodog of Dubs.

The picture below might give you some idea as to the time of year that I sunk this sample.

This is an autumnal cake.  I am aware that I usually employ that phrase in the same way that one might say "he's got a nice personality", but, in this case, it all seems to work.  The maocha comes from the Xigui area of Lincang.  I am loving the Lincang, longtime, as I seem to say fairly regularly.

This cake had everything going in its favour: at the time of drinking, I had just finished the week-long admissions exercise, in which almost all members of faculty have to set aside their work and interview prospective candidates for our undergraduate degrees.  It's a huge undertaking, and gets lots of (well-deserved) scrutiny from the press, to ensure that we're doing our jobs and not simply admitting our friends / donors / etc.  After that week, there is a few sweet days before Christmas lands.  Apple Scruffs arrived in that perfect hour, after hard work and before the holidays.

As with many good Lincang cakes, we have yellow-orange (autumnal coloured?) tea which is both fresh and very fruity.  It is very decent quality, although my diary notes that "this is very good, but I have several like it".  If you're looking for solid drink-it-now Lincang, Apple Scruff is $45/200g and looking decidedly reliable.

---

The Gentlest Sound

the gentlest sound

drenched by an April shower

of apple blossom

Sith

Some of my favourite music at school included (among death metal, progressive trance, and the opera of Lorenzo Da Ponte), albums made by East-Coast US groups from "The Projects".   If there is a common thread among these very different genres, it is that they can all be really, really good.

One of the side effects of my extended flirtation with East-Coast lyrics is that I have a detailed and nuanced, if biassed, understanding of life in New York State.  To my limited education, Americans are either (i) gangsters from Staten Island or (ii) musket-wielding revolutionaries from Concord, Massachusetts. 

My own childhood was spent in a dark, remote place in the middle of the English countryside, famous for a certain university and the likes of Isaac Newton. On recently receiving an invitation to return home, to the heart of darkness, I was reminded of the meeting of Obiwan and Darth Vader on the departure deck of the Death Star.

Gentle Reader, you surely know by now that I was the Sith Lord in this analogy.

Cf. this.

The Big Man himself prepared for his Death Star encounter by meditating in his Sith Chamber.  What they don't show in Empire Strikes Back is that, in the solitude of his Sith Chamber, Vader was actually listening to albums from the aforementioned East Coast affiliates.

My equivalent was to recline in the mechanised sanctuary of the teatable, my life-support helmet temporarily removed so that I could work on my Dark Side.  My prep involved meditating on the thesis (pictured above) produced by some poor nerfherder rookie, hoping to earn his stripes by locking his s-foils in attack formation.  I could almost smell the moisture farm.

Accompanying my Sith meditations was the 2005 BIG ZHONG from w2t, a tea vendor whom I inexplicably seem to know now only as "Dubs".  

(As in, "This came from Dubs.  Let me show you the web-page.")

While I sharpened my (obviously scarlet) lightsabre, ready to hit up the Death Star, I reflected on the humid darkness of the Big Zhong.  It smells like Tatooine, in case you were wondering.

It starts slow, like two users of the Force circling one another to estimate the depth of their adversary's affinity for that power that surrounds us and penetrates us; that binds the galaxy together.  There is malt and darkness (in the tea, not in the Force), but it is slow and reticent.  It a bedrock of naturally humid storage.

It is constant and sweet, but... it doesn't grab me.  Activity, warmth, a cooling sensation - but something is missing.  It reminds me of the hollow victories of the Dark Side itself: promising much, tempting one in with promises of ultimate power, and yet, somehow, absent any purpose or greater meaning.  Ultimately, it cannot last, and will eventually be overcome.

It is a sobering message for all practitioners of the Dark Side.

---

I return to my Sith Chamber.  Helmet up, Staten Island tunes playing on the stereo.  What went wrong with the Big Zhong?  I must meditate.

I crack open a bag of 1999 "Special Order" 8582.  It reminded me of the 1999 "Commissioned" 8582 from Teaclassico.  However, this version has a green, rather than a red, zhongcha character on its wrapper.  Twodog, the proprietor of the Dubs, noted that this cake has been stored in Guangzhou, which means humidity.

Even from the first infusion, in which the leaves (pictured above) have not separated, this tea is filled with character.  It begins with a red-orange colour, pictured below.  Woody sweetness, sitting in the throat, reminds me of warm feelings that Sith Lords do not usually experience.

Big, malty, dense, tingling - whereas the 1998 "Commissioned" 8582 from Teaclassico was all soft comfort, this is a harder, woodier tea with real bite.  It has an edge in the finish that causes the mouth to water.  Sith Lords don't get a lot of mouth-watering.  I was impressed.

---

Finally, to close this trilogy, and to end with the catharsis of the original Star Wars trilogy, I warmed up the tetsubin for a sample of 1998 "Hong Kong, Dry-Stored 7432".  The owner of the Dubs noted that this was not, in any quantifiable way, a bargain.  This is, in fact, a 1998 Liming cake.

Like Vader picking up the Emperor Palpatine in the conclusion of the Return of the Jedi, this tea brings even the darkened soul of the unredeemed out into the cleansing power of the Light Side.  Interestingly, there is almost no caffeine - instead, this tea is packed with comforting, energising, narcotics.

Seriously, this tea is drugs.

Tangy density, heavy and pleasant, the eternal comfort of the Light Side - this tea is so (so, so) far beyond my purchasing threshold that I can simply marvel at its potency.  So this is what Yoda had in mind.  Maybe he wasn't such a nutball, after all.

The confrontation back on the Death Star turned out to be, likewise, a thoroughly charming and friendly affair.  The nerfherder did good.  There may well be one more doctor in the world, before too long.

---

This Year's Apples

this year's apples

made from last year's apples

in the compost bin

Revision Classes

Trinity term has a pleasant feeling: it is sunny, there are few lectures, and my undergrad students are either heads-down in revision or heads-down in their glasses of Pimms. It is a time of revision classes and the like, which led me to some revision of my own...

I have received a goodly quantity of positive feedback for my previous foray into the nether-regions of my shelves and I am, Gentle Reader, always configured for maximal response to positive feedback.  If that makes me an unstable system, then may my poles will always reside in the positive half of the s-plane.

I have been revisiting some of my old teas, with an emphasis on the more trustworthy, reliable cakes that I know will deliver the goods.  This makes my sample biased, and I am fine with that: the goal, after all, is for good sessions these days.

Perhaps the most pleasantly educational encounter in the list below was that of the 2005 Xiaguan: this was a cake that was as black as an investment banker's soul when it was young, but which has matured so pleasantly that I am now wondering how my other "black" Xiaguan cakes have turned out.

To the victor, the spoils:

2007 Changyai - Yichanghao "Yiwu": sweet, heavy, solid, and aging despite being sealed in plastic.

2003 Changtai - Qianjiafeng "Jinzhushan": excellent tea.  Orange, heavy, and long-lasting.

2005 Xiaguan "8653": modern "black" Xiaguans can age well, it seems.

2008 Shuangjiang Mengku - Muyechun "Laoshu Qingbing": basic pu'ercha dressed up with purple tones, this is aging slowly.

2008 Menghai - Dayi "8582": in preparation for the arrival of a large purchase of 2008 8582, I try some of my own cakes.  They are coming on nicely, and provide basic Menghai richness.

2004 Changtai - Yichanghao "Yiwu Zhengpin": red, malty, and smooth, this is "old fashioned" tea of a reliable kind.

As ever, the new notes have been appended to the original articles, linked above, and so I invite you to scroll down when opening these pages.

In Yunnan, No-One Can Hear You Scream

I have no Fengqing [fung-ching] for years, and suddenly two crop up at once.  I recently enjoyed a 2002 Fengqing tuocha thanks to ME, and today is the turn of a 2005 zhuancha [brick tea], thanks to TeaVivre.

I have come up with a sneaky remedy for photography at dawn: employ a pretty background colour and use a direct lamp.  Suddenly, it doesn't look quite so bad.  It only took me half a decade of pre-dawn tea photography to get there, but better late than never...

Zhuancha is usually the rancid buttock of the pu'ercha world.  If your tea is too unspeakably macabre to turn into a real cake, or even tuocha, then just collect as much leftover leaf as you can and chuck it into the brick-mould.  Most bricks are really rather bad.  Looking at the leaves used in this brick, we can see that there are, at least, one or two tips included and it's not made entirely out of fannings.  Things are looking up.

By the time the heavy, thick soup has revealed itself, I am beginning to wonder if this brick isn't something rather special.  Let's examine the facts: it has a fresh, sweet scent when dry, and a pinelike woodiness when wet.  Its base is solid tobacco - not the "black" base of some modern Xiaguan, but getting towards it.  There is an agreeable thickness to its body, and even signs of a cooling character in its aftertaste.

Its husky sweetness builds throughout subsequent infusions, along with a decent kuwei [good bitterness] that is neither too easygoing nor too harsh.  It is straightforward tea, but it is very reliable and brews consistently.  Perhaps best of all, this little chap is a mere $26 / 250g.  In light of its price, the bargain sensors are beginning to saturate.  I should grab some of these for my lab - they have a challenge, and plenty of endurance.  A surprise win.

Big (and Fake?) Dayi

I am, perhaps like a lot of people, rather keen on the better Dayi cakes and their proven record when it comes to aging.  They range from the simple-but-excellent to complex-and-excellent, and are one of the few near-certainties in the highly uncertain world of pu'ercha.  Dayi special productions (although not the regular recipes) are currently the subject of market speculation, resulting in crazy price-rises for those particular cakes.  It is a very localised form of asset bubble.

While not a "special", the Dayi 501 (pictured below) is very good and well worth a look.  Apache and I have tried, and failed, to find much available in the way of 501, having to settle for 502 instead.

This article concerns an alleged sample of 501, which turned out to be anything but.

Apache noted that the wrapped of the 501 potentially-fake tuocha that he bought had been opened, and that there was no neifei - hence his concerns.

The leaves look good, being large and reasonably dark, although they are obvious red with respect to the genuine darkness of actual 501.

The rinse has a suspicious brown-yellow colour, which only becomes orange when there is sufficient quantity of soup in the gongdaobei [fairness cup] to mask its original appearance.

Its flavour is classically fake: it is not potent (where it should be, given the strength of 501), but the aging process has given it a simple, mellow warmth.  There is no pine-like charm, no huigan [returning sweetness], no Dayi character, just gradual maltiness with a calm sweetness.

The tang in the mouth has the curious character of lingering chemicals, not the cooling vibrancy of real tea.  I abandon it immediately, and will clean the pot carefully.  Silly me - I should have used a glazed gaiwan.

---

The 2007 "Anxiang" is textbook speculation.

Pictured above is the shupu version; the shengpu version is a different colour.

"Anxiang" refers to a dark, mellow, and light scent.  I remember one of the few classical poems that I actually know in Chinese, and hazard a guess.  "Yes, that is where it comes from!" says my dear wife, as surprised as I am.  The name of this cake is sometimes rendered as "secret fragrance", which isn't quite right.

This cake started out at around £30, and is currently topping a rather pointless £100.

The leaves, pictured above, are tiny and dark, with the faintest of scents.  Added to the damp, warm pot, they reveal an aroma of dark, dried fruit.

I am greeted with a proper scent, heavy and sweet.  As you can see from the above, the soup is a rich orange.  This is good Dayi: it is clean, smooth, silken in texture, cooling, and has good kuwei.  It is dense, fun, and has just the right degree of challenge to be appealing, and to suggest that its best is yet to come.

I was impressed by the Anxiang, but it needs a lot of leaves to get the most out of it.  The cooling kuwei even corresponds to a vivid feeling on the lips, which is quite unexpected for a Dayi cake.

While this is very solid and enjoyable tea, it needs to be bought at its original price rather than the inflated new price, I suspect.  Certainly, I would not feel comfortable buying it at £100 - I remember looking at these cakes in 2007 when they were produced, and cannot imagine paying so much for them.

There are, after all, plenty more Dayi fish in the sea.  The teasphere tends to get a bit over-fixated on certain cakes.

Shown above, the fake 501 and the 2007 Anxiang.  I leave it as an exercise, Gentle Reader, to determine which is which.