The opera. The ballet. An art exhibition. All draw fans who love the best, and being around others who appreciate it. As arguably the most concentrated and diverse venue for tea and all its accoutrements in China, Maliandao thrums from dawn to dark with processions of tea lovers, all intoxicated by its smell and savor.

 

 Yet the vendors on Beijing’s Tea Street deserve as much acclaim as their wares. Anyone in China serious about her craft knows that success in the capital equates to national success. Therefore, the most assiduous, the most dedicated, and the most daring of Chinese tea trade folk stake their hopes on Beijing, and Maliandao. Many have already established operations of international scope, and the best-reputed of them are well represented here.

 

What this means for you then, as a visitor, is a chance to experience more of China’s tea culture in half a day than you would through a month of traveling the rest of the country.

 

Indeed, stopping in at every tea shop on Maliandao could easily take the better part of a month, and would be highly redundant for all but the most irredeemable leaf-sucker. Let’s say, as a tea enthusiast, you have half a day to spend there. That’ll do. A full day? Even better.

 

Any cab driver worth his salt, or the ubiquitous jar of tea tucked behind his gear shift, will know when you say “mah-lian-DAO”, that you mean the Tea City. The only possible confusion might be over which end of the main road, to which you can say “Bei – mEN”

(North Gate), with the same rising end tone with which a disaffected teen says, “Ya knOW?”

 

The north end in actuality has no gate, but rather an unmistakable, faux antique stone arch welcoming all and sundry. Now the fun begins. At first, you notice quite a few convenience shops and other undistinguished fronts, but they soon give way to mostly tea stores. If the wind is blowing and the sky is bright, the view through their windows will be dim and mysterious. On much more frequent overcast days, the wares behind the plate glass will sparkle like Alibaba’s treasure. In fine weather, many of the teashop girls will claim sidewalk space and good-naturedly tout you in. Have a look, with one caveat: the heart of Maliandao awaits.

 

At the half-way point of the street, on its western side, sits Beijing Maliandao Cha Ye Cheng, a tea city in one building. In a country filled with massive bazaar buildings as full of grimy chaos and crowded commerce as they are of character, this one stands as a testimony to China’s potential. Well-lit and airy, Cha Ye Cheng provides a sense of space and order to all who enter. But it also offers an attraction rare to the shopping experience, the uplifting scent of hundreds of vendors’ aromatic wares, an olfactory world of diverse yet compatible smells. The effect calms and restores the nerves after a brisk walk, and is to the tea lover’s palate what a bakery’s aroma is to a hungry stomach.

 

Start at the top, up the escalators to the third floor. The first and second floors are peopled with a plethora of friendly operators, but for a first visit, begin where the more established and comprehensive companies keep shop. To the right is a true tea supermarket, Tian Yue. Broad aisles are backed by deep banks of shelves, and marked every few meters by pyramids of stacked tea containers and boxes. Colorful, outsize signs advertise specials, putting one in mind of a warehouse shopping club. Then again, so do the fluorescent lights and bright-vested youths pulling palates of product.

 

Directly opposite Tian Yue spans a broad storefront with much more subtle lighting, and a beautiful yellow banner sign. Over it range a baker’s dozen of brass plaques. These are honors and top certificates vouchsafing the superiority of the best place to begin the tea tasting adventure, Yu Cha Yuan.

 

What draws notice as much as the signage is a curious slogan to the left of it, “False One Compensate 10 for the Client.” This is no admission of liability – rather it assures that Yu Cha Yuan, the Royal Tea Garden, is confident enough in its stock to make such a boast. If it seems bold, it only heightens the striking tableau one views on entering. The soft light glows on a larger-than-life jolly Buddha, who keeps dominion over chest-high ranks of shelves a score deep. On them glitter porcelain tea sets and accoutrements in such glorious profusion of multihued pattern that they take the breath away. Along all three long sides of the store sit tea tables generous enough to seat eight or more apiece, natural wood pieces that invite a rest.

 

So too, do the staff. An attendant inevitably approaches with such sincere intent that the Western tourist, unused to it, might feel accosted. Cross-cultural note: good service in the Middle Kingdom is defined by up close, intimate attendance to your perceived needs. Do let them guide you to a table, to let the much-anticipated tea-tasting begin.

 

At one such table sits Mr. Zhang. He is a manager and therefore, among all the staff who desire the pleasure of helping a foreign visitor, can claim the honor. In front of him is a lambent porcelain tea set, robin’s egg blue with tea-tree patterns. He is preparing the store’s specialty: Tie Guan Yin. A glance about reveals clusters of customers at the other tables, chatting in merry but subdued tones, as at ease as though they were at home. It all conjures more the atmosphere of a club common room than that of a place of business.

 

The tea is ready, and Mr. Zhang proceeds with practiced economy of movement, dispensing the first bright golden pot-full to rinse and make way for the second, which once in the cups, steams and tickles the nose with a tantalizing bouquet of floral freshness. As to the flavor, only the truly refined can prevent delicate sips from becoming greedy slurps. No matter: peace and appreciation are the true rules of etiquette here.

 

Mr. Zhang is happy to refill as quickly as the cups drain. Filled with warmth, the body can not help but relax, and one feels restful enough to take in the store’s details. One wood paneled display with distinctive packaging and its own set of certificates turns out to be organic green tea. It is a curious concept, as tea in its processing must be handled with a level of care and cleanliness that even some organic foodstuffs do not enjoy. Mr. Zhang explains that this green tea has been processed according to international standards of organic agriculture. While most expensive teas are grown with traditional Chinese methods akin to the organic concept, less than five percent of China’s tea is raised by these new standards, a small but growing concept. True, mass-produced tea may derive from fertilizers and pesticides less than blameless, but Mr. Zhang maintains that any agent blatantly harmful would easily compromise the tea’s flavor, and likewise the grower’s selling prospects.

 

Not only Mr. Zhang but also other staffers hold degrees in tea culture, and love nothing better than to edify tea connoisseurs, but other stores beckon. After all, there are close to two hundred stores in Cha Ye Cheng, and two other markets like Cha Ye Cheng on Maliandao. Off to the next stop, refreshed by some great tea and fellowship.

 

Down to the second floor, more prepared for the potentially boggling array of decisions waiting. To the left and right, wall-less tea shops abut each other on a football field’s worth of space. This indoor yet open market plan is ringed by tiny tea stores, most no wider than three meters, and not much deeper. It’s a classic instance of Beijing’s propensity to confound by sheer quantity.  To compound the matter, every store boasts at least two young women, solicitously inquiring your drinking pleasure whether you make eye contact or no.

 

The solution? Stop right at Yang Xiang, the first open store to the right as you descend from the third floor, to the left if you’re coming from the first. Four enthusiastic young women smile confidently, with good reason: they still have some top shelf green spring teas, relatively hard to find in either quantity or quality in late winter. The youngsters’ manager conducts the tea ceremony, with the manner and grace of a ballerina.

 

She places three pinches of Ming Qian Dragonwell in a glass pot. Why not an yixing pot? To watch the dance of the leaves, the  particularly lovely in this green tea. Tightly huddled curls gently unfurl in the hot water, emerging into blade-like leaves that glisten and ripple. Dry, the Ming Qian does not impress with its aroma; it is a fairly common variety often kept as a utility tea. But the scent which arises from the dance bewitches. This is no ordinary Ming Qian. The first sip confirms, poignant and piney as dawn in a high forest, resolving into sweet dew with floral notes. Whereas its common cousins might be had for eighty RMB per jin, this one is two hundred and sixty, enough to keep a fan well-supplied for months.

 

The boundaries of Yang Xiang comprise shelves and counters with various wares, none which draw the eyes so much as the Pu Er Gong Yi – framed pictures made of hardened tea carvings. Landing eagles and rampant Mongolian ponies are embossed in admirably-detailed relief. Ah, but these pictures can’t be rendered into tea broth, though their earthy fragrance puts one in mind to drink Pu Er.

 

At the back wall of Yang Xiang’s side of the building, the left-most shop is Xin An Cheng Cha Yue. They are certified champions of Sheng Pu Er. The earthy aroma wafting from the store virtually draws one in on tiptoe, as a cartoon character in a gag reel. Once again, it is exclusively a young female organization on the surface. Is the tea business a lady’s business? The hostess laughs, then explains. Tea and womanhood share many virtues: delicacy, subtlety, depth of character. Tea’s preparation and appreciation is a matter of aesthetics and heightened senses, a realm in which women need not fear great competition from men. The hostess boldly claims that women are more polite, more refined, more comely, and indeed better suited to the tea business, as a rule.

 

She defends her assertion making ready a pot of Sheng Pu Er, with sure hands that are a delight to watch in deployment. The result is a cup of tea very much like English Breakfast, if English Breakfast’s characteristic briskness and spicy depth could be exponentially magnified. Truly, the body is so rounded, the finish so much longer than anything in a teabag that a little hyperbole is called for. The only thing not grand about this Pu Er is its price: one hundred and twenty kuai per jin.

 

Next in the pot at Xin An Cheng teashop is a rare tea indeed, Chong Shi, which translates loosely into “worm droppings”. When a proprietress opens a container full, the fermented pungency is cloying when smelled up close, enough to make the non-committed tea drinker take pause. But the brew is light, zingy, and has a silky finish. Our hostess reveals that Chong Shi tea is known in Chinese medicine circles as an ideal remedy for a cough-roughened throat. Not only that, it stimulates the salivary process and promotes digestion. Taken in this light, the worms can be thanked for eating the tea leaves, as well as those of the huang xiang tree, and doing the fermenting for us, so to speak. Their remuneration: one hundred kuai (RMB) per jin.

 

Time passes along very quickly and merrily touring tea shops. So merrily, in fact, that drinking oneself into a uniquely inebriated state is almost inevitable. Much less harsh than a coffee buzz, and with none of the blurred faculties that accompany alcohol consumption, the tea tingle is a delightful experience. It also leaves one famished.

 

A large, heavy Chinese lunch, replete with deep fried goodies and other high-fat viands, can be indulged in with a clean conscience. There is still walking and visiting to do, and tea, especially Pu’er, can be relied on to chase any ill-effects of grease right off.

 

It’s time to make stop in at the next tea monolith on Maliandao, Jing Ming Cha Cheng, a ten-minute walk south from Beijing Maliandao Cha Ye Cheng, on the same side. Not as big as the latter, Jing Ming Cha Cheng nevertheless presents a potentially bewildering vista of stores to both the left and right, also with solicitous proprietors apprising visitors and inviting them to sit and drink.

 

Head right from the door to the end of the hallway before having to turn left. Here is Hua Ming Xia, another store with a laughing Buddha facing the doorway. Heavy, rustic wooden tea trays dominate the selection of accoutrements for sale on the floor, while shelves of tea tray knick knacks made from yixing clay grace the walls: cute pigs, little Buddhas, toads with coins in their mouths, and the like.

 

 In the back left corner is a large hemispherical table, where a bright-looking woman with round spectacle sits. She prepares a round of the shop’s best Dong Ding Wulong. As the water heats, she praises the Dong Ding’s purity, raised by hand at over three thousand meters, a guarantee of purity. A familiar looking brass plaque certifying the store’s excellence is a further assurance of the anticipated Dong Ding’s quality. So too, is the penetrating scent arising from a freshly filled cup, pregnant with notes of honey and wild flowers. The taste is impossible to encompass in one sip, so many different flavors present themselves to the palate and quickly dissolve. The promised honey sweetness, however, lingers at the back of the throat. A decidedly top notch tea, priced at four hundred kuai per jin.

 

A stroll up the stairs, and one begins to realize the futility of doing Maliandao even partial justice, in terms of a broad sampling. The area inside seems bigger than it looks from the outside. Let the nose do the deciding, and it leads to Tian Fu, a Puer specialty shop with such a robust, earthy fragrance that they must have a leaf-curing oven on the premises. Time for some nice dark tea, with a deserved reputation for banishing the bloat of a large lunch. Some Sheng Puer, lighter and tangier than its older brother Shou, fills the bill nicely. It loses little depth for its lightness, moreover, with the added advantage of some youthful zest. A jin goes for one hundred and sixty kuai. Shou would be more expensive, since anything considered superior is usually five years old or more.

 

A mid-morning start means that just this light tour, albeit one with many a cup of tea and much eye-opening, has now led to the shank of the afternoon. The third and largest building of them all remains. A ten-minute stroll, to the southern end of Maliandao, ends at the entrance to Cha Yuan Cha Cheng, which signals its majesty with a massive Paifang, or traditional Chinese arch. The building itself rivals the very largest American Midwestern warehouse shopping buildings in size, but maintains a somewhat authentic Mandarin façade. Inside, the ceilings are much higher, and the hallways broader. Yet the vast depth of the place prevents extensive lighting. The endless stretch of stores, most with their own traditional, multi-colored awnings, appear all the cozier as they face the somewhat gloomy halls.

 

In the interest of comparison, pop into Xu Yuan for a sampling of good white tea, at the other end of the spectrum from Puer. A pot of Ling Yun bai cha is just the thing, its aroma a light gust of spring perfume in comparison to Puer’s earthy scent. The water infused should never be over sixty degrees Celsius, as anything hotter would compromise the Ling Yun’s delicate flavor. As fresh and light as the flavor is, Ling Yun’s body is quite full, and carries a faintly musky aftertaste. It turns out these qualities make it ideal for a cool summer drink. It can be soaked in cold water for half an hour, and will yield a cloudy, refreshing brew perfect for hot days. A 400 RMB jin will yield many a lovely pot, hot or cold.

 

Every corner in Cha Yuan Cha Cheng reveals another hallway stretching off to a dwindling horizon. One of these is open air, giving it the look and feel of a mini – tea street inside the building. Visit a little store named Yin Xiang on this street for a taste of Shi Ya Cha, a tea made from wild plants that grow in the crevasses of mountain boulders in Guanxi Province. The tea is organic by default, and the peculiar mineral-laden flavor as wild as the plant it comes from. It’s cost: sixty RMB per jin.

 

In Zhu Ye Qing can be found Gui Hua Hong Cha. This tea mixes eighty five parts of Gui Hua flower, from the eponymous tree, for every one hundred parts of traditional red tea. The intense floral bouquet whisks the taster off to a fragrant spring garden. Even the hostess is moved, recalling the Gui Hua tree that grows in the courtyard of her home in Sichuan Province, which blooms in the summer and brings happiness to all who smell it, some from over a kilometer away. A little over two hundred kuai per jin is all it takes to bring the scent and savor of the Gui Hua tree home.

 

Thus do four hours quickly pass, eight shops visited and easily ten times that number of little cups of great tea. To think that such a full visit has covered such a fraction of Maliandao is to realize the Beijing effect: larger than life, so grandly scaled that it defies easy familiarity, let alone expertise. Such is the capital of what is in many ways the biggest nation in the world. Such is the infinite allure of Maliandao.