Buying tea and silk in Shanghai: how to tell, where to buy, what to watch for

Tea and silk are the two categories where visitors to Shanghai most often pay too much. Tea is priced by grade and origin, silk by fibre content, and neither is shown where you can see it. What follows is method: what to look at, what to ask, when to walk out. No shops are named; units turn over quickly, and any list is stale on arrival.

Tea: the kinds you are likely to want, and what they actually are

Green tea is what most people picture as Chinese tea, and the famous Jiangnan ones come from around Shanghai: Longjing from Hangzhou, Biluochun from Suzhou. Both are prized for the year’s new leaf, a clean aroma and leaf shape, and both are unforgiving of storage: buy too much and the aroma goes. Jasmine tea is a green or white base scented with jasmine, the fragrance coming from the flower, with just as wide a price range. Oolong sits between green and black, varying by oxidation and roasting. Pu’er comes raw or ripe, usually pressed into cakes, bricks or bowls; the claim that older is always better has been inflated, but a pressed cake travels and keeps better than loose leaf.

One category is separate: flavoured and blended products sold under the word “tea” — fruit and flower infusions, milk-tea powders, “fruit teas”, roasted grain and herbal substitutes, bottled tea drinks. They can be pleasant, but there is no grade or origin to price them by, and they should not cost famous-tea money.

Grade and origin: what cannot be checked, so check these four things

One name — “Longjing”, say — covers an extremely wide range, from everyday grades to hand-fired leaf from the core area, at prices that differ many times over; grade usually means picking date, tenderness and uniformity. But a visitor cannot reliably check grade or origin: labels can be printed and stories learned. So do not start from whether it is genuine; start from what is visible.

• Shape and uniformity of the dry leaf. Tip some out: consistent size, or plenty of broken leaf, stalk and yellowed pieces.
• Smell of the dry leaf. Clean, dry and not sharp is right; perfumed sweetness, or a stale or musty note, is where to stop.
• Whether they will brew it first. A proper shop brews a cup or several infusions so you can see the colour, smell and taste before deciding; if the only conversation goes through the packaging, go elsewhere.
• Whether the price is on a scale. Weighing the leaf and quoting a unit price by weight is normal; a “gift-box price” or “set price” that folds in packaging and the idea of a present has been talked up.

One detail: if everyone in the shop is buying gift boxes, the pricing is not for people who drink tea.

The tea set-ups, and where to buy instead

The “tea ceremony” with a coach outside. You sit, drink and listen to an explanation, and the last step is a sale at a price far above the same tea through ordinary channels. The tell: a coach at the door, and a way out that passes the till.

“Ancient tree”, “wild” and “old tree” labels. No uniform standard to check them against, and mostly marketing language. The real thing exists, but not in the shop you are taken to.

An expensive box with ordinary tea in it. Most of a gift box’s cost is the box and bag; the simply packed tea at the same grade in the same shop is often the same leaf.

Buying by the tin. A sealed tin hides the leaf and the smell; unless you already know the product, do not buy by the tin the first time.

Where to buy: a tea shop with a scale that will brew the leaf for you before you buy, because that is a shop living on repeat customers; the food hall in a department store basement, where prices are marked, invoices are available and grade and origin are printed on the pack; and the loose-tea counter of a time-honoured shop, likewise sold by weight with clear tiers. One counter-intuitive rule: the best value is usually the plain everyday grade, the tea you would drink daily, simply packed and modestly priced, with no gift premium.

On carrying it home: tea is light and takes little luggage, gift boxes excepted, since they are bulkier than the tea. Customs rules are set by the destination country, no quantities or limits are quoted here, and blends with flowers, fruit or seeds may touch plant-quarantine rules; check that country’s customs or agriculture authority before travelling. As for form, a pressed pu’er cake travels better than loose green tea: it shrugs off compression and keeps its aroma longer.

Silk: mulberry silk, and everything “silk-like”

The distinction that matters above all others is mulberry silk against everything else. Mulberry silk is the natural protein fibre drawn from the cocoon; the rest includes silk blended with other fibres, viscose rayon, and synthetics made to look like silk, polyester and nylon being the commonest. They are not fakes; the problem is being sold as pure mulberry silk at pure mulberry silk prices. A shop calling itself a silk shop proves nothing: neither the name nor the pitch is evidence of fibre content, and the only meaningful evidence is the fibre-content label and what your hands tell you.

Without equipment, four things can be judged in the shop.

• Feel and drape. Mulberry silk feels close and slightly cool, springs back slowly when crushed in the hand, and hangs soft with weight in it; polyester is slicker, stiffer, quicker to spring back.
• Sheen. Silk’s light is soft and shifts with the angle, and the surface is not perfectly even; synthetics are brighter and more uniform, like a film reflecting.
• The burn test. Silk burns with the smell of scorched hair and leaves a black, brittle ash that crumbles between the fingers; polyester shrinks into a hard bead and smells chemical. Watch a seller demonstrate this; do not set fire to anything yourself in a shop or hotel room. A serious seller usually offers the demonstration; one who will not, and cannot explain the fibre content either, is a reason to go elsewhere.
• The fibre-content label. “100% mulberry silk” and “silk” or “silk-like” are different claims, and the more specific the label, the more it is worth pursuing.

The silk set-ups, what is worth buying, and tailoring

“Silk quilts” and “silk duvets”. Problems concentrate here: the filling may be only partly mulberry silk, the rest synthetic or short-staple fibre, made to look and feel the same. Check whether filling content and weight are on the label; if you cannot see it and the talk is all warmth and craft, do not buy.

Scarves sold by the piece on tourist streets. Low prices, many patterns, a claim of silk, a fibre content usually synthetic or blended: fine as an ordinary souvenir, a different matter at a silk price.

The tailoring shop that will not let you think. Tailoring itself is a real and often good business in Shanghai; the trouble is the method — measure you, quote one opaque total, press for a deposit. A normal shop writes the fibre content and price on the order.

The “factory” tour. On an itinerary, the “silk factory” usually matters for the showroom at the end, not the machines; the factory can be real while the showroom prices for tour groups.

Worth buying is yardage, or a plain garment, from a shop that states fibre content and issues a receipt: cloth by the metre, or a simple shirt, scarf or bedding set with the composition marked. The reverse is a complex made-up “tailored silk” garment with only a verbal promise and no invoice — the hardest purchase to sort out afterwards.

On whether tailoring is worth it: Shanghai’s fabric markets and tailors are well established for shirts and simple coats, given time to be measured and to collect; a shirt takes a few days and a coat longer, so ask when you order. If your stay is short, ready-made is easier. Silk is heavier than tea but compact, and textiles raise fewer quarantine questions than plant material; the destination’s customs rules still apply, so check them alongside the tea.

One rule, and who should not buy either thing

Tea and silk have little to do with each other, but the test is the same: buy where the seller does not depend on a tour group, buy where you can see the material, and pay by card or phone so there is a record. A coach at the door, no goods to inspect, a demand for cash or an instant decision: walk out.

Who should not buy. If you do not drink tea, do not buy tea — tea is bought by taste, not reputation. If it is not for your own use and you will not study it, skip the gift box; spend the budget on a meal in the city. If you cannot tell mulberry silk from synthetic and have no time to look and feel in the shop, do not buy expensive silk goods. If your luggage is already full, do not buy a silk quilt — its bulk and weight are the main cost. If you are hoping for a bargain here, a bargain depends on being able to judge, and these are the hardest categories to judge. And last: when someone is pressing you to decide on the spot, no price is a good price.