Sometimes it is good to have conversations with Tea Vendors, and this post is inspired from a discussion with a Tea vendor who is worried about orders, and the lack of repeat customers he has had even with mostly positive feed back on his offerings. So I tried to explain to him the mind of a western tea drinker when they set out to explore teas. It is quite difficult to put into words because it does not seem to make sense, because to put it into words you need to presuppose some judgement about the quality that the drinker themselves does not know. So in part you can say the lack of teachers/ mentors for drinking tea in the west is the real cause. But I finally was able to convey the mindset of a western tea drinker with a little anecdote.
*Disclaimer this story is made up, the health claim in the story is used to illustrate a point and completely fictitious.*
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Suppose you and everyone you knew were blind, though people knew about the concept of sight. Then you are told that drinking tea will allow you to see, but only as well as the quality of the tea that you have had. Feeling daring, you seek out some tea, and buy some bagged tea from the grocery store. The tea is of very poor quality, but you notice you can suddenly have a very vague sense of shapes and shadows, ( though probably still legally blind in the laws eyes).
Encouraged by this experience you then decide to pick up some loose leaf tea, that you are told is higher quality than the bagged tea. Suddenly shapes are more clear and you have a better understanding of light and shadows, though you are still completely colorblind. Really encouraged by this you suddenly buying up all sorts of teas, from all sorts of different vendors, hoping for a really great one. Over time you have tried a huge variety of teas of various qualities and your vision manages to improve, where suddenly you start seeing colors, and things are more or less in focus.
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Aside: This is where a lot of Western tea drinkers are, in this search and drink stage hoping for a really great tea. To help explain the vendors particular question there is this additional part to the anecdote.
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One day you have an amazing tea, and suddenly you have eyesight just about as good as it can get. Now here is the thing, you were blind, everyone you know and talk to is or was blind. There is no person that knows all about eyesight to be able to let you know exactly how good your vision is now. So you are left wondering "Does it get better?"
So instead of drinking that amazing tea all the time, which you can afford, and only branching out occasionally to try and find others that you like just as good or hopefully better. You instead go back to what you were doing, trying nearly every tea you can get your hands on hoping one will make your eyesight even better.
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This is the part that really had the vendor confused, if people found something they really liked, why did they not keep on reordering? It all has to do with the fact that there is no teacher to guide them and actually let them know, yes this is a very good tea, and you should buy this as long as you can get it. But rather not knowing how good that tea was on a relative scale, return to seek and drink mode hoping to find a better one.
This is really not helped by the internet, while the internet is a consumers best friend, it might just be a vendors worst nightmare. Whereas when everything you had to buy had to be done by walking into a physical store, how easy that store to get to for you often played a role in how often you frequented the store. The internet today suddenly puts thousands of stores all on the same city block, heck one could say they even all share the exact same storefront.
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