Is Yixing more porous than CZ??

[Trusar]

Trusar you are making a lot of very confident statements, but I have the impression that you are not very experienced on teaware yet. May I ask you for how long you have used Yixing teapots and Chaozhou teapots?

I agree with you that it is a good idea to test for yourself the claims people make. I think it is a good idea to do that also for Mei Leaf's claims. Perhaps you might want to try 5-10 yixing pots and 5-10 CZ pots before making generalizations. I will make a couple of brief observations:

1) the pot you call "zini" looks more like hongni to me. Maybe it's just the lighting of the picture. Here are a couple of examples of zini, one from late Qing:



and two from Yixing Factory 1:



2) coarser texture does not always mean more porosity. For example, this teapot (Qing zini):



is not more porous than this teapot (modern Qinghuini):



It is possible that there are CZ pots now that are less porous than some Yixings. That can depend both on the material they are made of, and on the temperature at which they are fired. But saying that CZ in general is less porous than Yixing is incorrect.

With respect to how reliable Mei Leaf is, he seems like a nice guy but I don't have the impression that he is very experienced about teaware either...

not sure. It was sold as zini, maybe its mixed zini and hongni.

It was very muting to start with, i doubt yixing hongni is that muting
( i really dont think anything can be, but when i get other pots ill confirm)

But i have a yixing hongni from EOT on its way so i will be able to tell at that time.

Like i said, im not the one generalising (the only one) i just accept and agree with don (from my observation after purchasing from scott from yunnan sourcing), who believes that CZ hongni is less porous, if this is the case not sure if i would want to spend money on 5 pots, they may not affect the tea at all like the one i have now ( appart from bai mu dan).

check out mei leaf youtube channel.

The only guys that sell CZ hongni have the smooth ones which yunnan sourcing and mei leaf sell. unless you show me otherwise.

[Trusar]

Trusar you are making a lot of very confident statements, but I have the impression that you are not very experienced on teaware yet. May I ask you for how long you have used Yixing teapots and Chaozhou teapots?

I agree with you that it is a good idea to test for yourself the claims people make. I think it is a good idea to do that also for Mei Leaf's claims. Perhaps you might want to try 5-10 yixing pots and 5-10 CZ pots before making generalizations. I will make a couple of brief observations:

1) the pot you call "zini" looks more like hongni to me. Maybe it's just the lighting of the picture. Here are a couple of examples of zini, one from late Qing:



and two from Yixing Factory 1:



2) coarser texture does not always mean more porosity. For example, this teapot (Qing zini):



is not more porous than this teapot (modern Qinghuini):



It is possible that there are CZ pots now that are less porous than some Yixings. That can depend both on the material they are made of, and on the temperature at which they are fired. But saying that CZ in general is less porous than Yixing is incorrect.

With respect to how reliable Mei Leaf is, he seems like a nice guy but I don't have the impression that he is very experienced about teaware either...

not sure. It was sold as zini, maybe its mixed zini and hongni.

It was very muting to start with, i doubt yixing hongni is that muting
( i really dont think anything can be, but when i get other pots ill confirm)

But i have a yixing hongni from EOT on its way so i will be able to tell at that time.

Like i said, im not the one generalising (the only one) i just accept and agree with don (from my observation after purchasing from scott from yunnan sourcing), who believes that CZ hongni is less porous, if this is the case not sure if i would want to spend money on 5 pots, they may not affect the tea at all like the one i have now ( appart from bai mu dan).

check out mei leaf youtube channel.

The only guys that sell CZ hongni have the smooth ones which yunnan sourcing and mei leaf sell. unless you show me otherwise.

I am not that experienced with chinese clay teapots yet, I have one zini (from wan ling tea house), I have one CZ Hongni from yunnan sourcing and will be getting a yixing hongni from EOT as soon as it arrives in the next week or so.

so far i know that appart from the clay itself, the firing and I think the fineness of the clay particles will affect the clays effect on the tea the most. It will take some time for me to build up a collection as i need to save for the pots and my expences are high and wages not that high.

I plan on buying a Di Cao Qing from EOT when i get the money, and a duan ni at some point in the future. I may buy a porous CZ Hongni if one exists and i can find one.

how long have you been into clay teapots? how many do you have?
any trust worthy websites you can recommend?

[Baisao]

Christ! I am going to stop posting altogether. This is the second time on this thread my posts hasn't posted.

Gist:
* Too subtle and nuanced for photos (and I broke down the various reasons why).

* You need a larger sample size, of higher quality, and to actually hold 'em.

* Thank you for the suggested herbs. Food is great medicine.

Ok, I am dropping off. This posting problem is too frustrating. What a waste of time.

[Trusar]

Christ! I am going to stop posting altogether. This is the second time on this thread my posts hasn't posted.

Gist:
* Too subtle and nuanced for photos (and I broke down the various reasons why).

* You need a larger sample size, of higher quality, and to actually hold 'em.

* Thank you for the suggested herbs. Food is great medicine.

Ok, I am dropping off. This posting problem is too frustrating. What a waste of time.

not food, they are essential oils of herb (don't eat it) , put it in hot water and breath in, or put around your nose and mouth, or rub on you chest ect.
essential oils are pure oils which are distill from certain plants or herbs. look up the essential oils i listed and type in viral bronchitis after the name of the essential oil like "lemon mrytle essential oil viral bronchitis". even if it doesn't work, its so goos for chest infections, cold , cough etc, seems to work better at these things than tea tree, but try and and see.

[steanze]

so far i know that appart from the clay itself, the firing and I think the fineness of the clay particles will affect the clays effect on the tea the most.

This is correct.

I plan on buying a Di Cao Qing from EOT when i get the money, and a duan ni at some point in the future. I may buy a porous CZ Hongni if one exists and i can find one.

EoT pots are pretty decent among wester offerings. I would recommend that you save up for a green label Factory 1 qingshuini that would be even better in my view.

how long have you been into clay teapots? how many do you have?

About 10 years. I'd say about 100?

any trust worthy websites you can recommend?

Usually the best deals are from friends collectors otherwise, Emmett and Hau Ying Chen sell some of the F1 pots occasionally.

[steanze]

not sure. It was sold as zini, maybe its mixed zini and hongni.

It could also just be the lighting of the picture. Zini should not be completely muting - I've never found an extremely muting zini and I tried a fair amount of zini pots I am not questioning your experience with the pot, but I suspect that if it really is so muting it might be some kind of weird modern clay... it is hard to tell without having a session together unfortunately. I think it will be easier once you have a range of clays to evaluate it. For example if you get a duanni pot, you can compare it to the zini and that will help to evaluate its porosity.

It was very muting to start with, i doubt yixing hongni is that muting
( i really dont think anything can be, but when i get other pots ill confirm)
But i have a yixing hongni from EOT on its way so i will be able to tell at that time.

Great! Comparing it to more pots will definitely help

Like i said, im not the one generalising (the only one) i just accept and agree with don (from my observation after purchasing from scott from yunnan sourcing), who believes that CZ hongni is less porous, if this is the case not sure if i would want to spend money on 5 pots, they may not affect the tea at all like the one i have now ( appart from bai mu dan).

Yes, what I am saying is that you might need some experience with a few more pots before your observation is enough to decide whether or not Don's statement matches with your experience. If your budget is limited, I highly recommend that you focus on buying tea and using a thin porcelain gaiwan as a brewing vessel. A porcelain gaiwan is very flexible and can brew most teas very well. Buying more pots is not really a top priority on a limited budget.

check out mei leaf youtube channel.

I have seen their videos before. They are well edited. However, he does not seem very experienced with teaware to tell you the truth. Mei leaf is not exactly the place where I'd go to learn about wares. If you'd like to learn seriously about yixing, I recommend to start from here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teapot2/?ref=bookmarks it's a group curated by Dr. Lv, a Professor in Taiwan who studies teapots and has published a book on the yixing teapots produced between 1938 and 1998. He knows a lot. You might need to use some google translate if you are not fluent in mandarin.

The only guys that sell CZ hongni have the smooth ones which yunnan sourcing and mei leaf sell. unless you show me otherwise.

Most of the CZ pots I have seen are smooth. As we were saying earlier, smoother does not always mean less porous. A teapot can be both smoother AND more porous than another. For example, Japanese Tokoname clay is another case of clay that is both smoother AND more porous than some coarser yixing clays. Same goes for Nixing clay. There are a lot of clays that are smoother and more porous than Yixing pots that look coarser. Saying that smoother equals less porous is incorrect.

[steanze]

I have viral bronchitis at the moment so I am not going to put much effort in to this.

Sorry to hear this, feel better soon!!

[Bok]

im not being that general, im just agree with some who know a lot more than me, my local tea vendor, Don.

Relying on one's person and on one teapot per kind of clay to make a general statement seems very general too me...

as i said people just copy each other, up till now even people who don't have CZ hongni teapot say that it is more porous, how do they know?

Rest assured, a lot of people who are discussing here, do usually own a fair lot of tea pots of all kinds of clay
If you stick around longer you will know who they are and that some have a very good reputation among Western tea geeks and do indeed possess a lot of knowledge about tea and teaware.

I would suggest to keep an open mind, experiment and compare more, before generalising.
No one here said that CZ is always more porous than XYZ. If you read carefully, we are saying that it always depends and there a lot of clays and exceptions of the rule, which is why statements like that of Meileaf are misleading and incorrect. Only people with access to a whole range of antique, vintage, modern pots of all these kinds of clay can make an assertive claim of that kind.

[Trusar]

im not being that general, im just agree with some who know a lot more than me, my local tea vendor, Don.

Relying on one's person and on one teapot per kind of clay to make a general statement seems very general too me...

as i said people just copy each other, up till now even people who don't have CZ hongni teapot say that it is more porous, how do they know?

Rest assured, a lot of people who are discussing here, do usually own a fair lot of tea pots of all kinds of clay
If you stick around longer you will know who they are and that some have a very good reputation among Western tea geeks and do indeed possess a lot of knowledge about tea and teaware.

I would suggest to keep an open mind, experiment and compare more, before generalising.
No one here said that CZ is always more porous than XYZ. If you read carefully, we are saying that it always depends and there a lot of clays and exceptions of the rule, which is why statements like that of Meileaf are misleading and incorrect. Only people with access to a whole range of antique, vintage, modern pots of all these kinds of clay can make an assertive claim of that kind.

what about CZ clay in general, forget about the vintage stuff.
the vintage stuff is gone, you cant base your statements about the CZ hongni which is not available now like the person who asked the question , for people like me, who purchase CZ hongni now and tel them about the past.

Is the clay used in modern CZ hongni the same as the clay used in the past? or is it they just process it differently, please don't tel me that because your pot is older they manufacturing techniques and the clay is better (or is it?). mei leaf and yunnan both offer the same type of CZ clay!!! and if you type in CZ hongni on google all you find is yunnan sourcing, even mei leaf dont have any more left, forget he old pots. Maybe as i said the clay is not powder down fine as the ones now are. what about the ones made now? if the same clay if powdered down finer and fired at a hire temp, it would have less porosity and be smoother to the touch. is this not correct? from what I can see this is how they seem be nower days.
please send the details to a web site that offers porous CZ hongni teapots as people in general like to claim.

[Bok]

what about CZ clay in general, forget about the vintage stuff.
the vintage stuff is gone, you cant base your statements about the CZ hongni which is not available now like the person who asked the question , for people like me, who purchase CZ hongni now and tel them about the past.

You can still find them! Of course it is not easy if you live in a Western country, but in Asia they are relatively easy to find. CZ is more difficult, but vintage Yixing is pretty common.

Is the clay used in modern CZ hongni the same as the clay used in the past? or is it they just process it differently, please don't tel me that because your pot is older they manufacturing techniques and the clay is better (or is it?).

Yes and No (see the pattern?).
The wide array of vintage CZ seems to have actually been of mediocre quality and craftsmanship. Poorly fired, those pots can be very muting. Which was a desired thing as the tea was equally bad, so in order to smooth out the edges, those kind of pots helped. There are also old CZ pots of superb craftsmanship and firing, but those are very expensive and not easy to find. I would say impossible in the West.

mei leaf and yunnan both offer the same type of CZ clay!!! and if you type in CZ hongni on google all you find is yunnan sourcing, even mei leaf dont have any more left, forget he old pots. Maybe as i said the clay is not powder down fine as the ones now are. what about the ones made now? if the same clay if powdered down finer and fired at a hire temp, it would have less porosity and be smoother to the touch. is this not correct? from what I can see this is how they seem be nower days.
please send the details to a web site that offers porous CZ hongni teapots as people in general like to claim.

Taobao has loads of CZ teaware. Some is of really good quality, some is not. Can not tell you about YS or Meileaf, I do not buy from Western facing shops.
My own personal experience is with a modern CZ pot from a young artisan. I posted it a while back, you can look it up if you are interested. This pot is made of pure CZ clay, which is not often the case, more often it is a blend. Pure CZ clay is more orangey than red. One can see that very clearly on vintage pots which have been glazed with red clay on the outside, inside is light orange compared to the glazed outside. I have handled one such old pot (Qing dynasty) from a friend and you can tell from the touch already how possibly muting this clay can be.

Bought it on Taobao. It is one of the best pots I own, both in terms of performance and craftsmanship! While I would not call it porous/muting in any way, it does have a markedly different effect on tea than a Yixing hongni. It makes medium roasted oolong very delicious.

I think a lot of CZ porous/muting reputation refers to old or poorly fired modern teapots.
But then again, it always depends and the exceptions are many!

[Bok]

One more thing I would like to add: Seems that real, authentic CZ clay is getting rare and precious as well. A friend of mine who is a potter went to CZ and did a demonstration for the local potters there. Afterwards they scraped up every little bit of leftover clay to re-use afterwards. Not even mentioning that there was no possibility for my friend of bringing some home…

Same for modern Yixing tea ware, a lot of it are not pure clays anymore, but clay blends. So talking of CZ or Yixing clay made pots might not always be correct in the first place.

[steanze]

Taobao has loads of CZ teaware. Some is of really good quality, some is not. Can not tell you about YS or Meileaf, I do not buy from Western facing shops.
My own personal experience is with a modern CZ pot from a young artisan. I posted it a while back, you can look it up if you are interested. This pot is made of pure CZ clay, which is not often the case, more often it is a blend. Pure CZ clay is more orangey than red. One can see that very clearly on vintage pots which have been glazed with red clay on the outside, inside is light orange compared to the glazed outside. I have handled one such old pot (Qing dynasty) from a friend and you can tell from the touch already how possibly muting this clay can be.

Bought it on Taobao. It is one of the best pots I own, both in terms of performance and craftsmanship! While I would not call it porous/muting in any way, it does have a markedly different effect on tea than a Yixing hongni. It makes medium roasted oolong very delicious.

I think a lot of CZ porous/muting reputation refers to old or poorly fired modern teapots.
But then again, it always depends and the exceptions are many!

+1, another thing to consider is that nowadays it is quite common to add iron oxide to clay to make it look redder.

[ShuShu]

I do not buy from Western facing shops.

I somewhat disagree with the claim that western facing shops have all the junk while Asian facing shops have all the treasures. A large percentage of tea related junk that is being sold in the world (i.e. junk tea and junk teaware) is actually sold in Asia. The average Chinese drinks what many on the west would consider undrinkable using teaware that may on the west consider dangerous. What is true is that good tea and teaware are easier to find in Asia. Many Western facing shops sell tea and teaware of the highest quality, it's just that demand for top-notch teaware and tea is usually quite low in the west.

[Chadrinkincat]

im not being that general, im just agree with some who know a lot more than me, my local tea vendor, Don.

Relying on one's person and on one teapot per kind of clay to make a general statement seems very general too me...

as i said people just copy each other, up till now even people who don't have CZ hongni teapot say that it is more porous, how do they know?

Rest assured, a lot of people who are discussing here, do usually own a fair lot of tea pots of all kinds of clay
If you stick around longer you will know who they are and that some have a very good reputation among Western tea geeks and do indeed possess a lot of knowledge about tea and teaware.

I would suggest to keep an open mind, experiment and compare more, before generalising.
No one here said that CZ is always more porous than XYZ. If you read carefully, we are saying that it always depends and there a lot of clays and exceptions of the rule, which is why statements like that of Meileaf are misleading and incorrect. Only people with access to a whole range of antique, vintage, modern pots of all these kinds of clay can make an assertive claim of that kind.

what about CZ clay in general, forget about the vintage stuff.
the vintage stuff is gone, you cant base your statements about the CZ hongni which is not available now like the person who asked the question , for people like me, who purchase CZ hongni now and tel them about the past.

Is the clay used in modern CZ hongni the same as the clay used in the past? or is it they just process it differently, please don't tel me that because your pot is older they manufacturing techniques and the clay is better (or is it?). mei leaf and yunnan both offer the same type of CZ clay!!! and if you type in CZ hongni on google all you find is yunnan sourcing, even mei leaf dont have any more left, forget he old pots. Maybe as i said the clay is not powder down fine as the ones now are. what about the ones made now? if the same clay if powdered down finer and fired at a hire temp, it would have less porosity and be smoother to the touch. is this not correct? from what I can see this is how they seem be nower days.
please send the details to a web site that offers porous CZ hongni teapots as people in general like to claim.

FYI there are other sources for CZ pots besides those 2 shops.

This shop has been selling CZ pots far longer than both those shops.
http://www.teahabitat.com/store/index.p ... &cPath=2_5

https://www.bitterleafteas.com/?s=Chaoz ... pe=product

http://www.postcardteas.com/site/produc ... u-teapots/




And you can also still easily find vintage CZ pots on eBay and at flea markets/vintage shops in the US.

[Chadrinkincat]

I do not buy from Western facing shops.

I somewhat disagree with the claim that western facing shops have all the junk while Asian facing shops have all the treasures. A large percentage of tea related junk that is being sold in the world (i.e. junk tea and junk teaware) is actually sold in Asia. The average Chinese drinks what many on the west would consider undrinkable using teaware that may on the west consider dangerous. What is true is that good tea and teaware are easier to find in Asia. Many Western facing shops sell tea and teaware of the highest quality, it's just that demand for top-notch teaware and tea is usually quite low in the west.

BOK lives in Taiwan if I’m correct so it wouldn’t make sense to buy anything from a western oriented vendor at a higher price then what’s readily available locally.