What My Tea Journey Taught Me — Eugene on the ShanghaiZhan Podcast

A few weeks ago I sat down with Bryce Whitwam and Ali Kazmi on the ShanghaiZhan podcast — "More Than Tea: What Pu'er Reveals About China, Taste and Obsession" — and it turned into something I didn't quite expect: a chance to look back on fifteen years of tea and ask what it's actually taught me.

You can listen to the full 39-minute episode here (also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify). But first, the part of the story that matters most.

It was never just my story

I moved to Shanghai in 2004 to work in advertising. In 2010, my wife Belle's godfather brewed pu'er for us — and it just blew my mind. But here's the thing people miss: Belle didn't just witness that moment, she built everything after it with me. She ran the business day to day while I was back in the corporate world. Her dad picks and ships every order from the family apartment in Shanghai. Tea Urchin has always been a family thing — I just happen to be the one with the microphone this time.

What the journey taught me

Talking it through with Bryce and Ali, a few lessons kept surfacing. That slowing down to really taste something — the color, the aroma, the beginning, middle, and aftertaste — changes more than your palate; it changes your pace. That the best things in tea, like the best things anywhere, come from small hands doing things slowly: farmers pressing a few hundred cakes a year, leaves from trees older than anyone drinking them. And that a cake of good pu'er sitting in your cupboard isn't an investment to admire — it's meant to be drunk. Don't feel guilty about breaking into it.

We also got into the questions I'm asked most: what separates a $40 cake from a $400 one, what actually happens inside a cake as it ages, and where I'd send a first-time visitor in Yunnan. I've left the details for the episode — some things are better heard than read.

Listen to the episode

🎧 "More Than Tea: What Pu'er Reveals About China, Taste and Obsession" — ShanghaiZhan

And if it leaves you curious, the cheapest way to start your own journey is a tasting: our pu'er samples include the Bulang and Yiwu teas I talk about in the show.

A note since recording: in the episode I mention that our move to Shopify wiped out all of our product descriptions and customer reviews — hundreds of hours of writing, gone. I'm glad to say that's no longer true. With some help from my AI assistant, we've spent the last few weeks tracking down and restoring them across the site. So if you go browsing the teas mentioned here, you'll find their full stories waiting.