Shipping & Delivery
Dear friends,
Standard shipping — 4–8 weeks.
Your tea ships from our Shanghai tea library and travels from China by sea freight — this is what keeps standard shipping affordable. Your tracking number becomes available once the parcel enters your country's postal system, usually 4–6 weeks after dispatch — we'll email it to you as soon as we have it. From there, delivery takes about 2 weeks. If nothing has arrived after 8 weeks, write to us and we'll chase it down.
Please provide your correct address & phone number for the customs declaration and shipping form.
Where our standard shipping reaches
Our standard shipping covers the 48 contiguous United States. We can't ship standard to P.O. boxes, APO/FPO/DPO military addresses, Alaska, or Hawaii — if any of those apply to you, please choose Express (EMS) at checkout, which reaches all 50 states.
Customs duties & taxes
Our prices do not include your country's import duties or taxes. Customers in the EU and some other regions may be asked to pay customs duties or VAT before their parcel is released — please budget for this before placing your order.
Please understand that we are a small, part-time hobby site. A note on tracking: your tracking number may not show any movement until the parcel reaches your country's postal system — this is normal and doesn't mean anything is wrong. If your parcel has not arrived after 8 weeks, please let us know and we will try our best to help locate the parcel. It is however extremely rare for a parcel not to arrive, so it's usually just a matter of being patient.
Express shipping (EMS) — about 4 weeks
In a hurry? Choose express at checkout and your tea travels by EMS from China with full tracking from dispatch — about 2 weeks within Asia, about 4 weeks to most other destinations. Express is charged at our cost, based on parcel weight.
Why two cakes are better than one
Express shipping is based on parcel weight — and most of that weight isn't tea. Here's the honest breakdown for a standard 357g cake:
- Tea cake with wrapper: ~370g
- Presentation box: 70–120g
- Protective filler: ~70g
- Outer shipping carton: ~220g
- One cake ships at ~750g total
The box and carton are a one-time cost — each additional cake just adds about 500g. EMS charges ¥320 for the first 500g, then ¥75 per 500g after that:
| Cakes | Parcel weight | Express shipping | Per cake |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~750g | $59 | $59.00 |
| 2 | ~1,250g | $79 | $39.50 |
| 3 | ~1,750g | $89 | $29.67 |
| 4 | ~2,250g | $99 | $24.75 |
| 5 | ~2,750g | $109 | $21.80 |
Two cakes ship for $79 instead of $118; five for $109 instead of $295. Orders over $100 also include a tea sample and tea knife (~60g) — on us, it never changes the price.
200g cakes
Our smaller cakes follow the same logic (packaging estimated from our 357g formula):
| Cakes | Parcel weight | Express shipping | Per cake |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~545g | $59 | $59.00 |
| 2 | ~870g | $59 | $29.50 |
| 3 | ~1,195g | $79 | $26.33 |
| 4 | ~1,520g | $89 | $22.25 |
| 5 | ~1,845g | $89 | $17.80 |
