My wife and I were in Vancouver recently. We were able to spend a
whole day on the tea shops in the Chinese neighborhoods on the
southern fringes of the city. Fortunately, I didn't have to do the
research myself, having been alerted by a couple of RFDT lurkers to
the existence of four promising shops.

Disclaimer: No relationship with the shops other than browsing and (in
two cases) buying that day.

One of the informants fed me the addresses 3 shops in Richmond along
with his ideas of what to expect there. Since he praised one of the
shops very highly, we made it our first destination. Good thing we
did! We spent about three hours drinking and buying tea there.

Spring Cottage Tea House (Continental Shopping Center, 3779 Sexsmith
Rd #2117, Richmond, BC V6X 3Z9; 604-270-8707; sorry no website) is
basically a wholesale business, but they were happy to deal with us.
If there's a better bricks-and-mortar place in North America for
Chinese tea, I'd like to know about it. They have a wide selection of
Chinese and Taiwanese teas, including traditionally roasted oolongs
and some interesting Pu'ers, some old. They're sincere tea people.
Stephen Chan is Cantonese and speaks English well. His wife, who's
from Fuding, doesn't speak much English, but her mother grows white
tea there. I think their average quality is excellent and their
prices low. When I tasted old Pu'er there, I had the unusual
experience of suspecting they *understated* its age. When I was in
Yunnan in May, it was basically impossible to find Dian Hong due to
the Pu'er bubble, but Spring Cottage had a very good, tippy DH for
$35/pound.

The other two in Richmond were disappointing. World Pu'erh, in the
Parker Place Mall, apparently had some interesting utensils when my
tipster was there, but I didn't see anything like that, and I was
miffed that they were hyping Pu'er made by the modern company that now
uses the old Tong Xing Hao logo as being from a 100-year-old company,
charging $65 for a new cake. At Van Cheong, in the Aberdeen Center, a
salesman tried to convince me that two young Pu'ers were 15 and 40 (!)
years old, from exactly what mixture of greed and ignorance I didn't
wait to figure out.

Back in Vancouver proper, our last stop was Aroma Tea House (8059
Granville St, Vancouver, BC V6P 4Z5; 604-266-7738;
info@aromateahouse.com), which is a branch of the Hong Kong teahouse
Lam Kie Yuen. In fact, it's run by Eliza Lam, whose father founded
LKY, and her husband. I was very impressed by her tea knowledge and
willingness to work with our needs. I got the same happy feeling that
they lowballed their Pu'er ages as at Spring Cottage. They're
especially deep in Pu'er, including old stuff, and in general they're
good in tea that appeals to a Hong Kong sensibility. Their prices
seem pretty reasonable. They are happy to allow you the time to drink
many steeps (as is Spring Cottage) so you can decide what you think of
a tea. My only regret was that we got there late in the afternoon,
limiting the amount of time we could spend there.

/Lew