Crazy coffee and tea prices

[JohnDS]

I just moved to Chengdu from Shanghai and while rents are considerably cheaper here, most coffee and tea houses in my area ( Yulin ) charge crazy money compared to Shanghai.

35 RMB for a small cup of harsh bitter brew seems to be considered a low price, while a cup of tea regularly starts at 60 RMB+ in tea houses.

Can anyone recommend reasonably priced cafes and tea houses in the area?

[Ray]

Re tea houses, its pretty common practice for many of the mid-upper level places to omit the cheap (15 – 20 kuai) tea from their drinks menu. I’ve had this numerous times. Walk into a tea house, “cheapest” tea is pu ‘er at 68 kuai! Bullshit! Ask them is there any cheaper, and more often than not, they will have one (sometimes if you get up to leave this encourages them to fess up about the cheap tea). It’s a little like the bars: walk in with two guys: “Sir, there is a minimum order of 12 (or 24) bottles for each table”. Get up to leave, suddenly 2 bottles is fine….

BTW: wen shu temple tea house still has 5 kuai tea….and the huge tea house opposite jiuyanqiao has 15-20 kuai tea and free night time performances, some of which are hilariously bad….

[JohnDS]

Never had anyone offering me cheaper teas so far, but I just say never mind and walk out after looking at menus with crazy prices.

I think it’s kinda funny that wen shu seems to have the most reasonably priced tea houses with few teas priced higher than 20RMB, given the fact that it’s a relatively touristy area.

If Good Wood Coffee would try to sell cans of coffee for 60RMB+ in the US that contain an amount of coffee which would fit in a normal sized coffee cup, they’d close up shop in no time.

[Ray]

Yeah Goodwood is stupidly expensive

[Author]

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