Travel China and Beyond

A Visit to the Malian Dao Tea Street Market in Beijing

On the first day of my recent trip to Beijing, I decided to take the afternoon and visit the Malian Dao Tea Street Market in the southwest corner of Beijing.   This fascinating market stocks a dizzying array of Chinese tea and tea accessories and is a cultural experience in itself.  There are a large number of stores in this area, but the one that my daughter and I went to was a four story edifice that houses a multitude of small vendors.  The first floor is crammed with hundreds of small tea stalls, primarily selling loose leaf tea but also stocking teapots, tea leaf storage canisters, tea cups, etc.  The second and third floors replicate the more crowded first floor, although the price seems to go up as you ascend to the upper levels.  (The fourth floor doesn’t appear to sell tea at all, but has unrelated stores and perhaps a restaurant—I’m not sure!) On this visit, I concentrated on the first floor and ended up buying 6 pounds of loose leaf tea—four pounds of jasmine tea and two of green tea.  The tea was remarkably reasonably priced at about $8.50 per pound and it was very good quality.  Of course the initial selling price was around three times as much, but that is to be expected in a Chinese market.  The obligatory bargaining was good practice for my scheduled visit the next day to the Hongqiao Pearl Market to buy jewelry for my online store Chinafinds.