"???"
Since the tea competition is being held in Changxi Town, the village chief, Old Chen, and other village committee members are not idle. They are all patrolling the competition venue to maintain order and avoid potential overcrowding or stampedes.
Old Chen, hearing Ah Qing mention him, instinctively lifted his foot, ready to walk over and ask.
But then he suddenly realized that he didn't have much interaction with Ah Qing. Why would Ah Qing bring him up without reason?
In this situation, Old Chen felt that Master Fox was surely up to some mischief.
"He probably did something bad, so he's pushing old me out to take the fall..." Old Chen kept a forced smile on his face and turned away as if he hadn't seen anything.
Over on Yu Xueqing's side.
Holding her little fox, which nearly disrupted her work, she squeezed out from the crowd at the tea stall. After calming her little fox, Master Fox, she finally shifted her attention to the live stream.
[???]
[???]
In the live stream, after Mo Yiqing had sent in a round of twenty sound effects, the stream had already climbed to the top of the morning outdoor streaming category leaderboard.
The previously sparse barrage had become unusually dense, especially after Ansheng's recent tea-mixing operation, which stunned a large number of clear-eyed viewers, leaving them with a face full of question marks.
Mixing drinks and blending tea... these things are quite niche.
Not to mention viewers unfamiliar with tea, even ordinary tea enthusiasts may not have seen it.
It's like Lipton. You might say their teabags taste bad when drunk pure, or you might disdain their stinginess, always using poor-quality red tea from India as the base. But in the hierarchical disdain of mechanized tea, Lipton is at the bottom.
Yet, it is a target many tea companies aim for. Their ability to maintain a baseline of unpleasantly standardized taste year-round involves some degree of technical expertise. These types of teas are mainly crafted for clients like milk tea and cold beverage shops, where they need to be mixed to become palatable.
Ansheng just demonstrated flavored tea, using teas of the same type with different flavors or mixing in other teas, to blend them into normal tea through technical adjustments.
"Stop talking nonsense in the live stream. What I'm showing you is from conscientious merchants. With costs of just a few dozen bucks, you can experience tea worth three hundred to five hundred per liang."
"If I were truly unscrupulous, a spoon of Three Flowers evaporated milk and a handful of essence could turn a Lipton teabag into Zhengyan Dahongpao flavor."
"With a cost of nine mao three, I could sell it to you for ninety-eight thousand, and you'd come happily thanking us!"
Ansheng, perched on Ah Qing's shoulder, saw comments on the screen suggesting food safety issues being exposed.
He couldn't help but roll his eyes and started complaining to Ah Qing about the nonsense in the comments.
This is Ah Qing's live room; what I'm showing you is definitely legit!
"This shouldn't count as a food safety issue, right? I feel that before Xiaolan's tea-mixing, that tea at best was something you'd buy for 9.9 yuan with free shipping to use for fridge odor absorption. But after mixing, it reached the standard of regular Tieguanyin."
"Hmm..." Yu Xueqing considered for a moment and then said, "I remember that the dark roast Tieguanyin from our Changxi Town, which is what people mean by heavy-scented Tieguanyin, goes for almost three hundred per jin. Even when our family orders it, genuine ones cost about a hundred eighty or two hundred, right?"
"Experiencing something on the market sold for around two hundred for just 9.9 yuan is explosive value for money."
Ah Qing felt that the comments had shifted from cute pets to food safety issues.
She couldn't help but explain, how could tea that passed pesticide residue tests and was produced according to national standards turn into a deadly poison just by mixing?
Even if Ah Qing is a bit naive, she understands how serious this topic is and how big a stir it could create.
"Ah Qing! The lowest cost for our family's deep-roasted Tieguanyin is two hundred and sixty per jin! Where did you get a hundred eighty from? Don't misquote prices in the live stream!"
"Shoo, shoo! Go play at the neighbor's!" Rain Zhenghong, who had been enjoying tea and rest, sprang up quickly when he saw Ah Qing spewing false prices in the live stream, and immediately caught her offline for a good lecture.
Now that deep-roast Tieguanyin is in shortage, even though our procurement price is over one hundred ninety, how could you mix procurement and cost prices, you dummy?
The tea estate's shop, your dad is renting it!
Water and electricity are commercial rates, and when you add your parents' wages, that's the real cost price.
If you were talking about light-scented Tieguanyin, thirty yuan could be easily sold, but this is traditional deep-roasting!
[666! The broadcaster getting a reality check offline!]
[Hurry, hurry! Broadcaster, quickly! Get the link up before your dad notices, I'll be the middleman.]
Ah Qing's live stream audience is mixed; some are from the cute pet circle watching for the fox, some are tea enthusiasts originally attracted by live tea culture, and about ninety percent are tourists.
Some tourists who originally didn't understand also figured out from the barraged explanations of old tea aficionados why the "Old Deng" was urgently upset.
Damn, selling a jin at a loss of tens of yuan, even losing out on shipping costs—who wouldn't panic?
"Ahem, ahem, ahem..."
Yu Xueqing awkwardly turned aside, picked up the phone again, and said to the audience in the live stream:
"Our family runs a tea estate, but... I usually study at school and don't know prices, made a joke. But, my dad said, in a moment, we'll list ten jin of deep-roasted Tieguanyin in our shop for sale at the price of 9.9 postage, so everyone can taste Tieguanyin."
"Right! My dad also said that if I taste some delicious tea at the tea competition later, he will also list similar tea for sale at 9.9 yuan."
"If anyone is interested, you can follow our music note shop. If you need to buy tea, pay attention to whether it's for personal use or as a gift."
"For personal use, buy the paper bag packaging as it's larger in quantity, but for gifts, get the gift box packaging; it's exquisite, but the quantity is a few dozen grams to a hundred grams less, serving as a packaging fee."
Ah Qing relayed her father's words to the live stream audience.
Yu Zhenghong had originally just come over to correct Ah Qing's verbal mistakes, but seeing the barrage calling him a stingy businessman in the live stream, the Xia Dong bloodline's innate exuberance kicked in, and he decided to splurge and support Ah Qing's streaming effort.
"Happy!"
"Ah Qing, want to see Old Deng step into the sea? If you want to see that, let's head right, where all the stalls are selling Zhengyan Tea, costing one to two thousand per jin. With your dad's face-saving personality, he'd go into debt just to give them away."
Ansheng, with a mischievous look, started egging Ah Qing on to do something naughty.
Rock tea is another name for oolong tea.
But not all oolong tea is rock tea; rock teas are defined as oolong teas produced in a few areas around Dahongpao.
In a tea competition, oolong teas do not include rock teas, and there won't be any rock teas competing.
For a single tea competition, three to thirteen jin of tea is required from tea farmers for consumption.
Thirteen jin of rock tea, even at the cost of the most marginal semi-rock tea, would go for around twenty thousand yuan.
Moreover, given rock tea's reputation, it doesn't need ordinary tea competitions for promotion. The tea farmers aren't fools.
"Xiaolan wants to drink rock tea?" Yu Xueqing spoke, and just as Rain Zhenghong was about to turn and leave, he stopped in his tracks.
Rain Zhenghong's pupils shook violently as he spun back, full of disbelief, looking at Ah Qing.
The scene of Old Deng's pupils shaking was fully captured by the tea aficionados in the live stream, causing them to burst into laughter.
While laughing, they seized the opportunity to educate others about what Zhengyan Tea and semi-rock tea are.
Zhengyan = three to five thousand just to start, culminating with Dahongpao mother tree tea, twenty grams for several hundred thousand.
Semi-rock = minimum eight to nine hundred, prices in the several thousands.
With enthusiastic tea lovers' explanations, the tourists in the live stream also had a good laugh, encouraging Ah Qing to go drink rock tea.
They've lived this long and have never tried tea worth tens of thousands per jin, and they'd like to witness it.