Some of the country’s most expensive teas cost millions per kilogram. They also aren’t actually for sale.
How much would you pay for a cup of tea? For most people, the answer is probably not much, but for a few ultra-wealthy Chinese, a handful of the country’s most exclusive tea leaves can be worth more than its weight in gold — 38 times more, to be exact.
In 2018, a list showing the prices of 19 varieties of “rock tea” — a type of oolong tea from the Wuyi Mountains in China’s southeastern Fujian province — went viral on the Chinese internet. Known as the “black chart,” the cheapest tea on the list cost 30,000 yuan ($4,600) per jin, a measure of weight equivalent to half a kilogram, while the most expensive would run buyers 5.2 million yuan, or almost 40 times the price of a half-kilogram of gold…