Will

While it can't compare to the stuff you can do outside, and while I'm still lusting after the Town Foodservice mobile wok cart (http://townfood.com/ranges_mobile.html), we are getting a Capital Culinarian range, and were pretty impressed with the wok setup for it when we checked it out at their factory. The burners are 23k, open burner, and they have a dedicated wok grate. 23-25k seems to be about as good as you can get for something that's speced for home use indoors. For those of you using tripod type devices without a heavy-duty wok chamber -- don't you find it a little hard to do wok cooking on something so shaky / unstable?

[full disclosure: I am friends with the owner] She's still selling stuff online. My memory is that the closing had a lot to do with the lease ending and / or change in the terms. It's definitely a hard business to be in, but hopefully she will re-open a brick and mortar shop in the LA area (preferably somewhere more convenient than RPV) down the road. Especially as far as dancong is concerned, I would definitely recommend her shop, so definitely check it out online if you want. FWIW, Tian Ren / Tian Fu does have branches in the LA area. I don't know if you'll get exactly the same thing as at the Beijing one (and to be honest, I'm not that wild about their mainland TGY), but you could check out the Tian Fu branch on Valley in San Gabriel if you want. There is also Valley Coffee and Tea on Valley in Alhambra; their prices are pretty good, but I think the tea is only so-so. Even so, the boss is nice and the prices are fair; I'd probably buy tea from there before Tian Ren / Tian Fu. For the greener rolled oolongs you're talking about, I am not always a big fan (I like stuff with a little more roast and / or oxidation), but I tend to prefer Taiwanese high-mountain oolongs if I'm going to drink something in that genre. Sources I'd especially recommend for this style of tea would be http://floatingleavestea.com/, http://houdeasianart.com/ (mentioned above), and http://teamasters.blogspot.com/ (French guy living in Taiwan who sells tea off of his site). In particular, Shiuwen at Floating Leaves (in Seattle) is generally really nice about suggesting something based on what you like, and if you make a small order, she'll probably include some samples of other similar stuff that you might like. For that style of tea, I'd be tempted to wait for the fall teas to start showing up, since the spring stuff might be a little stale by now, though you can probably find some discounts on spring harvest stuff, and that should still be good if you go through it quickly. None of these places are cheap, but I think the price to quality ratio is fairly good, at least as far as vendors that are easily accessible from the west are concerned.