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La Hiao Tea – The Jinuo People’s Panacea

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Jeff Fuchs

Sweat comes down my temples in thick rivulets ending up clotted in my shirt collar. I’m not a fan of the heat, which seems to come from the sky, the trees, from the very earth. There are thankfully smells of fruit blossoms, and the beautiful tang of the humid tropical forests which lie still to distract from the heat. There is too, another reason for a little bit of optimism: tea, and not simply any tea, but a tea from one of the ‘Six Classic Tea Mountains’ of Han lore. Above the Mekong River – long a dividing point of classic Puerh districts – Jinuo Mountain borders Gedeng (another of the classic tea mountains) and this is where I presently find myself. The ancient tea mountain of Jinuo is a perfect example of the old tea quote: “high mountains and fog produce classic teas”. High humidity levels and altitudes from 600-1700 meters, and its silent isolation, have long contributed to teas that are called ‘classics’.

Young tea trees. No more than 70 years old these youngsters are already producing great teas, and only gain in value by having the precious Jinuo Mountain designation.

Not given to simply ‘accepting’ a teas’ vaunted reputation, I’ve actually made my way here to not simply sip of the great mountain’s tea, but to observe – and inevitably sip – one of the traditional Jinuo tea concoctions known more for medicinal and ceremonial use than for any casual drinking. Like so much that is indigenous, the recipe risks being vanquished into the ‘forgotten drawer’ of anitquity unless passed along. Tea in these regions is now more business commodity than the more complete panacea that it once was. The local Jinuo name of this tea concoction Jinuo people is simply ‘La Hiao’. Like the Hani, and Pulang (other of the traditional tea growing peoples) the name for tea in these regions is simply – and wonderfully brief: “la”. A little irony considering that “la” (tea has long been known for its cooling and anti-inflammatory abilities) in Mandarin means ‘spicy’. Like any tea-growing district on the planet, a place’s name is no guarantee of a tea’s quality. Quality is either a decision for the mouth to make, or for a number of stages to come together in a kind of stunning symmetry: great raw materials, careful harvesting habits, and simple production methods.

My host – and hosts are so very important here – is a tiny man with bowed legs named ‘Eggplant’. He doesn’t feel the need to explain this ‘name’, and I feel no need to ask. We hustle along a tiny newly paved road, which swerves through the little town of “Ya Lo” upon Jinuo Mountain. Women, who are equally small to Eggplant, lug baskets brimming with freshly harvested tea leaves to and fro, never forgetting to engage in some chit-chat while on their way. The village is humane, slow paced, and entirely hot, and it is in the midst of the spring harvest which adds a bit of a buzz to the place. We’ve just spent a little over one soggy hour within the young tea forests that line the lower levels of the mountain. We have been collecting the prized delicate end-buds for the creation of this medicinal tea, known as La Hiao. Eggplant has about 300 grams of young spring ‘end’ buds in a small bag with some errant leaves tucked into his small dark fist. He reiterates numerous times that it is only the end-buds that he is interested in for this recipe. These end buds, which poke out of his hand and bag, have more of the fragrance and more of the precious health-giving properties than their elder cousins on the branches, he explains. In much of the west, these end buds are referred to as ‘white tea’, though here they are simply coveted for their abilities to add value to the already famed Puerh teas.

As we round a little bend of bougainvillea, which fearlessly sprays its brightness everywhere, I stop to stare at a bush that stirs something in the mind. Looking closely at the green thing in front of me, it comes to me that it is a coffee bush…here upon one of the great tea mountains of history coffee grows unafraid. I ask Eggplant for clarification about what coffee is doing here…I’m almost taken aback, fearing a kind of invasion from the great ‘bean’ into these lands of the great ‘green’. He looks at it and simply tells me that, “Yes, it is coffee but we don’t know what to do with it”. I stare at him a few moments somehow expecting that he might be lying, or covering up a conspiracy. Further north of us near another of tea’s bastions, Puerh City, coffee’s dark power is being felt as increasingly the less scrupulous (and more profit minded) convert their tea fields into coffee fields. Coffee consumption in China is on the rise, while the flow of tea into China’s youth has stagnated. Feeling this sort of paranoia arise in me, I know it is time to sip some tea somewhere. Eggplant’s home is not far away, so my thirst will soon be sated, or at the very least addressed.

The tea concoction I’ve come for is an alternative take on the way tea is perceived. It is a recipe that not only expels heat, but the in local terminology “recalibrates the metabolism”. Also used for ceremonies and for those who had taken too much of anything (including too much of the local firewater), the La Hiao concoction had been a veritable cure-all. Eggplant remembers one of his elder family members saying that the blend “made everything taste better”. This part of Yunnan has long held to the belief that if a meal was served without spice, the meal had no meaning and the recipe in question has some compellingly spicy and powerful ingredients, as I’m about to find out.

Eggplant’s home and even the little village itself, is in the midst of a chaotic turn from isolated tea-outback into a space of big homes that seem out-of-place. But, it is like so much of this region, a place that has come into its own and will decide how to proceed with profits from its prized tea. It still retains an old charm and seems incapable of throwing off its wonderful village-vibe, but here and there new concrete homes appeared in front of the older thatched homes of wood. Thankfully there are still the high-pitched wails of greetings and for the time being at least, the huge homes don’t seem to have erected barriers between people. Eggplant shuffles into his home, covered in a camouflage jacket that was hanging off of one shoulder, but not before depositing the freshly harvested leaves we have gathered on a massive wooden table.

I sit in a sheltered patio section that is simply a covered area where a huge trunk of a tree has been artfully but simply carved into a tea table that runs at least 4 meters in length. Wood, bamboo, and tea, are all linked here as much to eachother as they are to the people. Wood homes, tools, and tables; bamboo used as cookery, boiling tubes, storage devices and tea tables; and tea, long consumed as stimulant, medicine, used in rituals and in healing practices.

Eggplant’s wife comes out of the home holding a baby in one arm and a freshly collected handful of orange tree blossoms in the other. It is the beginning. Following closely on the heels of his wife and the orange blossoms, Eggplant emerges with two small white bowls gesturing for me to peek in. He disappears once again.

Within one bowl, lie the ‘flavoring’ ingredients: two raw garlic cloves, two potent looking chilly peppers (local specialties), and a small amount of salt. Within the second remaining bowl lie five mottled-colored peppercorns (again local). Looking over the potent ingredients I imagine the explosive result, though I’m still not entirely sure how it will all end up. Peppercorns, not far to our south find its bastion in Vietnam, a country that produces and exports more of it than any other nation. Used by the indigenous (and used heavily in Ayurvedic medicine) to help expectorate phlegm, stimulate the digestive system, and clean toxins out of the body, peppercorns join tea and garlic in forming an absolutely complete cleanser and neutralizer.

The assorted ingredients for the La Hiao: tea leaves (left), a bowl of garlic cloves, salt and red chilly peppers, and orange tree leaves (right). The only thing missing from the image are the locally grown and potent peppercorns.

On the table beside me two antiques of wood from another time. One long wooden carved tool looks more like a weapon that anything culinary. It is a pestle and I’m told it is an indispensable tool still now. The Jinuo people are fond of grinding essences together. I know from a few simple meals in the area and the idea that flavors and tastes are blended into eachother is a reoccurring theme in these parts. Medicines in this part of the world have been similarly created, mashing the ingredients together to form cure-alls. The other piece is a carved wooden vessel – more a wooden trough than anything – that looks nothing less than ancient. It is the host in which all of the ingredients will find their way for the final stages of this spiced tea.

Eggplant comes out of the house again ready to begin, but first in a brief show of theater, he waves around us before pointing to the ingredients and explaining: “Everything here is local and from the region, and this is the way we lived not so long ago”. He has quick snappy movements as though entirely high on tea, while at the same time having one of the most gentle and calm sets of eyes I can remember seeing. He begins, softly muttering some little tune while grinding the garlic cloves together with the chilly peppers and salt.

“These provide the base”, he tells me. They are lovingly ground into a pulp. Everything about the sharp fragrances and even the visual aesthetic hints at the power of this combination and my mind is trying to predict what the taste might be, but I know better. The peppercorns are next and it is impossible for the nose not to be moved this way and that by what is wafting out of the simple white bowl and its pulverized ingredients.

Finally it is time for the fresh young tea leaves and the orange leaves to be added. It is as though we’ve come to some sort of climactic moment. With his short powerful fingers he carefully puts the leaves in with the rest of the unrecognizable elements and deliberately folds the leaves, bending them to break the outer epithelial layer. This tear in the skin begins the fermentation cycle and causes reactions within the tea leaf to begin releasing some of its potent abilities.

Eggplant then gently grinds the leaves as if he hopes to simply encourage the fragrances and properties out of their green-skinned homes.

Now comes a moment when he carefully places the pestle down, and pours water into a kettle.

“The water must be heated only without boiling”. Having done this – the water is only lukewarm – he adds a bit of water to the mixture to loosen it, and then stirs it slightly. Then it is all poured into the wooden bowl, with more water added.

I’m then taken by the elbow for a cup of ‘straight’ tea at another little tea-table. The concoction that I’ve been mesmerized by needs 25 minutes to imbue itself, release itself, and whatever else it needs to do in the water. My brain and senses have been almost paralyzed in curiosity and I’ve taken notice of little else around me. The day’s sun and heat have blanketed the whole village and there are other fragrances swimming around in the air, but they are only whiffs that are distant secondary’s to the garlic-peppercorn-chilly blend mingling that bludgeons my nasal cavity still.

We sip the local tea which itself is arousing in its enamel-challenging freshness, but it merely serves to pass time and increase my interest in the ‘stew’ which rests nearby.

When ‘time’ comes, Eggplant and that powerful short-limbed body of his simply jumps up without any warning and I follow behind. There is the curiosity that inevitably arises when one is about to embark on something intimately familiar (in this case tea and garlic) that is out of context. Though not as much of an essential standard in my life as tea, garlic has rarely been out of my life for more than a few days and having grown up eating Hungarian for much of my life it too was a constant and welcome fixture. The resultant mix of these sage elements together into a potent organic mix of powerful antioxidants is what now waits before me.

Taking a ladle that has been carved out of bamboo, Eggplant gently stirs the contents of the wooden bowl to ensure a final blending. And then, without any drama whatsoever he presents the ladle full of the murky liquid. I tip it back trying not to expect anything.

The ensuing result of the concoction, after having pulverized the ingredients and let them sit together for 25 minutes, the brew is ready for consumption.

What ‘hits’ – and it does hit – is nothing creeping or subtle but rather a number of triggers that seem to explode simultaneously in all areas of the mouth creating flavors and sensations. The garlic is there – fresh and potent in all of its glory – but what surprises slightly is that nothing in the amalgam totally dominates. There is a slight sharp tang from the chilly but again it doesn’t overwhelm. Tea’s influence plays more of a back-up roll as it is there but only as a part of this package. Salt’s satisfying feel on the tongue seems to cool the entire mouth and the orange blossoms soft hints register in the softest ways inhalations.

A couple of ladles full later, I feel it impossible to ignore an ignition of sorts within the whole physical and physiological body. A kind heat is spreading through the body and there is a welcome clarity and sharpness of the senses. It is as though the soft-focus heat of the day has suddenly had a stabilizing filter fitted on top of it, forcing all senses to feel more. I’m aware too that sweat glands along my rib cage have opened whide. After a few more ladles, I’m almost skidding off of the little veranda searching for a place to relieve the bladder. Eggplant lets a little chuckle out, telling me that it is entirely expected that the body will begin to purge with infusions of the liquid taken. In traditional times, I’m told, an affected or ill person would ease off on solid foods and instead sip away – sometimes for days – on the mixture. The effect of the elixir was to purge the body, while re-configuring the body’s balance through the ingredient’s effects on the organs. A balance of cooling agents (tea), stimulating heating agents (chilly peppers and peppercorns) and salt introduced into the body to pacify, expel, and soothe all at once.

Later, still buzzing on the concoction, Eggplant and I take a walk through the village, with him acting as a kind Master of Ceremonies to the village’s history. I ask when the last time the La Hiao was made for ceremonial use, and he tells me of somewhat recent wedding that was celebrated, with the elixir being prepared by the bride’s aunt.

In such places, beyond the eyes and lush green horizons there still remain these ancient traditions and what makes them special is that, while locals may not be able to explain precisely the effects or the ‘why’s’ of something’s usefulness, they do know that it works.

Later, Eggplant tells me that we should return to the home, to continue in some ‘real’ tea drinking, by which he means tea unencumbered by any other additions. There is little that I can do other than smile, and follow his shuffling body back to his home and prepare for another pleasant onslaught of ‘pure’ tea.

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Jingmai’s Fabled Tea Forests

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Jeff Fuchs

-One of Puerh’s great tea towns revealed

The town is a casual mess of motorcycles, errant dogs desperate to be left alone, and human bodies carrying sacks over their shoulders. Green pick-ups are jam packed with tea negotiating the little street which seems not to have expanded at the same rate as business. Jingmai in mid-March is happily ‘mad’ with the spring tea harvest – which is just finishing. Few of Asia’s tea bastions can so be so languid and frenetic at the same time. It has the same buzz as ‘one-product’ towns throughout the world. Villages of the ‘grape’ would recognize the energy and pulse and the absolute need to get the green leaves dried, sorted, and sold. The Spring harvest is a month and a half of tea fuelled mayhem and it is for this reason that I have come. Seventy kilometers west of Menghai

The Dai people, Jingmai’s ancient landholders, are neat in movement and the women’s bright sarongs shimmy as move carving little lines through town. A tea producer I’d met before apologizes for not having time to host me for tea as he is entirely wrapped up in his own sacks of tea. He is barely visible, surrounded by 20 kg bags of the precious old tree teas that have made him wealthy. As famous for its policy of open doors and generosity as it is for its tea, southern Yunnan becomes a place of drama and high intensity during the harvest season. Prices have steadily increased, houses have grown and the mighty leaf of Jingmai has only expanded its stimulant powers.

Business is brisk in the little town of Jingmai during the Spring Harvest. Here a seller and producer carries 20 kg's of his latest creation to a customer's vehicle directly.

Joining me on my little Puerh venture into the tea’s very forests is Yi-San, a local buyer and sampler. Her mother has also joined us and though nearly blind of eye, seems able to spot a fraudulent tea at a hundred meters. Our itinerary is a simple one. We will track down a local tea seller, sip some of her tea, eat with her family and then repeat the process at two other homes. We aren’t alone, as the population has swelled with tea buyers, wholesalers and middlemen piling into the little town which sits on the side of a tea mountain. Huge 4×4’s line the already stuffed streets and while there is a general lightness of spirit here, there is also the unmistakable edge of business. Smiles run the range between completely insincere to jackal-like, but the locals are in full control of proceedings as it is their wonderful teas that all have come for.

Our first contact comes out to greet us. She is a pocket-sized beauty whose rough hands and smoky voice add to her charisma – not to mention that she has deeper tea-knowledge than most alive. People here in this region pick tea from an age when they can walk and hold a bottle and if they have a good mind – and better trees – they can become a minor ‘god’ of the tea world, selling the precious spring harvest. Clearly ripped on tea and excited by the current business rush, our little hostess races through the streets screaming at friends, greeting others but all the while hustling and leading us to her home. Time and tea are kings here and she doesn’t waste a spare movement. She wears an indigenous dress in bright pink under which are a pair of running shoes that add to her diminutive stature. Her eyes blaze intelligence and intensity and there something immediately attractive about her simultaneously considered and devil-may-care approach to life.

Yi-San greets this stunning little tea boss and I have that wonderful sense that though men dominate the landscape, there is a self-supporting network of women who make things happen. Climbing through the bags of tea of her home, we walk past 5 women – all of whom appear to be over seventy-years old – sorting through tea leaves. One woman gives us a little wave followed by one of those glorious toothless smiles that seem the domain of ‘ancients’. Up three flights of stairs and not one stair has taken me out of the site (and scent) of tea. It is a place entirely dominated by a small green leaf that the locals call ‘la’. We follow our pink-clad hostess up to an enormous fourth floor tea house and I feel the slight throbbing of my tongue that always is a precursor to drinking tea. A slight spike in my pulse also marks my addict’s need as I’m suddenly impatient for a dose of my green love.

The Dai people have long produced teas and are the guardians of the ancient tea tree forests along with the Hani, the Lahu, the Pulang, and Wa peoples.

The tea house is quite literally the entire top floor of our hostesses’ home. It isn’t immaculate, but rather ‘worn’ and warm, and the very tiles of the floor seem to exhale tea’s earthy green breath. In the words of an old – and similarly addicted – friend, Jingmai’s old tea trees produced teas that were impossible not to like. The local teas were ‘light’, encouraging the mouth to explore their subtleties. Many actively disliked Jingmai for what they perceived as its lack of bite, but in fact it was the one tea that I’d seen slowly win over the most ardent drinkers of ‘hard’ explosive teas. It was in my own estimation a ‘sleeper’ of a tea that created flavors in the mouth and if properly produced was seldom disappointing. This last point, production, was an aspect of Jingmai’s tea history that was enviable. Jingmai’s tea producers had long mastered high quality production of an already outstanding tea and the ensuing teas were predictable and expectations were always high, with the predictable big price tags. Prices this year for the top teas are over $600.00 US a kilogram and with some families producing 1000 kg’s it makes for lucrative ‘little-big’ tea business.

Our little tea fireball in pink is like a piston serving tea, all the while talking, pointing and even – and this impresses as much as anything – going into her little purse which hangs from her neck, for a wad of money for her brother. The brother it seems got all of the stature in the family, built as he is like a prizefighter. He sits with us using a water pipe to take in huge burbling doses of tobacco smoke taking huge inhalations of tea.

Tea and its long liquid fingers seem to spread to not only the immediate surroundings but also into the very psyche of people and bringing them together. Business, money and relationships are as vital – and fluid – as the tea itself. To understand this, it takes a visit to the source of it all to fully grasp what tea is and what it means. Tea is beyond all else a medicinal foodstuff and a thing of the earth rather than simply a distant leaf of esthetic glory.

As I ponder all of this imponderable stuff, action takes place in much the same way everything seems to happen in the tea regions: without warning. True to form though, the action isn’t what I expect. It isn’t a visit to another tea house as had been proposed, but rather a quick drive to the nearby Mangjing Ancient tea tree forest which is a massive and almost sacred green-space of nothing but tea trees. Said another way, we are going to where all of the green goodness comes from.

A few kilometers away is a world away. The forest of tea trees is the forest. Gentle things, bent things, climbing things, and all of them are tea trees. Yi-San simply sits down amid the trees and beckons to her mother to join her. Mother, though has other ideas and is up a tree in seconds looking at the tea leaves in the heights.
Having slightly smaller leaves than the monster leaves of further east, the tea species itself here in Jingmai is different from many of the other tea forests of Xishuangbanna though still part of the Yunnan big leaf family. I wander contentedly though the draped figures of the trees which create a kind of roof over the pathways. The forest is protected by law and while it is a shame that laws must be in place, if it protects the mighty forests then all continues along in green peace. Pulang, Dai, Lahu and Hani people reside in the areas but there are careful regulations as to whom can actually sell and ‘call’ their teas a ‘Jingmai’. Only residents of Jingmai, or those who harvest and produce their teas in and from Jingmai might label their product as such. Similar regulations are in place throughout southern Yunnan’s vast tea belt to ensure that fakes, copies, and outright lying about teas is limited.

Many of the tea trees bare the adornments of parasitic orchids that weave their way around the trunks and branches in a kind of elegant dress. Moving through this massive garden of stimulant joy it again strikes me how crucial the ‘source’ is. Without it, how can one even conceive of what tea – or for that matter, anything – really is. Above me too visible and audible are tea harvesters high in the tea trees above me clipping the tea leaves in the standard ‘one bud and two leaves’ format. All of the pickers on this day are women covered in big sun hats to protect themselves against the raging sun. The women hurl out laughs, songs, and comments to other harvesters and the whole process, while labor intensive, has the very ‘social’ energy that I’ve long associated with tea in these parts.

A local tea producer has invited us to his tea production plant later in the day. Yi-San is impressed. The little factory is immaculate and two women sit sorting leaves chatting in the nasally pitches of the local Dai people (whose language and culture mirror much of the Thai people to the not-distant south). Racks of tea lie slowly withering on the first floor and a massive covered rooftop provides a final drying space for the tea. Our host is a lean handsome man with quick eyes – and apparently – stunning teas. The teas we are served are in fact stunning, though the whole debate about ‘great’ teas is at times entirely moot. Twelve people at the same tea table sampling the same tea at the same moment will ‘feel’ and taste a tea entirely differently. What I do know about the tea that we sip, is that it hits with soft power and encases the mouth with some of Jingmai’s famed subtle touches. It has also been well produced which is perhaps one of the less-stated but infinitely vital elements of a good tea. Too high a frying heat, too much time in the sun, not enough aeration, or simply a lethargic fryer can all adversely affect a classic tea in waiting. For all of the commotion made about the harvesting space of a particular tea, all will be wasted if the production isn’t up to standard and produced with the same attention that the tea trees and bushes have put into ‘hosting’ them.

Elder Dai women carefully sort through the tea leaves taking out leaves or any refuse that is unsightly or of inferior quality.

Heaving in yet another sampling of tea, there is another of those wonderfully sudden moments when without warning a decision is made. Our lean host decides it is time to eat. He tells me that a good tea not only helps digestion, but it also prepares the digestive track for an upcoming meal. He presses a bag of tea into me telling me that it is a gift. I do not even make the pretense of attempting to say “no”.

Dinner could be summed up as “every possible thing local”, including a spicy dish of chilies and tea leaves. It is a huge feast that seems to gain momentum with local friends from the tea community showing up and joining us for dinner. Tea stained hands from clipping the leaves, fryer’s hands rough with the dark ‘extra layer’, sun-kissed faces and the warm smell of sun all join at a huge round table that fairly oozes with vegetation, mountain chicken, and leaves.

Following dinner, tea is again served up and somehow despite the festive environment, the tea acts as a kind of tonic. This year’s leaves are discussed, the prices are spoken of, and the world of the green leaf inevitably reigns supreme once more. In this part of the world, the word tea in whatever language is spoken is rarely out of site or mind.

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Obukucha: A Tea for The New Year Matcha’s Magic

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Jeff Fuchs

Our spartan and immaculate tea room moments before we are admitted as a group.

A small door swishes aside pulled open by a lithe arm draped in silk. And there stands Soyu Makai, in all of her precise and minute glory. Light boned, and layered in dark silks ‘Soyu’ (a title name given to the tea master) is known beyond her tea circles as Yumi Makai. A high priestess in my mind, she is in reality, a respected 25-year veteran and teacher in the Urasenke school of Chado, the Japanese ‘art’ of tea. Eight other guests await as I do for a ceremony of powdered matcha and there is the immediate sensation, seeing this immaculate teacher that another world exists on the other side of the door. I feel sloppy somehow from my rough Yunnan tea traditions, and have very consciously made sure that I’m as ‘neat’ as can be expected for this event.

Far from my ‘roots’ in Yunnan, where the simpler ways of tea focus on the tea itself, the ceremonial tea ritual I am here to attend adds meaning to every single aspect of serving, sipping, and preparing of tea. The entire world I am about to enter seems dedicated to removing everything non-related to this tea moment out of the psyche.

There is a deliberate and imprecise geometry everywhere around me as my newly slippered feet take me into a small sanctum of squares that is not quite square. The ‘flooring’ is a series of interlaying mats that way more than 30 kg’s each. The center-point of the room is a thick black kettle, which is fired from below by smokeless bamboo charcoal. Briefly a small gold leaf of flame is visible, but here in this silent room even fire is carefully controlled. Not one wisp of smoke slips into the air, but I’ve already felt the control and absolute adherence to seamless traditions here and I expect nothing but precision.

This little gathering which I’m grateful to attend, is to bring in the New Year. In a ceremony known as Obukucha, the nine of us will adhere to a posture of sitting, observe the rules of the ceremony, and finally sipping of the divine green leaf.

Soyu Makai enters with her immaculate set of tools.

We are carefully ‘placed’ into our respective kneeling spots in two small lines boxing in our master and the black kettle. Behind ‘Soyu’ another sliding door leads somewhere and at her side the sculpted and sublime tools of the upcoming ceremony.

Powdered tea, introduced by Eisai (1141-1215) to Japan after he returned from study in China, was once the tea of ritual and tribute. Eisai also introduced the refined traditions of Renzai Zen, but the tea seeds he returned with and subsequently gave to monk Myoe to be planted, were the beginnings of the powdered tea tradition. The traditions of both Zen and tea complemented each other and it was together that they evolved in both esthetic and intent. Quiet surroundings, quiet posture, but vigorous focus, were keys to both ceremonies.
Tea gatherings in Japan are all (as they have always been) about ‘one time, one meeting, one tea’, so the event is something slightly different and special each time, with the intention of taking one ‘away’. Though many formal schools differ in details, the intention is largely similar: to be able to focus the mind and heart upon an original and unique experience.

Within our group there is the slightly nervous apprehension of those who are about to embark on something fascinating and utterly ordered all at once. I am all too aware that my tea habits are about to be disciplined and part of me worries that I will somehow slip up.

My very mortal knees are in for a particular treat of pain and I am already fully aware of it. While movement is permitted during the ceremony, guests are ‘encouraged’ to remain in a kneeling position and remain still. My grandmother always used to say that discomfiture focused the mind, but I’ve never completely subscribed to that particular philosophy, so it will be an invigorating experience in many ways. Soyu’s soft voice introduces the wish for a harmonious New Year with the Obukucha ceremony. It is a ceremony that is specific in our case to brining in the New Year. ‘O-buku-cha’ itself hints at its ceremonial use, meaning “tea of great fortune”. Soyu Makai introduces the tea that we will take. An Obukucha itself may differ depending the seller, the producer or the tea master. Our own ceremony will be a high-grade powdered tea from the fabled and famed Uji region near Kyoto. In the Obukucha ceremony there is no rule or law as to which tea can be served, but it is inevitably a classic tea that isn’t normally had. In this case our tea will be served ‘thick’. Only the highest levels of matcha are considered for use in thick tea, as their astringency levels are far less. The temperature – one of the tea world’s great almost neurotic details – should be no more than 60 degrees and only 30 cc’s of water will be used. As a point of interest, a ‘thin’ tea will be used twice as much water, with temperatures twenty degrees higher.

As Soyu Makai introduces the minimalist tea utensils, the ‘kama’ (kettle), ‘jawan’ (hand made tea bowl), Chatsubo (tea jar), an assistant in a fuchsia colored kimono drifts through that hidden door I had noticed upon entering, to add water to a hand-crafted water container. Her entry is formal and invisible, though it is hard not to be drawn to the small precise steps and impeccable coordination that she displays. One could not fail to see the ritualistic and practiced movement to every single aspect of this ‘time and place’.

Somehow, the assistant who is never introduced, disappears noiselessly back through the same door carefully closing it behind her. A moment later, she appears again, this time with a sweet for the first guest. Moving in a clockwise order this hard candy is offered before each kneeling – and in my case almost excruciatingly painful – guest a folded white napkin. As it is placed before us, the fuchsia assistant bows to the receiving guest, placing her two palms face down just behind the offering. This little ‘aperitif’ of sorts will set up the mouth for the tea which will follow, but we cannot touch it quite yet.

The kettle meanwhile has not even purred, somehow being maintained at a constant temperature. Soyu then becomes silent and busy, and I am pulled into her world of tea preparation. A long bamboo curved spoon (natsumè) is used to collect brilliant green tea powder out of the black tea container. Soyu somehow manages to maintain a perfect little mountain of tea upon the bamboo tool, then twists her wrist dumping the little lump of green goodness into the ornate tea bowl and then in the silence of the room she does something that is both sudden and almost spiritual in its immediacy. She ever so slightly hits the bamboo spoon once against the cup to ensure every last bit of match powder has found its temporary home in the ornately tea bowl. Soyu then uses a folded serviette in a smooth movement to clean the bamboo. Every movement stands apart from one another, while seamlessly blending into one another. The serviette is then tucked into her silk sash that ties the kimono to her waist.

The silence, and formal precision of every single breath of this ceremony demands total attention and in that total attention the mind and body leave the outside world, precisely where it should be left, outside. It is explained later that this is one of the intentions of the chado. There is a much told story in Japan, of tea houses being one of the select few places that the famed Samurai didn’t bring their swords. The tea ceremony was not part of the everyday; it was rather an escape of the everyday.

Soyu Makai rushes nothing, and in every moment of her thorough ritual she carves out more of my respect. Adherence to a tradition in a world, where laziness is often camouflaged as ‘spontaneous’ and creative, this ritual seems somehow to hold onto something of itself.

Our tea master whisks the powdered tea using a bamboo hand-carved whisk. The bowl, as all tea bowls are in the Chado, is significant for both the design aspect and the creator themself.

Soyu has moved on in her own choreographed series of preparatory stages. She delicately picks up that marvel (in my own eyes at least) of the Japanese matcha ceremony, the bamboo tea whisk (chasen) is put into use. Hot water from the kettle is then spooned carefully into the tea bowl, at which point the spoon is carefully put to rest. Soyu Makai picks up the bamboo whisk and stirs the water and powdered tea. There is the faintest touch of sound but I suspect that our master has even the exact number of stirs worked out. A serving of tea is almost complete.

In succession, each guest is served by the fuchsia colored assistant (who reappears), who nods to each individual in succession that it is time to eat the sweet which has remained untouched in front of each of us. When this sweet has ‘prepared’ my mouth, a fresh bowl of thick matcha – only 30 cc’s worth – is placed in front of me. All of this waiting has strangely enough made me appreciate the paltry amount even more. After bowing my thanks I take the bowl and rotate it three times clock wise and sip the semi-bitter froth back where it ever-so-briefly suggests a creamy spinach broth (that is, what I imagine a creamy spinach broth would taste like). I have been told that the liquid should be taken in as few sips as possible, so my little slurp session incorporates only two inhalations.

My pulverized knees – temporarily – forget the pain and there is only the faint feeling that I could do with a few more bowls of the goodness.

The next guest is waiting though and they (and no doubt their punished knees) deserve the little frothy treat as much as I.

As we exit twenty minutes later, somehow and unbelievably walking back into the outside world, a question is put to Soyu Makai by one of my fellow drinkers, which slightly startles as it is the first ‘outside’ sound I’ve heard beyond our tea master and her utensils in nearly two hours. “When did you finish your tea studies”?

The answer seems so wonderfully consistent with what we’ve just been witness to when Soyu answers “One never finishes learning the way of tea. I am not close to being finished”.

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Snow Tea – The Highest of High Mountain Teas

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Templar Tea

Here in Shangri-La (aka Zhongdian) or Gyal’thang as it was once known to Tibetans, the mountains bask in high mountain bolts of sunlight and in the altitudes that have long protected and to some degree isolated all beings and things. My home for most of every year hosts winds that shriek as they pummel their way east out of the Himalayas. In the summer, monsoon rains that pound, and a vibrant bio-diversity that exists on the mountains every slope has been happily been maintained.

My thrice yearly runnings into the tea regions of southern Yunnan which lie almost 500 miles south of my mountain sanctuary have long yielded kg’s of gorgeous green stimulant, which inevitably comes back to my loft in the old town here in Shangri-La. I sip these teas daily and when there is a supply shortage I know that in mere days a shipment can happily make its way up to me, even here. There is no way around the fact that the teas which stimulate and ease my days, do not (and cannot) grow here. The 3,200 meter heights are not conducive to that which needs moderate ‘everything’ to coddle and feed the camellia sinensis plant.

Apparently during tea’s heydays along the tea caravan routes and the Tea Horse Road, an intrepid Tibetan businessman and trader tried unsuccessfully to plant and cultivate Pu’erh tea along slopes of the Himalayas and its extensions. The idea, which bursts with noble intentions (at least in my green-fed way of thinking) was to cut the times it took to transport the precious teas by caravan into the high mountain markets of Lhasa and Nepal which long craved the green-leafed gifts.

Ancient Tea Horse Road

Tea that the world has come to know needs a bit of sweltering heat, good slopes, a lot of mists, and some shade. It also needs certain soils to thrive, and this highland region is simply not kind to that which is known as tea.

Locals though – hardened mountain men – will speak of a tea called ‘White Snow Tea’ – or simply ‘Snow Tea’ – that does grow even higher in the mountains, above 4,000 meters. It is a particular tea that has long provided healing properties to those that dared to pass through the realms of the mountains, and as expected it has never been cheap, nor plentiful. Old tea caravans heading to the market towns would barter tea for the highland medicines to take with them upon their journeys as a part of a traveling medicine pack, and of course to turn a coin and resell.

This tea, rare though it might be, can be seen and purchased in any number of ‘mountain medicine’ shops in our Old Town. Though I’ve had it in blends before I’ve never actually prepared it nor have I ever really paid it much attention. No flavors have ever embedded themselves upon my tongue from the tea, so in many ways I still have no firm impression of this ‘Snow Tea’.

White Snow Tea

Called ‘snow tea’, the white worm-like strands are in fact a kind of high mountain lichen that grow and wind their way through the floor of high mountain’s lands. For obvious reasons trying to sell the health-giving properties of a lichen commercially would not work, so tea it is. Also known as ‘ground tea’ the tea resembles silvery gray sprouts and in the local shops bits of earth still cling to the ‘tea’, giving it an authentic appearance.

Local Tibetans, who first used and discovered the lichen, refer to it as ‘gong ja’, (snow tea) or simply as ‘shar’wa’. My walk through the cobbled streets along a portion of what was the Tea Horse Road doesn’t take long to yield an upright rectangular container full of the little specimens. It sits inside shop selling high mountain medicines and declares itself as just such with three languages emblazoned upon sign outdoors. The shop I decide to purchase from is nothing less than a complete and utter repository for cures of maladies that run the spectrum (and some yet undiscovered maladies no doubt). Shops dealing in medicines in China often refer to “Himalaya sourced”, “high mountain”, “from Tibet”, and labels will often depict the grandeur of snow swept mountain peaks shimmering above a picture of the advertised ‘cure all’. It is clear that the heights and what comes from them are viewed with a kind of idolatry and awe.

Many buyers of medicines will travel up to these places so that they will not be – in their own minds at least – conned into buying ‘fake’ medicines. Alongside the ‘White Snow Tea’ supply lies various fungus, dried mushrooms, and powders that declare bluntly of their potent abilities to solve all manner of problems. Everything from aiding circulation to clearing lungs up of phlegm is promised. Easing joint pain, and strained eyes are also promised in quick order.

I’d recently consulted a man I simply refer to as Doctor Mountain, a friend’s uncle who in his time has cured people, created medicines from herbs, and expounded eloquently about the powers of natural medicines. In my little quest to learn more of the natural abilities of the lichen, there were no better reference points than Doctor Mountain. When I have doubts or questions that need allying about ills, cures, or just general interest, I head to the good Doctor. A night previously, we sat around a humming wood stove while he spoke of medicines in general and in particular, the snow tea. No discussion would be complete without a meal and a drink of the alcoholic variety – homemade and fortified by either he or his wife. This alcohol, he frequently told me, was also a kind of medicine.

Doctor Mountain

In his words, the ‘gong ja’ is in fact legitimate and helps with heart issues, blood pressure and aids in cooling the body down in times of fever. “Any coolant, helps with the three key organs: kidneys, liver, and gall bladder.”

It is also, he tells me over a shot of whisky, something to help induce sleep when people are suffering from nervous disorders.

Herders who take their yak high into the mountains often collect the Snow Tea and other medicinal delicacies to help supplement to their income. When they return with their mules and billowing bags of mountain products, they can sell the goods for huge profits.

In the case of ‘gong ja’ or Snow Tea, he explains that it grows best on ground that at least for part of the year, is encased in snow which preserves its healing properties. Both this fact and the altitudes of 4,000 meters and higher are the reasons behind it being known to those that know it, as Snow Tea.

When another shot of alcohol is proffered to me – and accepted – by the doctor he speaks of the old trails that striate through the mountains being used by caravans. These mountain ‘highways’ would usher fungus, resin-heavy pine, and various funguses, mosses and the white Snow Tea from the heights. He also confides that the tea was used to counter alcohol’s potent properties when taken in too intense amounts. In my own days wandering through the high corridors I’d marveled at the bags of goods I’d often seen coming down with the mountain’s residents. I’d long assumed these little items – wood, mosses, weeds and plants – were simply for kindling or spiritual use.

Having finally left the doctor’s home, I was at least armed with a sense that this ‘Snow Tea’ had some legitimacy.

My decision to buy some of the white tea from this shop of high mountain medicines is to both keep some on hand, and of course to sample it. I’ve been told (and have a vague memory of) that the tea is mild with a slight bitterness. The seller in the shop will not budge on the price, which is 15 Rmb ($2.35 US) per gram until I casually mention that I’ve seen bigger ‘lichens’ at another shop. This ‘tactic’ of mine was suggested to me by the Doctor, when he told me that “size doesn’t matter and any good seller will not fall for this”. The seller does not which secures my mind that she probably has a legitimate product. She tells me straight that the size of the lichen means nothing whatsoever to the quality or potency of the ‘tea’ and I immediately purchase 5 grams which fills up a surprisingly large clear plastic bag. Like all good ‘real teas’ the size of a leaf means little, and in fact the smaller leaves (also the case of the lichens) the smaller the form, the younger; and the younger species often come laden with the most nutrients.

Home in my loft, the gentle preparations begin to finally prepare some of this ‘tea’, study it, drink it, and try to feel its effects – if there are any. Caffeine and the usual suspects of stimulants in a good green tea will be absent so there will be a little faith necessary on my part. No pungent kicks or wonderful rushes can be expected. My Kamjove kettle by the window is filled and water rumbles to its boil. Though called ‘white tea’, the ‘tea’ is neither white, nor a tea but rather silver, rubbery strands with the odd little bits of vegetation or green moss hanging off of them.

I’ve been told that the infusion water needs to boil to break up and release the essential elements of the lichen into the infusion, and that the infusion time should be at least three minutes. Outside my window, beyond a temple, dark skies shoot from the west, reminding momentarily where this precious white substance is from.

After a long soak, the infusion – which is unlike tea leaves in that the strands of lichen simply stay float atop the water – is ready and then sipped down with little more flavor than a slight metallic tang and that is it. Five infusions later, and still there is little more than that ever-so-slight tinge of iron taste and green before it is gone. Unlike so many of the ‘real’ teas that nicely pulverize my taste buds and gratify almost instantly, this tea requires more of a ‘have faith and it will help’ kind of attitude.

If the doctor says it is so, and it comes from the heights, it must have something special. Words from the doc and being sourced from the mountains cannot be denied. Immediately following the little sips of the ‘Snow Tea’ I prepare a potently bitter cup of a favorite green Pu’erh which has long comforted. I do this just to activate the cells and taste buds…after all; a little balance is always necessary.

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Oolong’s Misty Middle Ground

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Jeff Fuchs

The engine of my little scooter is unrelenting as it screams ever-higher, only to coast and reach yet another ascent into damp air. Bodies of mist are thrown over the wet strip of curling road ahead. Precious mists are everywhere here, coating all in soft gray.

the famed mists of Taiwan that provide a kind of cover for the tea bushes, diffusing both rain and direct sunlight

While the rain smacks my visor with fresh scents, my rain cape has pasted me with the tang of wet plastic. The sky moves from left to right above me and on all sides is lush, wet, greenery…and beyond that, fields of shimmering tea. Within a fold of the island’s central mountain range, I know that my scooter and I will be moving still further up in altitude beyond two thousand meters, and into what is famously referred to as “high mountain tea country”. One of Taiwan’s famed and legitimate claims is its precious high mountain Oolongs, and on this island which has dozens of peaks above 3,000 meters, there are ample places for Oolong to flourish. The 190 km Central Cross-Island Highway was completely obliterated 13 years ago in an earthquake that remains in the psyche of Taiwanese to this day, and as I coast along it, there are brown cascading falls of mud that spread across the asphalt. It remains though, one of the only routes into the world of High Mountain Oolongs.

Oolongs’ detailed journeys to become semi-fermented masterpieces are in many ways journeys that contradict my own long-standing philosophy that the best teas are simply made. Teas that take a straight line from the time they are picked to the much-awaited point of consumption have always felt more legitimate to my mouth. In their simplicity, they remain teas whose true essence cannot be hidden. High Mountain Oolongs, however, and their often ornate and customized production, lay waste to my long held belief.

My destination is Lishan, in the Central Mountain range, which runs north-south. It is an area known for fruit, drenched vistas, and the one overriding reason for my travel aboard a scooter, tea. Known to its Atayal indigenous population as Shalamao, its rain-covered slopes, volcanic soil, and voracious mists assist in making it a sanctuary for tea.

Within Taiwan’s potently green and deep slopes that hint at its volcanic past, there are vestiges of what locals will call ‘the old ways’ that still hum along unchanged. These ‘ways’ are the vaunted methods of creating spectacular teas. Much of the challenge of getting here, and much of what makes the landscape so tea-friendly is this very inaccessibility. These ‘old ways’ are time-honored methods that have long created teas that are mini works of art.

Mists are one of the great 'musts' for certain species of tea bushes. Taiwan with its narrow strip of land, surrounded by ocean, and pierced by high mountains is ideal for high mountain Oolong.

I have come to visit a man named Mr. Lu, who creates masterpieces of Oolong, in small quantities, from the 2,300-meter slopes of Dayuling. I have come to meet him, and take as much tea with me as I can, after sipping as much as I can hold.

Oolong, often referred to as ‘qing’ (a light tone or color of blue) in Mandarin, bridges the gap between fully fermented black and red teas, and the lighter greens, yellows, and whites. It is a tea of the ‘middle’ ground, but at the same time is a tea that needs a dexterous hand and romantic spirit to create. It is a tea that needs an obsessive creator. Perhaps more than any other ‘type’ of tea, Oolong can go wrong…or it can go extremely ‘right’.

On the island’s tea bastions of Ali Shan, Lishan, Wushe, Pinglin, and beyond, tea makers will often say that it is precisely in the careful manipulation and process of creating these nuanced Oolongs, that an ‘author’ or maker can create a masterpiece. Fermentation of tea is – in other, perhaps more accurate words – a measurement of how much freshly harvested tea leaves are allowed to oxidize. Oxidization is halted by either a frying process, or in some cases, a steaming process. The combination of this aging, along with the decisive heating of the tea, fixes the taste, and by extension, fixes how the tea will be regarded. Fake ‘Taiwan Oolongs’ rage in distribution centers, as the leaves themselves will be produced in China, Thailand, or elsewhere, to arrive in Taiwan for a brief ‘finishing up’ before being exported.

For now, only my immediate, and almost invisible, surroundings concern me. I’ve often seen photos of the Lishan area, with bolt blue skies, terraced angles of green and deep valleys. What I’m now immersed in is a sideways-moving storm of gusts, bursts of wet, and gray. After many such escapades of ‘seeking tea masters’, I admire those that choose to be near their beloved green hills rather than basking in their own fame in the cities. These mists, which roam well above a thousand meters, diffuse the sun’s rays and create an airborne tonic of humidity that bathes the tea bushes. This soft gray home of caressing humidity helps maintain the amino acids, stimulants, and flavonoids in tea. It is the mists that are heralded and needed for Oolongs.

Lin is apparently in his late sixties, and is known to make only enough tea for himself and a few who pass by and know of his special teas. His fame originates from an adherence to an old and rare process of roasting already sumptuous Oolongs with low heat fires, burning wood from various types of trees. These varying woods infuse hints – mere hints – of themselves into the tea, creating marvelous one-offs.

Along the side of the meandering roadway are orchards of pear and apple trees in unorganized rows, hunched against the wet onslaught. Pulley systems on small tracks, used to haul up fruit to waiting trucks, lie still and covered in slick.

The town of Lishan passes by and soon there is only tea around me. Dayuling’s Oolongs are prized for their pristine, far-off altitudes, and for the fact that with altitude comes cool, and with cool heights come fewer natural enemies to the tea bushes. Pesticides are rarely used in true tea gardens up here, and if they are, locals spread the news like word of a plague. Reputations must be kept and nasty sprays are one step to losing a pedigree immediately.

Studying a ragged piece of paper with hand-drawn instructions, I see below me a little paved entry to a valley. The odd truck comes into view, with headlights in the gloom. Not much stirs at all, as the world here is engulfed in precipitation. Turning down the little road, a home of many parts sits on the left, while orchids sway under a black cloth overhanging the drive. A pitiful little waft of smoke issues out of a thin chimney, and further down the road, sits a similar home, with a similar bit of smoke. This is it; a home that hopefully contains Lin and some of his heralded tea. Selfishly, I hope this is the right place and that there is plenty of tea ready for my greedy mouth.

It is from these experiences and journeys into tea’s more remote worlds that true knowledge is imparted. It is the second day of driving from Taipei, in the north, aboard this 125cc machine. There are no numbers on the house that I can see. My instructions are in the style of “after the gas station, second right turn, past a hydro line, a left and the first house…” It was in many ways a miracle that I had made it this far.

A door hurriedly opens, as though someone is expecting me, and a broad woman runs out with an umbrella. I am ushered into the front door as she apologizes for the rain. Dispatching my rain cape on a hanger and providing a towel for my sandaled feet, my hostess is everywhere at once…she shows all the signs of a perfect hostess, who happens to be ripped on tea. That gleam in her eye is something very familiar to the tea obsessed.

One room, with only dull light making it through, is off to the left, and my elbow is steered into the scantily lit, square room. An old medicine cabinet, with dozens of drawers, lines one entire wall, with tea poking out of a good number of them.

Oolong varieties were the first teas to make it out of Asia and into the west, and yet they remain in many ways the least known. Numbering in the thousands, with different processes and handling, Oolongs are stronger and more durable than their green brethren. These semi-fermented teas are varied, and depending on how the fermentation is done, and the type of tea desired, there is a very general rule that they will be fermented between 10 and 65 percent. Oolongs’ picking, withering, fermenting, blocking of fermentation, frying, shaping….all of these stages are determined by the master, his intention, and the type or vintage of the plant.

A leaf not yet harvested near Dayuling, Lishan that will be picked and used for one of Lin's brilliant but hard to find concoctions.

A man, slightly bent, is coming toward me, with the heavy eyelids of the insomniac. This is Lin. My female guide has disappeared momentarily, returning with an urn-like container of water. Lin points to it and rasps that this is spring water from a nearby source, “One of the essentials for any tea is good water”. This is as much of an introduction to him as I will receive.

Lin knows why I have come and he gets right to it. My body is uncoiling out of its damp tension in tiny stages. Lin’s voice comes out in bullet points with no flowery language or soothing smiles. His small body is perched at the edge of a small chair behind a table, upon which is a huge carved tea table, with a small plastic conduit tube hanging below into a pail.

As Lin explains that in Taiwan true teas should not be harvested before they are five years old, my broad-shouldered, female hostess arrives with a steaming plastic bowl full of hot water for my feet. Lin takes no notice, preferring instead to peek through the half dozen bags of dried tea leaves.

He selects one, and looks quickly over the table at me and asks if my feet are comfortable. “I’m going to serve you a roasted Oolong tea. A tea that has been roasted with cherry wood. It is a tea you will not find in many places and I’m not even sure I like it, but it is very special.”

Out of nowhere, he tells me “you will sleep here”, without looking up. His abruptness keeps me focused on him and I begin to suspect that this is exactly his intention.

Lin, I have been told, is originally from Fujian province, where Taiwan has taken much of its functional tea culture and much of its language. Known to be direct – often misinterpreted as rude- in their attempts to get to the point of a discussion – they are undisputed masters of Oolong in all of its incarnations and serving styles. As a friend once told me, “Fujian knows best where tea ceremony meets tea functionality.”

Lin is back explaining something as he readies one of an arsenal of stained clay pots. He tells me that he isn’t going to explain the special Yixing clay pot to me. “Yes, it is important, but nothing is as important as the ‘integrity’ of the leaf.” Heavy words.
The pot is rinsed from the outside first, so as not to crack it. Then the insides are rinsed with the searing, just boiled, nearby water.

Dark rolled leaves, almost black, are thrown into the clay pot, shaken with the lid on and handed to me to take in a first waft. First comes a waft of ‘roasting wood’ and then after that a hint of burnt corn.

A new batch of freshly boiled water drenches the leaves in the pot and the hermetically sealed lid is replaced. Ten seconds later, and after some humming of a tune by Lin, the first infusion drenches our awaiting cups.

Suddenly Lin is staring out of the bleak window at the rains beyond. Another nugget of tea is released from his mouth, “You know that these teas (all teas really) need mists. Those mists out there are like a blanket to protect the tea bushes.”

Moments later I have the fluid in my mouth. Two days of driving through rain disappear abruptly as I – with feet still soaking – take in Lin’s roasted Oolong.
Lin’s eyes stray to a point up and behind me before he shoots back the cup of tea and it is only after four more infusions – which have me jabbering with delight – that Lin grunts something. Again he isn’t sure; in this case he isn’t sure that this is the best of this particular tea. “Each year I take two or three kg’s to experiment with. This roasting is never the same twice. These teas are small little worlds.”

Some sips later, he finally seems to settle. He speaks of roasting in his short clipped way.

“Roasting is an art. You can hide a bad tea by roasting it, or you can use the roasting process to bring out a tea’s qualities. It can make an already good tea something special.” Roasting for many master-makers encourages yet more of a tea’s character to emerge, but he emphasizes, “Every stage of tea production is crucial and the roasting helps to wring something extra out of a tea. Some quality that needs the added roasting to release it.”

The roasting that he speaks of is done only after a tea is ‘fixed’ into its final form. It can be done immediately after, or, as in the case of Lin’s teas, months after. Some tea makers will even double roast a tea to ‘age’ and preserve it, just as smoking meats in the past extended the life of foodstuffs.

When I ask later if we might go into the fields, I get a slightly incredulous look and then a shake of the head. “We have a lot more tea to drink and I don’t like the rain. I like the mists though,” and he again stares out of the little window, before preparing another one of his roasted blends.

A comment Lin makes stays with me, and marks him in my tea-mind at least as an unrelenting perfectionist. When I ask him which tea he defers to most often, he thinks a moment, before telling me that the perfect tea rests only in his mind, and that “I haven’t tasted a tea yet that I find perfect.”

“This one is pretty good though,” he says, as he readies another pot with another dose of water.

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A Classic and the Mix Lao Banzhang

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Jeff Fuchs

Though debates rage, fingers wag, and heads shake in disagreement of whether a classic tea is really a classic tea, a great part of drinkers’ judgments are based on price (and the ensuing expectations), qualities and the environment a tea is consumed in. Expectations can destroy as easily as bad product and it is a kind of ‘travel to truth’ when one can visit and access a tea’s very earthen home.

It is a luxury (and perhaps a necessity) when one can access in person the source of a legendary tea. Add to that to take sips with those who live ‘with’ and harvest it, and treat the tea with camaraderie that befits an old and treasured friend, and this translates into some entirely tangible and spoiling. There is though, a tradition of the tea world that is rarely acknowledged, beyond simply the leaves themselves; something vital in creating a classic tea and that is the ‘mixing’ of a tea. To see this, one must absolutely visit the source.

Lao (old) Banzhang suffers at times in the tea world for the expectations that it comes with but it is in every sense (when genuine and produced by those that know) a classic. Many drinkers and collectors within Asia’s outrageously pernickety tea mob will claim that Lao Banzhang is the standard by which all other raw green Pu’erhs should be (and inevitably are) compared. Often regarded as a kind of do-it-all panacea for the ails of the tea world, a legitimate and properly-produced Banzhang has all of the delicious requirements to make it something magnificent. All of these plaudits come of course with a vital necessary given: proper production.

A Banzhang, whether it be from Lao Banzhang village, Hsin Banzhang (new Banzhang village) or from any number of nearby villages, will be at the mercy of good production methods, proper care and of course the stunning raw materials themselves: ancient tea forests.

It is early March and the bulk of harvesting is done in Lao Banzhang. Heat is beginning to stain everything in southern Yunnan and its sheen rests upon every surface. Altitudes above 1500 meters ensure that heat doesn’t entirely take over. The town hums…it is March and harvested tea leaves are being hauled in from the tea forests around. The entire community is in action shooting into the surrounding forests early in the day to begin each day as they began the last. Afternoon breaks; food taken on the floors with family and then off again into the deep green silences for a second round of picking. This area – a portion of the greater Pulang Mountains in southern Yunnan – is one of tea’s original ancient homes and it remains a place of relative silence and it certainly remains a place of unending tea.

I am lodged in a headquarters of movement – one of the village headmen’s homes -watching enormous bags of tea come in with scribbles of black marker on their sides. Different harvesting clans bring in their teas for sampling and mixing to the headman’s home. Relationships play huge roles in whose tea is sold and distributed by whom.

‘Little Goat’, the headman’s son is languidly ensuring marked bags go into the correct room of the sprawling ‘tea home’. He will be the heir to this tea center-point and already organizes much of the harvest in his carefree but attentive way. All of the tea is from the surrounding forests that encircle Lao Banzhang town and each ‘bringer’ of tea has produced their offerings: harvested, withered, fried, and dried the tea leaves. Each harvester has a history with the family of Little Goat and their teas are predictable, regardless of quantities.

‘Mr. B’, a mustached man from Guangdong province flits about grimacing and double-checking the bags. Occasionally he jams his head into a bag and takes heaves as if to satisfy an almost violent urge. Every harvest season he comes to this remote tea town and organizes and manages quality. His surliness is perhaps part loneliness, as he is a man with a quick smile and wit but far from home in this remote mountain.

His job is to ensure that tea that his company has already pre-purchased is up to standards for the most discriminating of buyers. The current mutually beneficial set-up is part of a relationship that stems back years and one that is based on trust and market demand for one of the great Pu’erhs of the world. Mr. B, himself a competent tea man at all of tea’s crucial stages is a kind of hired gun, a man brought into manage the collection of close to 15% of the entire town’s premium old tree Spring harvest. Rarely smiling and seemingly in a perpetually bad mood it is part of his ‘act’, as it is his task to ensure that quality is controlled at each stage. Each of the 20 kg bags of tea have come from designated families who are aware of – and follow – stringent production rule’s set by the Guangdong man and his company. These rules aren’t to ensure only profits; they are to ensure that a classic tea gets its due and remains from start to finish something extraordinary. These rules, in many ways are designed to ensure a sustainable future, and they ensure everything from the careful frying of tea leaves to the length of time and thickness of a ‘blanket’ of drying tea leaves. Bags of tea will be collected, samples tasted, and then one of the tea world’s great and very understated rituals takes place: mixing.

For one of the mixing sessions I will be present and yet another Guangdong man will arrive for three days only to oversee this vital step. His prime task will be to oversee the mixing of teas after sampling and deciding on which teas should marry which other teas. Mixing is one of the old and now fading arts of creating classic teas.

In the world of teas, most of the mixing that goes on is of the negative variety: ‘cutting’ inferior or foreign tea leaves in with sacred old tree tea leaves, which amounts to lying about the tea in question.

In the case of this load of Lao Banzhang, the mixing to be done is to enhance already top grade leaves to create something magic, and like most things ‘magic’, this requires an absolute knowledge of the product.

The ‘morning of the mixing’ arrives and it begins like every other day in the last week. A cool morning air rests in the valley around us with no breeze. Morning mists hold onto the forests. Scooters with two three and even four people buzz off along roads; groups of harvesters make their way up into the forests and I start the day with some blisteringly strong tea slurps with ‘Little Goat’. One of the the beautiful perks of time spent in a tea sanctuary is the amount of uncomplicated and raw tea that is served up at all times of day and night in quantities that literally flood. Bags of glorious ‘throw-away’ tea sit in casual disarray close to a tea table. This ‘throw-away’ is glorious tea, but lacks the esthetic requirements to be sold to picky sellers, so it is left to be sipped when the mood strikes and in the case of my greedy taste buds, this mood is often. Leaves that are torn, unsightly stems, and the odd bit of refuse don’t detract from taste, but they detract from the ‘look’.

When Little Goat picks a tea for a quick fix, he picks from one of the countless bags of ‘prime tea’ at his disposal, knowing each tea intimately: fresh potent teas whose bitterness hits at the beginning and end of the tongue, only finishing sweetly at the very last bend of the throat; teas that are four years old and mellowing ever-so-slightly into a vintage; and teas that are not the best of the bunch but still take the mouth and tongue on a happy bender of a journey.

When our famed mixer arrives, there is an almost dramatic hush after the welcomes and inevitable – and much needed – cups of tea. Built squat, our mixer ‘Mr. Wen’ is casual, quirky, and understated. Outfitted in flip-flops, and loose fitting clothes that barely restrain his bulk, ‘Mr. Wen’ has a short-stepped shuffle when he moves.

On the semi-covered outdoor porch an enormous tea table has been set up with an assortment of newly harvested teas for the proceedings. As an aside at one point while we all sit down, he mentions to me something he considers funny…though he doesn’t smile at this bit of information. He speaks of how locals sometimes don’t completely understand how precious their product is to people who buy from him and that their still-simple methods of production are one of the very reasons of why their teas are coveted.

When Mr. Wen sits, he appears almost bored by all of this but through years of knowing him I know that nothing; not one single element is missed or ignored by this muscular lover and seller of teas.

First, various teas’ raw tea leaves are studied by sight, with small bunches from each of the bags set out on tiny plates. Each plate has a small piece of paper with a number assigned to it. Around the table a small group of villagers sits softly talking amongst themselves, with one pointing out to the others his tea sample which sits in front of Mr. Wen.

Next, hot water from a nearby burbling kettle is poured over the ten samples in their respective bowls. Mr. Wen’s right hand casually swirls the leaves with a spoon and water mixture together allowing the water to open up the leaves. The spoon is dipped into the potent tealeaf mixture and brought up to the nose of Mr. Wen and gently turned back and forth under the nostrils. Nothing is revealed, no sounds emanate from him; nothing at all creases his face. The village men beside me sit with leathery hands folded or resting on legs as they gently preen forward on their stools, eyes attentive to every sound and movement of the performance.

Finally a nod comes from Mr. Wen’s wide head, the first sign of any kind of acknowledgement regarding the teas in front of him. At one point Mr. B and his significant moustache join us and he takes his place next to Mr. Wen with paper and pen handy. Even he, in his manager role defers to Mr. Wen’s unquestioned skills with the leaf.

The third ‘test’ that happens is a small amount of tea liquid is swirled into the spoon and slurped back noisily into Mr. Wen’s mouth. This is repeated with each of the ten teas, often broken up by sips of warm water. Some more sips of particular teas and then, as though all has been made clear, lightening instructions are issued to Mr. B, and he calls out the number of various teas clarifying which will be mixed with which. The whole point is that some teas lack a “bite” but lack something longer lasting, while others have “bite” while missing a “base”. Other teas have great balance but little staying power, and still others are simply “not good”. Tea #2 and tea #7 will be blended to bring together their complementary strengths…and so on. These qualities and characteristics are in part due to what direction the tea forests face, the kind of storage and drying that takes place and even the ratio of young and old leaves in a given tea. It is this ‘mixing’ that can fix or enhance an already great tea into something divine, and it is here that Mr. Wen is a master.

When the numbers are finally taken down and the teas blended (at least on paper) we all slump and get into some necessary tasting of our own.

Sheets of soft wind now make little passes through our space and the day has moved on while our focus has been the green leaf. Heavy sun gives everything the tang of warmth.

Mr. Wen asks for the bag of “Tea #4” and where it is from. Taking the bag, he looks carefully through the leaves as if confirming some suspicion and asks whose leaves they belong to. A slight man to my left raises his hand with a bit of hesitation and is asked immediately how much he has left of the particular tea. The ensuing answer is, “30 kg’s”. No one is sure where this line of questioning is leading but we all have our answer when Mr. Wen – making no secret of his intentions – tells the man, “I’ll buy it all”. He later explains that he has no intention of selling the tea but rather, that the tea in question will be part of his personal collection, so good is it.

Later in the day in another little but well-versed tradition I am presented with a bag of local tea for my own ample and obsessed-over collection. Unmixed, the tea is a simple but powerful ‘average’ tea grown locally and this token gift is one that is coveted not only for its contents, but for the sharing aspect which runs rife through tea communities.

Two days follow of this ‘mixing’ and then it is time to part until next harvest season. The only positive of leaving this place of classic teas is that my bags swell with newly acquired leaves…

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The Leaf and the Wood -Tea and Bamboo: A Tale of Two Friends

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Jeff Fuchs

“You see how it smokes”? Several small plumes drift upwards. One thick bamboo husk is wedged into the ashes of a low heat fire and wafts smoke upward into the heavy air. What smokes is the base of the green bamboo, which slowly chars in the embers. This one end rests in the ashes while the other open end is angled upwards. In the round bamboo (one of the other eternal green species of this sub-tropical area) container, raw tea leaves and water boil and become infused with the smoky, roasted, blasts given off by the direct contact to fire-heat.

Water and tea boil in a Pulang home, preparing the leaves for their eventual immersion into a husk, afterwhich the husk will be buried. No additives are included. It is simply water and tea leaf combined for eventual burial.

“This burning of the bamboo is what will give the tea its smoked taste”, Mr. Shen tells me. He remarks, almost to himself, that “Sometimes people do this for tourists, but very few know what they are doing.”

Beside the fire, four still-green bamboo husks sit waiting their turn by the fireside. About a meter long and three or four inches in diameter, they are neat and utterly simple, but represent one part of one of tea’s more ancient preparation techniques. Something that, in my own mind at least, transcends time.

Mr. Shen, who’s Hani name is ‘Nga’, sits back, eyes glittering in pride and expectation. This is tea culture laid bare, simplified to a tradition that is older than the ‘pick, dry, fry, dry again, and then consume’ teas that the world-of-now knows. Giant tea leaves of the big leaf Yunnan variety (Pu’erh) are squeezed together by wooden tongs and lie leaning against the heat, waiting to become soft.

When Nga decides it is time for our roasted brew be consumed, a simple bamboo cup is filled with hay colored liquid. Without tea going through the stages normally associated with tea production – which softens and modulates the taste -the raw tea leaf ‘extract’ imparts bitterness in the extreme; an essence that transcends manipulation. This is tea in the raw, with the roasting only barely softening the absolute ‘green’ of the taste.

“My parents used this tea when they had eaten too much spice or had fever. It is a traditional form of drinking and for us an old medicine”, I am told.

The air around us smells as only sub-tropics can smell: fragrant, smoky, and humid. Day’s light is fading into a stained hue on the horizon, and nearby, bougainvillea vines offer up their brilliant blooms. We are almost 1500 meters up in a tea mountain east of Menghai, and on this day, I’m being educated in some of the old tea ways that involve tea’s eternal mate, bamboo.

Our roasted tea hits the mouth with a force that is pleasantly shocking. It is as though I’ve been reintroduced to tea. The raw leaves, after boiling for fifteen minutes in the water within the bamboo host, have had much of their potency expelled into the water and it is an uncompromising introduction into tea’s strength. Nga warns against drinking this – or any fully green tea – on an empty stomach, as the intensity and astringency can affect the digestive track. His hands circulate his stomach area to emphasize the potential disastrous effects. What he doesn’t explain is the stimulant factor, which hits my entire being with a wonderful crashing force.

My Pulang hostess gets the boiled tea leaves out of the water and into a bamboo casket, within which it will rest for months or even years.

Even with my tendency to take in more tea stimulants than necessary, I’m not quite prepared for this little experience that has me jittery in minutes. Three cups into our drinking session, with eyes twitching and tongue nicely pulverized, it is time for my next bamboo related tea lesson. We move two meters away to another hearth and another fire, where another of tea’s ancient ‘ways’ will be played out.

“Dai, Pulang, Wa, and we Hani, have always used bamboo to prepare, cook, and consume tea. It is a good friend to us and to the tea”. The ‘tea’ and bamboo he speaks of line the forests around us in phalanxes of green tones and dark depths. Long together, growing as compatriots, it isn’t only here in China’s soft southwest where these two old friends have been inextricably linked. Japan’s tea culture has long kept the two close. Tea instruments carved out of bamboo, calligraphy celebrating the two, ornate bamboo tea tables, and even containers for tea leaves themselves, have long been a part of one another’s space and identity. A local specialty dish here in Menghai county serves up bamboo grubs, which grow fat on the sweet insides of bamboo. They are quickly stir-fried in oil, chilies and tea leaves in a spicy, bitter-sweet symphony of tastes … but that would need another blog post on another world of consumables.

Nga has prepared dried tea leaves in a silver bowl and is forcing them into a similar bamboo husk. “In the days before tea factories, we steamed the tea like this”. Forcing the leaves into the round husks with only a little water at the bottom, Nga then folds bamboo leaves into the top to effectively seal off the top, creating a small vacuum lid. With the water coming to a boil, the leaves steam, losing their shape and naturally compressing into the round tubular shape of the husk. With the water having been boiled off, Nga then forces the pliant leaves down with a wooden ‘plunger’. Using a giant blade, he then splits the bamboo casing lengthwise, revealing the compressed leaves in tube form, ready to dry and ferment…and ready to travel. Bamboo in this case was the ‘vessel’, the molder, and holder of the leaves. Yet another tea session of sips – this of the recently ‘formed’ tea – reveals no hint of roasted taste, but rather something soothing and only softly green.

Leaves stuffed into the opening point of a bamboo husk act as an informal seal, creating a steam environment to condense and conform the leaves into a formed tea shape.

An hour’s drive west, another pair of hands, another people, and another town, but the tea and bamboo couple are still together in another ritual of mutual complicity, aided by time and human hands. While the woman’s hands are as powerful as Nga’s, the pace is more plodding, and deliberate. This is a ceremony entirely about time and nothing of the modern world’s rush will change it.

The fire that burns is not outside in the dirt, but inside on a bare floor of ash, and the tea that is being prepared is not tea that will be consumed in minutes, but rather in months. A tradition that stems back to when emperors ruled kingdoms and the countries of now were nothing but dreams. ‘Sour tea’ is another throw-back to another time, but equally dependant on bamboo.

My Pulang hostess, in her methodical way, is repeating a process that will in her words, “be lost in two generations”. A huge and battered pot, only partially filled with water, comes to a boil, and it is at this point that raw tea leaves are thrown in and stirred.

The boiled down tea leaves are finally drained and stuffed ceremoniously into a bamboo husk, where they are further pummeled into a state of broken and disheveled submission. The tea leaves are packed down until they almost fill the barrier.

Two of my hostess’ grandchildren giggle at the site, and I wonder at her prophetic words, that they may not know how, nor know the worth of what their grandmother does. The elevated hut seems half modern and half of the old times. In one of the two rooms, a communal sleeping room, lies a room where nothing is hidden.. A series of mattresses lie on the floor in happy disarray, while the kitchen is an extended space that is made up of some hanging herbs, slabs of pork, and a series of small benches that stand surrounding the fire pit. Excesses and their effects have not yet touched this corner, though there is an easy and almost enviable ease to the people’s interaction.

Finally, some brown clay is dug from the ground, softened with water, and packed onto the open end of the bamboo, to seal the container completely. When I ask whether any other kinds of wood can be used for the process, I am given the slightly deranged smile that one gives the infirm in sympathy, and my hostess shakes her head, telling me simply, “It is not the way”. Bamboo will not rot, and will infuse the tea slightly with a little of its inherent sweetness, making it an ideal partner in all things tea.

We are ready for the final step, which will literally be a return to earth for the entire casket of tea. A small grave is dug, and the bamboo cask is gently laid in a ceremony that bristles with irony. Filled in, the tea will “rest” for anywhere from two months to over a year within the bamboo, which is in turn within the earth. On its eventual recovery, (“if we can find it”, my hostess laughs), the mixture will be added to rice in a tribute to a habit made famous by Burmese kingpins of centuries ago, known as lephet. It is tea mulch that is eaten. I am later told that one of the daughters of the homestead actually makes maps to locate the various buried treasures. Upon tasting some of the pulverized and ‘sour’ tea with a bowl of rice, the only sensation is of a potent, musty, vegetal complex, that needed rice to tone it down.

In all their thousands of years living and providing side by side, the ‘wood’ and the ‘leaf’ continue a relationship, though what binds them risks disappearing. Something Nga says maybe sums up best that notion of progress. In his straightforward way, he sees it quite simply. “If tea has to change its shapes, and its wording to move on, that’s fine, but we should never ignore what it is and where it comes from”.

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A Sip, A Walk – Meng Song Pu’erh

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Jeff Fuchs

There is a wind, but it seems to just blast more hot air from the west. Ahead, the ridge I walk upon seems to disappear into a green leafy bastion that engulfs the horizon. My guide Pai has disappeared; or rather I disappeared from him, as I lost patience waiting for him while he visited a friend in a nearby tea town along the path. The sand beneath me is reddish and dry, but this earth is precisely one of the reasons why this little hidden sanctuary is home to some of the regions great-underrated teas…so say the locals, and so said my own palate hours earlier. It is the locals that I most often listen to on the subject of ‘teas that should be tried’.

Meng Song Pu'erh Tea

The little-known area of Meng Song lies close to Menghai, and is one of the highest points in all of Menghai county, with one of its sub-tropical ‘mountains’ hitting the 2,400 meter mark. Just off this peak is where I now stand and tea surrounds me. One of the great joys of being down here is that one can sip a stunner and in mere hours be where the tea rises out of the earth.

Two days earlier, I hadn’t considered the place worthy of a visit because of a vague sense that I had to travel ‘out’ of the regions I normally forage through. The hitch, or change in plans, came as it often does with me, with a cup of tea.

Sitting perched in a tea shop of a friend, my host starts rummaging through one of his chaotic and thoroughly unorganized ‘tea drawers’, before making a noise as he finds what he is looking for. I sit puzzled; how can he even know what he has found, as he has piles of tea cakes stacked in near-identical wraps, with only one or two mandarin characters on each tea covering.

Meng Song Tea Shop

I am used to this performance of his, and regardless of his abilities to appear ‘lost’ in his own tea shop, Mr Lu is brilliant at finding good teas. He also knows that I enjoy having my palate rocked by a new tea. He is very aware that I’ve never had a Meng Song tea with him. The word ‘Meng’, which appears often in southern Yunnan, is a kind of prefix, found in front of another word, to denote a place, or even for some, a country (albeit a small version of a country, that is a throwback to the days when a valley would be one’s home for a lifetime).

Mr. Lu pulls out two tea cakes. One appears as though it has been gnawed at rats. A little more than half a cake remains. Mr. Lu hands it across and tells me that this will be for “dessert”. It is slightly darker than an average ‘green’ newly harvested Puer tea cake and this is due, I find out, to the fact that it is 7 years old and well on its way to ‘fermenting’ heaven. The other tea cake is brand new and oozing fresh green – a fresh Spring 2012 harvest that seems almost explosive in potency.

Minutes later, and four cups emptied out of the newly harvested young Meng Song tea, (picked from tea bushes that are 60 years old, known in Mandarin as ‘sen tai’), I am well on my way to changing my already flexible tea schedule. When the aged Meng Song is prepared and presented to my gorge, I am ready to not only buy, but to leave and see this ‘new’ place on my tea-region-radar. The seven-year-old tea verges on being an elixir – smooth, soft, but finishing with an oomph … and it continues to tempt well into successive infusions. This tea is from the ancient tea trees; Meng Song has both the newbies and the aged masterpieces. With this in mind, I now begin the task of finding four wheels.

Meng Song Pu’erh Tea Leaves

Finding a vehicle that is heading into the regions of green gold is never difficult, as half of the vehicles in Menghai are either going to tea towns, hauling tea into town, or cruising with samples on board, to their buyers. This neurotic habit of mine– this need to see a place where a tea (that has teased my tongue) comes from, is instructive and essential. By getting to the source, seeing the soil and the villages, and feeling the place, I can fill in vital blanks and feel better (and on occasion worse) about liking the tea.

Pai drives with a kind of languid incompetence, shifting into fourth gear while still only doing 40 kph. The engine shutters and I shutter along with it. He drives with a phone pressed into his ear … the hand that holds the phone also happens to be his steering hand. It is a marvel we don’t get pulverized and get sent spinning into oblivion, as he has the rather ominous habit of driving straight down the middle of the road.

Meng Song is yet another Hani stronghold of ancient tea history. Many of the Hani people in the area are related to those on the not-so-distant Nannuo Mountain, but Meng Song, both in name and in ‘tea-name’, lies slightly hidden to the outside world. It boasts neither stunningly expensive teas nor magical syllables. It is simply Meng Song.

Pai is long behind me, and I wander still further into the heat and gloom. Here the sun comes not in clear rays but in muted and muffled strokes.

Tea trees are everywhere and many have huge bamboo husks leaning upon their bows; ladders of the tea world, where harvesters can climb up to the peak branches which lie so high above.

Ancient tea tree

The forests of tea are closed, clean and sloped. They are, in my frame of reference, perfect tea spaces. At one point, I shimmy down a sandy dune that has been covered in bamboo leaves. This is a deliberate attempt to keep the soil and earth healthy in the rampant heat. Down I slide, into a little sanctuary of a pond, and a surrounding amphitheater of tea bushes that curl around the little body of water. Standing there, I feel a very tangible glow of contentment. As long as little places like this exist, all is well with the world around me.

The sound of dry cracks sail through the air, as wind forces the bamboo trees back and forth and forces them to give. The tea bushes and trees sit squat and unmoved. In my walk, which took almost three hours, there were almost no signs of man – none of the giveaway signs of plastic wrappers or cigarette butts.

Finally deciding it was time to find Pai, I descend into a town to try and call him on the phone. A woman in a bright orange kerchief stands watching with her dark-eyed child in her arms. I asked if she knew a “Pai” (though it may seem odd, villagers – and particularly tea villagers – all know each other, or know who would know). She points and smiles.

Less than 30 minutes later Pai sits in front of me, where he has been sitting for the past hours. I sip local tea on a wooden floor and finally ask him what he’s been up to. He points out at his battered pickup, where I can make out enormous bags that bulge out of the hold: tea.

I nod my head. It could really only be tea that distracts him within a tea region. While I was slipping and sliding through the tea forests in a bit of tea paradise, Pai had been negotiating the purchase of a supply of the local tea.

We leave in the dark, ripped on tea, and I don’t care how he drives.

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The Great White Bud, Power of White Tea

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Jeff Fuchs

In the great plethora of tea terms, color designations, and nomenclature, there is a risk of losing the fundamentals of tea. With the terms and hype, the basics often struggle for acknowledgement or even an understanding amid a tea growing base of drinkers. White tea, with its antioxidant-laden white ‘end buds’, isn’t the only tea where one can take in the power of the white.

Sitting in one of the many tea houses of Kunming recently, I was to witness something very un-Chinese, something very ‘un-tea-ish’, but something very necessary and refreshing: a full-on explosion of indignation from a drinker and prospective tea buyer. It had to do with the ‘white buds’ in a tea … or rather the lack thereof.

The ‘action’ stemmed from a subtle slight of hand that is occurring more and more often in the mainland, with regard to the amount of light-colored buds (often referred to as the ‘white’) within a tea. High amounts of these precious, flavor and antioxidant-rich end ‘flags’ or young leaves usually indicates a very decent tea, whether it is a green, oolong, or Pu’er. For many buyers, the presence of these light colored buds is one of the vital ‘musts’ before any purchase is made. The slippery, underhanded elements within the business of tea, however, are now able to essentially ‘coat’ a tea cake, nest, or brick of tea, so that the outside layer appears to be laden with these white buds, convincing a buyer that the entire cake is thus ‘gifted’. Where the outward signs are promising, within the formed tea shape, it is a different story all together. Rip off a chunk of tea and underneath one finds a completely different tea…devoid of the buds. In this way the cosmetics of the external cake differ greatly from the substance within. It is this less than honest approach which reared itself on a mild afternoon in Kunming. I have drifted into the tea market area that I frequent when ‘thirsty’, down a small side-street where the tea trade takes place much as it has for an eternity.

Within the tea house, I sat sipping a Pu’er from the region of Lincang in western Yunnan. I’ve long maintained a kind of gentle skepticism of any tea house that I don’t know intimately, but they do offer a repose of free tea, some quiet from the city, and occasionally a kernel of wonderful information or a discovery of a classic tea. The tea in question, from Lincang, was being touted and served by a lean man with a thick thatch of hair and thin lips. He was speaking about the tea’s great quality and of its “tangs”, of its incredible lineage in the region…and he spoke at length of the amount of light colored buds that are visible on the cake’s surface. Three men sip with me and it is clear that they are experienced buyers and fervent tea drinkers. While the tea nourishes, it isn’t special in my frame of reference.

When one of the three asks if he can see the cake, our host momentarily hesitates, muttering something, but finally hands over the tea cake after being pushed. The three drinkers, who sport short square-top hair-cuts and immaculate shirts, are interested in potentially buying 70 kg’s of the tea, which will amount to several thousand dollars. This desire to see and inspect the tea isn’t at all unusual, which is why the hesitation is a bit strange.

One buyer tears off a chunk of the tea cake without warning to ‘look inside’. He holds the tea cake under light and lets out a noise, passing it to his two comrades, who in their turn glare and start simultaneously berating the host, who has retreated slightly. Then, one of the three hands me the cake – as if to confide – pointing to the insides of the tea cake, pointing out with vicious jabs of his finger, the lack of white buds that appear so densely on the outside. It is true…the tea inside and out seems to be two different teas altogether. A premium is paid for a tea with a higher levels of buds and no buyer will complain, if, and only if, this is consistent within the cake as well as the external coating.

Tea shop owners, sellers, traders and even growers, will often point out the high concentration of light or ‘white’ buds within a given cake or loose leaf offering. In such a way, a tea’s quality (or at least one of the markers of a good tea) is on show.

Meanwhile, around me the hostilities continue, with the tea shop’s owner’s “brother” coming in on the act and soon there is a full-on yelling match going on. This is serious business. Tea for many (including myself), is something that transcends simply being a business. It is a luxury, a ritual, and an addiction of sorts, in one small package of green. It is likely that this firework display will go on, and there is even a point where the threats extend to violent reprisals for this current tea crisis.

The tea shop owner and his brother are on the defensive, claiming they know nothing of this ‘slight’, but in fact they must know they have no possible chance of escaping this discovery. One irony of the tea cake swindling that is going on is that to produce a fake is almost more time-consuming than producing a legitimate tea cake; the difference being there are far fewer of the precious white buds. It is for such a reason that many Pu’er tea purchasers prefer buying loose leaf, as in the loose form it is more difficult to ‘hide’ a tea’s illegitimate qualities. The drawback for some buyers is that in loose leaf form a Pu’er’s natural fermentation process is to some degree stymied, leaving some buyers feeling it is less authentic.

Threats of bringing the equivalent of the “department of business” in on the act, have the argument spiraling into a frenzy of attacks and useless counter-attacks. I decide the time has come to slip out. It is unfortunately not the first time I’ve seen this bit of ‘tea-deception’ and it is something that isn’t limited to Asia – these ‘false teas’ appear in one form or another in Europe and North America as well, though the tea buying population knows less of this swindling (nor what to look for) than in the Asian markets.

White tea, light colored buds, and the smallest supplest leaves on a tea tree or bush have become a rage world-wide because of their purported (and in many cases substantiated) health claims. With higher levels of antioxidants, and containing the crucial, delicate fragrances and flavonoids, the end-buds have the power to increase the worth of a tea but they are more rare than traditional teas. With worth brings the unfortunate aspect of attempts to ‘fake’ or manipulate a tea.

Genuine white teas like Yin Zhen (Silver needle) – which is highly prized and rare – and Fu Ding (a very good but more reasonable white tea) are fully ‘white teas’ with downy hairs coating the leaves. The tea plants are intended to produce a white tea, and are often located in the ideal location in a plantation because of their delicate needs. A Yin Zhen might be as much as $10.00 per ounce, and the total harvested amount might be as little as a couple of kilos annually, from a reputable plantation. The light colored buds in a tea like Pu’er, green, or even an oolong, are similar to a ‘white tea’ in that they are very young buds that contain more of the vital antioxidants and subtle flavors, thus adding to the value. The difference is that they are part of the greater whole, so to speak, rather than the entirety. In China’s rich tea history, white tea was once the beverage of choice for Emperors and men and women of means, given its rarity. In the days of yore, faking a tea was sometimes enough to warrant a death sentence.

A white tea, and its essential buds, may come from the identical tea plants that produce both green and black teas. One main difference to distinguish them is that a ‘white’ tea is treated only to a light drying and very gentle processing, whereas the more sturdy camellia assamica (Pu’er) and some hybrid varietals’ leaves are all treated to a withering, frying and drying.

I attempt to slip out of the heated argument, which seems only to increase in intensity, when I am held up by one of the three potential buyers, who gesticulates madly and tells me that “this is what is destroying one of our national past-times…liars and cheats”. At this word “liar” (pien ren in Mandarin) the tea host seems to lose the plot entirely, looking as though he will try and strike out with a hand or wild swing. Though this sort of aggression isn’t the norm, I’ve seen these reactions before in Asia regarding tea and its ‘falsification’.

It doesn’t come to violence before I leave, but upon reflection later, after I did make a retreat out onto the side street, I try to imagine such a remonstration in the west about a simple leaf, such vehemence and hostility about a beverage. Perhaps a bottle of expensive wine that turned out to be plonk might inspire a bit of the same ire. The time is coming though– as people consume more of these ‘special’ teas, the knowledge base will swell and, thankfully, so will the expectation of a great tea. At that point, who knows what the result of tea treachery could bring.

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A Classic Revisited and ‘re-sipped’ Yiwu

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Templar Tea

One of tea’s very favourite days: a day beset by damp fogs, where ancient cobbled stones meander through the tiered town and everything has the cold sheen of age and wet. A rain is coming in cold drifting sheets hitting the stone homes with repeated wet slaps. In backyards gourds hang swaying in the wind and it is the wind that is creating the movement. No one is stirring and the whole place has a feeling of one that has tucked itself in from weather that it knows all too well. Beyond the tiny tea town, tea bushes and further on – unseen to the eye – tea trees must be enjoying the humidity, basking in its life giving properties. For the senses, the town is all that can be aesthetically asked of a legendary tea region. Yiwu has one of those reputations that nothing but time and tea can give, but reputations amongst the tea obsessed can be taken away as well.

A loose knit cluster of irregular stone homes sits in an almost defensive position being pummeled by the wet from above. Rain, one of tea’s great providers lashes down. The lack of any human activity creates a feeling that the town rests in a kind of serene bubble been kept in a bubble of sorts. The old town is a series of walkways and alleys falling away into a valley. Walking along the slick cobbled stones I imagine the town remaining as a quiet nook for centuries to come. Happily there are no engines humming and only the odd crushed cigarette butt hints that there might be more than just structures here.

Yiwu the area exists more accurately than Yiwu ‘the mountain’, though in tea lore it makes up one of the six famous tea mountains of Yunnan – though its teas are not necessarily any better than any other ‘lesser’ tea mountains – in Southern Yunnan. There was a time when Yiwu tea was hurriedly transported north to Emperors, south into ancient kingdoms and along the daunting Tea Horse Road’s vast length up onto the Tibetan Plateau. While it remains a bastion of Puerh cultivation and quality, for many in the purist sect of tea taking, the area now struggles to retain (or reclaim) its ancient reputation.

I’ve come again to revisit Yiwu, not because of any lasting impression made on a previous visit but exactly because there was no lasting impression…because I’ve been subjected to a few very different experiences with teas from Yiwu – a couple startlingly ambiguous, and only one mouth watering. One experience involved rushing to a tea tasting of Yiwu teas at the last moment. I sat down and had four teas rifled into me that had absolutely no impact on the tongue, the mind or any other part of the senses. To make matters worse there was a chain smoking ‘tea expert’ (who was more salesperson than tea sage) who was talking non-stop for over two hours, seemingly without allowing a single intake of breath to interrupt his sermon. It was in my mind at least an entirely ‘untea’ experience. It ate at my very soul and came close to annihilating any desire to even hear the word Yiwu again. Then, another tea sitting near the Bada Mountains in southern Yunnan a Korean tea buyer shared a little packet of his Yiwu ‘sheng’ (unfermented) Puerh that was staggering in its virtues – a limited harvest from a “specific grower outside of Yiwu town”. These were his words. Whenever I hear these words it goes into the internal translation box and is converted into “I have my own private supplier and it is unlikely you will find them”. With tea is there is often a sharing aspect, but there is also the very human ability to keep good things hidden and it is understood. I have long craved (and been served) teas from areas that remain to a large degree off the tea radar. Affordable, made in small batches and genuine, these teas (and their servers) are what tea is about.

A tea drinker comrade of mine once offered up a bit of ‘democratic tea brilliance’ by saying that “good tea should be easy to find, easy to drink and easy on the wallet”. I heartily subscribe to the view and in my selfish years of taking and tracking tea, I have always been able to sip something of quality in any town, village or kiosk for free or next to nothing.

On a previous trip Yiwu was – as it is now – engulfed in rain and mists. Having had these divergent experiences it has brought me here again to revisit and try and create a better impression of a Yiwu tea – and uncover an accessible tea that isn’t an aged pricey wonder or limited edition.

This time I am here to ensure I do taste something that at least interests the mouth and is available to all. There are (and hopefully will continue to be) always ‘vintage’ teas from a region that are decades old, or from the prized ‘ancient tea trees’ that stun the mouth with their undeniable quality, but these are teas to find through tea channels, through the tea suppliers with an eye (and tongue) for something special; teas where the billfold will be lightened of some significant money. In the odd ecstatic moment these ‘greats’ are discovered by chance. A local once wisely counseled that if a ‘good’ tea is difficult to find in a so-called ‘tea town’ then market forces have taken the town over – which for many tea-inclined people is a sign of death.

Walking along the sagging cobblestones with a friend’s friend – who is himself one of these valued tea connections – there is little to see of anything other than rain. The stones below us were part of a greater tale as they linked up with tea caravan routes (tea horse roads) used to transport tea over the centuries. Caravans of mule and horse carried tea from this wet little corridor into the empires and mountains in brick and cake form. In the late 19th Century new and formal routes were created and expanded through the dense foliage to the town of Puerh itself to quicken the times to get tea to the great market towns. Entire maps were drawn to delineate the tea regions and their access routes. It was also around this time that the native indigenous peoples and their harvesting ways dealt with an influx of Chinese tea merchants whose methods were refined to create more tea faster. Yiwu has long had a name that carried the weight of its tea reputation and tea merchants knew that setting up links – and better yet homes and communities – would ensure a non-stop supply. Today the area of that produces ‘Yiwu’ tea measures about a thousand hectares and produces over 600 tons annually, most of it coming from 700 – 2000 meters.

In the past, ruling classes (and the rulers of the ruling class) would demand – and receive – tributes of tea from Yiwu. From there the masses would eventually hear of it, cementing its value and name.

Looking around me, it seems hard to conjure up a town that has carried its fame forward. My soaked tea colleague beside me tells how fame often destroys the very quality it was founded upon and how in his opinion the lesser-known town of nearby Yibang has retained more quality generally in their teas.

“When a tea town gets a name for itself, demand goes up and when demand goes up quality often becomes of secondary importance”. As he speaks he simply nods amid the driving wet from above as if acknowledging this truth to himself. I like these words as they cut through some of the hype – good teas need good soil, competent growers and good production methods. The cosmetics and at-times bizarre descriptives don’t matter if the mouth isn’t happy. Names, vintages and verbose monologues cannot hide a bad tea and shouldn’t.

This tea colleague has joined me to show me, to direct me to a place here in Yiwu where a tradition of doing teas is alive and well, albeit in limited amounts. A family has kept the tradition of creating their own small batches of tea in the “right way” (his words). He shares my soft skepticism of Yiwu’s general harvests and goes a step further by offering up a reason why.

“In many areas there are quotas where families or growers must produce a minimum monthly or yearly yield – quality isn’t the priority – to continue to be allowed to produce tea”. During the ‘Puerh-tea crisis’ of 2007-2009 there was a run on Puerh teas with prices seemingly incapable of dropping. People mortgaged houses and borrowed heavily to invest in Puerh tea. During that time harvests were upped to the extent that the tea crops themselves never had time to recover as they were being overharvested to supply the tea bubble. Another aspect that has affected the region is the introduction of the smaller Camellia sinensis sinensis with the end game being to produce greater amounts of tea that can claim the ‘Yiwu’ moniker.

We come to a little end home, which has a wooden railing in front, where mules and horses were once tied to wait for their tea and merchants. It bends under its own old weight sighing in the rain – as lonely looking as the town itself. The home is narrow and the entire building is on a slight slant as if burdened or pushed by a lifetime of billowing rains. A wooden door as forlorn and wet as everything else in town is closed and even the knock seems sullen.

A young man already bent by long hours of toil pulls the door open. The room has a single light bulb that hangs wavering off to a side spraying out a dismal yellow light. A small TV is on and in the corner an old woman sits with a blanket around he waist. She nods her head and nothing more. We are led through to the tea ‘station’ where tea is being prepared. Leaves are being fried, having the last bits of humidity and moisture eliminated. The young man – our host – races furtively off with eyes on the frying tea to retrieve cups of hot water. He arrives with a thermos and two glasses, which dance with steam trails. His hands, which are stained dark with the potent tannins of his work, find three little sandwich-sized bags that are proffered up to us. He isn’t a natural host and no sweet words ooze out of him; he is a tea maker and it warms the heart to be near someone who’s life work and play is tea. Some words are spoken and only one bag is kept, perhaps only 40 grams of the desiccated beauty. In this form, here and now with tea in its simplest most unadulterated form is something both prehistoric and potent.

We are sitting on tiny stools (that seem everywhere within the world of tea) in a tight clearing a meter from the ‘tea stove’ – a basic but solid flute of brick that creates a single intense shoot of flame that heats a great tea pan. Within the pan which is almost a meter in diameter green leaves brim over the edge. Above us a simple roof keeps the rain at bay. The silvery wet light around us peers in and in the small yard five or six wide tea pans lie upside down in the rain like metal turtles. Two young women take care of the process, churning the tea leaves wearing tea-stained cotton gloves. The leaves are not allowed to rest for more than a second, being stirred in a non-stop ritual that hypnotizes. There is almost a feeling that we have intruded…but I would rather be a nuisance here and watch something real than a feted teahouse being served murky teas.
Our young host pours out two cups of water and tells us simply, almost apologetically, that the tea that we are being served is a big hit with middlemen who sell to Korean and Singaporeans.

He races off to the left of us to spread out the ‘withered’ tea leaves which steam in their reduced state, appearing much like spinach when it loses its bulk. Tea’s labor intensity is on full display.

Without any fuss my compatriot drops two pinches of tea into my awaiting cup. “At least it is spring water”, he says simply. The leaves are rinsed once and then more water is added. The first slurps seem potent and then it gets smooth and stays smooth with the mouth keeping some residual taste. Here in these cheap whitish cups there isn’t the benefit (or distraction) of small cups and tools – it is about the tea, the water and the mouth.

When I ask where it is from, my sipping partner gives me the answer that comes with many of the classic teas “gao shan” – high mountain. The leaves are not the giant leaves but rather they unravel as middle-sized full leaves with full stems intact. Some of the leaves are imperfect in shape but this only means that this particular batch won’t be ‘dressed up’ for the market-place which demands so much that is aesthetic.
Our second full cup has now tapered down and the vegetal blasts never come, nor does any astringency but the taste is vital and strong and still that calming smoothness. After multiple cups there doesn’t seem to be any discernable change or decrease in strength and the color remains clean and true.

One of the girls tending the successive tea piles being fried up, looks over to us at one point and asks what the verdict on the tea is. In answer, I ask how much I can horde away with, and she simply nods and tells us that it is a “very good tea” and nothing more. Later we are told that the price is far from expensive but that the quantities of that particular tea are only around 80 kg’s per year…it isn’t one of their big sellers. When I ask what is their big seller, there is a moment of endearing hesitation as the young man tells us “the teas that we can sell most of, which isn’t always a ‘great’ tea”.

Walking out I want to stay and sit and of course take in more tea. My tea partner tells me that it is time to go and that our kind hosts must work…yes, the work of tea.

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