A beautiful pheasant hung at the door of the AiNi ethnic who owns the wild trees at NanNuo Shan. Sad, strangely poignant. It displays the ignorance that all of us are subject to in one area or another.
It’s been many years since I’ve embarked on this tea journey. To be sure, it is a specialty business, and a specialized skill set. Who could endure through these strenuous conditions of traveling in rural China, enjoying nonstop clouds of second hand smoke, staying at farms and living with the farmers in various levels of cultural differences, in order to really spend time to get to know each producer and area? Without truly understanding the context and culture of each region, how can one become a discerning buyer? To assume that one can expertly judge some tea leaves through sniffing at samples would be quite a little bit presumptuous, if not arrogant. No tea buyer can know a region better than the ones who live in that land, tended the tea bushes, cleared the soil to let in nutrient, covered the bushes with hay to keep them warm. Do you think you can waltz in and tell them you know better? Well, for every unknowledgeable tea buyer, there is someone in China buying Merlot and adding Red Bull, or chucking down the wine in shot glasses with loud ‘ganbei’! Ignorance is decidedly not bliss.
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