Apparently, Tung Ting stock grown in Anxi by a Taiwanese merchant who will sell these back to Taiwan, or elsewhere, as authentic Tung Ting. The mountain is huge here and lots of space is available. The culture and people are basically the same, so why not- right?!
Life in the village, the busy and the leisurely….Anxi mountain, Xiping, Che Shi Village, original home of Tieguanyin.
A beautiful chilly morning in Anxi. A newly paved road goes to Da Bao Shan, Treasure Mountain, the highest point here. Some of the wild teas are being harvested now, can’t wait to try wild Tieguanyin! But boy, my body is not moving this morning. The late night crazy drive in the fog and numerous tastings of teas and some home made rice wine (part of the customary ritual of this culture here) is the midnight Shao Ye( burning the night away) meal. Last night it was chicken feet and some other kinds of fatty meats. So my default polite thing to do was to drink the rice wine. Now, I defy anyone else to top my sacrifices on behalf of tea! For Chinese alcohol, especially the homemade ones, in my most humble opinion, is in direct polar opposite in excellence to their tea…..I think I have alcohol poisoning already from just a tiny shot glass amount.
Wow! An excellent year for the Red Guanyin. Mr. Lin, ex-physician and village doctor, made this one batch of Red Guanyin all by hand through a 15 hour oxidation. I am a sucker for the handmade stuff especially when it’s this good. Beautiful almost ruby color, lots of sweets and a bit of citrus, and a spicey top note like candied tangerine. Sold! He had very little left anyway. Each day it was made someone would come buy it all.
Anxi, a typical rural small city that serves the great Anxi mountain range, home of many Oolongs, particularly, the legendary Tieguanyin. Arrived into a misty, very cold night. This year, as it happens every 30 years or so, is the phenomenon of the winter spring. Some winter days roared back into the middle of the spring, killing quite a few tea sprouts. This was reported so far in Fuding, Phoenix,Hangzhou, here in Anxi, and also in Yunnan. Well, it also happened in the Bay Area so it must have been global.
Arrived into a night of blinding white fog. Let’s see if I make it up the steep, blind turns up the tea mountain.
If I do, will be up all night tonight tasting through hundreds of teas since flight delays set me back almost a half day.
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.