Aside from money and passport, the most essential item is the Kleenex when traveling in China. You can not live without this. It is toilet paper, napkin, for clearing pollution and sweat off your face, covering your nose when you go into a bathroom, fanning off cigarette smoke; and if you are really into local customs, spitting into it is also appropriate.
I bid farewell at 5:30 am to get down from the mountain, chirping birds, scent of flowers, swaying bamboos followed along. My new best friend was no where to be seen. Evidently, the toad has been following me around, pretending to be part of the chair or ground wherever I was. I didn’t realize why until noticing that I was not bitten by even one mosquito this whole time. Usually the swarm of mosquitoes create a cloud around me. The toad also realized that with me around, all he needed to do was sit by me and suck all the mosquitoes with his snapping tongue. No need to hunt. A symbiotic relationship. If only relationships with people were as simple and rewarding!
Mr. Dai says that his village in this glorious, beautiful mountain may soon vanish forever. The corrupt local government officials ensure that all aid, from United Nations level to Central Communist government levels to subsidize agriculture, create jobs, or at least pave some roads to go into the mountain have all been swallowed whole by the local government. I almost, almost told Mr. Dai that rather than bitterness against such blind injustice and corruption, ALL he needed to do was sacrifice and give up the Leader Grade Yellow tea!
Then I thought better.
This village hails over 33 generations of the surname Dai, and the tea has been here for over 1000 years. Some of the ancient bushes may well be 1000 years old, according to Mr. Dai, his great grandfather told him that when he was a kid, he asked his great grandfather who pointed out all the 600 year olds around the mountain. The wild bushes are in fact, indigenous and one of the original Guanmu/bush type Camellia sinensis on earth.
One thing for sure: Mr. Dai’s family invented the Yellow tea, they drink lots of it, and they seem to all live a long time. The tea bushes outlive them, but still, one can surmise longevity a function of Yellow tea?
Regardless, this is still one of the most remote, hidden, inaccessible, and therefore, pristine mountains in China I have ever been to.
Piling is one of the crucial steps for making Yellow tea unlike any other. After the high heat drying, the leaves are now very dry. The stems are still moist. Piling the leaves together allows the water in the wet stems to travel to the dry leaves- a process of drawing out the moisture in an ingenious way. After a day of piling, medium heat rotation is again applied. Then, piling with a fabric to keep out any additional air from influencing the final drying process. After that, one more round of high heat drying one week later ensures that the Yellow tea is the dryest tea of all time, thus the least perishable of all green teas!
This whole process was invented by this village. Trade secrets few green tea makers know or bother with. All this work to make a few renminbi, says the high roller Dragonwell merchants! Truly, this wonderful gem of Yellow tea is completely unknown and there is no market for, and skilled artisans like Mr. Dai, the last one standing, continues to make this tea out of sheer determination to preserve this vestige of pride from his village.
About 100 rotations of repeating between heating the leaves over charcoal heat, removing after 30 seconds to re-toss the leaves so bottom leaves don’t burn, shuffling the leaves, place back over the heat, repeat….. This is a long laborious process such as I have never seen for making any tea.
I asked the crucial question: when does one take a bathroom break during this continuous process?
They all laughed. Bathroom break? They can’t stop long enough for a sip of water!
Yellow tea drying is a daunting feat of skill, experience, and back breaking work.