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Tea Adventures

Sitting outside in a pleasant, not too mosquito filled night

Tea Adventures

Sitting outside in a pleasant, not too mosquito filled night, with Mr. Yan and his grandnephew. I remember young Mr. Wang, his apprentice, from nearly 13 years ago. Now he owns a relatively big tea business, married with two kids, but is just as obsessed and serious about tea as he was as a young apprentice. Lack of lighting and being in the middle of the night is not daunting- he needed to analyze the batches of dark roasted oolongs for whether 30 hours roasting was yet enough- by iPhone light! Then, it was time to bag and seal some teas, and I was instructed, how to feel the correct temperature warmth in the tea out of the roaster, to seal it so that the moisture absorbed from the air was just the right amount. So much to forever learn.

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What a scene, not to have ever taken place at this farm. I…

Tea Adventures

What a scene, not to have ever taken place at this farm. I requested about 10 samples of various oolongs and each with a different fire level, and cold steeped for 8 hours before I arrived. Attempting to pick out the best oolong for cold brew. People in China do not really drink cold tea, so cold brew tea is unheard of. But they were kind enough to humor me and calibrate for the version I want. Yellow Gold had the best fragrance even as a cold brew, but the long roasted Tieguanyin had the sweetest water. To be continued. They are roasting a couple more batches to steep over night.

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Long train rides from farm to farm

Tea Adventures

Long train rides from farm to farm. Luckily the trains are so fast nowadays, saving me a lot of time. Someone in the U.S. thought I was on vacation in China. I don’t believe I have ever taken a vacation there. It’s either a mountain climbing pilgrimage, tea buying, or other business. Vacation means de-stress usually, not ‘multiply the stress’. China, with its overpopulation, jostling, chaotic systems, possibility of being cheated, not to mention the random spitting that one must dodge with lightening verve, is simply not a relaxing situation. I do enjoy talking to all the farmers, tea producers, and all kinds of business people I meet, and exchange perspectives, as entertainment. They are much more open minded in some ways and wanting to hear, for example, just how bad this coming election is going to be. Isn’t Hillary going to win, they asked? Putin is not easy to deal with, he is the kingpin of thugs, they said. I laughed. What about Xi Jin Ping? Just a tough guy, huh? They seem to be slowly waking up to the dangers and failures of the patriarchal, Confucian system. No one has any solutions, but acknowledging the mess is a good step. If you are 1.3 billion people trapped inside a wall, what do you do? The Chinese are conditioned not to resist authority, they lamented. Curious. I didn’t start the conversation, and promised myself not to be an instigator this time either. Here in this photo, someone else’s thermos of tea, a typical scene of low end, repeatedly steeped, but at least, whole leaf tea, to be drunk all day long.

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Yes I am scowling. Finding out a lot of tea industry shenanigans…

Tea Adventures

Yes I am scowling. Finding out a lot of tea industry shenanigans all in one afternoon is stressful even if I have nothing to do with it. There is the long discussion on Jin Zhun Mei, that ridiculously expensive Golden Eyebrows tea from ‘Wuyi’, that is hack tasting and about $1,000 more than its actual worth. They let me in on a little secret- there is no such tea from Tong Mu village and all made in Jiangxi or surrounding regions and not even Wuyi. It’s all marketing inflation. I never liked that tea and had no respect for it, and if I said anything before, it would just piss off a lot of fellow tea industry folks. But truth about tea is what we should care about, and if one doesn’t care, why bother to be dealing in tea. Making a mistake or just plain not knowing is one thing. Once I find out, it just gets more irritating. Now, if I report it, I will be hurting other fellow tea merchants who carry such teas, and it’s not my intention. Just like the fake White Peony from Guangxi, or the Ya Bao. And even worse, some producers are putting sugar into black teas and burning it to look shiny, and sweet, masking any astringency. They figured that Westerners are going to add sugar anyway, and the Chinese black teas don’t look as glossy as Indian teas, so what’s the harm?
One thing for sure, once they figured out I was able to discern, their respect changes and then they spill all the beans- on others, and on themselves. But what do I do with that information, other than to scowl?

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The mystery of the Ya Bao tea, solved. They are the unopened bud…

Tea Adventures

The mystery of the Ya Bao tea, solved. They are the unopened bud of a tea like plant that is not Camellia Sinensis. The locals have no idea what this plant is, but they would take the seeds and press its oil for cooking. Is it tea? No way, said the farmers. I knew that, but just wanted to be sure. A city slicker is never really that knowledgeable, when faced with such other country life items, like the rice paddies next to the tea bushes, the wild tea plants next to the bamboo, the chickens running amok, and what to do with any of it. To say that a mere tea buyer would know more than the local tea farmer or producer would definitely be arrogance. Myself, I enjoy learning, and sharing, that’s all. Bringing back some great teas to share though is a matter of course. I have put in enough time legwork to make tea PhD, but in every trip, I still feel like a middle schooler. Tea is special, deep, and wide. A bit of humility helps. A lot of things get lost in translation, and I know people even call stuff like ginger tea, ‘tea’. As for Ya Bao, all one has to do is look and taste, without having to actually see the plants in the ground. But don’t take my word for it, I am always highly skeptical due to over 15 years of buying tea from farms. Think about it: If Ya Bao is tea, does it taste like Silver Needle/yinzhen? Does it look like any other Camellia Sinensis leaf buds? No? And no? ….. Neither does mint ‘tea’.

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