The Essence of Tea - Blog & News

It's with a feeling of relief that I write this post. I'd been holding off on this, while I waited for our tea from Nannuoshan to arrive in Kunming. With usual haphazard inefficiency somehow our package of tea took 1 week to make the 10 hour journey from Menghai to Kunming.

Following warnings about unscrupulous tea farmers and the very late arrival of our tea I began to question my instincts at trusting our farmer friend in Nannuoshan. I'm happy to say that once again our instincts proved correct and our bings arrived safe and intact, tasting as good, if not better than I remembered the maocha tasting. Next time though I've made a mental note to take a sample of maocha away with me to be able to compare to the freshly pressed bings - I realised that if our tea had been switched there would have been no way to prove it. But thankfully all is well, so on with the story...

Following lunch we set about tasting some of the farmer's 2008 Da Shu Cha maocha. First off was the 1st Spring picking. The first picking of Spring is traditionally the most sought after, being more aromatic than it's subsequent siblings and this one didn't disappoint. Throughout the infucions, it smelt and tasted great, however in the first couple of infusions there was a slightly burnt taste and hint of a burnt smell which worried me slightly. Having memories of drinking another tea which exhibited this characteristic in a much more pronounced manner I enquired as to the sha qing of this tea. Erduo (the farmer) confessed that yes, he'd messed up the sha qing for this batch of tea, leaving it a little too long in contact with the heat and scorching it slightly. What a pity.

Next up was the second Spring picking. This had less smell in the cup, but had a thick soup and a nice lingering hui gan. A nice tea to drink.

I thought about pressing a few bings of each one, and then the idea hit me - what about blending the two maochas to get the best qualities of each and even out any shortcomings either may possess. We went back to the sacks and grabbed a handful of each tea, mixed it up as best as possible and refilled the gaiwan.

The flavour was good, the smell was good, but there was still that hint of too much sha qing that worried me. I decided to play it safe and decided just to buy some of the second Spring picking maocha.

While discussing the pressing of the bings, Erduo volunteered a friend's factory in Menghai. He trusted their attention to detail and they'd be happy to press the (relatively) small quantity of bings that we wanted. He volunteered to bring us there that afternoon before dropping us home.

Once again our luck exceeded any of our expectations. While chatting about our plans for the rest of our tea trip, and hearing that we hoped to go to Lao Banzhang the following day, Erduo expressed some reservations. Lao Banzhang is a couple of hours drive up a dirt track from the main road and is accessible only by 4x4, motorbike or truck. He doubted that we'd be able to get there very easily and, after some thought, volunteered that he'd drive us there the next day. He'd drive us back to Menghai that afternoon, bring us to press some bings in the tea factory and stay with us in Menghai, ready to make an early start the next day. Perfect.

Since we had a bit of time to before we needed to go back to town, we looked around his tea processing setup. For Da Shu Cha and smaller quantities of tea, he used the same wok setup for his shaqing, but when processing larger amounts of taidicha he had a machine for this purpose. Basically a revolving drum mounted over a fire, the drum had spiraling fins inside to keep the tea moving around and working it's way through the machine

Also in his mechanized setup was a rou nian [rolling] machine, taking the manual work out of another stage of the processing.

Then it was into the van, to take a drive through his tea plantations before heading back down the mountain, towards Menghai.

We stopped briefly at the factory, drank yet more tea & chatted with the friendly owner, discussing our bing pressing requirements. With a little coersion from Erduo, he finally agreed to let us in to have a look around the factory - apparently (and it's not the first time I'd heard of this) the government has a ban on foreigners going into tea factories - perhaps they're worried that the unhygenic conditions in many of the factories might reach international attention. Luckily there was nothing to worry about here. We donned our white coats, hats and plastic shoe covers and wandered around freely.

Much of what we say here was very similar to the other factory I posted about a few weeks ago so I won't go into any detail. The one major difference here was that they package their tongs in the traditional manner, bound in bamboo husks. This process was intriguing to watch, with the worker stripping, cutting and binding with speed and ease.

Then off for some food & some sleep before our early departure in the morning.

We spent a fairly uneventful day making the journey from Yiwu to Menghai and settling into our basic accommodation which we hoped to be able to use as a base for the next few days while we explored surrounding tea mountains. Next morning, we arose early and boarded a bus headed back towards Jinghong, backtracking a little, hoping to jump off half an hour down the road and hitch a lift up the track to Nannuoshan.

As it turned out, once again we had a little more good fortune on our side than we'd even dreamed of hoping for.

As the bus drew out of the station in Menghai, Kathy decided to phone one of the numbers we'd been given by some friends in Kunming of a farmer from Nannuoshan.

It turned out that the farmer, whose name was Erduo, was in Menghai, just a couple of minutes from the bus station. We rushed off the bus to the bemusement of driver and fellow passengers and within 10 minutes we were back on the road to Nannuoshan, this time in a comfy van instead of a crowded bus.

As we drove high into the mountains along a dirt track, I felt very glad to have this friendly guide. Who knows what experiences an alternative scenario would have yielded for us, but having some local knowledge on hand was once again proving invaluable.

We drove past the entrance to his village and up higher into the mountain in search of Nannuoshan's 1000 year old tea tree. At some point we couldn't go further, from here we would continue on foot. As we continued along the track gradually the usual forest vegetation beside the path began to change. First some small tea trees, then bigger ones, then some really huge ones. These were much much bigger trees than those we'd come across in Yiwu, and more similar to those I'd encountered in photograph form usually accompanied by someone standing proudly in front.

We took our obligatory tea-tourist photos standing in front of a few big trees, and continued on to find the one true "millenial old tea tree" that Nannuoshan could lay claim to. Unfortunately, for the makers of those bings which make claims of containing leaves from trees of this age, this tree isn't picked. Being recognised as something of a local heritage piece, this tree has been surrounded by a barbed wire fence and is left to grow according to it's natural cycle, without being of robbed of it's leaves a few times a year.

Having seen this local treasure, we headed back to the van to return to Erduo's house, where his wife and their mothers had produced a beautiful meal for us. Once again we feasted and relaxed in the friendly, open & genuine atmosphere of another tea farmer's house.

Day 3 - Yiwu

Following a leisurely lunch, we set about preparing for the afternoon's activities. Our hosts had an order for 84 taidicha bings which they were due to press. To this we added our request for a few bings of their Dha Shu Cha [big tree tea] and Yesheng Chiao Mu [Wild Arbour] maocha.

Despite their basic living conditions, I was impressed with the cleanliness they practised towards their tea processing activities (although who knows how much our presence affected the proceedings - my guess is that it wasn't a lot)

We went to the roof and gathered up the maocha that had been wilting in the sun.

The room was swept, the sha qing wok scrubbed and a fire lit. The sha qing wok was interesting for me, basically a huge oversized wok, mounted over a sealed fire. The edges were sealed and the smoke vented out a chimney in the rear to prevent the tea picking up any smell from the wood fire beneath.

Besides being used for sha qing, this also provided the means for producing steam to soften the maocha during the pressing process.

Water was poured into the large wok, then a smaller wok with a hole in the bottom placed upside down over the water and wet rags arranged around the edges to seal the water beneath. As the water boiled, steam was vented up through the hole in the small wok into the waiting tube of maocha.

The bing pressing process was a 3 person operation. One to weigh the maocha into the metal tubes, one to steam the maocha and make sure it is evenly distributed in a the cloth bag, and one to compress the bing by standing on the stone moulds.

The bings (still inside their cloth bags) placed on a rack to cool, before unwrapping several hours later and drying for a few days.

With their order of bings already pressed, I took the opportunity to stamp some neifei for our bings

WIth the pressing of our order of bings complete, we moved on to processing the tea leaves we'd picked in the morning. As the wok was already heated, we just needed to remove the remaining water, scrub it down, and begin the sha qing [lit. kill green] process. This process stops the oxidation of the fresh leaf, and prevents it from turning into a red tea.

The trick, it seems, is to keep the leaves moving constantly, so no leaves ever come in contact with the heat for so long that they get burnt, but still allow enough heat to properly stop the oxidation process. The smell of these crackling fresh leaves cooking was sweet and almost overpowering.

With the sha qing complete, it was time to begin the rou nian [rolling] process. This, if done correctly, breaks the cells within the leaf, releasing oils and giving shape to the dried leaf.

The remaining steps before this tea could be pressed into bings were shai qing - withering in the sun, and picking out the huang pian [yellowed leaves]. Since we planned to leave the next day, they offered to carry out the shai qing themselves over the next day or two and send us the dried leaves for us to pick out the huang pian and press the bings ourselves back in Kunming. Perfect.

With some time left before dinner, I took the opportunity to have a wander around the village and came across this guy sitting in his yard making stone moulds. I was impressed by his speed and skill, able to carve these blocks of stone with an appearance of ease. I subsequently learnt of farmers driving for 5 or more hours to buy these stone presses from Yiwu.

Then, back for dinner. I was disappointed, but touched, to learn that they'd killed one of their chickens for us. They'd prepared a feast. Some in-laws came around for dinner and we ate and chatted until late in the night.

Tomorrow we would leave this peaceful village on our journey to Menghai.

Day 3 - Yiwu (2)

Rising early, as may be expected in village life, we took cold showers in the shed at the bottom of the garden and climbed up the Old Tea Horse Road to fill up on a breakfast of spicy rice noodles.

The village seems enmeshed in history and I had to remind myself from time to time that I was really in this famous place of which I had previously read so much.

After breakfast, it was back to the house to grab a bamboo basket, some locally made cloth bags to collect tea in and a few fresh cucumbers from the garden and some fruit to snack on in the mountains. Then we set off for the half-hour trek to reach their tea plantation. Rows of neatly pruned taidicha filled the small hillside that belonged to this family, interspersed with darting tea chickens almost self-sufficient save for a few handfuls of corn thrown for them each day.

Unconcerned with picking the taidicha, we paused here briefly only to take in the scenery before beginning our ascent into the forest in search of some wild tea trees. Those that we found were very different from the images of Wild Arbour trees that I'd previously encountered. Fighting for light amongst much taller trees, it seems these tea trees needed to adopt a much taller, wiry approach to their growth pattern. Luckily, for eager tea gatherers such as us, this thinness also meant that, although too thin to lean a ladder against, it was possible to stand further up the steep hill and bend the tree towards us, bringing the fresh shoots within our grasp.

Continuing further on into the forest we arrived at the family's Da Shu (Big tree) garden. These trees were planted by the Great Great Grandfather of our kind hostess, and had been continually tended by the family throughout the years. Unfortunately they'd also been pruned for many of these years, so hadn't been allowed to grow to their full size, though this fact also made it easier for us novice tea pickers, needing sometimes only to climb a log resting upon a fork in the trunk to reach the fresh leaves.

The strategy when picking was to leave at least one fresh leaf on each shoot. This provided the conditions for another shoot to sprout from the base of this leaf, encouraging the growth of the tea plant.

I was impressed with the lightning quick speed with which these farmers could gather leaves. By the time I'd picked a few shoots, they already had a handful of leaves.

On the edges of the garden, where there were less overhead trees shading the tea, I noticed the plants growing purple leaves. I'd previously read of tea plants doing this at high altitudes to reflect more of the lower wavelengths of the light spectrum and protect their tender shoots from the harsh ultra-violet rays, and have also drunk some tea composed entirely of these purple leaves, but had never seen this process in action before.

We stayed and picked for another hour or so and descended down towards our awaiting lunch.

At one point on the track, our friendly host said something and darted into the bushes only to return moments later with a stick surrounded by fresh honeycomb, dripping with the sweetest, most delicious honey I've ever tasted. He carved off slices with his knife and we stood and feasted on this sticky treat.

Day 2 - Yiwu

Happy to be beginning our actual tea journey, we boarded the crowded midday bus to Yiwu village.

It seems there are two buses that make the roundtrip from Yiwu to Jinghong and back each day. Run by friendly Yiwu locals, the conductor would receive a call on her mobile phone and 10 or 20 minutes later the bus would stop to pick up stacks of printed puerh wrappers, bags of pineapples from roadside sellers or tea farmers returning from the many plantations that adorned the hills to each side of the road.

Seeing the sheer scale of the tea plantations along the way, I feel less and less surprised by the amount of puerh that is passed off as being from Yiwu. These were places whose name meant nothing to me, having never come across tea labelled as being from there, and I guess puerh is usually sold as being from somewhere. If the farmers are from Yiwu, why not bring it the 30-50 miles back and sell it as being local. Indeed one of the Yiwu farmers subsequently told me that if a tea is produced by a large factory, it's pretty much guaranteed not to be actually grown in Yiwu!

As the bus pulled up in Yiwu, the friendly conductor enquired as to why we were here and wondered if we needed to be dropped off at the hotel. Overhearing Kathy, my travelling tea friend and Mandarin tutor, replying that we were looking for some tea farmers, a youngish couple shyly introduced themselves, said they were tea farmers and invited both of us to come and stay at their house. With a healthy wariness, we discussed this offer briefly, but sometimes it's possible to tell straight away that someone is really a good person, and from these people it was obvious. From their faces we could see they were honest and genuinely wanted to help us.

Fortunately our instincts proved correct. They made a phone call and a friend of theirs arrived in a van to drive us the short distance to their house on the edge of the village.

Their house was a simple affair, a courtyard filled with bamboo baskets of leaves withering in the sun, a large sitting room with TV, tea table and a few seats, 4 bedrooms, kitchen and a tea processing & pressing room.
It was interesting to note that they also had a dry storage room for their maocha. They kept this room heated and dry to prevent their maocha from gaining any humid flavour from the mountain air. This apparently is quite rare for farmers in Yiwu and, as I came to appreciate later, was just another of many indications of their attention to detail and wish to produce tea that was of a high standard.

The husband of the couple was originally from Puerh town and, having met his wife, moved to Yiwu to live with her parents and farm the land & tea plants that had been in her family for over 5 generations. As we sat and drank maocha with the husband, his wife and her mother prepared a feast in the kitchen which I observed with a tinge of guilt and a feeling that this was obviously much more extravagant than usual for the family. Nonetheless, as I relaxed and understood their wish to treat us well as guests, I accepted and ate gratefully before retiring to bed.

Tomorrow, we would head for the mountains to pick some tea.

As I return from a tea filled week, a bit exhausted and overwhelmed, it's kind of nice to be back in Kunming again. During the past week I've experienced so much and met so many open, generous and genuine people. Again and again I thought the trip couldn't get any better, only to meet someone new and be really touched by their kindness towards a couple of complete strangers arriving at their home.

There's been far too much in the past week to be able to recount in a single post, but over the next few days I'll attempt to compile my thoughts and convey these experiences as best I can.

Day 1 - Jinghong

Jinghong, being the largest of Xishuangbanna's cities and the destination of our 10 hour overnight sleeper bus from Kunming, was our first stop on this trip, allowing us some time to relax and break our journey.

We arrived at dawn and checked into a friendly Korean guesthouse, waking the staff from their early morning slumber, showered, changed and emerged feeling slightly less exhausted. In the courtyard were several bamboo huts, one of which complete with full gongfu setup. It turns out the owner of the guesthouse buys and exports puerh to Korea. He invited us to join him, and a tasty tea session soon had us revived from our travels and prepared for the day ahead.

Since our bus to Yiwu didn't leave until the following morning, we took the opportunity to rent a couple of bicycles and explore the surrounding countryside.

Compared to Kunming, Jinghong is a beautifully slow city. We checked out some Thai Buddhist temples and cycled to some outlying areas. The weather here was a big change from the cool Kunming climate and, as the midday heat increased, we took refuge in the shaded courtyard of a Dai restaurant, thirsty for some iced water. As we sat in the cool shade uneager to brave the sun again, quickly we decided to stay for some lunch. Despite the fact that we were their only customers, they happily fired up their barbeque and cooked some delicious vegetables and fish. We ate our fill and, as we arranged the chairs to enable us to lie in a more horizontal position, they noted our weariness and invited us inside to their sleeping mats and invited us to sleep for a midday siesta - perfect!

The remainder of the day, we spent exploring a little more of the town, drinking fruit juice in western style cafes and casually checking out some of the local tea shops with no intention of buying anything so early in our trip.

Armed with newly purchased camera, my Mandarin tutor (who I've managed to get hooked on pu), some mosquito spray, sunscreen and some cash, I'm off to Xishuangbanna for a week or so.

Amongst destinations on our itinerary are Banzhang, YouLe, YiWu and most probably some unplanned tea adventures.

Expect some reportage upon our return