Blogging now on www.verdanttea.com

Verdant Tea's website is up and running. We have moved our blog operations to www.verdanttea.com

Check it out! Lots of new articles, and even more exciting: We are now sourcing and selling tea.

Thanks,

David

Venturing into the Unknown

Dear Friends,

After years of research, and months of tea tastings and long conversations with fellow tea-lovers, I have reached a high point of frustration with the quality of tea available in the West, and with the lack of emphasis on tea as an artisan-crafted relic of culture, not a commodity product. With this in mind, I have taken the leap into the unknown to begin sourcing teas unlike anything seen before. I am not interested in simple flavor differences, I am interested in the story of each tea, the story of the farmer, and the legends passed down by generations of cultivators. These are teas that go beyond engaging the palate. They play on the palate, the smells, the sight, all to draw from us memories and emotions. These are teas that go beyond themselves.

This is high-time for America to find such teas. All the tea enthusiasts I speak to are ready for something greater than the tea bag. A tea tasting that includes the kind of pu'er, oolong, black and green teas that I am bringing to America always takes people out of the stress of the everyday. People come from the outside, from traffic and noise, and after twenty minutes have found a new source of joy, new friends, and new sensations of taste.

My teas should be in America by the end of April if all goes well. I am growing this from the ground up. Any support in the form of spreading the word will be greatly appreciated. The faster this picks up, the faster I can bring more teas and tea wares to America. Here is a partial list of teas in my first shipment:

Sun Dried Wild Arbor Yabao Sheng Pu'er: This is a unique late winter budset tea picked from wild tea trees with a rich cinnamon and nutmeg taste and lingering sweetness.

Yunnan Research Institute Special Comission Stone-Pressed Ancient Tea Tree Sheng Pu'er 2001: This tea steeps up with a full, satisfying body, and a biscuity, malty flavor that gives way to notes of dried fruit in later steepings. It is sweet with a creamy mouthfeel that usually only occurs in oolong.


Wild Arbor Cedar Grove Shu Pu'er 2005: This brick steeps up thick and brothy with an incredibly fragrant pine or cedar flavor from the tea trees proximity to an ancient evergreen forest. In later steepings it is sweet, sparkly and slightly tangy. This one can steep up 20+ times and keep giving.

Single Mountain Origin: Mt Bulang Ancient Tea Tree Sheng 2005: This one is extremely intriguing, with overtones of juniper berries, a molasses sweetness, lingering nutmeg and clove in the aftertaste, and later steepings yielding dried apple.

Family-Crafted Wild Arbor Sheng 2004: This sheng is unlike all others. It was not made under the label of a larger workshop, but instead hand crafted by the farmers who live in the ancient tea tree forest where the leaf material comes from. The sheng is intense, creamy and full bodied with assertive flavors of walnut.

Small Cake Competition Grade Shu: This pu'er is pressed into single-pot bricks, and made from enormous leaf material. There is an almost overwhelming flavor of sweet corn that lingers through dozens of steepings.

Golden Budset 2006 Shu Pu'er: This tea is made not from leaves, but entirely from tiny early spring picking buds. The flavor is incredibly smooth, and subtle. There is nothing overwhelming about this tea. It quietly imparts an exquisite sweetness of raw honey, with notes of lilac. Though fermented for years, there is something in the flavor evocative of a field in late spring filled.

More teas coming! This is a selection of teas from my first shipment. If anybody has an interest, I am happy to send samples, or take pre-orders. Tea wares like yixing, and walnut tea boards are also planned in the next two months. If there is anything you want, send me a message and I will consider it as I plan future orders.

Best Wishes,

David

The Word "Tea"

Tea is a loaded word. It goes back to the early days of Chinese history. Across the world, there are two main variations of the term: Tea, or ti, te, the, etc. and Cha, or Chai. Ti and Cha are different pronunciations of the same Chinese character, one, cha, is the standard Mandarin Chinese pronunciation. The other, ti, is from a southern dialect. Countries that pronounce the word Ti, or Tea first got the stuff from the southern port towns. Countries that pronounce Cha got tea earlier through land trade routes or inland trading. Notable examples of this are Japan and India.

Us "tea" drinking countries were introduced to the beverage through merchants as a commodity good. Those "cha" drinking countries were introduced to the beverage through Buddhist monks as a part of religious ceremony. Perhaps this is one reason that Japan, India, and China drink far more tea than other beverages, while Europe and America split the caffeinated market share with coffee.

Even the word "Cha" is a pretty new concept. At first, tea did not have a name of its own. It was simply known as one more medicinal herb. It's first real name was "ming." Later, when people realized that there could be different levels of quality to the drink, they named the high quality budset tea "cha." The more common leaf tea was known as "ming." Of course, every tea shop was claiming that all of their teas were "cha." Anyone honest enough to sell "ming" was going out of business. It soon became industry standard to refer to all tea, leaf or bud, as "cha." Now, nobody in China thinks of "cha" as a higher quality product. To give the connotation of quality, companies are bringing back ming by making a two character word: "ming-cha." In old times, this would be seen as a lower grade product, but China has forgotten the origins of its words, and now "ming" just sounds old and lofty. It is similar to putting thee and thou into English to sound fancy even though "you" was the more formal term and "thou" was the familiar term.

Because simpler terms like "ming" have become overused and lost their power, Chinese tea merchants have had to introduce more and more elaborate descriptions to denote quality. Thus you might see something awkward and preposterous like: Premium imperial palace tribute grade dragon phoenix jasmine pearl supreme. I have really seen this in my travels. It is always a letdown drinking such a loftily named tea and having it taste average.

The Chinese character for tea is actually quite simple. It is closely related to the character for bitter herb. The top part is a picture grass growing out of the ground. This is the part of the character that gives meaning to the word. The bottom is phoenetic. It is just a character that is pronounced like "cha" to help readers. The character "ming" is the same picture of grass with a different phonetic. Despite their differences and connotations, they both go back to humble roots, the idea of plants growing out of the earth.

The True Health Benefits of Tea

This posting is from my monthly column in the Senior Hi-Lites Journal of Wisconsin.

One day, a few thousand years ago, the emperor of China was out doing research for his great encyclopedia of medicine, eating every herb he encountered in the forest and recording the results. On this fateful day, he ate something deathly poisonous. The world began to go dark when the breeze lifted a few tea leaves to his face. Recognizing fate at work, he took them and swallowed them, recovering immediately. Or so the story goes. From that day on, tea has been known as a medicine. Modern studies recognize the powerful antioxidants at work in the tea plant, giving many Americans a powerful motivation to make tea a part of their day.

Yet, the most powerful health benefit of tea is completely overlooked by modern science: tea asks of us a few moments out of our day to prepare and appreciate it. This means that we are forced by our daily ritual to relax and recover, forced to take time to think about what we have achieved and what we wish to achieve. Twenty minutes of daily relaxation is just as critical to our physical health as twenty minutes of daily exercise if it manages to keep our stress levels in check.

Around the world, cultures have developed unique tea ceremonies. In China, the ceremony is so important to daily life that it survived the turmoil of war, famine, and revolution in the 20^th century. Despite the push to modernize, traditional ceremony is as strong as ever precisely because of its importance in promoting a healthy and balanced lifestyle. The Mandarin word for the act of preparing tea can translate to “free time.” This idea of enforced leisure is embodied in the thimble-sized cups used to sip the tea.

In Japan, tea has become a kind of religion. In Okakura Kakuzo’s landmark piece, The Book of Tea, he describes teaism as “the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence.” Some of us might dismiss this concept of healing as something unfounded and abstract, but modern scientific studies directly link happiness, stress and physical health. Adding this easy and pleasurable ceremony to your day will not only provide the antioxidant healing power of tea, but also the psychological benefits of Kakuzo’s teaism.

Notes from the Tea Underground (1)

As of this month, I am back in the field, working at Infinitea Teahouse, Minneapolis. This intensive contact with customers has given me some thoughts on tea to ponder.

The biggest question is of an ethical nature: Is it right to flavor teas?

Most customers that come by the store are looking for something sweet, fruity or even straight up bubble tea. How should the tea community as whole react to this movement in tea consumption? Browsing forums such as TeaMuse, I get the sense that flavoring is frowned upon as the stuff of amateurs, the equivalent of drinking Franzia Sparkling wine in a box for the wine connoisseur. It is true that straight up tea has enough flavors on its own to keep the devotee going for a lifetime. Even within green tea, flavors can range from a full earthy almost smoked flavor that tastes like food, to a a light and sweet brew with hints of rose. There are the many pu'er teas, which have a greater range than cheese for flavors. Still, most people are not so interested in the traditional tea experience.

I have worked my way through the 100+ flavored teas we offer at the teahouse in the last week, and may be gaining a new tolerance to the idea of, say, strawberry rhubarb mixed with sencha, or lemon twist black tea. First, the original tea experience involved blending. In early history, tea was too bitter to drink alone, so it was boiled with fruits, flowers, and vegetables. Blends are not blasphemous to tradition. In fact, they are a return to ancient preferences.

Next, the fanatics among us must consider, what is the ultimate goal in drinking tea? For me, tea is about ceremony. It is a chance to reconsider beauty in the everyday, and it provides a moment for contemplation. Flavored teas can fulfill this role equally well. I would rather see someone sit for 30 minutes and steep cranberry orange white tea than take a fine pu'er and steep it in a tea bag while driving to work. Connoisseurs among us need a reality check. we admire different "flavors" within the range of unflavored tea, but we spurn the addition of flavors that sometimes work quite well with the tea. For example, an Iron Goddess of Mercy Oolong should have a lilac fragrance. What is flowers were blended with this tea to bring out such a fragrance?

My last point on this matter is a bit more abstract. Tea preparation is a form of alchemy. My meaning, is that different elements are combined through a process that must be learned to create a superior final product. Alchemy, in the mind of early Italian and Chinese practicioners, was not about finding a recipe for gold, but a massive allegory for the combination of different elements in the soul to allow for transcendence. Tea, as described in The Book of Tea, is a form of religion that leads to some sort of transcendence or enlightenment. Blending teas is an extension of that alchemy, not a refutation.

I still enjoy the taste of unflavored teas most, simply because their diversity is so intriguing. Yet, I will no longer cringe to serve up that Bahaman Fruit Blend, knowing that the person drinking it is having the same experience i would have drinking a Wuyi Oolong. This is something that all of us tea lovers must learn if we want tea to become widely accepted in the America. Tea is humility- those of us who try to make it something too loft for others are destroying it.

Perhaps the compromise to be contemplated is how we can put blending in the service of bring out each teas natural flavor, and try to resist completely eliminating what the leaves had to offer. This will allow people to see tea in its true form while still enjoying the comfort of flavors they know.

Reading The Leaves: A Journey Into Contemporary Chinese Tea Culture (Part 3)

While the men and women who devote their lives and their land to tea share their knowledge with a humility fitting for the Buddhist and Daoist use of the beverage for meditation and contemplation of the universe, one need only descend the Lion's Peak to Hangzhou proper for a completely different view. Teahouses line every block, from the four story lakeside operations to smoky establishments with only “green tea,” and “black tea” on the menu where young couples rendezvous and middle-aged women gossip loudly. Prices for a pot range between a 200 USD Taiwanese Oolong and a 40 cent local green tea made from broken leaves.

Even in Qingdao, where tea by no means pervades daily life to the extent it does in Hangzhou, incredibly expensive tea can be found. I sat for an afternoon with a woman who started her own tea shop at age 22, sensing an opportunity with the growth of connoisseurship in a city of increasing wealth. We sipped a heavenly Tieguanyin oolong tea whose price I inquired about. She said that it is probably worth 40 dollars a pound, which was at the time moderate price for the level of quality. Surprised by this I assumed that she must have even better Tieguanyin since most tea shop's high end oolong goes for upwards of 100 dollars a pound. “No,” she said, “this is my best Tieguanyin. I know that you appreciate the tea for its flavor, so I tell you forty dollars, but if some people come in and ask for my best Oolong they would leave offended if I sold it so cheap. More and more people have so much money to spend, but they do not understand tea. They want to impress their friends so instead of offering a creamy, flowerly Tieguanyin to friends they will say 'I have a 200 dollar a pound Tieguanyin.' It is this kind of person that make our prices so high. If I sense this kind of person, the tea you are drinking becomes a 180 dollar tea.”

It was this shrewd woman who made me first aware of a demographic group that used tea as a means to advance socially. They might give an expensive tea to their boss with the price left on, or bring it to a tasting where they compete with their friends to bring the most costly sample. Those who can find the highest price win the highest esteem. I stayed up late that night trying to reconcile the humble kindness of my farmer friends who make the tea with the snobbish use of tea by the elite.

I started the next day early, traveling to the tea markets asking other proprietors about these special customers. Sure enough, everyone that I spoke with had similar stories, all told with a tone of resentment towards the customers in question. However I came across one man with an interesting perspective. He prepared an old Pu'er tea made from the first spring buds of tea trees in Yunnan and aged for a decade in a compressed brick. The bricks sell for hundreds of dollars each and taste like wild mushrooms dried with cinnamon and nutmeg. The tea was extraordinary; Technically made from the same plant that an earthy astringent green tea is made from but processed in such a way to taste of mushroom and mulling spice. The process takes years of careful attention and a precisely controlled storage system.

I asked him about snobbery and disrespect for tea among his customers. He sighed, “Of course. This is China. People buy tea for face, not for its flavors. They will pay extraordinary amounts for the rarest teas like the one we are drinking. But, what can we do? Without the money from such people, nobody would take the time to make teas like this, and if they were made, they would be reserved for politicians. With a market for expensive teas, people like me can devote their lives to tasting the finest tea in China and bringing it here to sell. This is what I love. This tea is the legacy of years of labor. How else can we continue to promote tea culture if not for the money of those who reject it?”

Of course, this proprietor is correct. If there is no market for the commodities that embody tea culture, then tea culture would recede to an elect few. Money brings tea ceremony, and the finest teas to every major city in China. While culture itself is not contained within the commodity or the ritual, Confucius knew that even the loftiest of men need ritual to remember the ideal that such ritual embodies.

In discussion with Qingdao university professor, expert on tea culture and ancient China Qu Jiangchuan, I have come to understand the abstract foundation for humbleness among tea sellers. Tea's historical beginning is simply its use as a medicinal herb, and later for its caffeine. There is a legend of Shen Nong, the mythic founder of Chinese medicine. One day he went into the mountains to try different herbs and record their effects, but consumed a deadly poison by accident. He lay dying on the ground until tea leaves blew in the wind to him. He took it as divine inspiration and tried the leaves. Soon, he was completely recovered.

At the Northern edge of Yunnan province, the land of the famous Pu'er tea, I came across an increasingly Tibetan landscape; Prayer flags hung between mountain peaks, and yak grazing along the road. Here, I had the opportunity to sit with a Buddhist lama and sip Tibet's unique butter tea. Tea did not spread from China proper to this region until the marriage of Han Chinese princess Wen Cheng to the Tibetan King Songtsan Gampo. The tea brought over was compressed into bricks for the journey, then ground to a powder and mixed with hot water to drink. The Tibetans found this beverage an excellent compliment to their diet of predominantly meat since it seemed to aid digestion. Butter tea was born with the realization that yak butter and salt could be mixed with the tea to create a highly sustaining drink for journeys through the cold.

This lama explained that he woke up at four every morning and prayed until noon. A lama cannot stop meditation to eat, but drinking tea prepared by the young apprentice monks was an excellent way to stay awake and undistracted.

It doesn't take a trip all the way to the Tibetan hinterlands to understand tea's role as a medicine instead of the object f connoisseurship. On my first week in Qingdao I took a trip to the largest bookstore in the city, Xinhua Book City to search for Lu Yu's Book of Tea. I first assumed it would be with ancient literature, and searched the entire basement floor with no luck. After an inquiry, I was sent to the fifth floor tea section, home to over two hundred titles related to tea. Displayed prominently as the best-seller was “Tea Doctor” an instructional book on using tea to cure various physical ailments.

After searching through piles of texts on “Cooking with Tea for Better Health,” and “All of China's Teas, a Connoisseur's Guide to Tea Buying” I realized that my beloved text was simply not a match in profit potential. This bookstore is a good indicator of cultural trends; Tea, as always, is being used for its health benefits with no consideration for flavor. It is also being bought up by the very wealthy, and in the case of Pu'er, often stored and resold at higher prices. Two hundred titles, and nothing on the history of tea, the philosophy of tea, or the specifics of the tea ceremony.

I walked back to Qingdao university that evening wondering if what I wanted to understand about tea culture had been pushed out of the mainstream and left to dusty libraries and villages like Longjing. Luckily, I had the chance to talk with tea expert Jiangchuan Qu the next morning. “Do you know white tea?”

I responded, “Of course, the Fujian non-oxidized budset tea, Silver Needle and the new bud and leaf clump mixture, White Peony.”

“No, I mean true white tea.” I thought my research into the types of Chinese tea must have skipped over something quite important.

“What is true white tea?”

“The Chinese have a system of labels for teas based on the color of the tea water. Black is Pu'er, red is your 'black tea,' blue is oolong; Green and yellow are the same as the English. Now if you had to pick a color for just water?”

“White?”

“Yes. During hard times, guests were presented with a steaming glass of 'white tea.' The peasant hosts were too poor to buy tea leaves, but they still went through the ceremony of heating the water and pouring it through a tea pot and into cups for guests. The guests would accept the 'white tea' without question, letting the host save face.”

“Would it be rude to serve water simply as water?”

“Tea is more than just a beverage for the Chinese. You must remember there is a ceremony attached to it. The act of pouring tea carries much baggage. Tea is first and foremost a humbling experience in China. Even the particularities of the tea ceremony itself are meant to preserve not obscure this humble quality. Everyone must sit at the same level as the tea is prepared. When the tea is poured into cups, they are lined up with the rims touching and the stream of water travels up and down the line in swift motions toy ensure that the flavor of each cup is exactly the same. If each cup was filled individually, the first one would be too light and the last too bitter.”

Professor Qu's words were the first that seemed to draw a steady line from the humble tea farmer to the final recipient of the tea. This 'white tea' he spoke of gives neither taste nor health benefits, but it was received with the same gratitude that a cup of first picking Lion's Peak Dragonwell tea is received. Perhaps tea's true benefits lie not in the leaf but in the very act of preparing the tea.

The following weekend I went to the tea market to discuss the idea of tea as a social connection with nature and instrument of humility. One proprietor, Ms. Wang, had an interesting idea. “Tea should be served to students in kindergarten and primary school. Making the students sit together and watch tea being prepared in the traditional way would build community and foster patience.” This proposal might not have sat well with children's aversion to bitter flavors, but I admired Ms. Wang's devotion to tea ceremony as an act with significance in itself, an act with the ability to raise even children's awareness to an abstract level.

Ms. Wang poured me some of her family's Anxi Tieguanyin and she brought up the term, gongfu. This is the name for tea to be used in tea ceremony. Literally it means free time. “Tea,” she explained “is the act of creating leisure in a chaotic world. If we do not stop for a few minutes every day we just eat, work, sleep and repeat until death. Tea is a ritual that enforces leisure. When I drink tea my mind is free to wander, to contemplate my life and whether or not I am happy on the path I have chosen. Without tea, who would stop every day to think?” There must be something to her words, for we spent the remaining afternoon chatting about Daoist philosophy.

Ms. Wang and Professor Qu have a true conception of the role of tea culture in modern China. While the tea growing villages have remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years except for the introduction of machines to dry tea leaves, and a brief attempt at commune-style land reform, the cities have undergone profound and sweeping changes. The pace of life has accelerated, the workday lengthened. Salaries have gone up, international cultural influence has exerted itself, bringing with it Coca-cola and Korean soap operas. Tea is humility, leisure, and contemplation. Of course there are those who only use tea to impress company and boost their social standing, but they are in fact the minority. Tea was first used as a medicine for the body; It has come full circle, providing an antidote for the mind, a medicine to treat stress and anxiety.

Were this not the case, tea would have long ago lost its status as revered. There are connoisseurs of everything under the sun, but tea is still an act of ceremony. Tea is saturated with history, with the humility that is brought out by the ceremony, and with the grandeur of the mountains that it grows upon,

Reading The Leaves: A Journey Into Contemporary Chinese Tea Culture (Part 2)

When I reached the hostel, I washed the sticky layers of humidity off my face, and got out a napkin with an address written on it. “54 Longjing Village.” This was given to me as the address of some Dragonwell tea farmers. I wondered about the lack of a road name, but thought that even if I didn't find them, it would be a good chance to stretch my legs amid the tea field after a long plane ride.

The bus line ended in Longjing village, nestled between mountain peaks above Hangzhou, including the famous Lion's peak where in April of 2005 two ounces of the first picking of the spring sold for 17605 USD.[1] Beginning with the Qianlong emperor's declaration of Longjing tea as a tribute tea and continuing through Mao Zedong's famous love for Longjing tea and his visit to the village to pick leaves himself, a sense of legend pervades the leaves here. As the bus came to a stop, a woman sitting next to me asked me if I wanted to try some Longjing tea at her house. I told her I wasn't here to buy tea, but to visit someone. She didn't pursue the topic.

As I got off the bus, a group of about ten bored looking villagers sitting in the square suddenly stood up and picked up their bamboo baskets of tea. “Lonjing tea!” they yelled in halting English. “Come to drink Longjing tea.” I said again, I didn't come to buy any tea. Switching to Chinese again, they asked, “why did you come here?”

I had read about these people before arriving. Many travelers claimed that they could not get rid of the tea sellers until they bought a token amount. Not wanting to find myself with a canister of tea grown hundreds of miles away, then packaged and sold as Dragonwell Lion's peak tea to eager and curious tourists, I stretched the truth, replying “I have friends I am visiting.”

“Who?” I glanced at the napkin and read the name.

“Oh.” The villagers sat back down disappointed at a lost sale.

My anxiety over finding the right road was in vain. The village began at a government-constructed archway commemorating the nearly-holy tea and continuing down the only road. The bus line ended where the pavement did. From that point on, cobblestones lined the clean village. I looked for number fifty-four, realizing that none of the structure looked like companies. Instead the village was made up of peasant houses, some with signs proclaiming “Dragonwell tea for sale.” I walked for about twenty minutes until the cobblestone too ended and a dirt road continued. As the road began to wind up to the mountain peak a watermelon peddler and her kids were sitting in the shade of a Fir tree.

“Watermelon! Do you need some watermelon?” While the heat-soaked air indeed tempted me to eat a little watermelon, I instead asked,

“Do you know where the Li family lives?” They pointed to a house perched on top of a small hill in the valley, covered with low to the ground lines of tea bushes. Bright green leaves curled into little needle shapes contrasted with the large dark older leaves. These buds are the lifeblood of Longjing Village, worth as in the case of the 2005 auction, more than their dried weight in gold.[2]

I walked timidly up the dirt path of the house, seeing not even the customary “Tea for Sale” sign. Nobody was sitting on the stone courtyard outside the house, so I poked my head in the door and asked if Mrs Li was home. While the villagers of Laoshan were always curious at my white skin and curly hair, the man sitting in his living room didn't blink an eye at it. “Please sit. Drink some tea.” He pulled out a wooden chair and brought a thick tall tumbler glass with those precious Longjing leaves at the bottom, pouring steaming water from a three foot-tall pink thermos. He disappeared for three minutes, then walked through the living room into the outdoor kitchen. “She will be right with you.” He looked at my full cup and laughed, “You can drink it now.”

A short muscular woman came in with her collage-aged daughter. The daughter greeted me in broken English, but hearing Mandarin in response, relievedly shifted language. The mother frowned, “You should practice your English with the foreigner.”

“Mom, that is embarrassing. I can't speak English.” The mother turned and addressed me,

“This is my daughter, we are sending her to college, but she is home from the city for vacation. How do you like the tea?”

“It is very different from the Laoshan green tea I am used to. I need to think more about the flavor. It is interesting.” Honestly, the mystique around Longjing village created expectations too high not to be broken when trying the most famous tea in China. I explained that I had actually come to learn more about tea culture in Hangzhou. The woman told me to wait, returning with a second chipped glass of tea with the tea leaves swirling around as the steeped.

“See the way the leaves unfold and float vertically like that? This is our best tea.” I smelled it and was immediately taken back by the strong mineral-earthy smell. The taste was a world away from my first cup. “The first cup is what we drink every day. I want you to try the second one so that you know true Longjing tea.

The woman and her family spend a frantic two months in the spring picking their plot of leaves on Lion's peak, working from before dawn until long after dusk every day. They say that the difference of one day on when leaves are picked changes not only the flavor but also their price significantly. A March 28^th cup of tea costs much more than an April 2^nd tea.

In the cobblestone courtyard in front of their house, the family lays out the tea leaves to wilt and then shapes and sears them in a large wok under low constant heat. Their hands are calloused from pressing the leaves directly against the hot metal for a perfect shape and appropriately roasted flavor. Even the daughter returns from collage to expedite the time-sensitive tea-making process. After the tea is picked and dried, it is not harvested again all summer. The family explained that the leaves absorb too much sunlight in the summer to have the distinctive sweet and earthy taste that Longjing promises.

At my visit in July, the streets were quiet, children played on house steps and old men crouched around tables talking to the constant click of Mah Jong tiles. Women were gathered together between houses chatting with each other. I asked the mother of the family, “Who do you usually sell tea to? Is it to middlemen that come up to the village, to tea stores in the city, or does a family member set up a market stall in Hangzhou and sell to individuals?”

The woman smiled, “We don't care too much for money up here. Our lives are simple. We pick tea all spring and relax for the rest of the year. We grow our own food, so we don't need much. If people come to our house, we will sell them tea. Some villagers go sell to tourists, but that is because their tea is not as good. We sell to one person who finds us, and they tell their friends, who tell their friends. That is enough.”

It is individual farmers like these who lay the foundation of my search for tea's identity. These farmers own their land generations back. During the cultural revolution, they said, the land was made into commune-style farming. I asked if they were ordered to increase output and lower quality to provide more tea for China. The woman's husband entered, “No, we have always given the same quality tea.” It seems that even revolutionaries, Mao Zedong included, had a penchant for this legendary tea.

(To be continued. Next installment brings this story to a close, so stay tuned.)