Author Archives: puerman

On Processing Raw Puer Tea

Several years ago I received an email from someone expressing some nervousness about buying young Puer tea because they were concerned about how it would age, which is fair enough, but then they said they were concerned they might purchase in error some ‘western boutique puer’. Since then I have been slowly trying to formulate a response.

It got my interest because I had never heard the term. I looked on line and the only reference I came up with was on ‘A Tea Addict’s Journal’ from a few years prior, also questioning the meaning of the term.

Since I’d never seen ’boutique’ being used as an adjective before I was curious and decided to check my Larousse. It’s a bit out of date, so I double-checked on-line to confirm my understanding, which is that in French, ’boutique’ simply means a shop. More often than not, selling expensive clothing and accessories, etc. predominantly aimed at women. Almost by definition small scale, as opposed to ‘les grands magasins‘.  In English, the meaning is similar to the French: a small, specialised, and probably expensive, shop.

In French it’s only a noun. There are plenty of other words in French to describe what I guess the adjective ’boutique’ is trying to express in this case in English: chi chi, chic, bijou, mignon,  maybe. What the shop sells is not ’boutique’ as in: ‘I bought a boutique little handbag in that shop in the Marais the other day‘.

The idea that something, for which one might create the adjective ’boutique’, would be inferior also doesn’t quite fit since ’boutique’ generally implies the opposite: quality. So it’s not a particularly good choice of word to denote something inferior, or even ‘fashionable’ (if implying that the object in question has a limited shelf-life. But, if we’re being sarcastic, why not?

My french friends, I supposed, could reasonably call their tea shop a ’boutique de thé’, if they wanted to peddle it’s smallness and class.

It’s another of those words like sommelier which has been purloined. Call me old fashioned, but I reckon there’s no such thing as a ‘tea sommelier‘ in French. A sommelier is a wine waiter/ress or wine steward. Nothing more, nothing less. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure what a ‘tea sommelier’s job might be: stocking teas and pairing them with food maybe?

So what, having got all that out of the way, is ‘western boutique Puer’ really referring to?  I thought it might have made sense if it was referring to small scale, expensive Puer made for niche markets, or something. The author of the term seemed to think it referred to tea processed in such a way as to make the tea more accessible/appealing to Westerners, (although he seemed unsure exactly how that was done) but in so doing, the tea was somehow rendered unsuitable for ageing, 

That’s not a new idea. In Chinese people refer to ‘市场茶/shi chang cha‘. Tea that is made ‘for the market’, i.e. made to be sold and drunk, not to be stored. But I find it hard to imagine that any Western tea makers/merchants would be doing that: intentionally producing tea that was not going to age well.  I’m also not sure many people would go out of their way to do that with old or ancient tea tree tea. It doesn’t make much sense, particularly given the current cost of fresh tea leaves. Generally, tea from ancient or old tea gardens is already very drinkable but I guess folks might do it with bush tea. It could well happen unwittingly however.

The other thing I have trouble imagining is that any Chinese Puer producers would go out of their way to make tea specifically for a Western market, given the size of that market compared to the domestic one. But if there is someone somewhere doing that, then what are they doing?

Raw or ‘sheng’ Puer processing looks pretty straight forward: the leaves are picked, maybe spread out in the shade for some time, ‘fried’, rolled and then sun dried. It doesn’t look like rocket science. But within that process there are a whole bunch of factors that can be varied, intentionally or not, to produce different outcomes.

The basic variables are:

LeavesGoing into the wok most people would agree leaves should not be ‘over-wilted’, say, 2-4 hours tan qing time.*
SizeA larger wok is generally better, and maybe thicker. Say 90 -100cm diameter, Set at an angle on the oven for ease of use. Too small a wok means holds heat less well and the amount of tea that can be processed is small, so overall less consistent result.**
AmountThe ideal amount of fresh leaves to put into the wok at one time is mostly determined by the size of the wok, but say about 6kg in a 90-100cm wok)
TemperatureThe ideal temperature of the wok surface is probably around 250°C in the middle portion of the wok. It will be a little cooler toward the edges, but after firing a couple of woks of tea, it should be quite uniform. Most people will agree that the temperature of the wok needs to be quite high at the outset. The first few minutes is key. What happens after that is of some debate. ††
HandlingThe method and speed of handling the leaves in the pan is the ‘art’ of firing tea. The leaves must be turned uniformly (relaxed and steady): inside out as well as top to bottom to avoid leaves in the middle being ‘steamed’ without coming into contact with the wok’s surface. Movement controls the speed at which the tea dries out and one must avoid tea leaves drying out before they are ‘cooked’.
The leaves must be shaken out intermittently in the pan to help release moisture and help bring out the fragrance but must be done judiciously. (Too much shaking will dry the leaves more quickly).
TimeDepending on all of the above the length of frying time might be around 12-20 minutes.
CoolingAfter the leaves are taken out of the wok they need to cool before rolling. This is generally done by shaking them out onto a bamboo mat or ‘bo ji’ and leaving them to cool after that. The contentious practice of putting the leaves in a heap when they’re still hot is discussed below.
The basic variables are listed above.

*Some people say best not to wilt at all. Others will tell you several hours is OK.

** In the last few years there has been a trend for thicker woks. Some folks are now saying that whilst they hold the heat better, they are less responsive to changes in temperature so maybe not ideal. Managing the fire under the wok is as important as master the frying of tea. There is room for a little leeway, but not too much.

Personal choice is dictated to some extent by physical stature, strength etc. Once the leaves start to loose moisture in the pan they become rather more difficult to handle. This is when it becomes easy to burn them.

†† There are many different opinions about wok temperature but generally speaking, lots of people tend not to like tea that they say has been ‘men chao’d/闷炒 at lower temperature. There is however, in tandem with the handling of the leaves, a fairly broad range of acceptable-ness. In any case, the ultimate aim is to arrest enzyme activity without killing them off completely as it is the enzymes that are going to kickstart the ‘fermentation/oxidation’ process later.

If you’ve seen any of those videos of folks frantically throwing leaves high up into the back of the pan, you know what it doesn’t look like.

There is, what I think most people would agree, a range of acceptable variations in processing factors listed above that are still detectable in a newly made tea, but after it’s been stored for some time are rather harder to perceive. A friend of mine reckons ‘In the first four years, you drink the craftsmanship, after that you drink the tea.’ A clumsy translation, but you get the idea: Initially, various aspects of the tea-making process might be more to the fore, but after say, ten years, they will have receded somewhat, and what you’re left with is the basic quality of the original material. So if it was good, and hasn’t been damaged in the processing or subsequent storage, it should still be good.

The two things that people new to Puer tea might be drawn in by are fragrance and sweetness, and they may have trouble with bitterness and astringency. There are a couple of things folks could be doing to augment the former and reduce the latter during processing. Currently there are three things that people might be doing which are arguably detrimental to the tea, but will help reduce bitterness and astringency and can make Puer tea more fragrant in the short-term.

Wilting. This is an old contention: Some people say that ‘wilting’ was never per-se part of Puer tea processing, but, whatever you call it, or whether you give it a name or not, it’s something that typically has happened (see here, and here). From when the leaves are picked to when they go in the wok, the time, and the way they were handled, can vary considerably.

The length of time is important. It could be anything from an hour to several hours. Everything, including the leaves themselves and the way they are handled during that time , the weather, the altitude, can affect the degree of wilting. There could be times when leaves are wilted more than is desirable because of factors largely outside the producers control, but for sure there are some producers who will deliberately wilt for a longer period with the aim of reducing the astringency and bitterness – generally at the customer’s request. Over the last 10 years or more wilting troughs have become more common. They are not native to Yunnan Puer tea making, but have been used in the production of green tea. They aren’t inherently evil. If leaves are put on a wilting platform rather than on a bamboo mat on the ground, air will pass under the leaves as well as over them so they will lose moisture more quickly. Hence, the time they are left like that should be shorter. Most wilting troughs are equipped with a fan at one end which when turned on will blow air into the tunnel underneath which will then be blown up through the leaves, thus increasing the rate of wilting. Some producers don’t use the fan, some do, some say they only use it with summer tea. So it’s something to watch out for. There’s really no need to use a fan with spring or autumn tea. 

Tea that has been ‘over-wilted’ is probably fairly obvious; it can be quite smooth, fragrant and sweet, but in my experience, somehow lacks structure/backbone/body/vitality. It’s good to be vigilant in any situation, particularly where wilting troughs are present, simply because it’s probably easier to exceed an ideal resting time for fresh leaves before frying. If fresh leaves are put on bamboo mats on an earth or concrete floor, they’re not going to loose moisture very quickly, so an hour or two either side of ‘the ideal’ will probably not make too much difference. The supposed aim of the ‘tan qing‘ process is for the moisture content in the leaves to be reduced a little (typically said to be about 10%).

Frying. Frying times can also vary considerably. This again depends on the state of the leaves, the temperature/nature of the wok (material, size, thickness, age, etc.), and the desired outcome. For some years there have been producers who fry tea for longer periods, as much as 35 or 40 minutes, toward the end of the frying the temperature of the wok is reduced and the tea is alternately left in a pile in the wok for a minute maybe and then shaken out. The process is typically repeated several times. Some people will even begin rolling the tea whilst it’s still in the pan, so once it comes out it needs little if any rolling. The stated aim of this is to make sure that leaf stems are properly fried to reduce any redness that may otherwise occur once dry, but it can also elevate the fragrance and reduce astringency. It’s not to everybody’s taste, and I personally don’t like tea like that, even though it initially can seem quite palatable. It’s a style of frying that I was first aware of in the He kai-Ban Zhang area around 2008/2009 which seems to have spread to other areas, albeit on a limited scale. It would certainly make sense that frying for a longer period of time, even at reduced temperatures, is going to be detrimental to the tea, but to what extent and whether it renders it unworthy of drinking five or ten years down the line, I’m not sure.

At the other end of the ‘sha qing’/杀青 spectrum you have the theory that tea should be fried just enough to reduce the moisture content sufficiently (a typical test is to take a leaf and bend the stem. If it doesn’t break, the tea is ‘done’). So it could be as short as 10 or 12 minutes. The idea here is that you preserve as much as possible of the constituents in the leaf on the understanding that the flavour will be more fulsome and the tea will age better. One ‘rule of thumb’ that one hears is that tea should be fried until the first time the fragrance comes out. That is enough. The theory being you want to seal things in, not let them out.

Another contentious element that many people now consider as detrimental is ‘ti xiang’/提香/enhancing the fragrance. This is done by shaking out the leaves more towards the end of the frying, and doing it beyond what is necessary to release moisture. Because of this, the tea dries out rather more than it would ideally. The aim of this step is to increase the fragrance of the tea, but Puer tea is not typically very fragrant when it’s young. It is generally understood that with raw Puer the fragrance will improve as the tea ages, and any attempts in the processing to artificially augment the fragrance are in error because once the tea has dried out to that extent it will not age well.

Some people are rejecting the ‘hand fried’ approach and using a ‘gun tong’/滚筒, a rotating drum fryer with hot air being passed through it. The argument is that the tea can be fried more evenly and more quickly at a higher temperature, producing a tea that is nearer the ideal described above. To do this in a wok takes a lot of skill and effort so is harder to maintain. The downside is that the person doing the frying still needs to be very skilled, as controlling the temperature, speed of rotation and time are all critical and a minor loss of focus could produce a less than optimal tea.

In recent years there have been other trends. One is ‘bao fa’/爆发: frying tea very quickly at a very high temperature, perhaps in an attempt to try and get closer to the ‘gun tong’ experience, but using this method it is very easy to produce tea that has a ‘dou xiang’/豆香, a beany fragrance, more reminiscent of a green tea. Not Puer tea. Folks doing this are sometimes working in teams so that people can rest between ‘fries’ as it is quite physically demanding.

At the other end of the ‘sha qing’ spectrum, there are folks who have been experimenting with low temperature firing with extended frying times.

The other thing that has been around for a while, is that when tea is taken out of the wok it is not immediately shaken out to cool before rolling, but is put in a small pile for some time (and occasionally even covered with cloth or sacking): it seems like times can vary from a few minutes to rather longer. The stated aim of this step is also to make sure the thicker stems are ‘cooked’ and increase fragrance/reduce astringency. This is a technique loosely borrowed from Yellow tea processing though the times may be rather shorter than those used for Yellow tea.

It seems very likely that this will have a deleterious effect on the tea’s ageing potential as the leaves are still at high temperature and are basically going to continue to oxidise/ferment – ‘cook’ if you will – when left in a pile for some time. It may be a question of degree, and a relatively short period of time may have a minimal impact on the tea’s ageing potential. Typical Puer processing, as mentioned above, is for the leaves to be shaken out immediately on leaving the wok to allow them to cool in readiness for rolling.

It is this last technique, [coupled with the practice of ‘ti xiang’ (they are not necessarily used in tandem)] which seems likely to have the most impact on a tea’s ageing potential and conversely, is not always so obvious in a new tea, though the colour of the broth will generally be deeper than one might usually expect.

Of course, there are always folks experimenting and trying to find new ways to tweak old practices. That’s surely not anything new. So there’s always going to be something to watch out for and learn from.

In 2021 it seems like we’ve been through a whole cycle (though it maybe hasn’t finished yet). There are people who were trying various ways of making tea some years back, who are now saying that that tea has not aged as well as they hoped and are again reviewing their methods and returning to what are understood to be ‘traditional’, or slightly modified ‘traditional’ processing techniques.

So what’s the conclusion?

There are certainly things people are doing to try to make young Puer more appealing, particularly to new Puer drinkers and some of that tea will surely end up in the Western market, but it may not all be bad. The factors discussed above are variables that can affect the tea’s quality and ageing potential, but their effects need to be seen as a whole, on a spectrum. We can’t say for sure which of any one of them on it’s own, in whatever degree, will definitely render a tea useless for ageing. Experimenting with the tea making process is also clearly not something new: the sheer variety of types of tea in China alone is testimony to that. Awareness of that fact should be enough to keep the consumer safe from erring too far from the well worn path of conventional Puer processing. Other factors such as the region, the ‘terroir‘, the season, the age of trees, etc. will also impact the ageing potential of any tea, and much as is the case with red wines, it’s not every year, grand cru or not, that produces a wine that’s equally good for ageing. So unless one is sure of what one’s doing, buy in small quantities, drink with awareness. Be skeptical, without being doctrinaire, and be prepared for some regrets: both for what you did and didn’t buy.

More Glyphosate

There was a brief discussion recently on LinkedIn following a post about Sri Lanka’s decision to ban Glyphosate, and the quandary that poses for tea producers. ‘Should we use Monsanto’s Glyphosate?’ was the title of the piece which went on to discuss how Sri Lanka is facing a dilema over pesticide use. I’m unclear about the timing as Sirisena introduced the ban a good couple of years ago which came after a previous ban was lifted after only a few months, in 2014. So sure, they seem to have been in a quandary over the decision for some time.

It’s a curious question. Imagine one was a world-class athlete who’d got used to taking steroids because they improved one’s performance, but slowly became aware of their harmful effects. If one was winning gold medals it might be hard to give up for fear of lowering one’s level of performance and only getting bronze, or perhaps no medal at all, but in tea there are no medals for performance. What is there to lose? Someone contributed to the discussion by suggesting pesticides are necessary to maintain production levels in an ever more populated world where starving people would ‘willingly risk an excess MRL or two rather than have no food.’ But tea is not food, though it may well be considered a staple by many folks in poorer parts of the world.

And Roundup is not insecticide. Not using it is not going to result directly in infestations of insects that will eat the crops or damage tea bushes, or maybe rust which will damage the leaves. The worst that can happen is that folks have to go into tea gardens and weed by hand. That’s about profit, or maybe reducing losses. But it’s hard to imagine using herbicides to keep labour costs down is going to turn a loss-making business round. On the other hand, opting for more labour intensive/creative methods of dealing with the problem, as Sri Lanka appears to have done may well prove worthwhile if it results in a more desirable tea. With Sri Lanka’s objective of reducing large scale plantations in favour of smaller family run tea gardens, it is ironically becoming more like Southern Yunnan.

Yunnan’s history of tea cultivation is rather different from Sri Lanka’s where the tea industry was developed by the British in colonial times. In Yunnan, the government has at various stages had a hand in developing the tea industry, but in Xishuangbanna there are not that many large scale plantations outside of some of the big tea factories and areas like Da Du Gang. There are a lot more in the Lincang/Lancang area. There were large scale (re) planting programmes around the middle of the 20th century, particularly in the Menghai area, but most tea producers are still smallholder farmers who are their own bosses. Many of them have in the past still choosen to use agro-chemicals in some way, certainly in bush tea plantations, but it has been a personal choice.

Dadugang tea plantations

Da Du Gang tea plantations

Even though the use of agro-chemicals has in theory been banned in ancient tea tree gardens, it still happens, particularly with something like Glyphosate, the use of which will significantly reduce the labour time required by a tea farmer to manage his/her tea gardens. But ‘market forces’ eventually will prevail in most situations.

Sunshine and Glyphosate

Sunshine and Glyphosate

More and more people understand, and are able to detect where Glyphosate has been used, and are averse to buying tea that may have been treated with it. So even when a buyer is not able themselves to detect its use, the fear that a customer may is a factor that will cause a buyer to err on the side of caution. This increasing awareness also brings other complications. Pretty much gone are the days when asking the farmer directly about which agro-chemicals they may have used would elicit a straightforward answer. One needs to be more wiley.

I was with a friend, and a friend of his, visiting some tea villages some way north of Yiwu. I had heard of a garden of 40-50 year old trees that had never been treated with agro-chemicals,so my friend had elicited the help of his friend who was from the area to see if we could find it. When we went into a village and found some tea that seemed like it might be interesting, he would say ‘这款茶不会超标吧’ /This tea isn’t over the limit (for agro-chemicals) is it? ‘应该不会!’ / It ought not to be!’  was the typical response. With its element of doubt, it was all you needed to know.

But doubt is persistent. Despite the EU having an MRL for glyphosate of 2mg/kg, none of the main testing companies, as far as I can tell, includes Glyphosate in any standard testing package. As I’ve discussed before, it’s apparently because Glyphosate requires a different method of testing, so cannot be batch tested along with a slew of other agro-chemicals. So it’s fairly common, here at least, for people to claim their tea ‘meets European import standards’, but miss or omit the fact that Glyphosate is not on the list, as a guy I know did, proudly announcing that four of his teas had all passed the ‘欧盟标准/European standard test’ and were chemical free, but he had missed that Glyphosate was not on the list. (Actually, in order to economise he had mixed four teas together and tested them as one, thus further compromising the test, but that’s another story).

Old tree tea gardens near Yiwu

Old tree tea gardens near Yiwu

P.S.In doing some recent online reading I revisited the Greenpeace – Lipton tea story and realised that there too, Glyphosate was absent. I have tried writing to someone at Greenpeace to better understand that absence: was it that Glyphosate was not tested for, or that it was, and none was found. If that were the case, given the number of other chemicals the teas had in them, it would be news-worthy in itself.

For an earlier piece on Glyphosate plus links to additional reading see here

 

There Goes Another One

It’s ‘Swing Festival’ again. Hard to believe. Another year gone. I’m not sure I could satisfactorily list what I’ve accomplished in the last 12 months. It seems like not much, but I’ve made a fair chunk of tea, and drunk a lot too. Some of it courtesy of an Aini tea farmer on Nan Nuo Shan whose tea gardens are between Shi Tou Zhai and Ban Po Zhai.

Someone once said to me ‘The thing that’s special about Nan Nuo Shan tea is that there’s nothing special about it’. It’s not exactly true: at it’s best it’s floral-fruity, with plenty of body, some heftiness with a distinct bitterness and astringency, and a good hui gan. A good solid tea that has so far escaped some of the extreme, fad-driven price fluctuations that have affected some other places. There’re differences between villages or tea gardens of course. Ban Po Lao Zhai is often a little more astringent than Shi Tou Zhai, etc. and of course, Ba Ma is another story.

This year it was raining heavily the day we went so we skipped the swing and stayed inside eating and drinking tea. The village, like others on Nan Nuo Shan runs on tea. They have tea gardens above Ban Po Lao Zhai even though they moved down from there many years ago to a village nearer the road because they still maintain land there that was apportioned to them at the time of the move. As with many other villages, people here grow some other crops too. Some rent land near the foot of the mountain to grow paddy, and they often grow some vegetables near the village.

Clouds rolling up the valley

The day before, I went to Pasha, where I hadn’t been for ages, but after repeated invitations from a tea farmer there I decided it was time to go. I went on the ‘new’ concrete road that was finished a couple of years ago that runs around the south of Nan Nuo Shan to Gelang He. It shortens the trip from Jinghong by about half. On the way I bumped into the tea farmer from Nan Nuo Shan who, on his way home had just had the misfortune to have a scrape with a Range Rover on a tight, sloping corner. They were lucky. Neither he nor his wife, who was on the back of the motorbike were badly hurt, but his bike was unrideable. He was waiting for his brother in law to come and pick them and the bike up. He forked out 2000 yuan to pay off the Range Rover driver to boot, even though it was questionable who was at fault. That’s the cost of riding an unregistered bike (something that many mountain dwellers do here), particularly on a tricky mountain road in the rain.

 

The road to Pasha from the foot of Nan Nuo Shan

The road to Pasha. Maize and rice are grown at lower altitudes.

Pasha, like Nan Nuo Shan is inhabited by Aini tea farmers. Their language and customs are the same. They both celebrate Ye Ku Zha – Swing Festival – at around the same time of year.

I think I’ve finally figured out how the date of the festival is determined: according to some folks it starts on the first ‘bull’ day of the sixth month of the ‘nong li’ or traditional farmers’ calendar. But there’s a problem with that because in Pasha it started this year, 2017, on July 13th, which was the second ‘bull’ day of the sixth lunar month and the rest of the Gelang He area it started on the third ‘bull’ day. According to my host, they start on the third ‘bull’ day in the Julian month of July. Make of all that what you will.

Aini (Hani) people are outward-looking, readily adapting to and taking on things they like or see as useful – Nan Nuo Shan is pretty well stocked with upscale cars these days – and they are much more open to outsiders than say, Bama’s Lahu people. They are also often quick witted business people. But they have an interior life which is less easy to access – they have an Aini name, for example – not the name on their documents, a public name, a name ‘for the government’, but a name only used by close family or friends that someone like me will likely never be allowed to utter. Last year the tea farmer I just visited for Ye Ku Zha actually told me his name, but at the same time made it clear that it wasn’t for me to use it.

Whilst their lives are changing rapidly – everyone who can, gets a car, pulls down their wooden house to replace it with something ‘fait de beton’ – Aini people, in this area at least continue to value their own culture and are not in immediate danger of being ‘han hua’d’ any time soon, maintaining, apart from their own festivals, their own language and customs – children all grow up speaking their mother tongue – and they still take time to make some of their own clothes and bags, albeit only worn on special occasions.

Boots ‘n’ Brolly for a Rainy Day

 

 

Nan Nuo Shan’s ‘Cha Wang Shu’

Anyone who goes to Nan Nuo Shan will have heard about, or visited ‘Cha Wang Shu’, the ‘King of Tea Trees’ that is between Ban Po Lao Zhai and Ya Kou Zhai. It is estimated to be 800 years old or more, but apart from carbon dating, there appears to be no sure-fire way to tell a tea trees age as they do not have rings that can be counted in the way that most other trees do. Locally, there are only word-of-mouth assessments of age, ‘so-and-so’s grandfather says it was yea big when he was a boy’ or something akin to that. Or otherwise by comparison with a tree of known age.

Carbon dating has been used to establish the age of some tea trees. And so to the apocryphal tale of the original Nan Nuo Shan ‘Cha Wang Shu‘. It was growing a little way below Shi Tou Zhai, and had attracted a lot of interest from scientists. As early as the beginning of the 1950’s Yunnan College of Agriculture researchers were exploring the varieties of tea tree in this area. The story is that local hunters who were familiar with the area would act as guides to take researchers deep into the forest. On one such trip in late 1951 a tea tree that was 8.8 metres tall with a girth of 0.83 metres was found. A couple of years later, one Zhou Peng Ju from Yunnan Agricultural College Research Department came to examine the tree, and over the ensuing years an increasing number of botanists and specialists came to examine the tree. Eventually it was established that the tree was a cultivated variety of tea tree.

According to one version of the sequence of events, as more and more people came to visit the tree, the surrounding environment was badly affected and the tree itself was also damaged, and by the mid 1990’s the tree died.

The local version of the story is that scientists came and took samples for examination by drilling into the trunk of the tree, which lead to the death of the King of Tea Trees.

This photo, with the tea tree behind, from the famous visit in 1985, is about all the evidence that remains on Nan Nuo Shan.

nan nuo shan cha wang shu

Zeng Wei Ran and colleagues visit the tree in 1985.

 

Hani ‘Ye Ku’ Festival

According to the Lunar calendar, the full moon in late June or early July is the time Hani people celebrate Ye Ku Zha. The Chinese translation, 秋千节 means ‘Swing Festival’ because, similar to some other local minorities, a large swing forms a central part of the festival. In other parts of Yunnan the festival is also referred to as Zha Zha Festival and rather than a swing they may have a see-saw type arrangement where a horizontal pole, set atop a vertical pointed pole can both pivot vertically and rotate horizontally. There appear to be various founding legends for this festival, but it essentially celebrates ancestors, though in some areas it is said to also be a harvest festival.

hani swing

Preparing the swing

Not all Hani people in Xishuangbanna celebrate it, but on Nan Nuo Shan and other Hani villages nearby they do. The time it is celebrated can also vary by as much as a couple of weeks. Traditionally the swing is made from four tall tree trunks, but due to the scarcity of the right height and thickness of trees, and restrictions on felling, it is common for the frame to be made of steel as it is in these photographs. The cross-pole is made from a thick length of vine and traditionally a number of thinner vines were strung over the cross-pole and braided to form the rope for the swing. Nowadays nylon rope is braided in the same manner.

child on sw2ing

Children lining up to ride on the swing

After the festival, which lasts about one week, the rope is left on the frame to be taken down and replaced with a new one the next year. The swing cannot be ridden before the first day of the festival when a cow is slaughtered and the meat shared out between the villagers. At that point villagers and visitors can ride on the swing and there may be a competition to see who can swing the highest, but according to village lore, the main purpose of the swing is essentially a form of cleansing ritual: by riding on the swing one can cast off ‘bad luck’ or inauspicious events from the previous year.

riding the swing 2

The village champion

At this time of the year, some way into the rainy season,  tea farmers are not particularly busy. There may still be a little Summer tea being made in some villages where they have small tea trees, but generally there will be little tea until the Autumn and any crops that villagers may have planted, like rice or maize will have already been harvested or will not get harvested till the Autumn.

 

Tea and Zen

Way up north of Yiwu is not necessarily the first place you would think to look for that rather overplayed blend of tea and Zen, but there it was. I shouldn’t have been surprised in the least, but somehow I still was.

Tea garden

Over the last couple of years I have been sourcing a little tea from a tea garden in a quite remote area some way above Yiwu. From the nearest village, it takes about an hour my motorbike on a narrow and difficult trail, often with steep, muddy inclines coupled with a sharp drop on one side as the path winds its way up the mountainside. A Yao (瑶族)friend and I had gone to the tea gardens and on the way had seen the small but vivid signs of how treacherous the path can be: a local couple had been riding on the path and had come off. They had already been taken down from the mountain, but the bike was still in the gully.

path

A more leisurely stretch of path with a little bit of ‘cha ma gu dao’ for extra flavour.

As anyone who has engaged in any kind of activity like that knows, the moment you come nearest to screwing up is when you lose concentration for a fraction of a second. I was curious to hear my friend’s experience, as it’s a much more regular activity for them than for me. I had also never had that kind of conversation with him, so when we got back down to the village I asked him what he thought about when he was riding on the path. He looked quizzically at me for a second or two before replying, ‘Nothing!’ he said.

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Looking south east from Da Du Gang toward the Six Famous Tea Mountains. Kong Ming Shan (to the north- west of Ge Deng) is just above the tree branch on the left.

Autumn – Nan Nuo Shan

I’ve been to Nan Nuo Shan more times than I care to imagine so I guess I feel like I know it fairly well and I had pretty much given up on the idea that I might find a tea garden there that was not over-managed, but this Spring on a spur of the moment decision I decided to do some exploring whilst I was unaccompanied. It was fortuitous since I found my way into some tea gardens that are part of Ban Po Lao Zhai, but that I had not visited before. There was one area of the tea gardens that particularly interested me and a second area which also looked good. The garden’s on one of the higher parts of Nan Nuo Shan, at a hair under 1800m, and the surrounding environment is surprisingly good.  It’s a tea that turned out to be one of the pleasant surprises of this year.

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After a rather sedentary summer, I went again to Nan Nuo Shan a day or two ago , this time with some friends. We visited some tea gardens that are part of Shi Tou Zhai, but lower down the mountain at a height of around 1400m, so not that high, but good enough. Some of the gardens here are managed with a slightly heavy hand but some, higher up the slope, toward the top of a ridge are better. Quite a few of the trees here have been copiced at some time and there are also quite a few smaller trees in amongst the larger ones. Some of these are clearly trees which were cut, or burned right back to the ground, but others look like they came later, naturally or otherwise. The environment around the gardens is quite good. My friend says he tasted some tea from here in the summer and that it was not bad so he’s toying with getting some Autumn tea from here this year. So, let’s wait and see.  The gardens looked OK, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

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