Category Archives: Tea making process

Tea House Talk: ‘Gu Fa’

I was riding through a village when I realised I was almost out of petrol. I stopped and went into a house to ask where in the village I could buy some. (There’s pretty much always someone in a village who will sell you a bottle of petrol. Usually 1.5 liter old mineral water bottles). They were in the back drinking tea and also had some fresh leaves wilting on a bo ji nearby. The tea they gave me reminded me a little of a Darjeeling type tea. ‘hong cha‘ I commented. ‘No’ they said, ‘这是古法！’ This is Gu Fa!

What the heck is ‘Gu Fa’? I wondered. They explained the process to me: fresh leaves are wilted (for maybe 12-13 hours) then the tea is lightly rolled after which it’s put out to dry in the sun. No sha qing.

The proposition is that in ‘ancient times’, whenever they were, lao bai xing may well not have had access to a wok to fire tea in and would have found some other way to process tea to their liking.

A year or two before that I had been introduced to some tea folks in Menghai. The lao ban described a similar process to me. He too maintained that this would have been how local tea was made in the past. He reckoned he had several tons of it stashed away waiting for the day when it was aged enough to pull it out and sell.

Quite some time later while having a discussion with a friend about it, he told me he’d read something online on the same topic in which it was proposed that the term ‘sheng cha/raw tea’ was originally used for a tea that was made more or less in the same manor as the contemporary ‘gu fa’, i.e. not fired/’cooked’, and that ‘shu cha/cooked tea’ was used to refer to tea that was pan fired, somehow in the same way that sheng cha is now made.

Gu Fa sounds like a marketing gimmick, but the idea is not that outlandish, and the tea is actually pretty nice. It’s not Puer, and it’s not really bai cha. It’s something else. With some qualities similar to a lightly fermented black tea.

Pressing Matters

In the world of Puer tea, opinions are not in short supply. How you get your cakes pressed is a case in point. There’s some logic behind the arguments, but it’s also about trends. Like how tight you wear your jeans, if you’ll excuse the analogy. One year loose fit is in vogue, the next straight, the next tight. It comes and goes.

Before we even get that far, how long one waits before pressing tea is another contentious issue. Generally speaking, the rule of thumb is to wait a month or so before pressing mao cha. The tea has just been made and dried in the sun and is going through a period of significant change and, the argument goes, is best left some time to stabilise. Plenty of folks wait longer. Some at least a year. But if you’re not living locally and need to get back home with tea in hand, or you need to get your product on the shelves, waiting longer may be a luxury you can’t afford.

Many local folks will wait at least till Autumn. This has the added benefit of avoiding the rush that occurs at this time of year, when many pressing outfits have waiting lists of at least a couple of weeks. In recent years, the wait time has perhaps been exacerbated by more people pressing smaller quantities of tea, and pressing smaller cakes, like 200 or 250 grams, which slows the process down.

Tea pressing factories prefer 357 g cakes as the other, smaller pressing options are more fiddly and slow (and the costs go up accordingly). But people who’ve got lesser quantities of tea are more likely to choose these options irrespective of costs. Of course, the much bigger tea companies are likely pressing their own tea anyway. Some people stick to 357 cakes because ‘that’s the tradition’ though the history of that is debatable. Some people go for 400g cakes or another variation, but still using the 357 bags, because they say it looks more ‘ba qi’ than 357. It’s true, kind of. The extra fifty odd grams definitely makes the cake look more plump.

The earlier idea – that bricks were made from junky tea – has been turned on it’s head in recent years with many people pressing 250, 500, or even 1kg bricks but using exactly the same material as cakes.

The process of pressing tea is essentially this:

The loose tea is weighed out (sometimes adding a few grams more to account for loss of weight through drying in the future), put it into the cylindrical container that will be put over the steamer, the ‘nei fei’ if there is one, is put under a few of the leaves on top (it will end up in the bottom of the bag once the tea is turned out of the container), and it’s steamed.

Nobody much talks about the water used, though it maybe has some small but discernable impact on the tea. Whatever the water, we’re only interested in the vapour in any case, so unless there are contaminants in the water that will vapourise, there should be no need to worry.

Steaming is generally for 20-30 seconds. If tea is steamed for too long – it happens occasionally if someone gets distracted, or there is a problem in the production process – it can subsequently have a rather dull appearance.

The pressure of the steam is important because one wants the steam to penetrate the leaves entirely and uniformly and also fairly quickly. Sometimes tea is steamed a second time if, in forming the shape, it has already cooled down too much to be workable, so it is steamed briefly again whilst still in the bag.

Some people like to use a hand operated or hydraulic press to lightly press the tea before putting it under a stone. This can help give the cake a more regular appearance and maybe saves having to stand on the stone, for added compression otherwise, significant amounts of tea are stone pressed. A team of 3 people can press oabout 300 kilos of 357 cakes in a day but around half of that for 200g cakes.

Stones vary in size, but generally are about 20cm tall and 30+ in diameter. The person doing the pressing stage of the work will generally stand on the stone and do ‘the hoola hoop’ 3 or 4 times. What one wants is a fairly uniform compression with the outside edge tight enough that the cakes is not going to fall apart at the edges.

There’s been something of a trend in the last couple of years amongst some folks who have been going for a tighter pressing. The logic is that the tea ages more slowly and therefor keeps its fragrance better than in a looser cake which tends to lose more of the aromatic properties more quickly.

Stone for pressing 3kg cakes

Another reason that is typically sighted for tighter pressings is when the tea is not intended for consumption when young and is to be kept several years for ageing. With that is the added factor of the nature of the planned storage: More humid storage could well use tighter pressings than dryer because the tea will age and loosen up more quickly.

A third idea is that blended cakes work better with a tighter pressing because the oils, etc. from the leaves are going to blend together more as they’re squeezed out giving a smoother drinking experience.

None of that is particularly contentious. The big area of discussion, and disagreement, is on drying. Here, opinions can get pretty polarised. There are broadly three schools of thought. The advocates of each say something along the lines of the following:

1. Tea must be dried in a drying room. The temperature is controlled, and is in the low to mid 40’s ). The temperature can be controlled so that it is lower than that of cakes drying in the sun. Air drying tea runs the risk of the tea going mouldy inside if not properly dry. Sun dried tea runs the risk of producing a sour flavour and the ultra-violet light can have a detrimental effect on the enzymes which are needed for the tea to age well.

2. Tea must be air dried. Historically, tea was not dried in a drying room dried. If the temperature is too high in a drying room it is detrimental to the tea. Room dried tea is initially quite fragrant, but for longer term storage air dried is better. If it is dried properly it will not run the risk of going mouldy.

3. Tea must be dried in the sun. Traditionally, pressed Puer tea was sun dried. Waiting till the winter when the sun is not so fierce is better. Tea needs to be air dried for a couple of days before being put in the sun to avoid it becoming misshapen, but it should be dried in the sun at a high enough temperature and for long enough for much of the moisture inside the cake to evaporate – that could be half an hour, or a couple of hours. Too long and the tea risks being damaged. Tea can also be dried in a ‘da peng‘, a perspex roofed drying platform such as is sometimes used for drying mao cha, but many people would not see that as an ideal option.

And then there are the ‘it depends’ folks:

It depends where and when the tea is being pressed: a little sun in the early morning may be OK. If the weather is inclement you may have no choice but to room dry.

People pressing in Jinghong will often favour room dried tea, because it’s also related to time and place. Jinghong is lower altitude (600m) and more humid than Yiwu or Menghai, for example. They also maybe don’t have a great deal of space to dry any other way. (tea that’s put outside to sun dry would take up a fraction of the space when stacked in a drying room.

People in Yiwu and Xiangming seem to favour sun-drying whilst Menghai folks tend to favour room-drying. This is maybe also to do with the different sizes of the pressing factories. Menghai probably has more large scale pressing operations.

It depends on the season: Air drying is possible into May, but later on, there is no choice but to room dry because of rainy season humidity. The risk of mould developing in tea that has not been properly dried is too great.

It also depends where the tea is being sent: if the tea is air dried and sent somewhere dry, it may be OK, but if sent somewhere more humid, it may be a problem.

It depends if you’ve got time. Room drying takes a couple of days. Natural drying can take several days, so if you’re in a rush to get your tea dried so you can ship it to wherever, natural drying may not be an option. Also larger scale outfits are probably less inclined to air dry because of time constraints.

I’m pretty much in the ‘it depends’ camp. My preference is for air-dried cakes. I have sometimes put air-dried tea outside in early morning/dappled sun for a few hours. If one is not in a hurry, that seems like the best option to me. I have never tried full-on sun drying and don’t feel tempted to try , though I know people who do. If it’s done judiciously it may well be OK, and may even be beneficial, but I doubt anything over an hour or two is good if the sun is hot. Given that ultra violet light clearly has sterilizing properties, and it seems quite probable that it would affect, if not damage the enzymes in Puer. Using a drying room, if done judiciously, is probably OK too.

Most pressing places are small factory type set-ups with sheet steel roofing. They get pretty hot inside. Because steam is being used, they also get pretty humid. Drying room temperature is important, but certainly controllable. I am more concerned with what sort of exhaust system a drying room has: having 40+ degrees of heat is certainly not a problem (if you put cakes outside with an air temperature of upper 30s, they will surely get that hot. If you put them in the sun, even hotter), but making sure that moisture is extracted efficiently is important. So choosing the right place at the right time of year is important: At this time of year with waiting times of two weeks or so, if they are not reliable, it may be tempting for a pressing outfit to push their temperatures up a little in order to speed up the process. That would not be desirable.

These days, a typical practice for deciding when pressed cakes are dry is to weigh them, or rather weigh two or three from a batch. The weight can be compared with the weight of the mao cha weighed out for steaming.

On Buying Tea

This post started off as a response to a question that someone once in a while will ask about how we source tea, but then it developed into a little monologue about visiting tea villages looking for tea. I have left that part till the end.

So first, let’s go back a few years, to when someone once suggested to me, rather humourously I thought, that we might consider changing our farmer – singular – as though there could possibly have been only one.

A couple of things become clear very quickly: if you’re not just sourcing tea from a few places that are near each other, you need a team of people. Some people you can squarely rely on. You can’t be in two places at the same time, and though regional differences exist – Menghai flushes earlier than Liu Da Cha Shan, or whatever, there’s a limit to how much ground you can cover in the relatively brief period of time that is (early) spring tea harvest.

Different areas & villages can have slightly different approaches too. There’s a reason for this, so it makes sense to draw on local knowledge and skills, rather than have a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Of course, a skilled tea maker can no doubt quickly adapt, but in any case, having one person make all your tea is a physical impossibility, dictated by distance and topography.

So then, the ways that I source tea are essentially these:

Arrange for pickers to pick leaves from a tea garden we have identified, which are then taken to a place where we have someone take in the fresh leaves and make the tea. The trees may not belong to the person who makes the tea. The farmer who owns the trees sells the fresh leaves and may be involved in the picking. In this way we have the most control over the process. It is also useful where a farmer has good trees, but hasn’t necessarily mastered the skills of making good tea.*

The caveat, if it need be stated, is that the person taking in the fresh leaves must be skilled at recognising fresh leaves from different trees and sources, be familiar with, and trust the pickers, and know exactly where the tea is coming from in order to avoid tea from elsewhere being brought in.

Cha Wang Shu – the small blue roofs are typically tea processing places

In recent years this has become much more common, particularly in places like Gua Feng Zhai where there are often concerns about the origin and purity of ‘mao cha’. The year before last someone said to me ‘Gua feng Zhai fresh leaves are expensive but their mao cha is cheap.’ It’s not completely true, but you get the idea.

Another situation where we might make tea in a similar way is where the tea garden is too far from the workshop to carry the fresh leaves out, and so the tea is made on the spot and carried out as mao cha. Some tea from the Yiwu area is still like that – anywhere where the tea gardens are too remote to be able to carry fresh leaves out to the place of processing – e.g. Bai Cha Yuan before they made a new road from Ding Jia Zhai to the tea gardens.

Making tea in Bai Cha Yuan

The third situation is to have a known farmer with good trees and tea making skills make the tea themselves. This also works well, but one needs to be sure of the skill of the tea maker. If the quantity is relatively small – a few kilos – it may be no problem, but a farmer who can make 5 kg well, may have trouble making 30 all to the same standard.

One also needs to be clear if the tea farmer takes in leaves from other villagers – many do and are honest about it, but not all, so one needs to be sure of sources and consistency.

The fourth situation, which is not necessarily separate from the above, is to work with others in the business. i.e. have others who help monitor or supervise the tea making and sourcing. This could be people who are effectively paid or take a cut, or it could be others in the tea business with whom one has a good relationship and with whom you pool resources.
The next situation is buying on spec from a sample. One can occasionally can get some good tea like this, but mistakes can be made. If the volume is small, so is the risk. In any case, if someone comes to you with a sample of good tea, it’s worth the trouble to go and take a look at where the tea is said to be coming from. I have on occasion bought tea in this way.
The last approach is going cold to a village with no knowledge or connections , this can be fun, but very hit and miss.

You only have to look around online at various blog posts by people who have done this to see that it is probably the least reliable method of sourcing tea, but makes for a good story. Unless you get very lucky, this is at best exploratory – laying the ground for something in the future. It’s rather like a paper chase…

It’s something I personally enjoy doing – going somewhere I’ve never been before and seeing what turns up. But it takes time. You can’t accomplish much in a day. It generally takes a few visits to start to get a handle on the situation in any one village.

Because of this, it’s worth considering how best to go about it.

Ideally maybe, you would look at the trees first, assuming they’re nearby and you can find them, then visit the farmer with the best looking gardens. But this is neither practical nor reliable, as you likely still need someone to show you round and in any case, the owner of the best looking gardens may not make the best tea, or it may already have been sold.

So a better option is going to farmers’ houses and see whose tea making looks the best (most professional, consistent,) and try some of their tea. You can always look at the tea gardens later.This is also time consuming. The first tea you get offered is likely not the best – the tea farmer is also testing you: he’s not going to sell you his best tea if you can’t tell the difference – and you could easily spend a few hours getting to the better stuff. If you do that in a couple of places, the day has gone. It’s impossible to go round every house in a village in this way, so inevitably there’s some luck involved in where you go.

It’s a long time since I read Walden, but I remember the observation that “A farmer’s wealth is measured by the extent to which the barn overshadows the house.” or something like that.

It’s useful logic. You’re probably not going to find the best tea by going to the poorest looking house in the village – particularly one where they have old tea trees. Anyone now, who has old tree tea gardens, should be getting a decent price for their tea if it’s any good. Of course, there could be other factors: the farmer has old trees, but because of size, poor management, etc. it doesn’t provide a good income, or they’re just not good at business – A Hungarian winemaker told me his father would say “A good winemaker must be a good man, must be good wine-maker, and be a good businessman.” It’s the same.

So a reasonable way to start is to see who looks like they’re doing decent business. It doesn’t of course mean their tea is good. They might just be good at doing business, or the owners just took out a hefty loan to build the house, but there’s a chance you’ll find something, and they might know what good tea is, and maybe know where to find it.

Occasionally you might get lucky: someone ordered 60 kg of tea, but then didn’t come through, or only bought 30 kilos in the end – spring tea buying can be a little frenzied and sometimes folks bite off more than they can chew – so, if you’re timing is right, there it is waiting for you.

A couple of other things are important:

The first, is village politics. Villages often comprise of two or three extended families, and they don’t always all get on. Once one gets to know one farmer in a village, they will likely rather jealously guard the connection. One has to be a fine diplomat, or a little thick skinned to navigate the network of connections both within, and outside a village.

Secondly, if you don’t know what the tea from village X should taste like, it’s better not to attempt any serious tea buying. It’s foolish to assume you’re beyond being fooled.

You should know roughly what the price is before you go. Tea prices are actually fairly transparent: very early in the spring, when there may only be a few kilos of tea around, if you were to ask how much tea ‘A’ is, the reply will likely be ‘I don’t know, the price hasn’t come out yet’ “不知道，价格还没出来。”. But a week or two later everybody knows – ‘So-so Pa Sha is about X a kilo, higher quality, around X+Y′, or whatever it is.

Like taking an un-metered taxi: to ask the price of going to ‘A’, only shows your ignorance. They see you coming. If you’re only buying 5kg of tea, the price will be higher than if you’re buying 50.

Bartering is worth it if you think you’re getting a bad deal and or, you don’t have too many hopes of developing a longer term relationship with the farmer. If you want to build mutual trust, trying to hack the farmer down on the price is not going to help much, but letting them know you have an understanding of quality and value is surely worthwhile.

*It is quite common for farmers to sell fresh leaves to someone else in their village, and in this way ensure a potentially less profitable, but more secure income. In the past it has been quite rare for farmers to make their own tea. The common practice was for farmers to pick leaves and sell them to a factory for processing.

Lao Huang Pian

I was around Ge Deng somewhere drinking tea with Chen Lao Ban (Guangdong Chen) when a tea farmer brought a bag of tea he had made for him. Chen Lao Ban makes his own tea and also has some local people make tea. There wasn’t much, no more than three kilos. He looked in the bag, looked up and asked “Where are the huang pian?” “You complained about them last year” the farmer said, “so this year I took them out.” Chen Lao Ban, looked up, shaking his head in disbelief, but said nothing.

Bada Shan Autumn 2012 Lao Huang Pian

Such is the story of huang pian, or yellow leaves, sometimes called ‘lao huang pian’.

As indicated in the previous post on the causes of bitterness and sweetness in tea, it is the older leaves that are sweeter.

Tea farmers: Aini, Bulang, Jinuo, etc, would not traditionally use young leaves to drink themselves. They use the sweeter ‘lao ye’, which they brew up in a kettle – traditionally in a bamboo tube – maybe having baked the leaves first.

For them, younger leaves, and all the tea brewing paraphernalia, is a Han Chinese thing which is alien to them. Many a tea farmer will tell you that when they were young, they never had a gaiwan or bowls. It is something they have now, rather as part and parcel of doing business.

If tea is growing quickly, the leaves, even including the fourth leaf are supple, pliable, and will not produce huang pian. When tea is growing more slowly, or has been left longer before picking, the lower leaves become less pliable, and if they are picked, will make huang pian. These leaves will not be made more supple by time or the frying processes, and remain un-rollable.

Ideas about huang pian in Puer tea change. From an appearance point of view, they are less desirable, but from a flavour point of view they are fine, and in small number, will not be detremental to the flavour; bringing a little extra sweetness.

The practice of picking them out is to please the customer who is primarily concerned with appearance. In Spring tea there should never be many. Autumn tea has more, and summer tea the most.

If the tea leaves are picked well and there are are few huang pian, the farmer can pick most of them out when they are firing the tea. When there are more, the laboriuos job of picking them out of the mao cha has to be done. The benefit is that they then become a ‘product’ in their own right.

Too many huang pian will lower the value of the tea, but most tea producers are happy to see some in their mao cha, which they can then decide to leave in or pick out and sell separately.

At Zhi Zheng, as there are generally very few huang pian in our mao cha after it has been dried, we prefer to leave them in the cakes rather than pick them out.

Monkey Picked Puer Tea

We’d been talking about this for months – going to pick some wild tea trees in the forest on Long Pa Liang Zi. Of course, they’re not truly wild trees in the proper botanical sense, but they’re trees that the village has no collective memory of anyone planting and they are left largely untouched in the forest except for when they flush twice a year.

There apparently used to be a lot more, but they have over time, died or been cut down. The taller trees are a fairly impressive 7 or 8 metres in height but my tea farmer friend’s younger brother scaled them in seconds to pick the tea.

To see him move through the forest – at a speed I could barely maintain – was to be reminded of the Jinuo people’s still recent past as hunter gatherers. The animals are, unfortunately largely all gone, but the brother is the kind of guy who is happy to set off for a few days in the forest – as long as he has a couple of packs of cigarettes and his machete. He also has a mobile phone but with the sound turned off, so wearing his camouflage outfit so that he melts easily into the forest.

The trees are a mix of da ye zhong and xiao ye zhong. The girth at the base of some is significant, but having been cut back, they have subsequently produced a number of relatively slender trunks. The taller trees, of course, in this kind of environment will have grown very quickly, and don’t necessarily represent vast ages, though the villagers believe them to be several generations old.

I was trying to measure the height of one using the altimeter on my mobile phone – which wasn’t very successful and, reminded of the ‘barometer story’ about the young Niels Bohr as a student under Michael Rutherford, was thinking it would be better to give the phone to the brother in the top of the tree and get him to drop it so we could measure how long it took to hit the ground. (If you’re not familiar with that story, you can read it here ).

One problem with trees in this situation is that, since they are on ‘common’ land, anyone can pick them – the sort of situation that led to fighting between Yi and Yao people near Yi Shan Mo a couple of years ago. Here, there are only Jinuo people so there is not that kind of issue, but the tree in the picture below was cut down last year. No one is saying who and, contrary to Wilde’s assertion, in villages like Ya Nuo, it is probably indiscrete to ask.

We kept moving through the forest from one small group of trees to the next, so there was no way to spread the leaves out to keep them cool and time was an issue.

Having finished picking, my friends brother took the basket and, moving quite a bit faster than the two of us, carried the leaves back to the workshop to spread them out.

When we got back, perhaps 20 or so minutes later we fired the wok and fried the tea.

We ended up with just under a kilo of mao cha which has a very distinct and pleasing fragrance. More on that another day.

Mang Zhi

When one thinks of Gong Ting (Tribute Tea) one first thinks of Man Song and when one thinks of places of historical importance related to Puer tea in Xishuangbanna, one perhaps first thinks of Yibang or Yiwu, or maybe Gedeng, but Mang Zhi has its share too.

Man Ya is below Hong Tu Po and the quickest way to get up there is from the Xiang Ming road.

Once across the bridge, it’s quite a quick journey up to Man Ya where the ancient tea tree gardens are. Like many places here, the original village no longer exists and the inhabitants have all moved further down the mountain.

One reason that this has happened is because of a lack of water, or the need for it outstrips the resources. Another is simply convenience. Sometimes villages have also been moved by the authorities.

These trees, known by the villagers as Tian An Men provide a fitting entrance into the area where the gardens are. As with many places, the gardens are a mixed bag with some xiao shu near areas of older da shu and gu shu, but the general feeling is still good.

Most villagers make tea in or on the edge of the tea gardens, while several sell the fresh leaves they have picked to someone else from the village to process.

Many of the trees are similar to those in other Liu Da Cha Shan areas, but a few are significant, like the one below with a girth of 60 or 70cm.

The gardens have good ground cover with plenty of ‘za cao’ or weeds.

Lost in the undergrowth are a couple of tombstones which appear to be maybe Ming Dynasty and look like they were for government officials. One has been defaced, it seems by…. well you know the story. The other is still in relatively good condition.

It is said that tea from these gardens was also Tribute Tea – tea that was reserved for emperors or government officials.

Ya Nuo (You Le Shan)

There’s plenty of tea to be found on the road out from Jinghong to Jinuo Shan, but it’s not until you get some way past Jinuo Shan Town that you start to see anything that looks like you might want to try drinking it. And not until you get to Ya Nuo, some 10 km later, that you start to see some forest and ancient tea tree gardens.

Formerly known as Long Pa, Ya Nuo is a Jinuo village on the Menghun side of Jinuo Shan. It is one of two original ‘buluo‘ that the Jinuo inhabited. Originally, there were two extended families with fifty odd households living under one roof in a large bamboo structure with a grass roof. All the buildings in the village now are brick and concrete.

In the late 1970’s, when the Jinuo people were officially recognised by the National Government, the families in Ya Nuo were joined by families from the second village.

The Jinuo are a Tibeto-Burman group with a population of about 21,000. Their language shares some similarities with Burmese and belongs to the Yi branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. Jinuo people are animist and traditionally, hunter-gatherers and tea farmers. The Jinuo ‘creation myth’ is that they were born out of the sun drum – a large drum with pegs holding a taught skin over the end of the drum that radiate out resembling the sun’s rays. All Jinuo villages have a male and female drum which are of central importance in festivities as they embody sacred spirits.

Traditional Jinuo culture was egalitarian, with clan members hunting and farming together and sharing their spoils equally amongst all families. Tea was traded with ‘ma bang’ caravan traders in exchange for commodities that were needed, such as salt, cotton and ironware.

The most important festival is Temaoke or ‘Iron Forging Festival’ which falls early in the new year and is referred to as the ‘Jinuo New Year’. For Tamaoke, a cow is slaughtered and shared amongst the villagers such that each household gets an equal share of all parts of the animal.

Jinuo people tradionally make tea by wrapping it in a large leaf and roasting it in the embers of a fire. The leaves are then removed and brewed in a length of bamboo,or nowadays, in a large kettle. The resulting tea is strong and sweet.

Older Jinuo people – particularly women, chew betel nut ‘Burmese style’ using areca nuts and betel leaves and continue to wear traditional dress, but most younger people now only do so for special occasions.

At Ya Nuo, there are 2,800 mu of old tea tree gardens, owned by the original families of the village. In the 70’s, a co-operative, that is now defunct, was set up and tea bushes planted around the village. The later arrivals have no old tea tree gardens.

From the back of the village an area of protected forest extends all the way to Menglun, and it is mostly in this area that the ancient tea gardens are to be found, at altitudes ranging from 1300 to 1700 meters.

Puer tea production – Supply and Demand

I’ve been thinking it’s about time to reach some kind of a conclusion on the issue of over-picking old tea trees. But to digress for a moment, I recently remembered these words from a Congolese student of economics I used to know in London:

“les besoins sont beaucoup, mais les ressources sont peut.”

So, putting that to one side for the moment, let’s carry on.

Climate and its impact on Puer Production

We have had a few years of drought conditions which have badly affected yield. Tea farmers are typically reporting a 35-40% drop in yield in 2012 compared with 4 or 5 years ago.

This, admittedly bleak scenario is offset by the topography of Xishuangbanna which creates many micro-climates, thus in some cases, mitigating the impact of localised, if not global climate change.

The factors for the farmer are about income, keeping customers happy and maintaining their (mostly inherited) trees. In the face of the first two, it is easy to see how the last could be relegated in importance in a quest for short term gain.

Not all farmers are necessarily aware of the issues, and may not have a long term view of their own livelihood or the health of their trees, though generally there is an understanding of the nature of the ‘heirloom’ that farmers have inherited and may hope to pass on to their own children.

Greed and the Market

Over-picking is sometimes attributed to the greed of tea farmers. This seems a little disingenuous. From an outsiders point of view, traditional tea farmers houses and lifestyles may look appealing, but I wonder how many people would be willing to take their place? How should tea farmers live? And who should dictate that?

Even as little as a decade ago, tea farmers in Xishuangbanna sold their tea for very low prices: often a few jiao a kilo. Puer tea mao cha was considered more an agricultural product than a high class beverage. Farmers would often travel considerable distances – not easy given the terrain and their limited resources – to try to sell their tea. Some did not even pick tea, apart from a little for their own consumption, until a few years ago, when the Puer ‘boom’ brought a new perception of the resource on their doorsteps. It must have seemed like a little magic to many farmers who suddenly were able to generate significant income without too much outlay, other than their own effort.

Most mountain minorities in Xishuangbanna have been used to living a subsistence lifestyle, so the Puer boom brought about a groundshift in their circumstances. With the cash income that many farmers now have, they are building houses, buying cars, flat screen TVs, computers.

The stories of tea farmers – and rubber farmers too for that matter – are legendary: suddenly coming into a decent amount of money, and then simply going to Moding in Laos (over the border from Mohan) and blowing it all in some mad frenzy at the casino, only to return home with empty pockets and carry on with their hand-to-mouth lifestyle.

So in a way, the fact that more farmers are beginning to have the foresight to put their hard earned money into something solid, like a house, should be seen as positive, even if, from a western point of view, the traditional house the farmer was living in had rather more charm than the concrete construction that has taken its place.

Most farmers houses have rather less stuff in them than other peoples so one can hardly blame them for wanting to acquire more household durables either.

Caveat Emptor

As tea farmers are increasingly exposed to the wider world, their ideas and expectations are changing. It is impossible to oppose or change that – hopefully, in the end, it will be beneficial to all, but one can’t condemn tea farmers for wanting to jump in and get a share of the bunfight that is ‘capitalism with Chinese charateristics’.

Things here are changing quite rapidly, but not all areas of a society or economy develop at an equal pace, and there is surely a process that we most of us know well enough: that ‘things’ do not necessarily equal quality of life, that awareness comes later, mostly after the acquisition of the things that one thought would bring something else into one’s life. But part of that process of acquisition will bring some interesting changes:

A while back, I was with a tea farmer I know in Nan Nuo Shan, who still lives in a traditional wooden has, but one equipped with a number of ‘mod-cons’. He was on the computer using QQ to talk to one of his customers in Shanghai. And this is a guy who left school before his teens without even the chance to learn Mandarin Chinese.

If it’s not already here, the time will probably soon come when someone in America can get online and buy tea straight from a tea farmer in Bulang Shan.

The Needs are Many but the Resources are Few

So back to the opening comment: given recent conditions, a farmer may be faced with a demand that they cannot meet, at the same time seeing a potential near halving of income. Does the tea farmer stand his ground, and resist the pressure/temptation to pick more than is good for the trees, and at the same time tell the buyer that the price has doubled?

Some buyers will go further and offer financial incentives to farmers in order to encourage them to pick more responsibly, but in any case, the buyer walks away with less tea than they were hoping to get for their money and is faced with recouping an investment that the consumer may not be willing bear.

Earlier posts on over-picking are here:

https://horsesmouth.puerist.co/pickin-money-trees-iii/

https://horsesmouth.puerist.co/picking-money-trees/

https://horsesmouth.puerist.co/over-picking-tea/

Naka

Naka -(Menghai Mengsong)

Naka is a Lahu village above Menghai Mengsong with around 100 households. They have a compratively small area of old tea gardens – about 500 mu of old tea trees. As early as the 1970’s tea manufacturers were sourcing tea from here. Read more about Naka here.

Like Picking Money from Trees II

To try to understand the problem better, let’s first consider what the ‘norm’ is in order to understand what over-picking is.

Methods of picking tea:

To cut a long story short, there are four basic methods of picking that vary according to whether the intention is to maintain or encourage growth, according to season and prevailing weather, and the condition of the tree.

Typical leaf formations that are picked are tip and one, two, three and even four leaves. The leaves that are left on the plant affect growth; anything from 3 or 4 older leaves to a ‘milk’ leaf can be left on the tree.

Also, the age of the tree and the intention of the tea farmer further determine how the farmer picks the tree; whether they pick high or low, the outer or inner leaves, strong or gently.

See the notes at the bottom of the post for more detail

Here are images from Yunnan Cha Shu Zai Pei Ji Shu (云南茶树栽培技术) showing the basic approaches to tea picking. The fourth approach discussed below uses a combination of the the following methods. Puer tea uses the same approach though typically with Puer tea there has been less rigorous adherence to these standards with tip and four leaves not being uncommon.

Normal black and green tea picking standard

image of picking the top out of a tea tree stem method - leaving more mature leaves further down the stem

Picking the tops out of the stem

Leaving a ‘fish’ leaf or ‘milk’ leaf on the tree

Tree Age, Season and Picking Frequency

Tea trees are generally defined by three phases: young, mature and old. Tea plants in their prime have vigorous growth and can be picked several times a year. The picking encourages further growth so, in this way, productivity can be increased. Borrowing liberally from Yunnan Tea Cultivation Techniques:

A tree that has reached maturity is in its prime. It has many branches and its foliage is plentiful. It has a well developed root system and a strong capacity to transpire. Its ability to photosynthesise is strong. At this stage a tree is at the height of its productive cycle, producing plentiful, quality tea leaves. At this point it is important to maintain the trees abundant foliage. In this phase of the trees life the tree can be picked more lightly (i.e. leaving more leaves on the tree) in the spring, pick more strongly in the summer, and in the autumn leave ‘milk’ leaves on the tree.

To maintain the trees foliage density, spring picking should leave the ‘milk’ leaf, summer, leave one large leaf, and in the autumn again leave the ‘milk’ leaf. At the same time as paying attention to the trees condition, ‘leave fewer leaves higher in the tree, more leaves lower. Leave more leaves on the outside of the tree, fewer in the middle.‘

Once a tree has reached an old age, it’s growth is less vigorous, it’s ability to photosynthesise is no longer at its peak and the tree becomes weaker. The trees organic compounds are reduced. ‘Chicken feet‘ branches begin to appear in the crown of the tree and new growth is weaker. Branches begin to die. At this stage, picking should be stopped for one or two seasons to allow the tree time to recuperate…..

Typically, tea bushes are generally picked three times in the spring, again in the summer, and then again in the autumn. Occasionally, also in winter or very early spring.

Mature tea trees are typically not picked in the winter, but are still often picked two or three times in the spring and again in the summer and autumn.

When a tree reaches an old age, it is accepted practice to reduce the number of times it is picked. In this way, an older tree may be picked once or twice in the spring and then again in the autumn. Though summer picking is often considered necessary to promote an autumn harvest. Trees in their ‘N’ hundreds of years may well only produce leaves in the spring, so are only picked once.

Clearly, appropriate-picking must take into account the season and age of the tree in order to preserve tree health.

From Yunnan Cha Shu Zai Pei Ji Shu

1. The aim of this method is to encourage growth in the crown of a bush or tree. This is typically used when plants are only a few years old. In this method, a stem is left till it has 5 or 6 leaves on it, or until it stops growing further leaves, and then the tip and two or three leaves are picked, leaving 3 or 4 older leaves still on the plant. Each flush is picked one or two times in the same way – picking the upper leaves, leaving the lower to encourage the plant to branch and produce more profuse foliage in the crown.

2. The second method is a combined approach. In this method, trees are left to grow till they have tips and 3 or 4 leaves, or sometimes tips and 4 or 5 leaves before picking, at which point, tip and two or three leaf formations are picked, leaving one or two mature leaves on the tree. The aim is twofold: to encourage growth and to harvest tea. The decision to leave one or two leaves is determined by the season and the strength of the plant.

3. The third method is in Chinese referred to as ‘Leaving a fish’ method because the tea picker leaves a small leaf on the tree which perhaps looks like a small fish. It is also referred to as ‘liu nai ye’ – leaving a ‘milk leaf’ method. This is the principal method used in picking many kinds of tea. Generally, picking is done when there are new tip and one, two or three leaf formations. The small ‘milk leaf’ is left on the tree.

It is typical to pick a bush ‘clean’ as if this is not done it will influence the following flush.

4. The last approach is to pick ‘according to local conditions’. This is understood as ‘whichever leaves sprout first, pick first, whichever leaves sprout later, pick later’. i.e. ‘Pick those leaves that have reached the standard (e.g. tip & one, two or three leaves), those that have not reached the standard, leave till the next phase of picking, those that have already passed the standard, pick according to the standard.’ Superfluous leaves are left on the tree. In this way, the tree is picked clean and there is an even distribution of both young and older leaves and whilst suiting the requirements of the tea farmer, picking is determined by the trees age, rate of growth, season, etc. In this way a tree can be picked many times in a year.

Horse's Mouth

Tea Tales from the South