Category Archives: Weather

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 It’s a bit out of date, so I double-checked on-line to confirm my understanding, which is that in French, ’boutique’ simply means a shop.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.

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

 

 

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.

 

Spring Tea

Another really dry spring, though it looks like it’s going to rain this weekend. Tea prices have gone up anything from 25 to 50%. Earlier in the spring, people were saying that Dayi and Cheng Shen Hao were going round pre-ordering tea which ratcheted up the price, but then, as some others commented, they’re not necessarily willing to pay top whack, and there are plenty of tea farmers who have solid customers who they don’t want to blow off anyway.

One tea farmer was telling me yesterday that, in their village at least, it was an increase in folks from Guangdong that was pushing up prices. That may be maligning Guangdongers, there’s always been plenty of Guangdong people coming buying tea. In any case, the village has seen a fifty percent increase on the price of fresh leaves since last year, and over the last three days, it’s gone up 10 yuan a day. The weather, as always is also a factor: very dry, not so much tea. After it rains, there will be lots more, but then there’s at least a few days after the rain where it won’t be worth having if anyone picks it.

HM came back from Ge Lang He saying Pasha was full of folks from Ban Zhang buying tea – draw your own conclusions. BHT fresh leaves are around 750-800 yuan a kilo, which means prices around 3000 a kilo and the rest of Wan Gong not much less. Walong is still about half that. So here are a couple of pictures to be going on with:

 Wa Long village in Man Zhuan

Wa Long is a little like Man Lin or somewhere like that where, at slightly lower elevations, it’s surrounded by rubber, but right round the village, and the tea gardens, the environment is surprisingly intact.

walong old tea trees

Here are a couple of trees right near the village, but most old trees are in the forest above the village.

Coming up from the Xiang Ming road, one first gets to Wa Long Lao Jia, and from there you run along the mountain ridge to Walong. From the road between the two villages one can see Gedeng.

wa long looking across to gedeng

Weather Report

 

ancient tea tree in Bang Wai

Ancient tea tree in Bang Wai, December 16th, 2013. Photo by Wang Xiong

We are having the longest sustained cold spell in ‘Banna that anyone here can remember. For over a week we’ve been having night time temperatures of 10 Centigrade or less, with two or three nights getting down to 5 or 6 in Jinghong. Daytime temperatures have been getting up to 20. In the mountains it has been colder, with heavy frosts and ice in Bulang Shan and snow in Lincang.

There were a few days in 1999 that were cold, but according to local people, it was not that extreme and didn’t last more than 3 or 4 days.

The general perception is that early spring tea will not be pretty, but the flavour should be good.

Early Spring Tea

Well, the hoopla of early Spring tea is done. Yet another round of price increases with plenty of exaggeration thrown in for good measure. Ban Zhang xiao shu for 3,800/kg, Man Song for 4000 to 6000 a kilo depending on who you are and who you talk to, Bing Dao for seven or eight thousand.

HM’s riff is that sheng cha has not yet reached it’s ceiling and that compared with Long Jin et al. it’s still very fairly priced. He is certainly not averse to paying top price for what he believes to be top grade tea, so I was surprised to hear him voice the idea that this year’s Bing Dao was not worth that much.

zhi beng ancient tea tree gardens

Zhi Beng ancient tea tree gardens

The rain early on in the year brought the first flush sooner than has been the case in the last few years, but then the tea was thinner in flavour. After the third week of March things improved, so there was a relatively brief window of time when the tea was good, and then it was Ching Ming Jie which, according to Han tea culture, signals the end of early Spring tea. Of course, it works as a rule of thumb for the most part, but there are always exceptions. Many tea farmers will try and tell you that in any case, the second flush is better than the first, but nobody much believes them.

In fact, it might make more sense to consider the lunar calendar rather than the solar – on which Qing Ming Jie is based – when picking tea, and by which it seems like harvesting might best be done on a waning moon.

Tea from more bei yin tea gardens have, to my mind at least, produced more interesting tea. Though this is not the case everywhere. The weather of the previous two or three years was in a sense an aberration and it is perhaps good that it has not continued. Though the current situation is also cause for concern.

drying early spring tea Ma Li Shu

Looking across to Mi Bu

Since the February rain, nothing. Hardly a drop in most places. So the second flush has not yet shown itself in many areas, though this is not universal. Many farmers reported a drop in gu shu yield this year, which is always good for helping to push up the price, but others reported above average harvests. Of course it’s not just the climate. There may well be other factors, like over-picking, that could bring about a drop in yield.

Sourcing good tea is not getting any easier: One needs to be paying attention, be resolute, have good contacts, have a good wad of money in one’s pocket, and some good luck too.

There was the usual flush of stories: like the sacks of tea in Gua Feng Zhai with last year’s gu hua cha stuffed in the bottom and some spring tea on top.

mi bu near ma li shu

Near Ma Li Shu. The tree in the background with red flowers, but no leaves is a Kapok.

I was in one village, Ma Li Shu I think, when a tea farmer was lamenting the current situation: “These cha lao ban who only want tou chun tea. Whose going to buy the rest of the tea?” For them the trend of distinguishing between gu shu, da shu, xiao shu and first flush, second flush etc, is not particularly to their benefit. They perhaps feel that they need to be making significant sums of money on the first flush in order to offset the income from the rest of the season.

Certainly, the bigger producers, like the folks from Guangdong in Ya Nuo are good news for the villagers, as they will buy tea from all three seasons, so the farmers do not get stuck with tea that they have a hard time selling. This is a much more reliable income than picky tou-chunners who leave the farmer in a precarious position.

mang zhi -yang lin

Looking across from Yang Lin. The mountains to the left of the valley are Ge Deng, to the right Man Zhuan

Spring in Banna

Spring has come early this year. A few weeks ago there was some bush tea around and I was in Lao Si Tu where they were processing some old tree tea.

At this time of year in the mountains, hillsides are spotted with white and the air is heavy with the fragrance of Bauhinias. In Chinese the tree is known as zi jing hua -紫荆花 , but in Xishuangbanna they bear mostly white flowers so are known locally as bai hua shu – 百花树.

The road up to Yi Bang was much better than it was a couple of weeks ago: the mud has all but dried up leaving a rock hard surface with deep ruts in places. But it has not dried out to the point that it is terribly dusty. Also, it is early enough in the season that there has not yet been much traffic.

I was in an Yi village some way beyond Yi Bang – He Bian Zhai. A small village with some fifteen households at the head of the Long Gu River.

he bian zhai near yi bang

Ancient tea trees near He Bian Zhai

Most of the ancient tea tree gardens are below the village, but some are next to the houses. A few are quite large, with a girth of maybe 80 cm, but most are more slender. The trees here are xiao ye zhong – small leaf variety, as are many places in the Six Famous Tea Mountains area. The ground here is not treated in any way. The soil is hard packed and very dry as the farmers do not turn it.

xiang ming he valley in the early morning

Looking down the Xiang Ming River valley

 

 

You Le Shan – dawn

dawn on Youle Shan

A chilly early morning looking south east towards Mengla from Jinuo Shan.

I was back in Youle Shan last week. The weather here has turned quite cool. The days are still into the 20’s, but the nights can be quite chilly. At this time of year there are some spectacular sunrises and sunsets.

The area to the right of the picture is all part of Menglun Protected Forest Reserve. The villages tea gardens border on the reserve.

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/

 

picking basket - summer tea -

Like Picking Money from Trees

Over-picking Puer tea

Periodically, there is some comment online about Puer tea and over-picking of tea trees, so I thought it would be interesting to explore this further, and try to tease (‘scuse the pun) out what exactly this means in practice, and what the effects and implications are. It’s also important to consider this in relation to the Puer tea market to understand how it too may be impacting tea cultivation practices.

The broad picture is that concerns about the quality of Puer tea are becoming more frequent, and the explanations typically include climate/drought, overpicking and the use of a range of methods that are aimed at increasing productivity.

There are a number of factors:

1. The last few springs have been particularly dry which has inevitably affected yield, if not flavour.

2. At least in recent history, prior to 2005, the majority of people in the Puer tea supply chain –  farmers down to customers – didn’t distinguish between old trees and bushes when picking tea. Old tree tea was not specially sought after so there was not the potential to over-pick and stress trees that there is now.

3.There is increasing demand for tea, with ever more people seeking a limited, and probably dwindling supply of old/ancient tree Puer.

4. Farmers have been using practices which, for them at least, are new – from turning the ground around tea trees to applying chemical fertilizers – in an attempt to increase yield. There are concerns about how these practices are impacting tea quality.

4. In recent years, methods of picking have:

a) had the propensity to disregard time honoured wisdom about tea tree cultivation, especially vis-a-vis the impact of weather.

b) been minimally influenced by research and understanding that has emerged and is recommended by tea colleges, universities and government organisations.

b) possibly fallen prey to the pressure of demand amidst a growing global market and big economic shifts for local farmers, many of whom previously lived subsistence lifestyles.

If we assume that inappropriate-picking, above all other factors, is having an adverse effect on tree health and tea quality, we should first consider what is ‘normal practice’ for tea picking, and specifically for old tea  trees.