Fresh tea at the base of Nannuo Mountain

Nannuo Mountain, in the Chinese province of Yunnan, is blessed with some of the most ancient tea trees on Earth, growing on rich rainforest soils.  Sun Peipei is a tea expert and native of Hebei, but she had never visited Yunnan.  Knowing that the trees had to be somewhere up there, we randomly chose one of the mountain trails, meandering through picturesque villages and thick bamboo forest.

Village home on Nannuo Mountain

So… as the memories of rice dumplings faded, we saw one of the local villagers heading down the road; with big eyes, dark skin and kind smile this man looked amazingly similar to the Huasteco people in Mexico.  Stopping a few meters away, he greeted us in the traditional Chinese way:  ”have you eaten?”

Tea Master Yang Si

“Hello.  No, not yet.”

“Then come with me; we’ll pick some vegetables and go to my house; it’s very simple food.”

Very simple food… we stopped by a small garden that belongs to the village, picked a beautiful giant cabbage with some healthy bug bites on one side, carrots and chili peppers.  These ingredients, cooked over firewood with bits of fresh bacon and washed down with local baijiu (moonshine) and tea brewed with spring water made the most amazing meal.

Tea master Yang Si's home... the sounds of fire, birds and wind make it one of the most comfortable places on Earth.

Our new friend, Yang Si, turned out to be a tea farmer from the Aini ethnic minority.  His people live in the mountain areas of northern Thailand, Myanmar and southern China, and have been devoted to the production of tea for many generations.  Their homes are built with wood and are permanently perfumed by the rainforest, tea trees, and a small bonfire that is lit 24/7 inside the house.  Their chickens are free range (free to range in the kitchen, the bedroom…); their vegetables have a flavour that mass produced crops cannot match.  And their tea, produced in small batches, over a fire in a small shack, is amazing; just like wines from small vineyards, every batch is unique.

Yang Si at work

Yang Si then invited us for dinner… and the following day for breakfast, then lunch, and then dinner again.  Sitting by the fire while sharing a meal can easily become a habit, just like picking fresh tea leaves and brewing them with mountain water.

Tea, Nannuo Mountain style

Three months later, in April ‘09, I returned to Yang Si’s home, this time to buy some of his amazing Pu Er tea to the West; it is the first time he shares tea beyond China.

Yang Si’s tea is available at  www.daotea.ca/web2010/daotea_ancient_tree.php

Praise for Yang Si’s tea:  www.teareviewblog.com/?p=8546

I sneaked under a piano and lay my head on a pillow.  Sound came, first in isolation, then as flowing stream; no thoughts, just sound.

My new friend Craig Addy (www.underthepiano.ca) pioneers the concept of Sound Spa in Vancouver. Guests are cocooned by music, lying under the piano while Craig improvises a masterpiece.  I highly recommend it.

The piano

As thought and memory came back to my head, I could not help comparing the experience with having tea in Hwagae, in the southern slopes of Mount Jiri, at the home of my good friend and tea master, Kim Jong Yeol.

Tea master Kim Jong Yeol's home in Hwagae, at the foot of Mout Jiri

Tea Master Kim Jong Yeol.

Lacking a better way to describe the feeling, I will borrow from Anthony de Taize, author of The Korean Way of Tea:

“We can hear a mountain stream gushing over boulders down the valley in front of us, and all the trees around are in their freshest green.  The taste of the first cup of tea, made with water that is far below boiling point, on a palate freshly awakened, is so intense, so inexplicably rich and varied, that from that day on the only question can be: ‘when shall I be able to go back and drink that tea again?’”

Music at Mr. Kim Jong Yeol's home is courtesy of this stream.

Freshly baked bread, tea leaves garnish.

Online tea shop:  www.daotea.ca

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dao-Tea/295022550502?ref=ts

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/DaoTea

How can you capture the essence of a high altitude rainforest in a tea leaf?  Why have some tea groves survived for hundreds of years without any need of fertilizers or pesticides?  How do you keep tea trees producing top quality leaves year after year?

These are some notes from my conversations with tea  masters Weng Shangyi, Yang Si, Men Er and Da Zhen.  All pictures were taken in their groves.

Tea farmers pluck the best blossoms early in spring; it is only fair to share some of the rest with the “other folks” in the grove.

She also likes the tea leaves in Da Zhen's grove (Anji)

Bug bites are good news in older leaves of Master Weng Shangyi's Long Jing tea bushes.

Flowers, lichens, moss… the richness of a high altitude rainforest is captured in every tea leaf that grows there.  This diversity, along with the substrates in the terroir, makes the difference between good and sublime tea.

Lichen covers the trunk of tea master Yang Si's centuries-old tea trees in Nannuo Mountain.

Flowers like these grow wild next to tea master Men Er's groves in Nannuo Mountain.

Healthy tea groves are defined by more than just plants.

Happy spider spinning its web on a tea bush, next to a field of wild chrysanthemum (by tea master Zhan Zimei's home).

One of the neighbors in tea master Da Zhen's tea plantations (Anji).

If your grove lies under the canopy of taller trees, the soil will be rich.

Giant trees like these provide shade and enrich the soil of tea master Yang Si's groves in Nannuo Mountain.

The "ocean of bamboo", as it is called in China, nourishes Da Zhen's tea groves in the province of Zhejiang.

Old trees, like old friends, are best.

Men Er, Pedro Villalon and Yang Si under the "King Tea Tree" in Nannuo Mountain.

My latest trip was to Qiao Ban, a very small mountain village in the western part of Zhejiang Province.  My objective was to meet Mrs. Zhan Zimei and Mr. Wen Xingzou, parents of a good friend of mine, and long-time tea farmers.  I was, they told me, the first non-Chinese to join the harvest of chrysanthemum flowers that grow wild on the mountain slopes.  And I was thrilled to meet these wonderful people who have each devoted over 50 years to the art of tea, and was honored to join them for dinner.

Mrs. Zhan and her granddaughters

In the mountains of China, I discovered once again, it is useless to say that you are full. Whenever your bowl is half-way empty, your hosts will serve some more rice, or throw in a fried egg with their chopsticks… or urge you to eat  more from a bowl of veggies.  The best you can do is top the bowl (making the hosts proud) and eat very slowly, timing to eat the last 30% once the rest of the table has finished.

Rice?  The pantry’s right by the kitchen.

No complaints.  Sharing their tea, made with traditional methods,was the highlight of the trip; but the food alone, made fresh with vegetables from their gardens, roots that grow wild on the mountain and freshly laid eggs would have been a great reason to travel.

A day’s harvest

If you would like to learn more about Mrs. Zhan & Mr. Wen’s wild chrysanthemum tea, I invite you to visit the Dao Tea online artisan tea shop (http://daotea.mybigcommerce.com/products/Wild-Chrysanthemum.html).