Extracted from www.yunnantea.netA strange ‘mule team’, carrying tents, sleeping bags and waterproof tarps tramped through the dark, impenetrable primeval forests of the Ailao, Wuliang and Shuangjiang Mountains. Among the team, there was the 60 year old honorary chairman of the Tea Association who is now also the vice director of the Yunnan Provincial People’s Congress, comrade Huang Bingsheng, as well as the young biology student Guo Minghui. They are not ‘backpackers’ in the modern sense of the word, nor are they outdoor sportsmen. They are part of a series of investigative activities into the ancient tea trees of the Pu’er tea region organized by the provincial government, scientific and educational departments in early March. At the Guangzhou Trade Fair in the early eighties, Mr. Guo Honglian, president of the Hong Kong Kongkow Tea Trade Association told me that Hong Kong tea aficionados have discovered a thing or two through long-term Pu’er drinking: Vietnamese, Thai and even Chinese Pu’er’s from Guangxi and Guangdong Provinces are fine right away, but unsuitable for long term storage; Yunnan Pu’er however, is perfectly suited for this, and through long term mellowing loses its bitter flavor, has a smooth taste and mellow aroma – it is definitely the top of the Pu’er teas. In those years at the trade show, I saw that the Pu’er tea booths from Guangdong, Sichuan and Guizhou Provinces were so empty that birds could nest there, while my booth was always being barraged by tea traders from Hong Kong and Macao. Yunnan Pu’er tea has spread far and wide, standing high above its contenders. This is closely connected to the richness of ancient and cultivated tea trees in the Yunnan Pu’er region. As for the compounds that are so important in making the uniqueness of Pu’er tea such as tea polyphenols, tea catechins, caffeine, L-theanine and water extract are all present in much higher quantities in the Yunnan large leaf tea than in small leaf types. Right now, there are over 200 types of tea-related tree that have been discovered, mostly distributed through China’s South and Southwest. Yunnan Province is home to 47, while Guangxi has 22 and Guangdong, 20. As for actual tea trees, there are 34 types, with Yunnan being home to 31 plus two variations. Most of the cultivation-type teas belong to the tea family (Camellia sinensis) and the Pu’er variety (Camellia sinensis var.assamica); wild tea trees usually fall into the quinquelocularis series Dachang (Camellia Tachangensis) or the pentastyla series Dali (Camellia Taliensis). Wild tea trees have also been discovered in northeastern, southeastern and central Yunnan, but their properties are different from the giant tea trees of the Pu’er region of southwest Yunnan. The goal of our excursion was to seek out the origins of the Yunnan Pu’er tea family, and explore the biological mysteries of Yunnan Pu’er tea.
I.
March fourth, the first station of the expedition, Kunlu Mountain, Pu’er County. Here, the Hong Kong movie star Zhang Guoli donated 20,000 RMB (USD 2,400) to maintain an ancient tea tree. Mr Zhang came to Kunming (Yunnan’s Capital) to make a film. On the first day, he tasted some of my aged Pu’er tea, and has been hooked on in ever since. He has seen a lot in his days, and is a very sophisticated tea drinker. Since then, his entire family including his wife, Deng Jie, have stopped drinking aged Wulong (Oolong) tea. In order to obtain good visual documentation, for this trip he asked a friend to bring his professional video camera the day before we began our trip. The student Guo Minghui, who has filming experience, is our trip photographer.
Kunlu Mountain, which lies in Kuanhong Township, Pu’er County, is part of the Wuliang Mountain Range. The terrain is steep and hilly; after searching the entire area, we were unable to find a suitable place to set camp. It was comrade Huang Bingsheng who finally found a flat meadow to set up our tents. This was our first night on the mountain. Li Jian, nicknamed Mountain Ghost (or Mountainholic) by his buddies at the Red Extreme Outdoor Club, was responsible for leading us in setting up the tents. The new campers made a lot of fuss, finally getting all the tents up. Mountain Ghost said to me jokingly, “you really are something else, you brought a provincial leader all the way out here to sleep in a tent”. In the night, we talked about the Tea Route market in ancient Pu’er. In fact, the main commodity there was actually salt. That day in Kunlu Village, I had seen a few salt-licks that had been worn smooth by countless cows and goats; I even took a picture. Yunnan is nowhere near the ocean, and the need for salt is a big problem for the hill-tribes that live here. Pu’er’s Mohei Township is home to an underground salt mine, which provides sustenance to the villagers of the surrounding tea mountains. Aside from cow and goat hides, the largest commodity traded for salt is tea. It is no surprise that a large trading market emerged in Pu’er and that this place became the center for Pu’er tea. In earlier days, the Pu’er region did not produce so much tea. In the early 1970’s, as Sino-Vietnamese relations fell apart, patriotic Hong Kong tea traders organized a boycott against Vietnamese Pu’er tea, and came to the mainland in search of new sources. In 1973, the Foreign Trade Ministry sent an urgent telegram ordering Yunnan to produce over 200 tons of tea leaves for Hong Kong. The Provincial Tea Company began planning that year for tea factories in Kunming, Xiaguan, Menghai and Pu’er to begin producing Pu’er tea. In future plans, the Pu’er Tea Factory would always have the smallest production. According to historical records, most of the tea produced in southern Yunnan came from Pu’er, where it was then shipped off in all directions, which is why this variety of tea was named Pu’er. Historically, the name Pu’er was a general term for large leaf Yunnan tea varieties that had been allowed to mold, then worked into any type of tea. Modern Pu’er tea refers to molded tea that has been fermented and carefully selected. Some people who don’t understand the history still mix the names up, coming up with laughable names like Pu’er black tea, Pu’er green tea, etc…
In Tang Dynasty times, the district of Yinsheng (modern day Jingdong, Xiajing Valley and Pu’er) was administered by an official named Li, who loved tea. He never returned to his hometown in Jiangsu, rather settling down along a mountain ravine in Kuanhong Township and planting two tea orchards on Kunlu Mountain. The orchard at Kunlu Village consisted of 372 trees, while the other orchard had about the same. As for the age of the trees, it seems they should be much older than those at the ancient tea orchard on Menhai’s Nannuo Mountain. These trees are very tall, all measuring over 5 or 6 meters. A ladder must be used to pick the leaves. The trees’ posture were wide open or partially open, most of the tender branches had visible hair; the leaves were between 6 and 15 centimeters in length, the leaf surface was flat or slightly bulging, the leaf edges had fine, sharp teeth, and there were two to three scales on each flower bud. I reckon that these trees cannot produce a considerable amount, but the value of tea from old trees is definitely quite high. These orchards lived on under the care of the Li family descendants for several hundred years. During the Nationalist Republic, a Li descendant, named Li Mingren took over the family business, using tea to cultivate people when he invested 1,825 silver pieces to construct the Kuanhong School. Li Mingren also served on the Provincial Congress. After he died, people carved a tea tree on his gravestone.
At dawn we set out from our campsite at 1700 meters above sea level, following along the meandering mountain path. Comrade Huang Bingsheng moved very fast, and often had to stop and wait for everyone to catch up. He previously served as the director of the Agriculture Bureau, later serving two terms as the provincial vice governor in charge of agricultural affairs, so he spent a lot of his time climbing around the mountains of the countryside. There is definitely a big difference between exercising and not. Kunlu Mountain is on the lower reaches of the Wuliang Mountain Range, and the altitude is rather low, at only 2,200 meters, just south of the Tropic of Cancer line. The tree that Zhang Guoli sponsored lies on a 70 degree slope at 2,100 meters. The environment of the surrounding area is pristine, with the only evidence of humans being a painted number, JC253CM. This tells us that the root diameter is 80.57 cm, and at least 25 meters tall. This is the largest tea tree on Kunlu Mountain, and is part of the Dali pentastyla series (Camellia Taliensis). The giant tree is full of luxuriant leaves, and the trunk splits into three forks. To compete for sunlight with the surrounding vegetation, the tree shoots right up to the sky. Only at the very top of the tree do we see side shoots. The slope was too steep for us to measure the trunk. As the surrounding vegetation was extremely thick, we were unable to photograph the entire tree, and we resorted to crouching on the ground to find a good perspective. There are many mountain tea plants on Kunlu Mountain, and the wild tea trees are even more abundant.
The mountain was not so high, but the road was very long. Today we walked no less than twelve or thirteen kilometers. In the forest, the canopy blocks out the sun, and it’s not so bad. When we were a few kilometers from Kuanhong Township, the trees retreated, and the scorching sun soaked our backs with sweat and made our minds numb. When Miss Majia from the Sugar and Tea Department of the Agriculture Bureau cried out in shock, our minds were brought back to alertness. There was a green two meter Bamboo Leaf Snake stretched across the path. He was sticking out his tongue and working his eyes about, watching us tauntingly, not leaving until a few minutes later.
II.
The investigation into ancient cultivated tea trees is a part of a larger investigation into ancient tea trees in the Pu’er tea production region. Through the period of investigation we visited Nannuo Mountain in Menghai County, the Hekai Manmai Village, the Banzhang ancient tea orchard of Bulang Mountain, and visited the ancient tea orchard of Jingmai in Lancang County. A few years back, we made a mistake, emphasizing high production levels across the board, and the reform of low producing orchards. Large swaths of ancient tea orchards were lost. The director of the National Tea Quality Testing Center Luo Shaojun told me that enormous monoculture tea orchards were not a good thing. The natural environment is gone, the pests multiply, and there is no choice but to use large amounts of agricultural chemicals. Since the European Union raised its standards regarding pesticide residues, I went to Europe several times to meet with the German Tea Association and the OTG Tea Company. OTG Director Kaufman told me that the Chinese “666” chemical compound is very stubborn, remaining in the soil for more than twelve years. The grass that grows form the soil holds the pesticide residues, which are embedded into rabbit meat when they eat the grass, and transferred to humans who eat those rabbits. There is already scientific evidence to show that this chemical compound has carcinogenic properties. In the past several years, we have had no choice but to avoid these high risk pesticide areas to organize our tea exports. Tea is a healthy beverage, not junk food, but if there are pesticide residues the drink cannot be healthy.
The main inhabitants of Nannuo Mountain are the Hani ethnic group. During the Nanzhao Kingdom (a non-Chinese kingdom that ruled over Yunnan and much of Southeast Asia –trans.) of the Tang Dynasty, Some of the Hani that were concentrated in the Ailao Mountain Range migrated southwards, passing through Yuanjiang, Mojiang and Jiangcheng into Xishuangbanna. But the Hani were certainly not the first residents of Nannuo Mountain. When the Hani arrived at Nannuo Mountain over one thousand years ago, there were already destitute tea orchards left behind by the Puman people. The Puman people were ancestors of the modern Bulang, and the descendants of the ancient Pu people. The Pu were the earliest people to cultivate tea in Yunnan, and are called the “ancient tea farmers”. In December 1951, the Yunnan Provincial Tea Research Institute (then called the Fuo Hai Tea Testing Ground for the Yunnan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forestry) discovered an ancient tea tree measuring 550 cm in height with a 138 cm diameter at the base. They respectfully named it “King of Tea Trees”. In 1954, the noted botanist Cai Xitao examined the King of Tea Trees. In 1957, the nation’s tea experts, professors and scholars ran a comprehensive set of tests on the King of Tea Trees, and produced definitive evidence that the tree was in fact cultivated; it was a living fossil of the Chinese people’s domestication of the tea tree. The Nanuo Giant Tea Tree is characterized by elliptical leaves of 11 cm in length and roughly 4 cm in width and the leaves all tilted diagonally upwards, gradually sharpening to the tip. The leaves were a deep green, and the leaf flesh was thick and soft. The edges of the leaves were flat, with many shallow teeth and a very visible main vein. The new sprouts were sturdy and of a deep green hue with lots of hair; it had a strong ability to produce new sprouts. Since the 1980’s, the amount of visitors and cars steadily increased, and the surrounding natural environment was seriously damaged. The tree itself was wounded many times, and in 1995, the king of cultivated tea trees at Nannuo Mountain passed away. On May 8, 2002, the head of the provincial Tea Research Institute Zhang Jun and the director of the Menghai County Tea Office Zeng Yunrong discovered another relatively ancient and large cultivated tea tree on a remote slope deep in the Forest of Nannuo Mountain. Cultivated tea trees are characterized by: mostly bushy or partially treelike trunk shape, a fully or partially open posture, hairy tender branches, leaves 6 to 15 cm in length, flat or bulging leaf surfaces, fine teeth on the leaf edges, and two to three scaled flower buds.
Directors Zhang and Zeng had us walk through the ancient tea orchard for several hours. This tea orchard stretches almost 2,000 hectares. Nannuo Mountain has an average of 126 days of fog per year, and receives between 1500 to 1750 mm of rainfall; the relative humidity is above 80%, the altitude about 1400 meters above sea level; the earth is very thick and the soil fertile. This is the natural environment for large leaf tea trees. The area was truly full of life. There are over 8,000 hectares of ancient tea orchards in Menghai County, mostly concentrated in the inaccessible mountain areas. An ancient tea tree was recently discovered in a ravine near Banpozhai village. The tree is 530 cm tall, with coverage of 935x750 cm; the main trunk is 76.4 cm in diameter at the base, and 40 cm in diameter in the center. The first branch is 60 cm off the ground, and there are 6 main branches. The posture is open, and the coverage is very wide. The Hani people just happened to be celebrating their “Hongxi” Festival, the festival for the harvesting of the tea leaves. I saw a two year old Hani child already holding her bamboo cup full of tea. That night we pitched camp on the crest of a hill roughly fifty meters from the giant tea tree. In the tea forest, one can easily find trees so large that it takes several people holding hands to completely wrap around the trunk. These trees are definitely older than the tea orchard. We were puzzled: how did the first inhabitants plant the tea orchard without destroying the forest? Could they have already been aware of the natural relationship between tea trees and surrounding flora? At night, the large bright moon crept slowly over the treetops. Day after day, year after year through hundreds of seasons and dozens of generations, the world’s oldest and largest forest of cultivated tea trees produces bounty and enriches the life of humankind from the high Yunnan Plateau.
We were left breathless by the tea orchard’s ability to balance with the local environment. This was truly a forest in tea and tea in forest. All manner of flora and fauna were thriving on the ancient tea trees, even rare orchids bloomed on their trunks. Worms were living on the trunk of a tea tree in the ancient orchard at Jingmai, and thousands of spider mites came to devour them. Miss Ma cried out to comrade Guo Minghui. We could not believe our eyes as our photographer flew to the scene and captured the amazing sight on film.
It was impossible to find a suitable flat area in the ancient tea orchard, and we resorted to laying tea leaves on the ground to cushion our tents. The Hani households have concrete platforms in front of their wooden houses for drying tea leaves. Pu’er tea is produced with molded tea leaves that have been dried in the sun; they still contain about 12% or more of water. The molded tea leaves have a high water content, and they naturally ferment through the process of trading, storing and shipping. For red (aka black) and green teas, the fresher the better; as for antique Pu’er teas, one must look for the proper production processes, accumulated age and sufficient mellowing. It is completely different. In Taiwan there was a person who wrote a book, saying that he stores his Pu’er in cold storage. A few days before, I showed this to the Kongkow tea trade association vice director Tang Songfa; we looked at each other and had a good laugh. Mr Tang said jokingly; let him sell his Pu’er ice blocks. Vintage Pu’er is not made in the modern refrigerators of today, but tempered through the ages along ancient stone roads. In those years, I must have rented out every air-raid shelter in Kunming to store Pu’er tea, and later modified the Yiliang Tea Factory Pu’er storage house several times, organizing research groups to do experiments on prevention of mites and optimization of the mellowing process. These activities accumulated rich experience towards the successful production of Pu’er tea.
At the Simao Pu’er Tea Festival last year, the secretary of the Simao Tea Association Huang Canhui led Ms Luo Shaojun and I around the tea city to taste some Pu’ers. Some of the booths were shouting up a storm about their tea, but it was no good. Since I hadn’t tasted any good aged Pu’ers, I wasn’t very interested in the whole thing. At a booth near the central gate, a young woman passed me some of the Pu’er she was brewing. I took a sip, and the mellow aroma seeped into my lungs; my eyes lit up. The girl said that the tea had a history of over thirty years. I asked where it was produced, and the answer was Lancang. That sounded about right. I asked, “Lancang Tea Factory?” As I finished that sentence, the old woman who was beckoning people at the gate came over and locked her eyes on me. She recognized me. At the Kunming Trade Fair in 1980, I had oversold our reserves of Pu’er tea, and the company sent me out to organize more to fill the order on my own. I ran all around, and met the then director of the Xiaguan factory Luo Naixin, and the Menhai factory director Zou Bingliang, both in charge of inspection. Lancang County has many ancient tea orchards, and their factory had just been added as a Pu’er tea producer. The old woman’s name is Li Yingmei, and was in charge of quality inspections; her husband, Wang Yongtai is the factory director. They had a batch that they thought was no good, and they were very anxious. I told her that there was nothing wrong with it, and that I could take it to the provincial company immediately. I also told her to keep the tail end of the batch, because it would be very good later on. Li Yinmei told me that I was drinking from that batch right now. She packed up a bag of it just for me.
There are too many counterfeiters of Pu’er tea, especially fake labels and dates. I went to a teahouse in Qujing with Zhang Guoli. The City Council member responsible for cultural affairs, Vice Secretary Yu Chao asked us what type of tea we wanted to drink. Zhang Guoli said, “Old Zou is here, so let’s drink Pu’er”. The tea came, and it had a ‘new water taste’ as they call it in Hong Kong. Guoli cocked his brow, and muttered “soy soup” with amusement. I went to the shelf and took the tea down for a look. This was a “seven” brick, which showed that it had been stored for five years, and it was marked as “China Local Livestock Product Import and Export Company, Yunnan Tea-Leaf Company Division.” I told the boss it was counterfeit. The boss said he had parted with a dear amount of money for it. I’ve worked at the provincial tea company for over twenty years, even serving as vice president from 92 to 2000. In the late eighties, with the reform of China’s foreign trading system, the Yunnan Tea Company quickly dropped the word ‘Division’ from its name. The proper name in 1990 became “China Local Livestock Product Yunnan Tea Leaf Import and Export Company. This brick of tea could have been produced in as little as three months. The teahouse boss gave in with a deep sigh. The green-molded tea produced at the ancient orchards is the best of Pu’er. But this type of counterfeiting is astonishing. Whenever the spot market price goes up, people from all around put their tea up on the market, putting on whatever label is selling at the time to get a high price.
A lot of the chaos on the market can be attributed to the misleading information in some irresponsible publications. The Book of Pu’er Tea published in Taiwan in late 2000 is full of errors. The China Tea Yunnan Provincial Company was established in September 1950 and ended in January 1956. On page 56 in this book, the text for plate 40 identifies the tea as Fuohai Tea Factory produced in the 1940’s, China Tea Yunnan Provincial Company red tea seal round-brick; likewise print 42 on page 53 and print 43 on page 60 show Menghai Tea Factory China Tea Yunnan Provincial Company, early green seal round-brick. In the 1950’s, the provincial company only had the Menghai tea factory producing for domestic and foreign sales. But plate 52 on page sixty is labeled as Xiaguan Tea Factory, 1950’s China Tea Company Yunnan Provincial Division tea seal iron pressed round brick. Even more farfetched, plate 54 on page 71 has a tea identified as a 1980’s tea seal round brick from the Yunnan Provincial Tea Company Kunming Factory. That’s a brief sketch which I’ll follow up with an explanation of the problem. If time allows, I plan to write an article specifically detailing all of the errors. Erroneous information misleads business, and there is a lot of money involved with tea. This is very irresponsible.
People often ask me why they haven’t seen this type of tea in recent years. This is a very interesting question. Pu’er tea is dried and molded in the sun and then mellowed afterwards. There are two routes for mellowing. The first is natural aging, known as fresh tea cakes (or green tea cake, -another reference to freshness- trans.); the second process is to add moisture and temperature, stacking the tea moist, and the cakes are known as mature or ripe cakes. As I said before, my province only began testing artificially fermented Pu’er in 1973. Before this it was just production of heated or dried molded tea for shipping everywhere. Pu’er tea naturally ferments over time in the process of long distance shipping, so the consumption structure was that Yunnan people drank the first-stage dried molded tea while people in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia drank real Pu’er – the finished product. It was this pattern that muddled many a consumer. Hong Kong consumes four thousand metric tons of Pu’er tea yearly, which is a daily rate of at least ten tons. In a Hong Kong tea house, if you don’t first specify that you want Xiang Pian, Tie Guanyin, Longjing or Black (Red) tea, then they will surely bring out a pot of smooth Pu’er tea. In the 1960’s, to support Vietnam and counter America, the Hong Kong Teck Soon Hong Company encouraged tea traders to buy their Pu’er tea ingredients from Vietnam. When the mainland supply was cut off during the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Zhou Cong from Yunnan’s Tengchong Prefecture brought some Hong Kong Tea traders to Thailand for artificially fermented Pu’er tea to cover the market. In the eighties, I extended a special invitation to Zhou Cong to come to Kunming and the Menghai tea factory to exchange about the art of Pu’er tea production. Someone brought out a brick of tea saying that it was a 1960 Simao Pu’er and asked me to appraise it. I didn’t even have to steep it to tell him it was rubbish. Anything can be faked except for the passage of time. The flavor and aroma that the ages leave behind on Pu’er tea can never be counterfeited.
III.
We hadn’t planned a visit to Lan Cang County’s Bangwei giant tea tree in our journey. After we had examined the Jingmai Tea Orchard, we were given lunch by the local people. Ms Yang Liuxia, director of the Simao Tea Breeding Ground heartily recommended this Bangwei tea tree. If we wanted to go to Bangwei, we could arrive at Shuangjiang late at night. We finally made our decision.
Up and out several kilometers, a gravel road opens to the right, which leads from the villages to the county seat. The road is very wide, and is rather flat and level. After twenty kilometers, we entered into a collection of villages along a section of concrete road. Wendong, my heart jumped. I recognized it. There was the commissary, and over there was the cafeteria where I ate ‘rice treats’ with her. Thirty years ago, this place was called the Wendong Commune; now it is called the Wendong Ethnic Wa Township. In ’76 I lived in a Mangnuo Wa village connected to the Wendong Commune for one year with my work unit. There was a girl in the work unit named Tan Xiaoling who was a year younger than I. She had just graduated from the Institute for Chinese Medicine and worked at the Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, and was the medic for our work unit. She had gentle, delicate features and was soft and refined in her ways. She wrote beautifully, and was skilled and confident in Tang and Song poetry forms. I was a lazy and careless individual, until she came into my heart, and I devoted myself to caring for her.
Mangnuo Mountain is surrounded by a vast area of tea orchards, and there are many tea plants growing on the mountain. To the back of the mountain lies a tributary of the Lancang (Mekong) River, Xiaohei River, and across the river is the county of Shuangjiang. Mangnuo Mountain and Kunlu Mountain are both along the Tropic of Cancer. Aside from the Wa, this area is also inhabited by the Bulang people. They use traditional methods for drying and molding tea. When there are few fresh leaves, they roll them with their hands; when there are many fresh leaves, they roll them with their feet on a 2.5 by 2 meter bamboo plate. The Wa girls of Mangnuo never wear shoes, and the bottoms of their feet are covered in thick, tough callus. Whether they walk on rough stones or sharp brambles, it is just like a smooth flat surface to them. The middle-aged women smoke dried tobacco from bamboo pipes of all shapes and sizes. I often saw the women using their feet to stamp out the burning tobacco coals. I told Ms Tan, you are better at communicating with these Wa women, try to get them to stop using their feet to roll the tea leaves. When the tea harvest was at its peak, she ran around back and forth telling them, but to no avail.
The Wa family home is simple, and there are only three objects made of metal: a knife, the stand for the cooking fire, and a bronze cymbal. The bed is covered by a self-woven mat, and water is held in a bamboo bucket. When the sky is cloudy, the tea leaves are laid out on a bamboo mat to dry over the fire. This is the reason why molded tea occasionally has a smoky flavor. The Wa boys are totally fashion conscious; no matter how poor they are, they have to buy one of those Red Light Brand radios for 47 RMB (USD 5), and carry it over their shoulder all day. At night, they bring it to the door of a girl’s house, and accompany it with their gourd pipes. If they’re lucky, the object of their affection will knit a bag to carry the radio. When I was in elementary school, I often played with radios, and this was put to use when I arrived at Mangnuo. The mountain folks from miles around came to have me fix their radios. There was one kid in the village named Yan Kan whose radio had broken a wire. Sometimes it played, and sometimes it didn’t. He was hysterical. At the time, even the sale of a big fat pig didn’t provide enough money to buy a radio. I lit my tongs up and soldered the broken wire. You could flip the radio around and it still played, and Yan Kan became my good friend.
Manager Song Wengeng was the head of the work team, and lived at the headquarters. Tan Xiaoling and Chen Hangao also lived at headquarters. At Mangnuo, I was the only one in the tea business. Yan Kan often took me up the mountain to wander in the tea forest. Each time we went, I’d bring a small bottle of kerosene from the commissary, and a bundle of rice straw. Whenever we came across a hornet’s nest on a tree, Yan Kan would chop a stalk of bamboo, wrap the rice straw around the end, soak it in kerosene and light it up. When the nest was threatened, the hornets would swarm out and attack the torch and be buried in a sea of fire. Yan Kan would them climb the tree and grab the nest, and that night at dinner we would have tasty hornet larvae for desert. One time, I spotted a large hornet’s nest, and Yan Kan said that we could not touch it, because it had an owner. I was confused. In this wilderness, how can it be owned? Apparently, someone came before us and discovered the nest but had no kerosene. He snapped a branch there to mark the spot, signifying his ownership.
Yan Kan told me that a half-day’s walk down the road there was a granddaddy of tea trees, the largest tea tree in Wendong, reaching over two stories in height. Yan Kan’s Chinese is rather lacking, and I didn’t fully understand the place name he said. In fact he was talking about the Bangwei giant tea tree. One can only walk there, and the round trip takes a full day. Yan Kan said he’d take me to see it. Tan Xiaoling also promised to go. The vice director of the Grain Oil and Foodstuff Company and vice director of the work team Li Hua would not let us go. She said that two metallurgy workers had been killed nearby, and the upper levels sent a notice sayingthat our unit could not go out randomly. In the end, I was never able to pay my respects to this granddaddy tea tree.
Old Song and Chen Hangeng knew of the flame between me and Tan Xiaoling, and secretly created opportunities for us to be together. Right before we were to return to Kunming, we went up the mountain together to collect some tea for Yan Kan to prepare. I made sure that Yan Kan would tell his mother not to use her feet to roll the leaves. There was no electricity at Mangnuo, and at night I read Darwin’s The Origin of Species by a weak oil lantern. Yan Kan told me something. A few years back, the old village leader went to town for a meeting. The place he stayed in had electric lighting. After the meeting ended, the village leader cut the wires and pulled out a light bulb to take home. He carefully made his way back, and through all those mountain roads managed to keep the light bulb intact. He took a piece of twine and hung the bulb over the common ground and called everyone together to see the pearl that glows at night. At night fall, that bulb surely refused to shine. I told the story to Mr. Song, and everyone had a good laugh. Old Song went to the commune for a meeting, and used the commune phone to call Wei Moucheng, the scientific director of the company’s production department. At the time, the party standing committee had written a document agreeing to pay the tea company for improvements in tea leaf production. Old Wei got a car and brought an ethanol generator and some tea rolling machines to the village. The pearl that glows at night began to glow. The old Wa villagers were overjoyed, and danced around an old man playing the gourd pipe, sending yellow dust in all directions from the grain threshing ground.
After we got back to Kunming, Xiaoling’s parents invited Chen Hangeng and me over to their house for dinner. I’ve never ironed my clothes in my life, and my clothes were wrinkled and ratty, and I had no etiquette, coming off as a total moron. Chen Hangeng on the other hand looked totally snappy, his brilliant Shanghai clothes were without a single wrinkle. Her parents didn’t have a single good impression of me, and were adamant in their refusal of our relationship. Xiaoling was devastated, and cried all the time. This was the biggest setback of my life. When in Mangnuo Village, she was in my thoughts on many a night as I drifted off to sleep. The day we parted, she came to the grass shack I had temporarily set up on the grounds of the old International Trade Center soccer field. I brewed two cups of the molded tea that we had picked with our own hands. Large leaf molded tea is extremely bitter. This was the first time we had held hands in over a year. She cried tears full of that bitterness. I am afraid of nothing on this earth but the tears of a woman. She slowly drifted off in a daze, and left for America soon afterwards. I took in the bitterness of those ancient tea leaves and lay awake through the morning. I didn’t have a lot of stuff back then, and when I moved out of the grass hut I took the hemp sack that Yan Kan gave me to hold the tea leaves and stuffed it into my old tape recorder. Later I got a new recorder, and the old one stayed at the foot of my bed.
Now it is that same mountain and that same road, though before it was just a dirt one. Our work team sat in the back of a pickup truck, eating dust and baking in the sun. When the cattle and children along the road saw our car, they would scatter off in a rush. We took a corner and there were five or six cows on the road. I was deep in thoughts about the past, and I cut the wheel a bit late. The jeep barely missed one of the cows, and scared a yelp out of Bao Weimin in the passenger seat.
After few kilometers past the Wendong public center lays Bangwei, and the giant tea tree stands just along the old path at the head of the village. The Lancang County government declared the Bangwei giant tea tree as a protected county cultural relic on September 25, 1992. The Bangwei ancient tea tree has a tree shaped trunk and stands 11.8 meters tall, with coverage of 8.2x9 meters. The base is 1.14 meters, and the lowest branch is 70 cm off the ground. There is one primary branch and three secondary branches. Experts believe that the Bangwei ancient tea tree has flowers and buds characteristic of wild tea, but the leaves, sprouts and branch tips are characteristic of a cultivated tree. It is a tree from the transition between wild and cultivated tea, and can be used directly. Its age is around one thousand years, making it the oldest transitional tea tree found to date. This tree has important historical and academic value for the research of the evolution of tea and the biology of its domestication. Though it was discovered early on, it has been protected well, and it thrives healthily to this day.
One day after twenty years, Xiaoling came to see me along with Chen Hangeng. Chen Hangeng was still not the vice director of the International Trade Ministry, I think he was a department head. I remembered the tea leaves. I didn’t tell them, I just made three cups of tea. The passage of time had mellowed the tea, as it mellows life. What was once just molded tea was now authentic Pu’er. The bitterness that once stabbed at the senses had disappeared, and was replaced by a sweet mellow flavor. Tasting tea is like life, who can really sort out the flavors? By then, I had already been in the Pu’er tea business for twenty years. I had already come to know that the more tea chemicals in the leaves, the more bitter the taste. Once the tea has been aged into Pu’er, it becomes smooth, and after mellowing for a long time, acquires a full bodied flavor and a lasting aftertaste.
IV.
Bangma Mountain is in Yunnan’s Shuangjiang (Twin Rivers) County, just west of Mengku Township. It is a southward offshoot of the Hengduan Mountain range, and its main peak stands at 3234 meters. The warm Indian Ocean air currents mix here with the currents of the Pacific Ocean, which creates unique climactic conditions, such as relatively high precipitation. The main peak which is covered in snow during the winter also maintains the necessary moisture for the vegetation covering the mountainside. There has been a change in the climate in the past few years, and the bamboo died off after a mass blooming, exposing a group of ancient tea trees. Among this cluster of tea trees, there are two with a trunk diameter exceeding one meter, roughly twenty meters tall, and many healthy, smaller ones. The newly discovered young tea trees are strong and full of life. These are also of the Dali family (Camellia Taliensis); these wild tea trees are clustered around an altitude of 2250-2720 meters covering an area of 373 hectares.
Many people know that the tea of Mengku is good, but few know that this place holds the ancestors of tea. A winding twenty kilometer road leads us to Dahuzhai Village Center. Halfway up the giant snow mountain at about 2600 meters, there has recently been an enormous wild tea tree discovered in a place called Tea Mountain River. It was discovered by a local Lagu boy named Zha Muyue. At first, we didn’t know he was the one who discovered the largest tea tree, and we chose him as our guide after being misled by many others. We were chatting casually when we heard about the story of discovering the tree. When there were no local government officials present, Zha Muyue quietly complained to us that he had not received a proper reward for his discovery. The last county leader had set a rule while in office that 5,000 RMB (USD 600) would be awarded to anyone who discovered a wild tea tree with a trunk exceeding one meter in diameter. It seems that the new county leader has not kept the former leader’s wishes. Under Zha Muyue’s guidance, we trekked across the primeval forest devoid of roads. We crossed hills and mountains, going from an altitude of 1700 meters to over 2500 in a space of about four hours and a distance of over ten kilometers. There are many obstacles to mobility in this primeval forest devoid of trails, and it requires much determination and resolve to negotiate the steep slopes. The refined associate professor of the tea department at the Agricultural University, Zhou Hongjie was telling us as we went how to determine whether a tea tree was wild. Our team’s biggest worry was Ms Ma Jia. Her legs had gone completely stiff a few days before as we hiked across the Wuliang Mountains. Everyone tauntingly called her ‘bowlegs’. She said she was going to collapse, and large blisters had already formed on her feet. Ma Jia is a good girl, in the city, she lives in the lap of luxury, and in the wild mountains she can grit her teeth and keep up with the team despite her blisters. Maybe it was when Mountain Ghost told her about her function for the trip, “big brother bear always goes for the pretty lady who falls behind the team”.
The slopes of Mabang Mountain are very steep, and a flat piece of land is hard to come by. At 2400 meters, we found a relatively flat depression under an enormous tree. This will be our campsite. Everyone hustled to scrounge up some grass to place beneath our tents. The head of the Rural Economic Affairs Committee Bao Weimin was setting up his spot under a large tree, and was totally engaged in arranging the area, pulling things here and moving stuff there in a series of useless activities almost running around in circles. Mountain Ghost had another snappy comment, “the male has two methods for attracting the female: one is with his beautiful fur or feathers, the other method is by building a proper den”. Everyone was clutching their bellies in laughter. After several days, setting up the tents came as second nature, and camp was set in ten minutes.
We still had some time, so we went to see a tea tree that was over one meter in diameter. This tree is situated at an altitude of 2720 meters, stands 16.8 meters tall, tree formation, measured 3.25 meters around the base, 3.1 meters around the trunk, and had coverage of 13.7x10.6 meters. The branch density was average. I was looking at a leaf sample from the book, and listening to Professor Zhou and Yang Liuxia, director of the Simao Tea Breeding Ground, give a lecture. Comrade Huang Bingsheng was also paying close attention. The wild tea trees of the Pu’er region are characterized by: tree shaped trunks, relatively straight posture, tender branches lacking hair or little hair, big leaves, 10 to 20 cm in length, flat surface or slightly curled, with sparse, dull teeth; there were 3 to 5 scales on the flower buds, big flowers with crowns reaching 4-8 cm, and 8 to 15 thick, white petals; some of them containing hairs. The tea industry requires a healthy respect for science. In the seventies, I was assigned to the operations center at the Provincial Bureau of International Trade, working on the tea trade under the guidance of Comrade Li Kebang. We discovered that there was a problem with the pressed tea that was being sent to Tibet from the Xiaguan factory. The Tibetans were experiencing dizziness, abdominal pains and diarrhea after drinking it. The National People’s Committee sent people down to investigate, and Song Wengeng sealed off the warehouse. At the time, tea production was limited, and the Provincial Tea Company issued a directive authorizing the limited sale of wild tea (known as forest tea) for border trade. We didn’t know if there was a problem with the ratios, poor transportation, or sloppy harvesting, maybe they had harvested another plant that looked like tea. In the end, there was a massive recall of pressed Yunnan tea from the Tibetan market.
Cai Xin from the Yunnan University tea department told me that our ancestors were very smart, they accumulated a rich knowledge in the long process of domesticating wild tea, and they figured out which trees would be edible or not. Blindly assuming that any tea tree was edible could cause problems. The giant Bada tea tree of Menghai was from the Dali family, but did not produce edible leaves. When selecting tea leaves, overuse of Irrawady variety (a.k.a. Yunnan-Burma Variety) can also be harmful.
The primeval forest is beautiful in the rays of the setting sun. The pictures that come out are enchanting. I used the soft light and set my camera on high speed mode and just held the shutter button. The winds came strong in the night, making the tents howl. Though this was the highest altitude that we had camped in, it did not feel cold; we still had to open our sleeping bags and just use them to cover our bodies. We talked a while about Yunnan’s mountain terrain, and about the peculiarities of the Hengduan Mountain range, which provided a unique geographic environment and climate, nourishing communities of large leaf tea trees for mankind. Wild tea tree communities always develop on or near the tropic of cancer. Of course the tropic line runs right trough Bangma Mountain. In the seventies and eighties, the surrounding provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Hainan took large quantities of large leaf tea trees back to their provinces to cultivate. When they arrived in their new homes, they mutated into middle or small leaf tea trees. Darwin’s words show us that what is maintained is the hereditary aspect, and what changes is the adaptive aspect. I conjecture that tea had found its perfect home along the tropic line.
On the second day we arrived at Zha Muyue’s newly discovered tea tree. This was the climax of or journey, everyone was very excited. It took three of us together to wrap our arms around the trunk of this giant ancestor of tea trees. We took some measurements: the base circumference is 4 meters, 3.5 meters at the middle of the trunk, coverage of 15.8x15.3 meters, 20 meters tall. The tree has four main branches, the first is 2 meters in circumference, the second 1.25m the third 1.8 and the fourth 1.1. More detailed information, including this tree’s age, will have to await further analysis by our experts. Once the results are in, this tree might be the oldest wild tea tree in the world. The discovery of this giant tea tree is further evidence that Yunnan Province is the birthplace of tea. Something else was very interesting; there was a tea tree that stood over twenty meters tall in an A shape. It turned out that it was two tea trees, one of the Mengzi family and one of the Dali family, who had naturally grown together. This is also unique in the world.
We were all in much better spirits on the road back than when we first went up. Old Bao has been working in agriculture for years, and climbing around the mountains to visit villages was a daily affair. Though he is now fifty years old and has been hiking for several days, he still mustered the energy to clamber up to the top of a tree like a monkey, climbing up along a six or seven meter vine. Mountain Ghost was there shouting, “He’s joining his ancestors”. There was another round of laughter. Going down the mountain is always easier than going up. I often go hiking, and though I go up the mountain slowly, my legs are solid. I went down the mountain quickly, almost half running, and was at the head of the pack the entire time. Mountain Ghost was up to his old tricks, coaxing Ma Xi to run faster, and secretly overtake me. I understood in my heart that Ma Xi was going to have a rough time tomorrow and the next day, and she would definitely be aching all over. At the last hundred meters, she got a second wind. I slowed down to a normal pace to let her be the first to reach the village and get her laurels.
The former Shuangjiang County leader Feng Guoxing is an old Dai Cadre and an old friend of mine. When he was serving office, I attracted some international investment to get a CTC production line imported from India and installed at Mengku Township, bringing all kinds of revenues to Shuangjiang County. He has always been grateful to me. As we ate dinner that evening, the conversation returned to ancient tea trees. Everyone was saying that the set award for finding the tea tree must be paid. Old Feng said that he was now working in the regional government, and that there was nothing he could do. The county tea office said that they had already paid three thousand RMB. I offered that the Provincial Tea Association would provide for the five thousand RMB award for the next giant tea tree to be found. I jokingly said, “If you guys play around and one of the villagers throws his ethnic temper and chops a tree down, that would be a great loss”. Mountain Ghost put his two cents in, saying that he already saw two felled giant tea trees on the mountain today. Old Feng looked perplexed, “what if those trees…” I was still saying my piece, “I’ve been in the tea business for thirty years, and today I finally had the chance to pay my respects to the ancestors of tea”, and as I spoke, I handed two thousand RMB to old Feng so that he could hand it over to that Lagu kid, Zha Muyue (Zha Muyue is the first on the left in the above picture).
V.
Qianjia Village (trans- village of a thousand homes), Zhenyuan County was the last stop on our journey. All in all, the large leaf tea trees of the Pu’er production region, including wild, transitional and cultivated, are mainly focused in the triangular region west of the Ailao Mountains and east of the Bangma Mountains. It is 70 kilometers along county roads from the Zhenyuan County Seat to Liujia, and then another 20 to Qianjia Village. Our travels of the previous days had all been along the Lancang River Region, and arriving at Babian River meant that we had entered the Honghe River (Red River) Region. The Babian River separates the Ailao and Wuliang Mountain ranges. The Zhenyuan County Seat is on the Wuliang Mountains, while Qianjia lies on the Ailao Mountains. One must cross the Babian and Ahmo Rivers, tributaries of the Lixian River, in order to reach Qianjia Village. Overall, there are a few specific geographic characteristics of the places where large leaf ancient tea trees grow in the Pu’er production region: one is high altitude, between 1000 and 2800 meters above sea level; secondly, they are all along the Tropic of Cancer, where the sun’s strong rays strike directly; thirdly, they are all centered around the Lancang and Lixian River Regions.
Once in the Ailao Mountains, the marks of human life become few and far between. While I drove I was I was wondering how there could have been a village of nearly one thousand homes deep in the forest high on the mountains. The car was enveloped in dust from the dirt road, and the scenery was unspectacular. It wasn’t until we reached Little Falling Water that I realized the power of these mountains, and the intensity of the natural environment there. We parked at an altitude of 1700 meters, and Qianjia Village was situated above Big Falling Water at an altitude of 2100 meters. To reach the king of tea trees we would still have to cross the primeval forest to an altitude of 2450 meters. The waterfall that the locals call Big Falling Water hangs halfway up the mountain, where the water spits out from the peak above. Its overall descent is 100 meters, ranging between 10 and 20 meters in width. It is a three tier waterfall, with the largest step 80 meters high
The mountains were steepest here. I was going very slowly up the slope, chatting with a local guy the whole way. During the years of the Tongzhi Emperor (Qing Dynasty), the imperial envoy Lin Zexue gathered the Qing army to surround and attack the Dali regional rebel leader Du Wenxiu. The ethnic Yi cavalry leader rounded up 3600 troops as reinforcements, not knowing that the Qing troops had already captured nearby Nanjian. Li Wenxue was sold out by the traitor Li Mingxue, and he died a heroic death on Wugui Mountain at Nanjian. After the death of Li Wenxue, the rebel army took to the hills. The crippled army of just over 1000 people set off into the forest in the middle of the Ailao Mountains to camp, planning to take advantage of the perilous terrain to continue their resistance against the Qing. I had traveled through Xiangyun Shuimu Mountain during the Chinese New Year holiday, and had learned that Lin Zexu had carved a plaque there, but I never knew why he had come to Yunnan. On this journey, I came to know another side to Lin Zexu. The local buy pointed out to me that behind the trees on those peaks was the fire beacon; the right backside was the Xueguo Mountain natural barrier, the center was Big Falling Water, where the rebel army had set up cannon batteries on either side. I sighed under my breath as I climbed the mountain and observed this obstacle which, to take an old Chinese saying “when one man stands in the way, ten thousand cannot pass”. One hundred years ago, the boundless Ailao Mountains had hosted a tragic point in history; one hundred years later, thick Winter Melon trees are sprouting through the collapsed ruins of Qianjia Village. I asked the local guy if there were still any descendents of the rebel army. He replied with certainty, “no, legend has it that the Qing army poisoned the Dulu River, killing the entire army”. I don’t believe that, but the rebel army truly disappeared, and no one knows where they went.
We still had a few kilometers to go to reach the King of Tea Trees, across the Dulu River and through the wild yet tranquil primeval forest. This is a national forest preserve, and a living gallery of biodiversity. We found a lot of plants related to tea. The camellia flowers had already bloomed, but many days later than in Kunming, and we could still see a few wilted flowers clinging to the bushes. When the rebel army camped in this forest, they were short of medicine, and used tea leaves to stay healthy. The King of Tea Trees is 25.6 meters tall, 1.2 meters across the roots, and 2.82 meters around the trunk. The coverage was 22x20 meters. This was the biggest single trunk tea tree we had seen on our journey, but sadly, the branch facing us was already withered, and the tree was getting worse, as the coverage was certainly no longer the recorded 22x20 meters. Two stone embankments had been piled around the foot of the tree, with two stone plaques standing upright. Not far away, there was also a small pavilion erected. These activities have already heavily damaged the surrounding natural vegetation. On the road back, Professor Zhou was saying that the tree had been harmed by some Taiwanese businessmen. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t figure it out, and I pried him with questions throughout our hike. He said that the building of the embankment and the plaques had destroyed the original environment, and that they had also signed an agreement to receive ten kilograms of dried leaf from the King of Tea Trees every year for trade. It takes five kilograms of fresh leaves to produce one kilogram of dried leaves, so those ten kilograms mean that fifty kilograms of fresh leaves are taken every year. What does this mean for an ancient tree that has not been domesticated? In order to protect the resources of the ancient tea trees, the national government has made laws protecting the environment surrounding them and against picking, processing and selling tea leaves from ancient trees more than 40 centimeters in diameter. Professor Zhou has seen the pictures taken by the old Yunnan tea expert Ga Shun in the early nineties. The Tea King stood tall and healthy, but now it was looking old and decrepit. The preserve managers said that the little money that had been promised by the Taiwanese businessmen was still mostly left unpaid. It looked like the Tea King’s strength had been sucked away by those businessmen. I snapped to attention as if from a dream. In 1982 I accompanied four Americans to see the cultivated Menghai King of Tea Trees. At that time, no one had erected any plaques or embankments, and the then head of the Menghai Tea Factory had simply put up ropes to keep people from getting too close. The tree was strong and vibrant. Then a pavilion and plaques were raised, and an embankment made to wrap the roots. This Tea King who had lived well for hundreds of years hobbled into the “afterlife” after only ten years of labors. Back on August 3rd, we were researching the Banwei giant tea tree in Langcang. The tree had an exposed root that was sticking out three meters. Miss Ma Xi has a good heart, and asked if we should bury to root. Professor Zhou said not to, because the best protection is to maintain the natural state. Not surprisingly, the Banwei giant tea tree is still lush and healthy to this day.
The guys at the Nature Reserve Management Station found a young monkey last spring, and have been caring for it for almost a year. We handed him some chocolate, but he didn’t want it. Little Yi took a bite himself and handed it back to the monkey, and he took it. He tasted the good flavor, and in just a few moments stuffed the chocolate into his cheeks. At lunch time, the little monkey cuddled in old Bao’s chest nibbling on a chicken’s foot. Old Bao handed him a bottle of strong rice liquor, and he sat there intently licking it off of his fingers, bringing us a good laugh. He got drunk and fell asleep off to the side. One of the environmental workers said that the little monkey went and joined the other monkeys a few times, but would always come back after two or three days. He had taken on human mannerisms and had trouble communicating with the other monkeys, often being bullied by them. Here there was good liquor and meat to be had, as well as good companions to take care of him. There one was exposed to the harsh elements and fierce competition for survival. I saw that the young monkey would never be able to return to the wild, but I wondered how he would find a girlfriend later on. I’m thinking that just like the king of tea trees, he should be living in a wild environment.
(Camp)
(Newly discovered tea tree)
(And ancient tree, left, and Dinosaur Vine)
(Dali and Mengzi tea trees growing together)
Zou Jiaju
Thursday April 1, 2004
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