One day, at 1:30pm on the afternoon the cloud cover became so dark it looked like night. I’d never experienced this before.  This was the [...]]]> I’m back in Guangzhou with great teas sourced after an adventure of a lifetime. It’s hot and the weather is tempestuous. Afternoon thunderstorms and heavy hot heat cover the city.

One day, at 1:30pm on the afternoon the cloud cover became so dark it looked like night. I’d never experienced this before.  This was the view from the front porch of the tea house looking outside down the street. The leaves on the left are lit from the lights of the store inside. The lights of the businesses are on, but there are no street lights at 1 in the afternoon.  Since no one else seemed alarmed, so I assume this has happened before and just went with it. An hour later after a torrential rain, the clouds cleared and the sky was blue and peppered with popcorn white clouds.

This year Bai Mu Dan White Tea and Golden Heart Ti Kuan Yin are particularly good, and I stock up on those. The Bai Mu Dan is a pre-Qing Ming tea and gives up to 10 steepings, this is actually the best grade of white tea I’ve ever tasted.  The Golden Heart is Fresh and still roasty and perfectly uniform.

I also source a top grade of honey sweet Chrysanthemum flowers, and new teas like a Szechuan Red. The Szechuan Red  is a Gong Fu grade that is superbly delicious with notes of strawberries and fresh bread, it would be delicious hot or cold steeped with a summer strawberry cobbler.  I compare two Dragonwell teas that are both Pre-Qing Ming. They are both equally good, though prices have gone up 15%. They reflect that this year in Hangzhou was unique, it was too sunny and dry and hot followed by way too much rain. These teas are from the hot dry days. I choose the higher grade of the two Pre-Qing Ming Dragonwells that has the top notes I’m looking for. It is exquisite and so high a grade it is yellow, (not to be confused with yellow tea, this leaf is yellow, but not oxidized to be a Yellow tea). It reminds me of the yellow soil of Hangzhou up on Shi Feng. Mei Jia Wu is the larger and lower altitude growing area of Dragonwell tea, but has more sulphur in the soil. Shi Feng is a higher altitude peak, and the soil has sand in it, gently limiting the mineral intake to the tea leaves and resulting in a higher fragrance and potential for a yellow leaf after processing.

I also pick up more of my best-selling teas that are solidly delicious this year: Ying De Red, and Big Red Robe Wu Yi Oolong, 2007 Liu Bao and 1996 Menghai. This year I buy more tea than I ever have before, and I’m excited to have enough tea to meet demands. It feels like I’ve hit a home run, and I’m passing 3rd base, walking with my head high towards home plate. What a lucky, fun, successful trip.  I have one more day here and two days of fun in Hong Kong to come. These are the sweetest days of this trip after the hard work is done when I savor how far I’ve come.

But in the morning we cannot reach Mr An by phone, so we play tourist for the time [...]]]> We’re back in Shantou to visit Mr An at his tea house. He has finished tea that was from the beginning of the harvest I know to be exceptional tea.  This is the tea I will buy.

But in the morning we cannot reach Mr An by phone, so we play tourist for the time being, visiting the Bridge from the Song Dynasty,

the Old Town that’s being rebuilt and the temple of the Great Guan Yin. She’s gorgeous,;two stories tall, and there are people singing and praying all around and the sweet smoke of incense is kissing her.  (Pictures weren’t allowed, so here’s a shot of a deity guarding the temple. )

We walk the city, seeing the old houses,

the temples, the businesses that still have wood store fronts and covered walk ways.

These homes are beautiful, but I also imagine living in them is like living in a garden shed: small and drafty and falling apart.

Shantou’s glory days were probably 100 years ago, and the city suffered an economic depression for quite a while. Only in the last few years have they rebuilt and the city has regained its elegance. Here’s a newly rebuilt section that’s a pedestrian area. It’s quite shiny and new, and contrasts sharply with the falling down stone and old wood houses you see if you look just feet off to the side street. It’s not disingenuine in it’s newness either, this is exactly what China is: a dichotomy of old and new side by side. Unapologetic.

The people are graceful, and have a dignified way of expressing hospitality that is heartfelt and genuine.   Here they speak Chiu Zhou –ese. To say please drink tea, you say “Jeh-yeht  Dey”.  And there are other regional dialects, too. Most people speak Mandarin, and about half also speak or understand Cantonese too. Cantonese here sounds like Cantonese pronounced with an American accent and was delightfully clear and very easy to understand!

It’s 8 pm and dark out, very dark. I’m riding in a Chinese style Smart car with 4 people, hugging my luggage, in a lightning and rain storm with bad Russian disco playing much too loudly; a broken defrost system which means the windows are down, and it’s pitch [...]]]> What’s your favorite nightmare? Here’s mine:

It’s 8 pm and dark out, very dark. I’m riding in a Chinese style Smart car with 4 people, hugging my luggage, in a lightning and rain storm with bad Russian disco playing much too loudly; a broken defrost system which means the windows are down, and it’s pitch black outside. Pitch. Black.  The windshield washers can’t move fast enough to see the road and the driver keeps wiping the accumulating fog off the glass in front of him with a cloth and honking every 200 feet just so other people know we’re on the road and hope they see us coming – because he can’t see them.  (There are no pictures of this moment, but rest assured: they are forever burned in my brain.)

I just spent the best 24 hours of my life on the top of the world and I’m probably about to die unless fate has another plan for me.  She’s funny that way.  And not ha-ha funny.

We left the mountain late that afternoon after witnessing the 24 hour cycle of processing tea. That day it was pouring rain so hard it sounded like being inside a wave continually crashing against the beach for 20 minutes at a time. No one talked, why, they couldn’t hear each other over the roar of the rain. The rain only let up for about 30 minutes –once- and when the clouds (not fog, clouds) rolled back to reveal the mountains they hid, the sight was spectacular.

I did not buy tea from that day’s harvest. The tea was too rough, bitter, and too late in the harvest. The only tea on the farm that day was Mao Cha – unfinished tea; meaning the sticks, twigs, bigger unattractive, strangely flavored tea leaves were not picked out yet, and the last two firings had not been done. This is a raw farm product not ready for market. The finished product is sent down the mountain daily, tea is not kept or stored on this mountain (there’s no where to put it). Tea, Dan Chong tea, takes more processing than this to be purchased and re-sold.  The tea is driven to the store in town and then usually trucked to bigger cities where the tea is roasted yet again. It’s even said that the best DC teas are kept until August, until the mid-autumn harvest and re-roasted 6 months after picking and they are the most delicious. I’ll have to choose some in August to share with you. But for now, I’m in the market for spring tea.

After our nightmarish drive down the mountain, we arrive in one piece back in Shantou at 10 pm and rest in our hotel until the next day.  I haven’t been this happy to shower in years. I remember grabbing my shampoo bottle and thinking: “hello darling”.  I think I actually said it out loud, I’m not sure. I know I meant it.

This is rice porridge (Jook) with pickles, peanuts, eggs,  two kinds of olives 

These are fresh hand made shrimp paste won tons

And this is shrimp won ton soup with shrimp paste balls, [...]]]> I’ll just keep it simple here and let the pictures speak for themselves – this one’s for you, Ms Miller:

This is rice porridge (Jook) with pickles, peanuts, eggs,  two kinds of olives 

These are fresh hand made shrimp paste won tons

And this is shrimp won ton soup with shrimp paste balls, and lettuce

This is a potato noodle dish with cabbage and eggs and tiny shrimplets.

This is street food dinner: potato noodles, fried Lap Cheurng sausage, tofu with beans, eggs and tiny shrimps.

This is where you eat dinner:

This is what you get to choose from to make your dinner:

This is a bitter nettle-like soup with chicken broth. They still have thorns on, and I call it the Bitter Lover’s soup.

These are ricey-rolled wrapped things that are sweet. I think they have beans and chestnuts in them, alongside chestnut dumplings and Spring rolls!

Real Spring rolls! No cabbage or pork here, diced veggies and sweet crunchy chestnuts and mung beans:

This is oysters with garlic and an oyster pancake, it wasn’t presented very well, but my god, is it good with a little chili paste. (Is Taiwan’s famous oyster pancake originally from here? And up here, where do they get the oysters??)

This is a home style Shantou lunch at Mr An’s house: counter clockwise we have: Chicken Chiu Zhou style, spring rolls with mung beans, a tarot root and red bean fried patty, eggplanty-like vegetable, sticky rice rolls with corn, black sesame, or sweet potato, dumplings with chestnuts, greens with ginger, In the middle is a bowl of fishy soup with tofu.

Of course they are, they were the ones bruising and processing the tea until [...]]]> At 6:30 am we rise with the workers, still in our clothes from yesterday, put our shoes on and and have breakfast of Jook (porridge). The ladies head up the mountain at 7:30 am and the men are still sleeping.

Of course they are, they were the ones bruising and processing the tea until 3:30 last night. The only person involved in every step of each of the processes AND picking AND cooking is Mrs Lam. She oversees everything and everyone.  We wait for the men to rise at 8:30. They are still dressed. This has been going on for a month now, and everyone is bleary eyed and exhausted. I’m exhausted and I just got here last night.

The men quickly eat Jook, and Day processing starts right away. It starts with the “Kill Green” process, or stopping the oxidation of the leaves. They’ve rested overnight (this process is reminding me a lot of bread making) and changed color and are ready to be set so the oxidation stops. The fire is the first thing that needs to be tended to: it is lit right away and left to come up to temperature.

One fire is set in each of the tiny holes that holds the ovens below the kiln-like machine that holds the drum roller that the tea tumbles around in and the roaster that the tea will be cooked in.

First, the tea is put in to the Kill Green machine. It’s brought over rack by rack and dumped on the processing floor in front of the kiln and then the leaves are tossed into to the hot tumbler.  The leaves are heated at about 100 degrees Celsius for 2 -3 minutes depending on moisture content. Interestingly, the front of the kiln is covered with a bamboo basket and the leaves are steamed. I’ve never seen this before. It’s like pressure cooking tea. This is strange, because after all this work to get the moisture out of the leaves, it’s being contained rather than released. It gets to the point about 3 – 4 hours later when it’s “raining” indoors, and the people processing tea wear hats to stay dry.

After the Kill Green process, the leaves are removed from the kiln (the motor is reversed and the leaves are pushed out naturally). They are fluffed and transferred to the rolling machine. Now, for Ti Kuan Yin tea, this step happens multiple times, and with two machines, to both roll the tea and then curl it upon itself. This time, the tea is only being twisted, and so the process is much shorter: only 5 minutes, and it happens only once (if done properly).

Next, the tea is fluffed – this time for about 20 minutes per basket. This is crucial at this point, the leaves are curled, but they need to be separated, otherwise when they’re cooked, it will just be a lumpy mass of leaves. They are sprinkled on mesh wire cooking racks, about 3 feet around, and put in the oven to bake for an hour.

Both kiln and oven use wood fire but I couldn’t find out what wood is used, I was told whatever’s available. I’m going to investigate and see if I can find out what wood is used – I have my theories about this and I think it matters.

Next, the tea is collected on a plastic tarp and rests for about 3 hours. It is re-fired again for an hour, and racked to cool completely. Lastly, it is bagged and you have 20 kilos of Mao Cha (or raw tea ready for sorting) and ready for a finishing roast to bring out the specific flavor of the tea varietal.

And finally, we’re at 6 pm the following day. So from 6 am the previous day until now, we’ve processed one batch of tea. At the same time, 6 pm, that day’s pickings come up the mountain and they’re ready for that nights drying, and the process starts all over again.

I’d like to say here, that Mr Lam is quite the tea bad-ass he appears to be. He rocks tea processing like a pro, because he is. This is him checking the moisture content of the leaves during the Kill Green process, determining how they are doing just by touch.  Pretty awesome if you ask me.