Travel Diaries

Report from the Company of Tea Devotees’ expedition to remote parts of Tibet.

Probably everyone knows that tea is drunk in Tibet. You can find teahouses on almost every corner. Black tea with yak milk and butter is, after tsampa, the second most important staple in the diets of the inhabitants of this beautiful country.

In Tibetan teahouses only this one type of tea is served, and it comes in large thermoses. It is drunk salted, sometimes alternatively with a sweetened version. The usual price for one thermos is one yuan, which is just under ten cents.

Tea can be bought either pressed or loose leaf from many street vendors together with yak butter, which is stored in yak stomachs and sold by weight.

The most commonly sold tea is a Sichuan brick wrapped in yellow paper.

We were more interested in the bags of green tea with labels in Tibetan, which we learned truly do come from a plantation lying directly in the territory of Tibet. Considering its location on a high plateau with a minimal altitude of over 3,000 meters above sea level, the search for the Tibetan tea plantation became a challenge for us.

The chairman of the Communist Party of China Mao Tse-Tung himself visited the lovely valley near the Tigong Lake, created by a tributary of the sacred Brahmaputra River, and decided that the place was suitable for cultivating tea. It was from his impetus that the first tea seedlings were planted here in the early 1960s.

Roughly three months after the earthquake, however, the natural dam burst under the weight of the accumulated water, spilling into the valley and taking with it a 40-kilometer-long local road, the only access road. The place became completely cut off from the outside world for several years, and even today it is only accessible with all-terrain vehicles with double fuel tanks. What’s left of the lake is visible in the photo. The tea plantation is girdled by a rock wall, which serves as protection against free-ranging yaks.

It was incredible luck that on the very day of Aleš’ visit, which also happened to be his birthday, i.e. April 23, 2007, was the first day of the tea leaf (to be precise – only the tea buds) harvest. The fresh young shoots, however, were not abundant, and so the gatherers sufficed with little bowls, and in some cases even the fronts of their sweaters, instead of classic tea-collecting baskets.

A little after midnight the fires are lit in the renovated workrooms.

The work night has begun for the processors. The tea is stirred and shaped by hand.

The resulting tea is called Mao Jian and is intended only for local political leaders. For that reason, the price is impossible to determine. Its flavor reminded us of the famous Chinese Putuo. The name “Mao” is not, however, derived from the great chairman’s name. In Chinese, it means “downy,” while “Jian” means “top.”

It just so happened that A. Devotee’s visit to the Tibetan tea garden was the first ever visit of a European! But even considering attempting to establish any business cooperation was out of the question. The local Mao Jian drinkers’ condition for doing business was to first show our good will by investing in the damaged road. Reportedly around 30 million yuan ($3.98 million). After that, we could start talking about tea… Considering that the Company of Tea Devotees does not have the above-mentioned amount at this time, we can take solace in having good contacts for a producer of black loose leaf tea for the Tibetan market in neighboring Sichuan.

Experienced by A. Devotee

Written by J. Devotee

Travel diary across the tea gardens of China, 1997.

"In China tea was originally prepared using tea leaves from wild trees, which would be cut down to be harvested, since uncut they could grow to fifty foot or more. Only later, in the 4th century, did tea enter cultural consciousness. The tea plant began to be cultivated and tea became a market commodity."

This inconspicuous piece of information, often included in publications on tea, sowed the seeds of temptation in the minds of the Tea Devotees.

Riding the Iron Rooster to Hangzhou

On Chinese trains, there are two levels of passenger comfort - you can either travel in the "hard" or "soft" bed category. From Beijing, we buy a "hard bed" to Hangzhou, the capital of the tea province Zhejiang - the first tea province on our itinerary.

I find only one aspect of travel on Chinese trains difficult. In every compartment there are carefully placed loudspeakers that play modern Chinese pop music throughout the whole journey interrupted only by short radio plays or basic information such

as when the first Communist cell had been established in whatever town we are passing through at the time. On the other hand, the trains are relatively clean and run on time.

The first tea surprise of the journey is that all the passengers have their own screw-top jars, in which they have an infusion of green tea. Indeed, on request the conductor brings five grams of high quality green tea in a vacuum pack, and then comes round the compartments at regular intervals with a pot of boiling water. All you need is your jar!

Hangzhou, a city described with admiration by Marco Polo, interests us because it produces Long Jing, one of the most celebrated of Chinese teas. Long Jing, which means "dragon well," is an excellent green tea that has maintained the traditions of primitive hand production over the centuries except for the fact that the pans in which the tea leaves are processed are no longer heated over a fire, but are now electrically heated.

The highest quality Long Jing is produced in a village of the same name, and always in April. In this month, the pale green leaves that appear on the tea bushes after their winter rest are torn off by hand while still undeveloped. In size they are no longer than three quarters of an inch and several hundred must be gathered to make 100 gr (3 ounces). Over one season private farmers manage to produce around 60-100 lbs. of this high quality tea, which sells for US$5.50 to US$7.50 per lb. - but as the weather becomes hotter the quality of the tea falls, and so does the price.

Heading West; Unwelcome in Qimen

In the train a routine police check of the contents of pockets and baggage is underway and beyond the windows the face of the landscape is gradually changing. The foothills of Huangshan (also home of many famous Chinese green teas) begin to rise on the horizon. We cross the borders of our second tea province - Anhui - and head for the town of Qimen which has given its name to a world-famous black tea.

The police officer conducting the checks on the train asks us where we are going. We think it is only a formality, but our subsequent encounter with armed police at the Qimen station turns out to be far from a formality. We are placed under house arrest and are forced to leave on the next train. Apparently, visiting Qimen requires a permit we do not have.

Down in Fujian, We Learn More About Tie Guan Yin and Bai Mu Dan

One of the most famous of Chinese tea provinces, celebrated above all for the production of white and half green teas, is Fujian. In its northern area, the superb Wuyi mountain range rises to heights of more than 2,000 meters (6,500 ft). Tea is cultivated everywhere! We start to feel embarrassed with our jars at our belts (carried from north and central China), since here tea is drunk from special small bowls of unglazed earthenware made in Yixing, farther north. The whole ritual of preparing the tea, which is called "Gongfu Cha," consists of pouring boiling water several times onto a relatively large quantity of half green tea in a small teapot. Roughly a minute after scalding the leaves in the pot, the light brown infusion is poured into the tiny cups. This procedure is repeated up to seven times, depending on the quality of the tea. We buy Gongfu sets and learn to prepare the high quality half green Tie Guan Yin.

We discover that a mere 65 km (40 miles) away (half a day of a wild bus ride along winding stony roads), the "aristocrat" of White teas - Bai Mu Dan - is gathered and processed around the town of Jianyang.

The production of Baimudan is very simple. The freshly picked tea is spread out on shallow baskets woven of bamboo measuring roughly 1 meter in diameter, and left to

wilt in the sun for several hours. The baskets are then transferred to an attic space under a scorched roof, where it is very hot and dry. The tea is subsequently shaken manually with circular but jerky movements at roughly half-hour intervals until it is thoroughly dried.

The next phase is the crucial one for the establishment of the price, and this is hand-sorting. Young and old Chinese women, and sometimes even whole families including children sit down around the flat baskets and painstakingly remove pieces of leafstalk, dark, over-fermented leaves and the remains of branches.

The sweetish superfine taste of the downy white tips must not be muddied in the brew by the presence of the bitter tannic acids contained in older leaves and stalks.

When brewing green tea for themselves, the Chinese often make it directly in a plain cup. We find that for the preparation of Bai Mu Dan, it is very practical to use a bowl which broadens conically towards the rim and has a cover and a saucer. The cover has various advantages. It means that steam from the hot water cannot escape and so scalds any tea leaves above the surface. The tea keeps warm, and the intoxicating aroma that might otherwise have escaped without being caught by the vigilant "smell cells" of the honest tea drinker is preserved under the lid. Another decided advantage of the lid is that just by sliding it a little way off the cup you can create a slit through which you can drink the tea without getting the scalded tea leaves in your mouth. The saucer means that you can carry the tea around "painlessly."

A 60-Hour Ride to Kunming

We are now in our third week in China. The train ride from Fujian to Kunming, the capital of the tea province of Yunnan takes 60 hours. We amuse ourselves on the way by trying all the snacks offered by the vendors at the stations (poultry claws,

dried fish, snails and so on), and we compete to see who is the bravest. The result of the tastings is agreement that the best delicacy is "niu rou," which is spiced dried beef, and

the worst of all is instant noodles. Our jars mean that we never miss a chance to taste tea.

The south-west province of Yunnan is considered a paradise for nature lovers. It attracts ornithologists, zoologists, entomologists, geologists, botanists. More than half of all animal species in China are to be found here, and the province is also home to a third of all Chinese ethnic minorities. We know that Yunnan will be a paradise for devotees of tea as well. While the tropical but moderate climate of the region allows the cultivation of rice, tobacco, sugar cane, pineapples, bananas and mainly tea, original tropical primeval forests remain unfelled on the south-west border with Laos and Burma (now Myanmar). Somewhere there, hidden from the eyes of tourists, surrounded by wild jungle and guarded by the Chinese border forces, the 100-foot tea tree Cha Shu Wang, or Tea King, has grown toward the sky for 1,700 years, probably the oldest of its species in the world.

The Sleeper Bus to Xishuangbanna

As the distance from the capital of the province increases, travelers' comfort decreases. After 30 hours of a wild "sleeper bus ride," during which the driver got so drunk that a passenger had to replace him behind the wheel, we reach the heart of the Xishuangbanna region - the town Jinglinghong. This area is the home of the Dai national minority.

These are a people who historically, culturally and ethnically have more in common with the southern Thai peoples, and also differ from the other inhabitants of China in that their traditional lifestyle is the least affected by the political upheavals of the last century. People dress colorfully, the cuisine is spicy and diverse, there is life in the small Buddhist monasteries and to us, the atmosphere is distinctly un-Chinese.

We stay in little bamboo huts and gradually get used to insects and spiders of a size we never imagined before. In the restaurants we uninhibitedly order toads, snakes or fat worms, artificially bred - we are told - in the bodies of dead pigs.

Our enthusiasm for all this exotic world around us is enhanced by the brilliant range of teas produced in the area. Knowing that the green Mao Feng and Yunnan Lu teas,

the black Yunnan Hong tea, and above all the Pu-er teas are produced exclusively in this part of Yunnan, loose or rolled into all kinds of shapes, makes us euphoric. Our jars work hard.

We learn from villagers and private tea producers that the Yunnan Pu-er so highly rated in Gangdong, Fujian and in the West is not drunk here at all. The locals do not like its taste, so it is produced only for export. The green tea on the other hand is a great favorite, and drunk on every occasion.

We try to find out a little more about the closely guarded secret of how Pu-er is processed. It is a dark, twice fermented tea, distinguished by a fine mustiness on the surface and the unusual scent of old Buddhist temples. But we do not have the necessary permission from the Ministries of Secret Facts, Agriculture and Foreign Affairs, and so the gates of the 13th chamber for the production of Pu-er remain closed to us.

Finding the Tea King

We are however getting close to the goal of our trip. Starting out early from the last town indicated on the map, Menghai, we head for the Burmese border. We are traveling in a bus which half an hour earlier was a disassembled wreck. The going gets really rough. On the stony track the bus whimpers, scrapes and squeals. Villagers in traditional dress are taking the most extraordinary objects with them such as a giant electro-motor. They are squashed in fours on seats for two and all of them (including the old ladies) smoke. A group of hens traveling loose take a fancy to our backpacks. Border guards returning from leave look disorderly and are slightly drunk. We feel as if we do not belong here. Towards the evening we reach an anonymous settlement on the frontier itself. The only walled building in the village belongs to the commander of the border guards.

We are aware that since China has no border contact with Burma (except by air) our presence is highly suspicious. Our interpreter Petr has difficulty understanding fragments

of conversations in the local dialect. We are the first "long noses" (as the Chinese call us) ever to have come to this place in history! Once again we are arrested.

The drama of lengthy explanations begins again. But what is to be done with us? The natives do not want to let us in, the soldiers want to deport us, but the bus is not leaving until the next morning. Salvation in this hopeless situation comes unexpectedly. The Tea King himself rescues us. When the local inhabitants hear that we had come all the way from faraway "Czechoslovakia" to see their Tea King, we are all at once welcome. We are allowed accommodation for Y5, each in a wooden animal shed, and are even invited to the bamboo "culture house" which houses a television powered by petrol aggregate. "Don't go out at night without a torch. There are cobras everywhere," the soldiers warn us before we go to bed. They are looking forward to the next day, since they have made a deal with us to provide us with an armed escort to the King for Y40.

Over the last few years we have traveled through many tea countries. We have been soaked to the skin in tea gardens in the foothills of the Himalayas in Darjeeling, we have warmed ourselves at fires in the clay huts of Nepalese shepherds and drunk their salty tea with rancid yak milk. In North-East India we have bowed before the immensity of the River Brahmaputra, which brings life to the huge tea valley of Assam. In the middle of the bewitchingly beautiful tea island of Sri Lanka we have meditated with Buddhist monks, and near the Georgian frontier and with machine guns trained on us we have explained to armed Turks that it was an interest in tea that had brought us so far. On our tea pilgrimages we have met many tea experts and tea laymen, and we have discussed with them the possibility of finding the Tea King somewhere.

But we had always had the feeling that our conversations were verging on the borders of fantasy and legend. A few people had heard of the King, some had an inkling, but none could point to a place on a map.

But we, the Tea devotees of Prague, actually found the King on the sixth of April 1997 at 10:15 Chinese time.

Srí Lanka - The Home of Ceylon Tea

Discovering Tiger River and Adam's Peak tea in 1996.

Fishermen's Hospitality

In one of the innumerable inlets on the west coast of the island of Srí Lanka lies the fishing village of Negombo. The local fishermen, just like their distant ancestors in the period described by the author of the 2000-year-old legends of the Ramayana, sail out to sea each morning to pursue their trade on catamarans skillfully carved out of huge tree trunks.

"Come and visit my humble dwelling," I am asked as I walk through the village. The aroma of dried fish, the sun at its zenith and the red scorched sand under my feet has tired me out, and I accept the invitation without much hesitation. My host is called Warnakulasooriya Hernandez and he is a member of the Christian minority on the island. His forebears were christened in the times of the Portuguese voyages of discovery and colonization, which brought mass (whole village) baptisms.

In a hut built of bamboo stems and palm leaves stuck together with clay, a kerosene burner is glowing and the sound of boiling water begins to rattle from a tin pot that I

believe is the only metal article in the "house." The master of the house throws in a handful of scented black tea, broken into very small pieces. "There is fresh milk and a little cane sugar, if you please," says the mistress of the house, who has come to take a look at me but after a moment vanishes to tell her relatives in the neighborhood that they have a rare visitor from who knows where.

Tea and the Mountain Gods, a Story of Cultural Diversity

"This tea is grown at high altitudes in the heart of the island, at around 6,500 feet above sea level near the Adam Mountain. That was where Adam came down from Heaven to Eden and he first touched earth at the very summit. But the tea in this area is named after the highest situated town Nuwara Eliya, which in Sinhalese means "town of radiance." "Tea is cultivated in other places as well," my host informs me. "Don`t forget to try the tea from the area named after the ancient town of Kandy, which is classified as a "low mountain" tea." Then he goes on, "The teas from the high mountains produce a lighter brew, while the lowland teas are very dark and you must put a little milk and sugar in them. Teas from the Uva or Haputale areas are of outstanding quality, and this is mainly to do with the South-West monsoon, and so the best harvest is in the August-September season. By contrast the harvest in the Dimbula and Dickoya areas is dependent on the North-West and the best quality is to be picked in the January-February season." While my host has been speaking the hut has filled up with several men and a quantity of children, who after a while are shooed back over the threshold. The tea is poured into small ceramic bowls and the tea extract that has formed in the tin pot is diluted with boiling water.

The next to speak is the eldest of the brothers, as we later learned. "I hope that on your tea travels you will also visit the summit of Sumanakúta" (7,300 feet above sea-level). "And where is that?" I pretend to be scared, since I had a feeling. "Buddha once came to this country to turn the wicked cannibal tribes - the Rakshashi - to the true faith. To show his supernatural power and ability to transport himself anywhere, he put one foot north of the royal city Anurádhapura and the second foot on the top of the mountain I mention. In both places he left a deep footprint (the two places are about 100 miles from each other). In the 1^st century BC, King Vattagámani had a Buddhist monastery built at the place of the footprint near the royal city, and both these footprints of the "Enlightened One" are much venerated."

"But that is the summit of the same mountain that -," I start a joke, anticipating the reactions of those present. "Yes indeed, and the Hindus believe that the summit of the mountain is a holy place too, where their highest deities live," the answer comes back, confirming my view that I am witness to the purest example of religious tolerance. But I have not yet heard enough and so I ask, "And what about Muslims?"

"There are also a lot of them living here and they are mostly descendants of long ago traders of spices and precious stones, who settled here for good, especially on the coast. You won't find them in the interior. There the majority are Indian Tamils, who were moved here by the British to work on the tea plantations," explains my host pouring the rest of the fine black tea into the earthenware bowl.

Later, sitting in the bus taking me to the interior while the driver uses all his skill to avoid the trucks full of fresh tea chests, I notice the signs on the truck sides. From the names of companies like AKBAR Brothers, ISMAIL T.A.M., and ABDUL HUSEIN & Sons it is clear that the descendants of the old Arab traders are still doing a lively business today.

James Taylor - the British tea pioneer - in 1867 far-sightedly planted the first 19 acres of tea plants in the garden of Loolencondera, a move thoroughly justified by the results, and the fact that a century later the island Lanka was to earn the suffix Srí, meaning "brilliant" or also "fortunate".

The tea plant at the time became a symbol of religious harmony. How else could the plant be regarded when it was

picked on the land of the Buddhist Sinhalese, processed by the nimble hands of the Hindu Tamils and then transported to the tea houses of Christian Europe by Muslim traders?

Time cannot, however, be held back and for a long time now Srí Lanka has not been as fortunate as its inhabitants wished for it to be in the times when the local tea was still called Ceylon. At least, may our choice of teas be fortunate, we have teas from the gardens of the Nuwara Eliya and Kandy regions for the clients of Dobrá Tea.

by Jirka Simsa

Travel in the center of Taiwan, 2005.

The life of Tea Planters

The life of the four thousand tea planters living in the village of Luku that spreads out picturesquely on the slopes of the Tung Ting mountain (which translates as "Frozen Little Peak," and rises about 4,000 ft. above sea level) in Central Taiwan is for most of the year monotonously quiet - only when the dew has dried on the tea bushes (soon after dawn, for we are in the Subtropics, only a few kilometers beneath the Tropic of Cancer), the entire planter family sets out for the tea field to spend the whole morning harvesting the tea leaves by hand. Around noon, the pickers return with full baskets and while the tea leaves wilt spread out on bamboo platters in a shady place, the family gives itself up to the favorite activity of the day - the preparation and joint consumption of a lunch consisting of many courses.

After a noonday rest, the male members of the family embark on processing the tea. With little technical help the tea leaves go through the following time-honored and time-tested phases (the first 12 tea bushes were brought to Luku in 1855 by a certain Feng Chi Liu from Fujian, where he had been called to examinations for an official state career):

1. Withering

2. Light rolling - by hand or in simple wooden rollers.

3. Repeated (usually 7 times) short sharp drying in rotating drums heated from the outside (today usually by gas).

4. Repeated pressing of the leaves wrapped in white cloth, either by traditional treading, or with a simple machine (alternately with the sharp bursts of drying).

5. Completion of drying in a grating dryer.

This fifth phase is reached by the evening, and then the whole family again gathers for the final process. The dried leaves are poured out in a heap on a large circular table, round which everyone sits watching the interminably long TV news as they painstakingly pick up the tea leaves (now already rolled in irregular balls) one by one and break off the little flags of remaining stem. As the news ends the work usually ends too, and the concluding tasks fall, once again, to the head of the family. He weighs its out into 600 g (= 1 yin - the local unit of

weight or about 21 ounces) portions, vacuum packs it in decorative cardboard boxes and then sets it out, marked by a certain number of standard white flowers, on a shelf by the entrance to the house.

Only now is the working day over, and the members of the planter family usually go out, often to evening courses in the "kung fu" tea ceremony or to the popular music schools for adults. The way the latter operate is remarkable: in one large hall the players of the different instruments (the national instruments - the "pi pa," a wooden flute, a single-stringed violin and various small drums), first rehearse "separately" and only then play the new piece together. Very occasionally the head of the household will go to the local inn in order to discuss the development of the tea crop with the competition (but usually over a bowl of tea rather than alcohol). On Saturdays and Sundays there is no tea picking or processing, since these are sales days.

The Tea Market, the Flower Rating

At crack of dawn, the tea room is cleared and gradually changed from a living room into a workshop or tea shop. A large objet trouvé, skillfully modified for the "kung fu" preparation of tea by a local craftsmen is dragged out from a corner, water is boiled in a large kettle on a gas stove and everything is ready - the customers can come in.

And come they do, or more precisely people from the smog-bound capital Tai Pei drive up in large limousines to breathe the fresh air in the famous high-mountain climatic spas of Ali Shan and to buy fresh supplies of tea.

Although the supply is broad and plentiful and the competition between the four thousand planters producing the same type of tea - Tung Ting - is huge, sales are all conducted in a calm and polite spirit. The customer goes from planter to planter, taking a route that might seem accidental but is in fact guided by the white-flower marks on the tea packages: Here they have three-flower Tung Ting, there they have two-flower, and over there they even have five-flower. And every Taiwanese knows the prices corresponding to the flowers in any year.

In mid-May the decades-old tea cycle is traditionally interrupted and at the same time crowned by a mass tasting

of the spring harvest, at which flowers (1-5) are awarded to the tea production of each planter, and prices for the flower categories are set for the next year depending on the quantity and quality of the crop. The high point of the tasting is the announcement of the "Tea of the Year" - the single winner of the six-flower award. Each of the 4,000 planters supplies 2 x 1 yin of tea for the tasting, which takes place on an anonymous, two-round basis. The first round is conducted by a tasting committee selected from the planters themselves, and the second by a committee from the state tea commission (The Taiwan Tea Board). After the results have been counted and announced, life under the Frozen Summit returns to its usual quiet, only the map of the tea customers' itinerary through the village of Luku is slightly modified.

- by Andrew Snavely

The Secrets of Pu-er Uncovered

A second trip to Yunnan province in China, 2000.

The great majority of Chinese have fears about the betrayal of "Chinese state secrets" or the export of Chinese "know-how" about the production of anything. Such fears, based as they are on the experience of the Chinese people both from the distant past (the export of the silkworm) and the recent past (the export of unique knowledge from mainland China to Taiwan and subsequently to Japan and the "rest of the world" at the end of the Nineteen-Forties), were apparent to me at every step during my travels in China.

First Visit in 1997

During our first trip to Yunnan in 1997 (see The Search for the Tea King above) we had gone to the small town of Menghai in the autonomous region of Xishuangbanna, where we visited a tea-processing factory. The factory management were very friendly and kindly let us into the otherwise guarded building. We were allowed to take photographs and make notes about the production of red tea. We saw most of the factory where the green tea was processed, and were even allowed a glimpse of the pressing of Pu-er into all kinds of forms.

On the other hand, we received no answers to questions relating to production. On the contrary, it was made clear that if we did not stop showing that much interest in Pu-er production, we would be told nothing more at all. But we had managed to find the Tea King on that trip, and we considered the journey a success.

Urge to Solve the Mystery

The longing to solve any kind of mystery flows deep in Czech

blood, so it was not long before I set out again for South China, armed with a whole range of books, to try once more to uncover the secrets of Pu-er tea production. The first

records of Pu-er tea go back to the period of the Tchang Dynasty (618- 907), but the three categories of Pu-er tea as we know them (Mao Jian - tips tea, Ya Cha - shoot tea, and Nu Er Cha - virgin tea) appeared later, under the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911). Why was the last of these teas called "virgin"? It was because the best varieties of tea, mainly destined for the imperial court, were picked only by young unmarried women and girls, who in this way made extra money for their dowries.

Why the name Pu-er? The reason is very simple. The first large administrative center in the vicinity of the Six Tea Mountains was the town of Pu-er. Hence the name of the tea, derived from the then "Mecca" of the tea trade. Today tea leaves are still picked on the slopes of the Six Tea Mountains, but the strategically important sites for tea production have long been shifted to the west, to the border areas of previously virgin mountains.

How Was the Taste of Pu-er Tea, So Different from All Other Teas, Developed?

Although we have no way of telling exactly how the mode of production of this tea was developed, one friend volunteered a particularly plausible explanation. The distinctive and indescribable aroma and taste of dark Pu-er could have come into existence accidentally during the transport of teas in sacks on the backs of the horses, oxen and mules that trudged the caravan routes radiating from the town of Simao to the neighboring and distant world.

The bags stuffed with tea would in most cases have become damp, from external moisture and the sweat of the animals from underneath. A specific microclimate developed which resulted in the tea undergoing a new process resembling oxidization, but which in this case was fermentation in the tea at the caravan stations became accustomed to its peculiar aroma and taste. As networks of surfaced roads and railways developed, however, and caravan beasts were replaced by covered freight vehicles, the conditions favorable for the second fermentation changed, and it became necessary to artificially simulate the environment that emerged spontaneously in damp bags on the backs of transport animals. This was probably the way that the original method of "double fermentation" of tea leaves, unique to China, was born.

Pu-er Production - The Secret

Now you are expecting me to reveal how I found out about Pu-er production. Unfortunately, I have sworn not to reveal the sources of the information. I will only share what I have learned from these sources.

On the innumerable tea travels that I have made in recent years, I have realized perhaps a hundred times, when "face to leaf"

with the tea plant, that production techniques are not in themselves transferable. The taste of a processed tea is directly dependent on a quantity of factors such as soil

composition, variety of tea plant, climate, season, height above sea level, quality of leaves picked and, last but not least, processing procedures. It is completely impossible to achieve a comparable, let alone a better, tea than the original by simply copying a procedure. While tea innovators have been trying to take this road in many places in the tea-producing world, I have never yet encountered a copy that would improve on the original. The combination of the natural environment of a specific locality and the new technology logically produces what is simply a new original tea!

In the borderland mountains in the area known as Bada there are extensive tea gardens, and in the middle of these is a relatively small modern manufacturer that processes the raw materials for the preparation of dark Pu-er.

The picked tea leaves are transported here and allowed to wilt on a concrete floor under the roof of a very large hall. The leaves are spread out and later raked back with special wooden rakes, used very roughly. The leaves are not just left to wither and partially dry out, but are also sufficiently beaten about. After several hours of withering (including overnight), they are spread out in a thin layer outside on concrete and dry out exposed to direct sunlight, while being turned a few times.

The leaves acquire a green-red color, in places turning brown. The resulting raw tea material is packed into sacks and taken to factory storage in the town. The unsorted tea (at any time of year, according to the needs and capacity of the processing plant) goes through special steaming machines and then, still hot and moist, is spread out in a layer roughly 40-50 cm (1-2 feet) thick in fermenting rooms and entirely covered with heavy cloth. The tea is left for several days, and this is the stage that decides its quality and, therefore, its price. The longer the period of fermentation, the finer and more mature the taste. Ordinary Pu-er tea is mature in 7-9 days, but there are delicacies that are fermented for a whole month! Finally the Pu-er is dried out on machine belt dryers and sorted. The higher grades are sold as loose teas, and the lower grades are used to produce pressed teas.

Pressing into all kind of shapes is carried out after the tea has once again been steamed. After being taken out of

the forms the tea cakes, bricks and so on are put on wooden trays and kept in special rooms in which a constant temperature and humidity are carefully maintained. Here the pressed tea matures and dries out, but not completely, since it is highly desirable that the fermentation process not stop, but continue. Tea processed in this way is packaged in fine paper, boxes or banana leaves, but must never be hermetically sealed.

Does Older Mean Better?

The older the better is a rule that applies only and exclusively to teas pressed from dark Pu-er. All other teas must be thoroughly dried out before being placed in chests or sacks in order to make sure that there is no further oxidization or fermentation. This latter rule applies to loose dark Pu-er as well. In our climatic conditions, however, any hopes that some little block or nest of pressed dark Pu-er carefully hidden away in the attic or at grandma's place will be much better in twenty years (if not mouse-eaten!) tend to be futile. The problem is that in the areas where Pu-er is cultivated and produced the humidity is around 90% and in our country it is only 40-50%. The result is a process that starts immediately after the transport containers are opened, whether at Logan airport or Boston harbor - the tea simply dries out!

by Jirka Simsa

"Yellow Tea" or "yellow tea"?

Another journey to China, 2001.

Tea literature is relatively miserly with its explanations of the term "yellow" in relation to China tea (and, by the way, only in China will the reader ever encounter the term). One gets the impression that there is some unresolved problem here, some little question mark hanging in the air, and an area where the opinions and theories of tea specialists and laymen are in contradiction.

It was again the urge to solve a mystery which brought Ales Jurina and me on a new journey to the Middle Kingdom in 2001.

The only hints were a few names of so-called "yellow teas" in pin-jin transcription and the information that "somewhere in Hunan or perhaps Anhui, but certainly in China," it would be possible to find out more.

"Huo Shan Huang Ya" -Anhui Province,

"Ping Yang Huang Tang" -Zhejiang Province,

"Chong An Lian Xin" -Fujian Province,

"Meng Ding Huang Ya" -Sichuan Province,

and

"Bei Gang Mao Jian," "Yuan An Lu An" -both with no known area of origin.

These were the only clues, and the not very solid points of reference on which to plan our journey. I cannot quite remember why we finally decided to head for the place that was furthest away and least accessible, but perhaps it was just because it was the furthest.

Tea and Tea Rooms in Sichuan

Due to its strategic position, protected on the east by the Longguan Mountains and on the West by the mountains of neighboring Tibet, the Province of Sichuan has earned itself a place in history primarily as the birthplace of silk. This was the place from which the caravan routes radiated outwards, taking white gold but also other goods including tea to the South and Yunnan, to the West into Tibet, or to the North and the South-West branch of the Silk Road.

The provincial capital of Sichuan, Chengdu, is probably the most "tea-centered" town I have visited anywhere in the world. There are tea rooms on nearly every corner. Every park is also a tea house and the courtyards of the Buddhist temples seem almost designed for drinking tea. And drinking tea is a matter of course here. It is not just some kind of drinking scene staged for tourists eager to purchase. There are not many tourists here anyway.

Loose tea is sold in small shops and to our dismay the sellers do not stock the local favorites such as Zhu Ye Qing Lu, Gan Lu, E Rui, Qing Chen Shan, Yun Wu or the Huang Ya we are seeking, but plagiarized Long Jing or Bi Luo Chun. Essentially they do not give a damn what a tea is called so long as they get paid for it!

In one such little shop we tried to find out something about the yellow tea Huang Ya, and discovered that the very tea we were looking for had just been offered to us a while before as Long Jing, had a distinct resemblance to Mao Feng, and carried a little label with a name completely unknown to us.

Trekking in the Mountains

We went from Chengdu to the small town of Ya An, which according to available information offers a better range of local teas. More importantly, we arranged a meeting with the owner of a factory in the village of Meng Ding just under 10 kilometers from Ya Anu.

The meeting had been arranged for four in the afternoon, and so we first headed up to the hills rising above Meng Ding where we made a discovery of unexpected proportions. A local taxi took us to the foot of Mount Ming Shan from where we continued up using the chairlift for local tourists. The view from the top was breathtaking. Tea plantations spread out

on the slopes of the mountain, between them were little stone paths and the roof of one of the monasteries.

We continued on foot. At one point we were stumbling on slippery stones and struggling past dense vegetation, but we were approaching the unsuspected goal of our expedition!

The abandoned Buddhist monastery had been reconstructed many years before and the government had decided to put a museum of tea in it. Unlike the "All-China Concrete Museum" near the town of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, however, this tea monument was highly picturesque and persuasive. The front wall of the monastery was decorated by four stone reliefs depicting the cycle of tea culture from cultivation to drinking. Beside the entrance on an old wood-cut one could see the Emperor himself, being offered gifts of tea, and inside the whole complex, in the courtyard, we found a permanent exhibition of all kinds of tea bushes brought here from far and wide. In the side wings of the monastery there were small exhibitions of examples of all kinds of local teas including their historic packaging and the historical implements, aids and simple machines used in the past for tea production.

The most exciting sight awaited us in the main monastery temple, however, which is dominated by a several meter high statue of the supposed founder of tea cultivation in China! According to local sources he was the monk Wu Li Zhen, who lived in the period of the rule of the Shang-Jin Dynasty (1523-1027 BC), supposedly in the very place where we found ourselves, the slopes of the Mountain of Ming Shan!

At that moment we wondered if we had reached the very roots of the tea cultivation (Sichuan competes for this honor with Yunnan).

The Difference Between "Yellow Tea" and "yellow tea"

In the past every Chinese province had to pay taxes to the emperor. The tax was gathered in the form of the best goods that local people could offer. In some places it was mineral resources, in others handmade articles, and in others cattle or

sheep. In the tea-producing areas this obligation was sometimes extended to tea.

There was only one emperor, but thousands of tea producers. The consumption of tea at the imperial court was reckoned in tens of kilograms, while hundreds and thousands of tons were actually produced. Only the best of the very best had a chance of getting to the table of the emperor himself. And when a tea was chosen in this way, it naturally acquired huge fame. In many cases it also earned the adjective "imperial." And the color of the emperor was from time immemorial yellow!

In the period of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the color yellow even became exclusively an imperial color. Nobody else would dare to wear it, and only the palace of the emperor might have yellow roofs. It is therefore easy to see how "imperial tea" became "yellow tea," especially since the pronunciation of the Chinese sign "emperor" is the same as the sign for "color yellow." Yellow tea (with a capital Y) could then be a name applied to any high quality tea served at the imperial court, regardless of whether the tea was green, white or blue-green. In fact we encountered the name "Yellow Tea" in the northern part of Fujian Province in the mountains of Wuyi Shan. Here semi-fermented Da Hong Pao was offered to us as "Yellow." In Hunan Province, on the other hand, white Jun Shan Yin Zhen is also labeled "Yellow."

Did any independent category of "yellow teas" (with a small "y") exist then? We asked the guide at the tea museum.

Another Secret

"Yes, of course, but its processing technology is a closely-guarded secret," was the reply. "I can only tell you that at the beginning the tea is processed like green tea, but in the final phase there is a change. The wet leaves are not dried rapidly, but slowly at a certain temperature for a relatively long time, during which they are covered with flax fabric. This is the procedure used, for example in the production of the local Huang Ya. For obvious reasons I can't tell you any more details about the temperature and length of drying." "Naturally" we said thinking of the "obvious reasons" but at least half-satisfied, we left the monastery-museum.

The time for our meeting with one of the local tea producers down in the valley was approaching, and it turned out to be extremely fruitful! We had a chance to visit a small factory where workers were just processing the tea "Young Bamboo Shoots," or Zhu Ye Qing Lu. There we were told that the best quality Huang Ya is processed only in one period each year, between the 27^th of March and the 5^th of April, when the temperature and moisture of the air are in rare balance, and that the processing of this tea takes four days.

"We have found it!" we thought to ourselves as we returned to the provincial capital Chengdu. We were missing only one piece of information, the temperature at which the wet leaves were dried out, causing the decomposition of the

green chlorophyll and so the change in leaf color from green to yellow. On that subject our host had refused to talk, not even promises to buy the best of his production in future had had any effect.

The tea culture has given the town of Chengu one unique feature. There is in the city a multi-story "Tea House" built in a grandiose style. The aim of the architects was to capture and preserve the old cultural values that are vanishing as a result of globalization and the modernization of China. The building has a central room as large as a station hall with a glass roof and is full of greenery, with entertainment from live musicians playing traditional instruments, and tastefully furnished like a large tea garden restaurant. Up on the galleries the visitor can admire artifacts rescued from town buildings, monasteries and village dwellings which are now demolished. Here you can borrow literature saved from the "cultural revolution," or hire a room and watch period black-and-white documentaries from an antique projector.

We were of course a little bewildered by such a sophisticated setting in a China that we otherwise found pulsing with spontaneity and raw life, and we were all the more surprised when after getting a very warm welcome we were served by rigorously trained and elegant waitresses and offered a range of tea mainly from local representatives. The person in charge of the choice and presentation of tea was a particularly cultivated young man, extremely well educated in tea sciences, who was willing to discuss all kinds of esoteric tea subjects with us.

We couldn't resist complaining to him a little about the problems foreigners in China experience when trying to get information on old secret procedures for tea production, and he sympathized with us. He himself didn't seem to find any subject a taboo ... except the production of yellow tea! He apologized greatly for the fact that he could reveal no more than that the temperature at which the covered leaves were dried out over not quite four days was 50 degrees Celsius!

by Jirka Simsa

India is a Drug

Journeys through Assam and Darjeeling, 1995 and 1999.

I can't explain why, but every time I leave India I say to myself, "Never again!" Perhaps it's because I'm always so exhausted when I return home. When I travel on my tea discovery journeys, my tea instinct almost always takes me to places that are unknown to foreigners - places that have little in the way of creature comforts.

Yet despite my past "resolutions," here I am flying to India for the fourth time, once again of my own free will and again in the hope that this beloved land with its oceans, great mountains, unending sun-baked plains, crammed railway cars, people shining with the bright flame of faith

and above all some of the best teas in the world, will hold no grudges against me and be generous to me. It has always been so in the past. It has always given me my share of deep experiences. And during the ten-hour flight I keep going back over those experiences in my head, and I'm a little nervous. I don't know what is waiting for me.

Faithful to the Legacy of Mahatma Ghandi

I first visited India with friends in 1995, in the foolish hope that in the virgin forests of the East Indian state of Assam we would track down the wild tea plant found there in 1823 - so we had read - by Major Robert Bruce. We were fascinated by the idea of following in the footsteps of the old discoverers right up to the border of what is Myanmar today, and traveling from the then unknown settlement of Sadia, where in 1826 Sir Charles Alexander Bruce founded the first tea plantation, downstream along the life-giving River Brahmaputra as far as Calcutta. After all, it was in Calcutta that Assam tea was first loaded onto a boat bound for England, so that in 1839, in a London auction house, Englishmen could sell the first tea cultivated on the territory of the British Empire.

In 1995, Assam was one of the few territories in India to which a foreigner could not travel without special permission. Such permissions were issued “in tandem” by two institutions, namely the Ministry of Home Affairs of India and the Office of the Resident Commissioner, Assam House, both located in New Delhi.

Anyone who has ever been in India knows all too well that Indian officials give a whole new dimension to the word "bureaucracy." We four friends and tea enthusiasts went back and forth and back and forth through the streets of New Delhi hoping that even if an official at the Ministry had put us off ten times, we would be successful on the eleventh attempt. We also somehow believed that the bureaucrats in the Office of the Resident Commissioner would be more forthcoming when they saw our faces at the application window for the fifth time. Oh how naive we were! We got absolutely nowhere.

In the end there was nothing left for it but to use Indian weapons to get results. On our unending trips across the city we were fascinated by the traditional costume worn by some Indians and we decided to try it out ourselves. We bought ourselves long shirts and loose trousers made of natural material and I even acquired a boat-shaped white cap. When I first put the whole outfit on and went out into the streets I was surprised to find people pointing at me, clasping their hands in gestures of greeting and addressing me as Papa Nehru. And then it came to me that I might be able to use the effect to my advantage. I thought of the non-violent way in which one of the greatest figures of modern Indian history, Mahatma Ghandi,

managed to achieve his aims. So we donned our traditional Indian costumes and set off for the Ministry. Once again they welcomed us with "poker faces" and ignored us. But

then we sat down on the floor in the lotus position and announced that we did not intend to get up again unless and until the permissions were issued, and we were starting a hunger strike. The permissions were in our hands within five minutes.

They did, however, leave us with one warning. "Avoid the town of Jorhat! It really is forbidden to foreigners," the official said. But how we were going to avoid the town of Jorhat when it contained the headquarters of the Tea Research Institute of Assam? We had no idea, but it seemed best to ask no questions and just get going.

Is Paradise Green?

We spent thirteen hours on an Indian train in a car that had no doors and so there was no way of stopping the unending succession of hawkers of all kinds who kept coming in to offer underwear, umbrellas, nail clippers, polish for shoes or the removal of facial and nasal hair; naturally we were tired and rather nervous. To make matters worse the train was six hours behind schedule, but still the conductor tried to observe the only element of the time-table under his control - hourly waits at each station. We reached the most remote place of our journey, the town of Tinsukia, exhausted, and in total darkness.

A wonderful surprise awaited us the next morning. The sight of the boundless Assam tea plantations full of women

pickers with timid doe-eyes, the sound of the unending silence that reigns there, interrupted only by birdsong and the rustle of the tea leaves, truly an unforgettable experience.

We hired some cycle rickshaws and off we went. The Chotta Tingray Tea Estate, the first plantation we visited, is one of dozens where tea is processed using the C.T.C. (crushing, tearing, curling) method. It is a method that gives a balanced, consistent and strong brew. The crushing of the stalks and sometimes even parts of the branches adds a special woody flavor. The tea characteristically releases its color and taste very quickly after steeping, and is ideal for blending with milk or spices.

We enjoyed the views of the green ocean, and continued downstream along the Brahmaputra hoping to have a chance to find wild tea bushes in the forest. This was the way that the Bruce brothers sailed on a barge a hundred and sixty years ago, struggling through impenetrable malarial swamps to discover the wild tea trees. Today, however, there is no wild nature left to discover any more. The Brahmaputra Valley is one of the most intensely cultivated areas in India. As remains of the original vegetation can no longer be found anywhere except in nature reserves, we made our way to the Kaziranga National Park.

As we settled down in the train, we realized that we would have to go through the forbidden town of Jorhat. As it is the seat of the Tea Research Institute of Assam, we knew we could find experts there who would tell us where to find what we were looking for. It was definitely worth the risk.

In Jail in Assam

Unfortunately we were intercepted soon after leaving the train station, loaded into military field vehicles, transported humiliatingly across the town and locked in detention cells. Time passed and every so often we were interrogated. We explained for the hundredth time why we had come to the town; for the hundredth time we were told that we shouldn't have done so. We finally learned that we were being kept in cells for our own protection! Apparently armed groups of local extremists were operating in the area. They saw wandering foreigners as potential hostages to be used to secure the release of their fellow combatants from prison. Finally we understood. We signed a declaration stating that the next day we would leave town on the first train and we were driven to a hotel where we went to bed, protected by an armed guard.

No Help from Scientists or a Rhinoceros

Before we left we had a chance to visit the institute. There were tea bushes growing "wild" because nobody was pruning them, but little help as to where to find wild tea trees in the jungle.

We left Jorhat and rode into the Kaziranga National Park, which lies on the route to Guwahati, the main city of the state of Assam. Not even on this leg of the route did we see

genuine virgin forest. On the back of an elephant and accompanied by a one-horned rhinoceros we made it into genuine wilderness, but just when we were starting to cheer and hope that the real adventures were beginning, we were brought up short by a warning notice. We had reached another prohibited area where a soldier with a loaded machine-gun did not look as if he was interested in discussing the reasons for our visit. We turned back. Who could we ask for information? We looked at the rhinoceros, but he pretended he didn't understand. Maybe some other time - or some other place?

The Grave of Charles Alexander Bruce Rediscovered!

We were on the bus that was to take us over the bridge across the Brahmaputra and I was bursting with excitement thinking of the great shots and camera footage. The other bank was so far away I couldn't see it. I'd never been across such a wide river. Looking out the window I saw guarded booths at the end of the bridge and I remembered that just a few years after the Second World War in Eastern Europe they still used to guard strategic bridges to prevent sabotage. Such guards could be seen in the Soviet Union as late as the Seventies. But why here? To prevent people from taking photos of the water in the river?

Although I knew that photography was forbidden, I still took some photos and video footage. We were so far from the guards, how would they ever know? But the other Indian travelers on the bus, who in these remote areas have little experience with foreigners, betrayed me at the other end of the bridge! I had no choice but to pull the film out of the camera and give up the cassette from the video camera. Damned bridge!

The next town, where we didn't really know what we were looking for, was called Tezpur. We didn't intend to spend much time there, but our instinct made us walk around. Suddenly we saw the half-crumbled wall of a cemetery. Very strange - they burn corpses here, don't they?

We soon realized that this was the grave of Sir Charles Alexander Bruce, who discovered wild tea bushes in Assam more than 170 years ago! Time did not stand still here, and this was no longer a place of piety. The grave in front of us was the center of a lively scene: a band of local youngsters playing cricket and the ever-present holy cows. The grave of Bruce, the man at the origin of tea-cultivation that was now one of the biggest sources of income for the government and hundreds of thousands of people in this part of the country, was now simply part of everyday life in this village! The local people honor him by pursuing their daily lives around him. For once, a great man's monument has not been pushed to the periphery of life.

The Spring Tea Races of Darjeeling

A few years later, in 1999, I flew into Netaji Subhas Chandra Airport in Calcutta to meet an Indian friend who had invited me to a very important event. Every year at the end of March, the time of the first harvest of tea leaves known as First Flush, the bosses of the tea industry in the Darjeeling area get together for a tasting that takes place at the celebrated Planters Club in the town of Darjeeling.

I met my Indian friend Bhairav on my first visit to India at the Tea Exchange of the J. R. Thomas Company. I was drawn to him from the beginning, with his enthusiasm for tea and his spontaneous openness as he introduced me to the secrets of cultivating, processing and selling tea.

He explained to me the routes by which tea leaves get from the tea gardens to the teapots of customers and revealed more than one “trade secret.” I learned that it is common practice for many foreign tea importers sign contracts for the purchase of tea without having a chance to taste the final product. When the contracts are signed the leaves are still on the plants! I understood when it was explained that some of the tea contracts were destined for tea bag blends. However, I was surprised that this was also a common practice for leaf teas presented in shops as “single estate.” I gathered that this sad reality was the result of the ridiculous race to be the first to import the fresh First Flush spring tea, which means that quality tends to be relegated to second place. The first First Flush available, may therefore not always be the best.

Snow Leopard, a Presumptuous Attempt to Make White Tea in Darjeeling

Bhairav and I stayed in the middle of a marvelous tea plantation in a bungalow belonging to his parents near the small tea-processing factory. One day, I got the idea of preparing a little surprise for the bosses of the Indian tea industry.

Drawing on the experience I had acquired on visits to China, I decided to try and produce a new type of Indian tea, by using a hand technique tried and tested for centuries. It was supposed to be a white tea, because in China white teas

(such as Bai Mu Dan) are processed in this particular way, which involves kneading the leaves and drying them on flat bamboo baskets. I asked for a sufficient quantity of fresh tea leaves, and one morning, braving the incredulous looks of the managers of the tea factory and all their employees, I put my hand to the task. I divided the tea leaves into several heaps of the same size, which I then left to wilt partially in the sun and partially in the shade. After the wilting I kneaded some of the leaves thoroughly by hand (for about 30 minutes), and some I merely shook on a bamboo tray. The fermentation took place both in the sun and on the cool floor of the fermentation room.

I dried the tea on the pipes that conducted heat to the assembly line machine dryers. The result was surprising. None of the samples was really bad. One of them even won me praise from the director of the factory, Bhairav's mother, and from the tea production manager, who together with his deputy had been giving me the strangest looks all day as I pursued my peculiar enterprise.

This processing method definitely made my sample a white tea, and therefore unique in India. For that reason I thought that my best sample might be accepted to compete with the elite teas that would be tasted the following day in the famous Planters Club in Darjeeling.

As I was looking for a name, I heard a commotion, the voices of villagers outside the factory gates. The villagers had found a dead snow leopard among the tea plants, an animal hardly ever seen in the area, and they didn't want to hand it over to the local authorities. Indian law makes it compulsory to report the finding of a dead protected animal, and to hand it over to special laboratories for scientific examination. An animated discussion took place, as local villagers prized ornaments made of leopard fur, as well as amulets made from the leopard's teeth or claws which for them have a value that goes beyond that of purely decorative ornaments.

There was the name I had been looking for. The tea would be called Snow Leopard!

Yes, It's a Good Direction ...

The tasting at the Darjeeling Planters Club is a very prestigious event, but not a competition. It is up to the tea producers to select which tea samples they wish to submit and what to make of the comments they receive from the leading experts of the Indian tea industry.

However, in the throngs surrounding the tasting elite there are tea traders, brokers and representatives of foreign companies who are there to carefully note the experts' comments on particular samples and who will adjust their buying plans accordingly.

Then came Snow Leopard's turn. It stood out just by the size of its leaves, up to twice the size of the leaves in the other Darjeeling samples. The infusion was yellow-orange and as the scalded leaves unfolded there was no doubt left that only the two tip leaves and a bud had been used to produce it. Before the presentation I had asked Bhairav not to tell anyone who was responsible for this piece of presumption, and if anyone asked just to say that it was a white tea, hand produced using an old Chinese method.

In fact, after the experts had tasted the tea, they expressed an interest in the details. But they learned no more than had been agreed between Bhairav and myself in advance, and that wasn't much. Yet their verdict was unambiguous: “Yes, it's a good direction you've set out in!”

The Best Laid Plans!

The rest of my stay in India, Bhairav and I dreamed and talked about how we would introduce the production of white tea into Darjeeling, how we would dust off the old Chinese method for producing it and how one day we would be famous thanks to Snow Leopard. We had no idea how fast things would soon be going downhill.

Blissfully unaware, I went home to Europe and Bhairav left for studies in the United States. Soon after, my friend's family plantation got into financial difficulties and the decision was made to sell it off. The birthplace of the Snow Leopard became a source of grief and anxiety among local people who had relied on it for their livelihood. Bhairav finally decided to marry in the USA and not return to India. The tie had been broken.

Although my activities had in no way been responsible for the problems with my friend's plantation, I remembered my earlier presumption with a certain embarrassment and wondered if someone like me had the right to interfere in established systems that worked reliably and had been tried and tested

down through the centuries. But mostly I was sad, because I was sorry for all those people I had gotten to know during

my stay among the tea gardens. I had no news and wondered how hard things were for them.

Long Live Indian White Tea!

Three years later I was standing in our tasting room looking at new samples of First Flush that had reached Prague by courier from a whole range of Darjeeling gardens.

On the agenda there were more than forty samples of India teas, each submitted to us for a blind taste test with no details on exact specifications and origin. As I was assessing the look of the dry leaves, I noticed one sample whose leaves looked different from all the others.

Our team judged this sample to be one of the best. After we exchanged notes, its detailed specification was a surprise. Instead of the expected initials “SFTGOP” (Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, the very best of traditional black teas), were the words: “White Tea”!

Although the leaf appearance was different, the tea had a taste profile similar to that of First Flush Darjeeling teas. Our suppliers were not very forthcoming about how that particular lot had been processed. Some tea secrets must still be discovered! We still do not know whether it had actually been processed using the Chinese “White Tea” technique, if it was improperly labeled or if the supplier was simply using the name on a conventional First Flush (an infusion of First Flush gives a pale, golden colored brew) to capitalize on the growing popularity of Chinese “White Tea” abroad!

We have, however, just recently received samples of Darjeeling “White Teas” which have both the leaf appearance and a taste profile that, although less subtle, is still close to the “White Teas” from the Chinese province of Fujian. Maybe one day there will be “White Tea” from Darjeeling on the Menu of our tea rooms!

by Jirka Simsa

Tea and Football in Turkey

Traveling to the Town of Rize, 1995.

When flying over Turkish territory on the way to India or the Far East, memories of my visit to the Northern Turkish town of Rize always comes back to me.

Rize has given its name to the local original Turkish tea. Tea cultivation was started here in the 1940s at the instigation of

Attatürk, the greatest leader in modern Turkish history, but the local tea has already made quite a name for itself. The way the tea is prepared and served, in particular, has made the beverage a ritual delicacy in Turkey.

Most tourists in Turkey head for resorts and attractions, but for my colleague and I, the importance of the places we travel to lies in the fact that tea is cultivated and processed there. So, late on a cool November afternoon, after the bus dropped us off on the coast road of Rize, we found ourselves being buffeted by the wind and regularly soaked by water from the turbulent Black Sea. The language barrier was total - no one spoke anything but Turkish. We couldn't tell the hotels and restaurants from private homes as all the buildings looked the same to us, so we were afraid to go in anywhere.

Which Club Football Do You Support?

We were saved by a tea house, since we knew how to recognize one of those. We entered a room adorned with posters of famous footballers and dominated by a huge tin apparatus for boiling water. The customers, exclusively male, were sitting at wooden tables and drinking sweetened tea. It is a tea prepared in a special way, with the dry leaves first heated over hot steam and then, after boiling water is poured over them, steeped for quite a long time in a metal pot placed over the steam coming up from the tin apparatus. A very strong brew results, which is then poured into small individual glasses shaped like tulips and finally diluted with hot water from the apparatus and strongly sweetened. The cups are served on exquisite saucers made of white glass with red ornaments or on beaten tin saucers.

A deadly silence, however, settled on the room with our arrival. Dozens of pairs of dark eyes over black moustaches regard us with suspicion. We sat down at the one free table and ordered two teas. Tea is a universal word even in these parts, but the atmosphere thickened and we felt as though we didn't belong and became somewhat scared. A huge man rose from his seat in the corner and headed straight for our table. He sat down beside us and I began to feel a touch faint. In sign language he indicated he wanted me to tell him which football club I supported. The silence was deafening.

My throat dry, I whispered the name of my favorite club and immediately regretted having opened my mouth at all.

I realized that we had recently knocked a Turkish mega-football team full of foreign stars out of an international cup contest. The giant sitting opposite us checked the name of the club once more to be sure, and then he got up, raised a hand in the air with his thumb turned up, and bawled something in Turkish into the quiet of the tea-room. All of a sudden, everyone was congratulating me, people all around were buying me tea and the local drinkers couldn't have been more friendly. There were dozens of warm handshakes, backslaps and expressions of admiration. It felt like I was in a dream. I never expected such a sudden turnaround.

But why? It turned out that the local football fans are the devoted followers of a different Turkish club, the arch-rivals of the one we had defeated. And they were not just overjoyed that their enemy had been knocked out of the cup. They also honored my club, for winning. Now that's what I call a lucky break!

by Jirka Simsa