Showdown in old Jinggu Town

We're in Yunnan during the Water Splashing festival. This is a four day holiday for the Dai Minority, celebrating their deliverance from the Demon King by twelve brave women. In gratitude the local people splashed water over them to wash the blood off their clothes.

The Dai are elegant people, and dress in bright and colourful clothes. the women dress particularly stylishly on festival days. We were asked if we would like to experience the festival, and were keen to do so. My expectation as a foreign visitor was to have water gently flicked over me by the graceful fingertips of women in traditional costume. Not exactly.

Ready for Water Splashing

We arrived in Jinggu town to find families in the streets tooled up with all manner of water fighting weaponry - buckets, water bombs, water pistols, turbo-charged back pack water guns. In the street, on balconies, on roofs. And of course when we arrived we immediately became VERY popular. Three of us ended up walking down the street like gunslingers, outnumbered several hundred to one. Word soon got around, and attacks were often accompanied by cheerful shouts of "Pleased to meet you!!". I don't think I have ever been so wet.

In the end we needed to retreat and were offered sanctuary in the back yard of a restaurant, where we sat in the sun and gradually dried out. As per usual I attracted some attention, with one old gentleman fascinated by my general size and particularly my tummy, revealed in all its glory when I had to strip off my shirt. He demonstrated his general disapproval by flicking his hand at me with the index and little fingers pointing outwards, in a "down with the kids" kind of way. I'm sure it was a bit ruder than that. Despite this minor irritation, it was a happy time sitting with the family and sharing some food. And the gentleman and I shared some of his rice wine.

Nothing about tea in this post, but it's all part of being over here and will linger in the memory. We should definitely have a Water Splashing Day at home.

White Bud, Purple Bud, Zhong Xin again

We travel from Menghai to Jinggu in an old bus secured as a last minute replacement for the two taxis we had booked, which obviously got better offers - everywhere is very busy because it is a local festival. The bus is quite slow and the journey takes us 8 hours.

We meet Mr. Yi, who owns a factory that processes local green leaf and also presses unfinished tea (maocha) into Puer cakes in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Transport up the Mountain

We taste a selection of his teas, including a cake made from 2012 Yue Gwang Bai, one of the main teas on my list. Yue Gwang Bai - Moonlight White - is made from the leaves and buds of the Big White Bud variety, rolled and dried slowly in the cool of the night. It is partially oxidised but not baked, with combination of oolong and black tea flavours. It has an aroma reminiscent of fruit cake. This is not a tea for the purist, but I like everything about it - the name, the appearance, the aroma, the taste - and it has been very popular at Fortnum & Mason. The big disappointment was being here a little too early for the 2013 harvest, and only being able to taste a pressed 2012 cake, which doesn't develop the flavour and aroma of the loose version.

Next morning we are off up the mountain on the lookout for special trees, accompanied by Zhong Xin, who has joined us for the rest of the Yunnan trip. It turns out that not only is he a 29 year old tea master, he also has five apprentices - four in Yunnan and one across the border in Burma. I discover that I bought a Raw Puer made by him in  2011 from Yako village on Bulang Mountain, a far away part of Yunnan. I had no idea at the time but clearly I have a very discerning palate indeed. He has every right to be a bit smug and superior, and he does have the Philip Oakey** floppy fringe and pout, but he is genuinely impressive guy. He tells us that he is entirely self-taught and simply went up into the mountains to learn his craft. It's a slightly unlikely story but we are very happy to believe it.

We are looking especially for the Big White Bud variety - Da Bai Hao. This is not quite as easy as we expected, but eventually we find one amongst a hundreds of other old trees in an area that had been abandoned for years because it is so remote. A local farmer had cut down a lot of less valuable trees, letting the light in and discovering the valued Big White Bud amongst the ones remaining. It was quite exciting to find it, but the actual appearance is rather underwhelming. All this changes when the tea is made, as the long buds turn white and look beautiful, particularly when pressed into a cake, which looks like a glowing moon.

Da Bai Hao - 'Big White Bud'

White Bud cake

We also find the rare Purple Bud variety, a mutation apparently caused by the strong sunlight. In fact it's not very purple, just a few leaves on an otherwise green leaved tree. The made tea is however a dark glossy purple, and looks attractive in a pressed cake. This is a tea that needs to mature for several years, as the early taste is rather thin and bitter. Jennifer set aside some cakes for us last year and we expect them to be ready by around 2015. It's a different way of buying tea.

Purple Bud Tea

Just as we were leaving, Zhong Xin appeared clutching a sprig of three leaves with a variegated pattern that no-one had seen before. How he found them amongst hundreds of trees is a mystery, but he is a bit different. Maybe it will turn out to be a new variety, who knows. One final comment about Zhong Xin. He is happy to share his knowledge, theories and techniques with anyone - there is no hint of keeping things close to his chest. You can't help liking and admiring him.

We decide to walk down to the main road rather than using the pickup. It's a steep path down through woodland, and a good experience. Warm though, and by the time we get to the bottom we're rather hot and dusty and in need of a shower. Not much chance of that. Please see "Showdown in Old Jinggu Town".

** Those of you born after 1965 look away now. Philip Oakey headed up The Human League in the 1980s. For many this was music's lost decade, but for those of us courting and dressing up to go dancing in Faces Nightclub at Five Ways in Birmingham it was a magical time. Viz. the 12" extended remix of "The Sound of the Crowd". Dress to impress, look moody. Fabulous.

Zhong Xin

Philip Oakey

Tea Mountains, Ancient Trees and Young Tea Masters

Yunnan is tea's genetic home, its spiritual home and its cultural home. All the tea plants in the world can trace their ancestry to the mountain forests where SW China meets Vietnam, Laos, Burma & India. It's the only part of the world where tea is indigenous, and there are still productive trees that are over 800 years old.

800 year-old tree

There are many tea mountains in Yunnan,each with its own 'terroir' and local tea trees: even trees of the same botanical variety show subtle differences depending in where they grow. It's a case of driving as far as roads allow, walking to a village and from there into the mountain to find the ancient trees. These gnarled and twisted solitary trees with their large dark leaves are a far cry from the yellow-green carpets of cloned bushes in tea plantations, and when climbing up through the forests there is a sense of encountering something ancient, almost magical.

Walking on the Mountain

Trees on the Mountain

The leaves from these ancient trees are used to create the mysterious tea that is Puer ( or Pu-erh). For many people (myself included until a few years ago), Puer means a dark turgid tea with a taste of mouldy wet leaves, accompanied by the vague hope that it might be healthy in some way. This is a tragedy. Puer in its raw (as opposed to cooked or ripened) form is a light & complex taste adventure, with flavours that develop as the tea matures. In fact, the word translated as "raw" - Shengcha - can also mean "alive tea", which is a perfect description. I'll do a separate entry on how Puer is made so that you don't need to plough through the detail here, suffice it to say that the chemistry of the leaves and the making process result in a unique type of tea, and Puer is categorised as distinct from all other teas.

We start from a base in Menghai, from where we visit Nannuo and Hekai Tea mountains. The pattern is the same - walk to a village, meet a tea farmer at his house, taste tea, visit the trees, taste tea, share a meal, watch the making process, taste tea. Leaving aside the tea aspects (which I find fascinating but don't necessarily expect others to), the experience of sharing a meal in a tiny house high up a mountain is unforgettable. Rice, wild vegetables, spices, perhaps some meat, shared with the family. And seated round a low table on tiny low stools, the cause of much hilarity in my case. I have one picture that just says "who the hell let this giant into my house?", which I'll add to the post when I get back.

Physical giant maybe, but certainly not a tea giant. Some of you will have gathered that I have been a tea taster and buyer for over 30 years. This really ought to count for something, but not out here. My first visit to China in 2002 was like opening a window in a dull stuffy room and letting in sunlight and fresh air. it's the same each time I visit, with the bizarre feeling of knowing less than I did before - I find myself having to strip back what I thought I knew and to start again. It's not so much that I don't have knowledge, more that it's the wrong kind of knowledge. In fact, most of what I learnt in the first 25 years is utterly irrelevant here. Even the way if preparing and tasting tea is different. So I feel a bit exposed.

Cooking Lunch

"Who the hell let this giant into my house?"

We spent the last two days with Zhong Xin, a Xi Fu, or Tea Master. He travels round Yunnan finding the best leaves and turning them into exquisite teas. He has developed his own techniques from scratch and is experimenting all the time. He is a bit of a legend, and attracts people to watch when he is making tea. Oh, and he's 29. TWENTY NINE. Same age as Jennifer Jiang, and to see them together riffing about tea making is something special. We had to leave them to it last night as we wanted to eat before going to bed.

My strategy in these circumstances? I try to avoid the conversation about my tea career, in case it goes something like this:

"How long have you been in tea?"

"Oh, about 34 years"

"That's a long time"

"it is, yes"

Pause

"So how come you don't know anything then?"

Tea Master Zhong Xin

Hong Kong, Yunnan and Canton

April 2013, and I'm back in China for another 3 weeks of learning and discovery. This year I am in Yunnan and Fujian provinces, looking at Puer, White tea, Lapsang, Tie Guanyin, Rock Oolongs and flowering teas. The purpose of the trip is to visit farmers who supply these teas to Fortnum & Mason, learn more about them and discover new and unusual teas along the way.

I'll try to describe the teas in the various blog entries without getting too technical. If you've read previous entries you'll realise that this isn't so much a blog for tea experts, but more for those interested in my travels and experiences in search of Interesting and rare teas. For those of you who want more tea information there are plenty of sources out there, albeit of variable accuracy. I'll go on to mention two specifically, but "please note that other websites and blogs are available".

En route to China I spent a day in Hong Kong and caught up with one of my tea heroes, Leo Kwan. I first met Leo in London in 2001, when he was promoting his Ming Cha brand via a tea bar in Selfridges. It was he who first opened my eyes to the beauty and complexity of fine Oolongs, and his depth of knowledge, warmth and openness made a big impression on me - the idea that the whole point of having knowledge is to share it, not to keep it hidden away. Leo now has a web resource designed to be a forum for sharing information and opinions about tea, and I recommend it to anyone who would like to go a little deeper: www.teaguardian.com

I'm travelling with Jennifer Jiang & husband Ken as before, but also with Jen and Ali from the Canton Tea Company. Jen founded the company six years ago and heads it up from London, but its base is in Bristol, where I met them briefly just over a year ago. Nice people. It always adds an extra dimension to travel with other tea enthusiasts, particularly when we share the same views about quality, authenticity and engaging direct with artisan farmers. Canton is a fine company and another good resource: www.cantonteaco.com

For part of the time we will also be accompanied by Martin, a freelance filmmaker who is putting together something called  "Secrets of the Tea Masters", in partnership with Canton Tea but also in cooperation with Fortnum & Mason. This is of course not about me but the Chinese tea masters, featuring Jennifer Jiang. I might get to appear in the background every so often if that doesn't spoil the scenery.

As was the case last year, the itinerary is flexible and all I really know for certain is that I am due to arrive at Xishuangbanna airport in SW Yunnan late on Thursday April 11th. I've been to Yunnan once before, and remember it at a wild and beautiful place. I'm sure it won't disappoint.