In March of this year, I made a set of teas aimed at exploring the rounian process. A few months have passed now, and it is time for an update. The teas themselves have stayed in Beijing, undergoing a dry Spring season and a particularly humid Summer season, but they seem to be doing just fine.

Some basic information on the processing for this set:

Shared:

• 180 °C Wok temp kill-green (Done by Zheng at TXM)

• Small-tree GFZ Chaping material, picked March 23rd, 2026

• Sun-dried after rolling

• Sun-dried after pressing

• Pressed with the same stone/mold weight on the same day, 200g cakes

Light Rolling Specific:

• 1-batch hand-rolling only

Heavy Rolling Specific:

• 30-min on the rounian machine, high-speed 2-batches of hand-rolling

Some notes during processing:

• Significantly less HP post-rolling for the heavy rolling version

Some notes on the cakes themselves:

• Light rolling is a lot easier to separate leaves from the cake than the heavy version. Almost feels like the heavy version literally sticks together better.

Light version photos:

Light version tasting notes:

5g/115ml Gaiwan

Soup color is light, faint green. Seems to have undergone fairly little oxidation. It has some body to it, though the thickness is not particularly there. Surprisingly, it feels quite nice in the body; it’s nicely balanced for the first few steeps, not too heavy. Lots of sweetness, but not long-lasting, though I think that’s to be expected with the material in these teas. Not much astringency at all. I’m surprised that a small tree GFZ from an admittedly mediocre garden (Chaping) performs like this. Soup does not change color significantly when I push it, maybe slightly more vibrant, and I only managed to extract a slight amount of astringency. Overall, it’s a decent experience, nothing terrible. I think it gets chaotic towards the end, maybe because of the material, I’m not so sure.

Heavy rolling photos:

Heavy rolling:

5g/115ml Gaiwan

Compared to the light rolling, the soup color is a shade or two darker, leaning more yellowish-green. There is more oxidation, which is to be expected. Soup is mildly thicker. The gaiwan lid now has a resin-y sticky sort of aroma for the first few steeps. In general, the tea performs similarly but produces a more coating and longer-lasting finish. Almost sticks to the tongue and the throat. There is more noticeable astringency, but not an egregious amount, in the normal steeps. When pushed, the soup gets much darker, but not a big increase in astringency or anything terrible. The tea seems to be better put together than the light rolling version; it does not get as chaotic in the later steeps, as far as I can tell.

I don’t know which one I would prefer right now. They have similar qualities, and my heart leans toward the heavy rolling, but I guess it depends on what someone would prioritize in a tea. I think I like the heavier rolling version more because the finish is a lot more satisfactory, and the tea seems to be more durable. They’ve both surprised me; the cost to produce these two teas from the raw material was quite low, and yet even knowing their origin, I quite enjoyed drinking them.

Looking back, producing this set was an interesting experience for me. I spent about a week in Yunnan, mostly around Yiwu, trying to gather some more information detailing preparations for the Spring tea-making season. I’ve yet to complete that article—there are some details I’d like to smooth out—but the one lesson I’ve learnt and seen repeatedly is that tea-making is hard. I don’t know how else to describe it. If you make tea, and you seek to make it well, then you must dedicate your life to it. It is hard to imagine how someone underwent this process of hiking into a jungle, camping, picking near unclimbable trees, and heading back to a bright night of wood-fire kill-greening and hours of rolling until their hands could no longer sweat from the covering of tea sap. But it is interesting how, especially when talking about rounian, our talking of processing seems to yield very little consideration for the people doing the work, or their time, or their lives. Of course, I am one of those perhaps overly anthropologically oriented tea blogs, but what I’ve always hoped to convey through my words here is the agency and hardship that are inherent to tea.

When I first began to plan this experimental set of teas, I went to Jingmai, just to realize the specifications I set were not too high, but rather completely unacceptable. I approached the tea-making experience as something that could take into account a variety of controlled variables and spit out something distinctive, something worthwhile, but that is simply not possible. In hindsight, the only reason I could produce this set of tea was pure luck. I’ve been to Banna a few times now, talked with a fair number of people, sifted out people who did not care, and only then did I find someone who would sit down, listen, and discuss the actual prospects of such a production. Zheng, the owner of TXM, was that person. There is never a guarantee of rainfall; there is even less of a guarantee of the correct amount of rainfall; I cannot promise if the sun will pierce through dissipating fog or if its rays cannot shine past an extra dense day—that is simply the reality of organisms. But this year, the rain was perfect, the sun too. I was able to find a villager with the right amount of leaf, with the right amount of withering. The factory workers were beginning to arrive for the Spring season, and I was the first batch to go through. You see, if these events had not lined up, I wouldn’t be able to describe how the sap feels on my hands, and I wouldn’t have been able to make this tea.

I see plenty of discussion on reading the science behind teas, getting to personal conclusions on a ‘logical’ and ‘scientific’ understanding of Qi and Yun, or any other seemingly exotic, oriental terms, mostly ones that prompt unending arguments. I don’t think this is the correct approach. I think that it lacks respect, it lacks detail, texture, attention, maybe even empathy. Sometimes it feels as if there is a group that strives to avoid drinking tea entirely, because how could someone who sits down and truly thinks, appreciates, respects, and feels a tea come to such conclusions?

I think it is worth sitting with the context of tea while drinking it. My constant exposure to stories about terroir, or haoji-style blending and processing, is migraine-inducing. Unfortunately, when you dive a bit deeper, most of these stories are fake, and some are entirely unverifiable by mouth. But what is guaranteed, especially by the more boutique options out there, is a human being behind your tea. So I guess there is a bit of love I try to give when I drink tea, thinking about them.

Best,

Chilli

Go drink more tea :)

Hong Kong may take the place as the happiest (general) place on planet Earth for any tea drinker who does not fear conversation. A few thousand steps a day in Central, and some broken mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English will get you a fair amount of tea sessions that seemingly warm the soul from the inside out. If you have some cash, the tea is well worth picking out as well.

Though my frequent transfers out of HKIA allow me to indulge in the occasional HK-only convenience store item and culture, I seldom step out of the airport and get to walk around with complete freedom. This summer, I managed to fulfill that dream.

Burnout is a fickle matter. That wildly overused quote by Heraclitus, “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man,” becomes quite applicable here. As much as we hate to admit it, we are constantly forced to move forward; by moving forward, we are no longer the same person. By doing something new, taking on a new challenge, or making a new decision in life, you end up changing the sort of overpassionate desire that fuels burnout. So, yet again, you are not the same person, and it is never the same burnout.

Perhaps I see burnout in a different light than a lot of people. I am young, and the river of time seems to flow ever faster as my body walks down the path that is my life; yet, the things I spend the most time on seem to wear on me the most: hobbies that I have spent a decade and change on now seem to be teetering out, and often it is myself that I find fanning out the flame. I picked up too many projects this year; the rapids of time can only handle so many meanderings, and when faced with too many, it will keep moving onwards, trying to catch up to its previous pace. I got flushed away this summer, and by the time I was about to be pinched by the rocks below, I had left the rapids, the consequences of too much in too little, the confines of my home, and gone to Hong Kong.

I took great liberties in not planning anything before my trip. I knew it would rain, and I knew I would have to walk a lot, but that was it. I’ve visited Hong Kong several times over the years with my parents, mostly for standardized testing, but this was my first time going solo. It’s an interesting city; somehow, the great combination of human will and our many emotions makes for a beautiful sight.

When I entered Hung Chong Tai again, the first time in a year, one of the shopkeepers recognized me immediately. I sat down with them for a few hours that morning, drinking a chunked-up ‘99 Daiwen 7542 that I think was probably not what they said it was, but a nice, relaxing conversation with the two of them watching the customers go in and out in the middle of monsoon weather was something I didn’t realize I needed.

I visited HCT on the suggestion of James of TeaDB last summer. They seem to be quite the variable shop, with multiple storage facilities both in HK and in the mainland, and with the occasional good, clean HK trad factory cakes. Their prices are rather reasonable, though they seem to get lost in the marketing and storytelling—don’t buy their 05 “Dayi” Red Mark, it’s a cryo-stored, heady mess. I do think they’re a rather charming look into HK Puerh shops, though. I like the conversations I have here more than the ones I have in Maliandao or Fangcun. For some reason, they seem a lot more genuine than the ones in the mainland tea cities, and it feels rather freeing. They seem to match the passion of whoever enters the store; maybe that’s just years of being a salesman, but they’ve never demanded that I buy anything before, and that’s nice.

I left HCT to go buy an umbrella. Really, I should have just worn a poncho as Ming suggested, but I digress.

Last time I was in Hong Kong, I wasn’t able to visit CHTH, Yeeon, and DTH. I made it a mission this time around to visit all three.

There isn’t much to say about CHTH and Yeeon. They’re the type of tea shop—though CHTH might be more of a Rednote-fueled coffee spot now—that expects you to pay for some tea and leave. So, I paid for some TLH and Yeeon’s 01 Yiwu Clusters and Best Taste, and left. If anything, I was surprised CHTH had their TLH for sale after hearing so many times that they had either stopped making it or were preparing for retirement.

Dragon Tea House was a different story.

Interestingly, the Hong Kong location of DTH is on the second floor of a seemingly obscure mini mall—unsure if that’s what they refer to themselves as. I was expecting to sit down a bit at Yeeon and CHTH, so I ended up arriving a lot earlier than anticipated, awaiting the listed 11 am opening. Eventually, one of the security guards walked past and told me to go have lunch and come back. He was right. As I left my random cafe find of the afternoon, I saw that the Dragon Tea House poster on the second floor was now backlit.

Talking with Ringo was some of the most fun I’ve had in Hong Kong. Maybe, in part, because we have stepped on similar ground in Yiwu and Banna, the familiarity and passion for that region became quite apparent the more we conversed. Admittedly, we may have been a bit too excited…

In a span of about 3 hours, Ringo and I went through the following:

• 2015 DTH Gushu (Fuyuanchang Haoji-style blending?)

• 2015 DTH Gushu (Normal?? Too many versions, Ringo…)

• 2008 DTH

He was rather excited about the blending of that first 2015 tea. I’ve attached a cake photo here for better viewing of what he is talking about with the blending style. It presented with a lot of curiosity when we brewed it, but through a sort of veiled complexity. It was a harmonious sort of tea, full and bright. Ringo did say that he had had the actual Haoji tea this was modelled after, the Fuyuanchang, though I am unable to verify that. Comparing this to the ‘normal’ gushu production from 2015, the ‘normal’ version felt more singular and more in line with what I was expecting. There really isn’t much to write about the 2008—I am sure people have written better notes than I have.

I ended up needing to leave to pick up a friend, and I picked up a cake of 2005 DTH.

Turns out, a lot of tea and a lot of heartfelt conversations really do heal something. As much as the rest of this year will probably be a rollercoaster for me, I do hope I get to go drink more tea and do more in-person sessions. I like to think that I’ve come a long way in tea over the past year and a half. Palates improve, people change, environments change, so it’s nice to sit down and feel all of it at some point.

Best,

Chilli

In my garden, there sits a weeping fig. This specific type of fig tree, Ficus microcarpa, grows as tall as a sequoia is wide and as wide as any oak will ever get; yet, in the confines of my garden, and within the pot it resides, my fig will never be that large. My fig is by far the most tropical and exotic-looking plant in the garden. Its leaves are round and dense, glowing and nimble when young, dense and sleepy when old; smooth bark runs down its trunk, offshoots of which push the bottom wider and wider, like a water tank: pressurized and about to burst. Yet, given both extremes, the middle is fragile and thin, always teetering the foliage towards the sunshine, leaning in every morning for a great big hug with the sun. I’d love to give it a great big hug many years down the road, but I doubt anyone with the agency to give it the right home will do so by then.

My mother picked up a few tomato and watermelon saplings while I was gone. Upon my return, they’ve already grown taller and pushed their roots wider than my little fig. They’ve already flowered, but perhaps due to the strangeness of Beijing's weather, have not produced any fruit. Their leaves are now too heavy, and their stems too tall, to hold themselves up. My mother has rooted a wooden stick and attached a few hair clips to remedy this. My fig holds itself up just fine. Though they are equally silent, I like to think of them as rather good friends.

Please excuse me for the lateness of this post. I’ve been quite busy over the past few months and have not had the time to sit down and write a proper article. As the work, both academic and personal, has piled up over the past while, I’ve been rather stressed and tired. Of course, most of my time was spent on finishing work, so I skipped the tea schedule I had been accustomed to and adopted a more casual style of drinking. This change of perspective, however, has surprisingly been quite productive.

For the longest time, I regarded mug brewing, bowl brewing, and thermos brewing— really, any kind of ‘casual’ tea drinking—as a guilty pleasure way to drink tea. But, as often happens in this hobby, tea begins to pile up. Over the past few years, this has mostly been an observation done for daily teas that I would occasionally buy on a whim. These daily teas were not necessarily cheap; sometimes, these would be samples that I bought, maybe 10 to 20 grams worth, that simply did not need the affording of my time and extended attention to sit and enjoy. Either that, or they were disappointing and not as enjoyable as I would have liked. In the past year or so, however, my sample buying has decreased, and my cake buying has increased. As such, my veritably oversized collection of mediocre samples has decreased to a preferable, paltry number. Yet, the special teas—the sort that I would save for a particularly calm day to sit, enjoy, and extend—increased dramatically. This is rather unfortunate for my bank account, of course, but it also led to much more of my collection becoming daily or near-daily teas that I wouldn’t feel guilty casually drinking without being too attentive. Eventually, these casual sessions morphed into their own little alcove of calm in the sea of stress in which I resided.

The greatest takeaway from this while of casual drinking is that, by seeing a different perspective on tea, and becoming familiar with the different faces they wear, you will learn quite a lot. Not just about that particular tea, but about all tea. In brewing any tea through these more casual mug or bowl or thermos sessions, along with some more attentive gongfu sessions, the nature of the tea becomes a lot more present and legible. How does this tea feel? More specifically, how does this tea feel in the mouth? How about in the throat? How about in your entire body? Can you even feel it everywhere, or is it more localized? These are all questions we ask when we sit down and drink tea, but once we get more used to this interrogation, I think it becomes our nature to subconsciously apply them to most everything.

Bowl brewing in particular has been rather revelatory for me. The simplicity of it and the specific practice of it seemingly drives a lot of people away, but bowl brewing is so pretty and so convenient that it became my default method for casual drinking. Brewing some Longjing or Yibang in a bowl is such a joyful activity. You get to see the dry leaf slowly expand and sink to the bottom, almost as if you are viewing a small piece of beautiful meadow from the sky above. It’s so calming to appreciate this subtle detail, the beauty of the tea, that the session morphs into some sort of humbling art. Perhaps that was a missing piece in my drinking of tea, the lack of appreciation for the beauty these teas can be, not only through taste and body feel, but also a visual, sometimes even an audible way. Some teas will sink faster, some teas will unfurl quicker, and you, the drinker, the viewer, the listener, begin to grow accustomed to every little change in the leaf itself. Bowl brewing also brings a very interesting view into how any such tea may feel. Other than being pretty, bowl brewing seems to shine on the more delicate parts of energy and flow, which, of course, is always appreciated. I have to admit, I was so drawn to bowl brewing that I probably took up, to my dormmates’ dismay, almost all of the bowls in our cabinet. Because bowl brewing is best done on a lower ratio, it removes some of the guilt behind drinking my more special, younger teas, like my Yibang Cat Ears.

The second most enticing casual brew option was thermos brewing. I have a rather ornate methodology to preparing a thermos brew, which I won’t outline here because I must’ve repeated it several dozen times on forums—and because it is not the most agreeable method—but it does afford me a lot of tasty tea in the mornings. There is no room to hide in a thermos. Literally. Everything the leaf has to offer will be brewed; there are no exceptions. So those tannins? Yeah, that goes in too; don’t overdo your ratio. But through this, some teas really do shine. The 2007 WuWeiSanFang Bangwei, as an example, excels at thermosing. This tea lasts forever, and with each refill, it seems to reveal another side of itself. I’ve often taken a thermos of this on long walks or climbing, it seems to let me appreciate the rays of evening sunlight, or the hold-that-was-totally-not-a-jug-but-I-thought-it-was on the wall.

Sometimes, not paying as much attention and giving the leaf more room to figure things out for itself is a good thing. We do not need to be locked in the cycle of GongFu’ing everything; no one has time for that. Rather, we should take some time to appreciate our teas in different lights, leaving our regular, scrutinizing eyes at the threshold.

There’s a poetic life lesson in there somewhere.

Best,

Chilli

If you are a reader—which I hope you are considering you are embarking on this trek of an article—and you have not seen or read the HTML review, you should take a gander at their latest piece: “Meanders.” If you have, however, you would see that the piece ends with a Toni Morrison quote:

“All water has perfect memory and is trying to get back to where it was.”

I wonder if I—together with the river, together with the trees and the clouds—am trying to as well.

I think of nature a lot. I think that the rivers, the trees, the clouds represent some sort of innate beauty that I can hold in my heart. Partly, my life in the city has made me insensitive to concrete and glass but immensely so for blades of grass and taunting mountains. Is this just another landmark to, as Taylor puts it, orient myself? Maybe not in the ethical, good versus bad sense but rather in a weirdly humanistic way. Tea trees represent something similar, if not even more beautiful. They’re not great at being trees, or being alive for that matter—the original claim to the 3200 year old tea tree, for example, and to an extent all claims of a thousand-plus year old tea tree, have recently been toppled by the very committee that put out the statement in the first place. I think, partially, putting a committee to decide how old a tree was inherently a bad idea. You know, these trees, they don’t understand that we pick their leaves to drink, that we take great care—nowadays at least—towards their wellbeing, towards a goal of longevity and natural harmony. They don’t understand why, when they push out new growth in the rains of March, April, perhaps even the end of summer and the start of fall, humans trim them back, but only the leaf that is young, not the ones that have hardened, darkened, the ones that are no longer shining in the bright sun. They are plants, and only plants they will be, just as we are only human, and only human we will be.

The weather has aligned with my break and, for the first time, I was able to do my long awaited rolling experiment. I am glad I ended up at Yiwu, in Mengla, in a place filled with so much history and culture and need that the people feel on par with the trees. And that, in the most literal and metaphorical ways, they are. The modern Puerh market is obsessed with terroir, obsessed with single trees, obsessed with anything they can claim is special. People, as in the businessmen and the impulse buyers and some select tea drinkers, have realized that you cannot buy cheap factory tea and expect it to age into the “next 88 Qing Bing.” So they search for not-cheap-factory-taidi. They search for specialty, but in reality they search for the feeling of specialty, the feeling that, somehow, the leaves they receive in dried lumps come from specificity and not commonality. But the market seldom looks at the process of tea, the hardship that is the hike up and down the mountains, the bug bites, the late-night kill green, and the incessant rain the very next day blowing up your sun drying plans. Making tea is hard in all senses of that word. Try hiking up to the tall-pole “gaogans” that are now touted as the end all be all of tea trees, you will roll your pants up to your knees, just like I did, but you will soon find the water going up to your waist. You will then reach the trees, after maybe three or four or five hours of hiking, you will marvel at how tall they are, and then tremble at how the pickers make their way up. The tall-pole pickers are paid more, but they risk more too.

The business of picking tea trees is one that is hard to explain. The Xishuangbanna region lies on the very edge of southern China. The Menghai side of the Mekong borders Myanmar, and the Mengla side borders Laos. This unique wedge like border with the two countries allows for varying forms of foreign workers, usually coming over for tea picking, to enter for a week or two every year so that each tree is picked and everyone makes some money. Of course, we can dwell on the economics of tea pickers for a long time, the pay structure is convoluted and never standardized, but we should never forget the people because at the end of the day, no matter how bad or how good your tea is, the leaves were picked by someone who you’ll never know. But they’re out there, somewhere, I hope. The young trees and plantation bushes come first, they sprout large buds immediately after rain—they are still nimble enough, small enough to deliver water to their extremities with speed. The pickers begin to look for employers. They remind you that soon, when the weeks pass and the older trees sprout, they will be in high demand. The small trees don’t matter much, they are, of course, worth much less than the older trees and as a consequence don’t earn you as much money. But, it is good practice to retain pickers early in the season so that you have the manpower to pick the rest of your younger trees, and the majority of your older trees, later in the season. Prices start as low as 100 RMB a day, about 15 US dollars a day, and climb up to 500, 600, sometimes even 700 RMB a day, or about 100 US dollars a day, for the tall-poles or the cat-ears. Riskier trees, harder hikes, and fateful weather all dictate prices—simple supply and demand. Sometimes housing is provided, either at the farmers home or in tents up in the deep mountains. Nearly all of the time, lunch is provided, and sometimes even breakfast and dinner. When I visited Guafengzhai—a stop I was not expecting to make—I tried to look for the infamous “Jorita” from Instagram. Instead, upon showing one of the few farmer friends I have there her page, I found her sister, who was preparing a meal for some pickers. I was there to buy raw-leaf, of which I was going to process later that day for a light vs. heavy rolling experiment—I ended up with 11 kilos of Guafengzhai Chaping Small Tree in the back of my car. I was not looking for—and in fact could not look for—older trees from fancier places, cheap, early-season tea was good enough. Jorita, if you are reading this article, please thank your sister for her kindness on an unexpected visit.

I visited a few other villages, most interestingly Mahei and Gaoshanzhai, but I did not make cakes out of Mahei and only collected a small amount of Gushu from Gaoshanzhai from last year to press—for funs sake. I’ve been wanting to do a heavy rolling versus light rolling experiment for several years now, first starting in Jingmai and now ending in Yiwu. At Jingmai, what was supposed to be a small task became quite the large one after my complete inability at convincing the farmers to take the alcohol lightly—when they woke up, I had to leave. This year at Yiwu was a different story, and I am grateful it was. As I arrived quite early in the season, cake pressing and processing was easy and plentiful. Below is a set of images detailing the processing.

For my rolling experiment, I decided on the following parameters:

Light rolling:

• Hand roll only

Heavy rolling:

• 30-minutes at high-speed on the rolling machine

• Hand roll twice

Upon comparison, I preferred the heavy rolled version due to its thicker soup, durability, and resinous presentation. The lighter rolled version presented better aromas. I have not had these after pressing, but I intend on leaving them by themselves to age further—location yet to be determined. Mr. Chen of BYH also made a rolling comparison some years back, available on Teas We Like, though the specifics are not given. I have only had the strong rolling version so cannot make judgement on the comparison. I did find the hand feel of the yet-to-be-dried leaf very different, though, as the stronger rolled leaf stuck to my hand much more vigorously compared to the lighter rolled version—to be expected, but alas still interesting. I was lucky with the weather and had the tea sun-dried into Maocha, a blessing. I am quite happy with these cakes, I will not be offering them for sale.

Tea

Like a river,

meandering,

flowing.

With time it erodes,

too, with time it moves,

too. We all change,

don’t we?

Best,

Chilli

P.S. If you have made it this far, I extend my gratitude. Words put down, put out, are meant to be read and heard. I hope your tea changes. I hope we all change. I hope, you let that change, Let It Enfold You.

This is the first recap of this blog, and of this year. I want to start a more regular monthly writing routine about the more interesting teas I’ve drunk and my lackluster notes on them, hopefully I am able to keep this up for the whole year. I realized about halfway through January that I’ve been drinking some very notable teas, and perhaps they are notable enough to write about. As the month passed, my thoughts on this matter boiled over, and here we are. I apologize for the email readers, you may have to click into Substack for this one as the photos make it quite lengthy.

I want to begin this with a quote from Phyllida Barlow (1944-2023), a British sculptor who was defined by her vibrant work of imposing scale. She says:

"There are plenty of artists who don't have exhibitions. There's plenty of art that's never seen. And I think I'm intrigued by that, making work that does not have a destination. It has its loneliness and its sadness about it. And many artists endure that for their entire lives and it's heroic. The novel that never gets published, should it never have been written? Of course it should be. I think there's a lot that's not entirely spoken about or recognized, which is the unseen and the unknown and the creative act as a deeply private experience. There is this great powerful desire to just create something. And does that just get eroded away? I hope not."

There is a certain output from drinking tea that, at least I think, releases some of the tension in life. In a way, the tea of the tea maker is artistry, and the way the tea evokes the sense of elegance or beauty in you is a feeling that I hope we all cherish. If we plug in the drinking of tea as an exhibition of the art of tea, and if we plug in the work of the tea maker and the work of the trees as the artist and the canvas, I hope we, the drinker and thus the audience, will be able to ‘exhibit’ this art in ways it wholly deserves. Inversely, if we do not drink these teas, we don’t exhibit them; the art sits in storage, unseen, unrecognized, never understood. But hopefully, this distinctly beautiful act of making the tea will stay. Ok, enough of this talk, onto the teas.

Starting from the most recent:

2015 WWSF Yibang 6g/115ml

This tea is quite nice, very charismatic. It’s brother, the 2017 Yibang, from recollection has a stronger, longer sort of huigan, along with a thicker soup. But, that is not to say this tea is not excellent in its own regard, I think that it is a delightful tea. The energy is quite fantastic, with the core tea flavor and presentation nodding to it’s 2017 brother. The aromas are heartfelt, therapeutic in their own way both through the wet leaf and the soup itself, along with the stuff that sticks to the cup. It just keeps on going, a wonderful experience.

1990s Malaysian storage MTF, a blind labelled as “Brew Well” 5g/100ml

This tea, which was blinded to me nearly a year ago, was found at the bottom of my old sample box. I am immensely sorry to the person who gave me this that I have not drunk it until now, but in a way I am also grateful I did not, as I have learned plenty both in the dimensions of brewing and feeling tea in the past year. I nailed the Malaysian storage on this quite fast, it is rather distinct, and guessed the age as well. It is a wonderful tea, with an alerting sort of feel but at the same time a grounding, calm feeling. It is incredibly enjoyable, and quite durable. Wet leaf and soup presented a nice, woodsy, incense-filled aroma, and the soup was rather beautiful in the mouth.

2024 DXJD Wuyangshan Silver Needle

This silver needle was quite an interesting experience. It is unlike any white tea I have had, though I admit I have not had that much white tea in comparison to Puerh. Lots of fruit on the leaf, a very interesting brew. Certainly, a beautiful tea to look at as well. The drinking experience lives in stark contrast to other teas on this list, the thickness is good and the texture is good though I think it needs a little bit more time. Overall, quite nice.

2003 Wistaria Zipin - 4g/115ml

This was also a sample from the bottom of my long forgotten sample container. A generous one from Stein. This is the first Wistaria I have had in a long time, and I guess the second Wistaria I have ever had. I remembered this being a distinct sort of smoky, but did not remember the energy of it. Perhaps the summer of Arbor experience really reset things for me as the Qi on this was quite incredible. Perhaps to make teas like this I should follow in the footsteps of Zhou Yu, known stair-climber and calligraphy enthusiast, and climb some stairs, write some calligraphy. The smoke this time around was also distinct, it is not in the same vein as the smoke you expect from Xiaguan or factory stuff, but instead a more ZhangXiang-y, leathery sort. Very interesting tea.

2004 WWSF Manzhuan “broom” — 1 leaf to bowl

The venerable WWSF Broom. What a great tea. Even in this exceptionally low ratio state, it still presented with a vigorous, elegant sort of bodily energy, along with a distinctive sweetness present via the wonderful inclusion of huge stems. I love this tea, and I wish to attain some more of it for study brews as the energy, sweetness are enjoyable aspects for a gentler experience. We should all casually drink tea more, not all art has to sit in a mueseum to be loved and recognized, you know

A lovely day at Yume Wo Katare:

The lineup of teas drank while I was there goes as such:

• Chillicat (me) 2025 TXM Tianmenshan Gaogan “18th Birthday” cake (Blind)

• OWT NLK “Shen Niu”

• 2007 WWSF 6FTM Gushu (Seo storage)

• 2008 WWSF ManZhuan Gushu

• 2003 CYH ManZhuan

• 2003 CYH Yiwu Yesheng

• 1998 Bana “Evening Fragrant Jade” Jingmai (Blind)

They went on for quite a while longer, but I had to leave after the EFJ.

This is the highlight session of January, a lot of tea friends came and we had a very productive, if not slightly gluttonous day of great teas. The Manzhuan focus in the middle of the session was intended as comparison, but perhaps we got a little lost.

Others have much better notes on these teas, but I will mainly write about the standouts and the things I remember distinctly.

I was quite surprised by how my own “birthday” cake performed that day. The water used seemingly improved the tea a good amount. I was mainly surprised at how it was received. I blinded it because I was at least somewhat afraid that there would be bias involved, and I was afraid that it may present headier or perhaps middling to the people at the table. That was, however, not the case. The crowd seemed to enjoy it, as I have, and the material presented very nicely. A good start to the day, and the youngest tea we had.

I have been interested in the 2007 Wuweisanfang 6FTM gushu version for quite a while as my birthyear is 2007. Unfortunately, the chances of this tea will ever show up for sale is nil to none. This presented beautifully, it is a dense tea with a wonderful presentation of energy. I enjoyed it a lot, and it was perhaps a good reminder to be grateful for sessions like this.

I brought my sample of the 2003 CYH Yiwu Yesheng because I was too afraid, both in terms of the body feel and a f*ck up in brewing, to have it on my own. This tea is a reminder that Yiwu is not soft, and it can in fact give you a good few punches. This tea does not punch you, though it does subtly remind you that it could absolutely do so. It presented very elegantly, with a comfortable sort of heft to it’s energy. Wonderful wonderful tea, a shame it is so rare.

We were blinded with the 1998 Evening Fragrant Jade, quite the villainous blind, but also a very productive blind. One of the tea friends commented that it was “even more traditionally processed” than one of the other teas we had that day (I forgot which). The dry leaf, rolled quite tightly, was intense to even look at. The brew itself was exceptional to say the least. I had just had a piece of 100% chocolate before this brew, I forgot which one it reminded me the most of, but the thickness, the aromatics, the energy, were all immensely beautiful to experience. With the sale of Bana to Callisto, the future stock of this tea from them is up in the air.

But, that is the way with things in tea. Slowly but surely our collections grow to the point where we can have more and more special teas every day, and through that we are then able to further contextualize what seperates the bad from the good, and, more importantly, the good from the great. That is all for this recapitulatio.

Best wishes,

Chilli

It was a rather cold evening in Beijing when I decided I was too hungry to drink more tea. The tea apartment is quite close to one of those mega malls people seem to enjoy shopping at, so I walked over in the dry, ear-reddening cold of the Beijing night. They had built this nice elevated walkway right next to the mall, decked out with escalators and elevators on all four corners; it must have been an expensive undertaking.

I stopped by a rather random steakhouse in Beijing this December, the sort of place that feels a bit high-end but clearly shows its cracks in tired staff and dusty corners. They played some kind of unfortunate Jazz playlist, with the occasional musings of Coltrane reaching my ears in some chaotic spiral of playlist indecisiveness. I had sat down to order some sort of botched paella or a mediocre steak, but instead I was surprised to see a Yunnanese mushroom stir-fry on the menu. So for about 7$ I ordered it.

I was surprised to see that it was, in fact, quite the well made mushroom stir-fry. After all these years hanging out in the tea mountains of Yunnan, eating their food and living their world, I found a bit of my third place in this supposedly ‘Western’ establishment. For some reason, I found that somewhat poetic; the steak was absolutely atrocious—someone must have seen a Peter Luger video and decided they should do it too—but the mushroom platter, so spicy and so nicely tender, was quite nice. I guess in a way, it reminded me to be more grateful for everything around me, for I think I live a sort of ‘Bourdainian’ existence in reference to the late Anthony Bourdain. I’ve drunk tea all around the world, in airports, on planes, and in spaces filled with equally enamored tea heads. But I guess for me, my ‘tea home’ will always be in Yunnan. Yunnanese mushrooms in a Beijing steakhouse.

A year end musing on tea would not be complete without some appreciation for growth. I started off the year very disoriented, I didn’t see a direction of tea I wanted to head in. At the time, at least on Discord, it felt very difficult to read what was actual ‘tea talk’ and what was just blind hype. So I left—not just for that reason of course but it certainly played a role. Over the Spring, I spent a few days up in Jingmai to look at some trees and explore that region some more. Coverage of the Jingmai trip can be found in my mountain journals posted on this very blog. I found Jingmai to be a bit of a chaotic place, but ultimately placed me more in touch with my emotional connection to Yunnan. I liked viewing the great sea of clouds Jingmai is known for, drinking tea in that wonderfully built tea room, and watching the great sun set over the village roof tops. The tea itself is perhaps a bit negligible though, I find Jingmai to be a uniquely challenging place to observe great tea—there is too much volume, too many new processors, and no real ability to be as small as one person with a few friends to attain a ‘great’ tea. Of course, ‘great’ Jingmai’s do exist, but perhaps the hit rate is rather low.

I think this is a trend I have seen a lot throughout my ventures into the area. Places like Laobanzhang have a particularly high hit rate of middling processing, the green sort that truly sucks to drink. This is because, though LBZ is a particularly odd example which I will explain later, the volume of tea coming out of these villages is extremely high. Due to this increase in supply, not just from Gushu but also from big/arbor/small tree and taidi production as a way for farmers to make more money, there is also a increase in demand for processors. This simple formula leads to a simple conclusion: A need for more processors leads to people coming back to the villages for higher paying jobs like kill green hands, this leads to many inexperienced processors learning to do things fast and efficient instead of skillfully and slow. Because of this inexperience, and perhaps too the lack of or inability to focus on the skillset behind well done kill green etc, this particular sort of green puerh is made. My suspicions on the competitive nature of kill green were confirmed through a later conversation with Zheng of ZSL where he talked about some farmers claiming 60-second kill green batches, of course we laughed at their videos together, but it was rather shocking that such a claim is even disseminated. You will notice that the better processors, the ones with experience, the ones who have had the time to hone down their craft and their skills, are never available to hire. They work for place which have the capital and care to use their skills, and they are never desperate for work in new hype regions.

I think one of the most important parts of my tea journey this year was my ‘Summer of Arbor.’ Arbor itself is not a bad term, in fact there are plenty of Arbor teas I love and enjoy, but the two I drank the most this summer did not fall in that category. There were two very bland teas that made a constant rotation this summer, mostly through mugging: a BHT and a Mansong. I will say this, there is no point to chasing these potential ‘region generalizations,’ especially when they are not from the core region. For example, I have had wonderful BHT and Mansong from the core trees of both regions, but nearly every other market-available BHT and Mansong have left me dissapointed. And I would like to say this as well: Don’t try to chase these regions!! You will be left similarly dissapointed. But regions aside, these maocha, new 2025 teas, were so bland that I think drinking through them left my senses refreshed. I don’t know how best to describe it other than that, but they became the reason I wrote my “Revisiting old friends” article. It really makes you think, if someone constantly drinks teas that perhaps dull the senses, is there really much extrapolation you would trust? I certainly would not trust most of the body feel statements I have made before this summer, at least speaking on the ‘degree’ of said feelings. This reconstitution of my senses seems to have helped in my rebuilding and relearning of judging and experiencing teas, and upon revisitation, particularly among the 2019 TXM black wrappers, I had a wonderful realization that these are not teas I want. I do take back my thoughts on the 2019 Yunquan for the most part though, as I think the summer in a friends place didn’t do it particularly good and it has recovered as of now.

During the Summer, I signed up for a sampler from Seo which consisted of a variety of teas from his source, Wuweisanfang. Unfortunately, my being in China delayed my experience of these teas by quite a bit. Fortunately, this gave them plenty of time to rest at Boston. Once I was back, I began to work through them, and I believe my summer reframing has substantially affected how I enjoy teas. These teas are wonderful, in particular I loved the ‘03 Manzhuan Broom and ‘08 Manzhuan, along with more unique examples such as the ‘17 Yibang. I learned a lot about my tea drinking with these teas, and I think I have formed a much better framework to appreciate them as well. This goes back to the idea of ‘dulled’ senses, I do not think I would have appreciated them as much as I do now a year or so back when the ‘19 TXM single origin cakes and the occassional XZH were my ‘daily’ drinkers. Something that people forget often is that the daily sessions, the casual drinkers, are what will steer you. The more tea you accumulate, the more ‘special’ tea you own, the easier it is to drink better tea every day, and that is something I strive for. I have around a thousand cakes (Not as impressive as it sounds, they are mostly cheap drinkers gifted by the people I interact with in the mountains) spread across storages in Kunming, Beijing, and Boston, with most of my special cakes in Beijing and Boston, I am grateful that I am now able to drink many of them without feeling too guilty.

I think that ultimately, the more you drink tea with a critical mindset, one that is seeking to learn from the tea rather than judge it or gaslight yourself into liking it, the more you will understand it and the better you can describe your feelings toward it. It is a similar story for most other things in life. When I started interacting with the Puerh community in the West, I found it hard to discern between very lackluster sources and sources that were willing to teach. I think I can discern this much better now, and I implore others to seek more learning from their tea so that they can discern for themselves as well. So I see these arguments online, sometimes I engage with them sometimes I do not, and yet I know what I feel when I drink these teas and I form my thoughts on tea through this lens. But there is also some semblence of common sense in all of this, I think some observation is needed to see that some conversations have a much lower hit rate than others in your head. I think that no matter how much or how little tea you have or have drunk there will always be signs that someone aligns more or less with your expectations and experiences—that is very important to note. It is important to feel, feel for yourself.

As this year ends, I realize I have grown a lot as a tea drinker, but as a human being too. In the grand scheme of life, you lose some and you gain some, perhaps you end up in the same place after all, but there is beauty along the everlasting journey—you just have to notice it. Some notice it, but do not stop to acknowledge it, I implore that you do. Yunnanese mushrooms in a Beijing Steakhouse.

Have a happy new year, and may 2026 bring us good tea, good friends, and good love in our hearts.

Best,

Chilli

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. There is a Japanese idiom, Mono No Aware (物の哀れ), which roughly translates to “the bittersweet poignancy of things.”1 I’ve recently found this idiom creeping into my feed—why that is the case I do not know—but I did take on a particular interest towards it. From what I can muster, it is sort of similar to the Latin phrase ‘Carpe Diem’ but with a more nuanced focus on the ephemeral—that is, the appreciation, not just acceptance, of the heavy impermanence which rules our lives and everything within it. I open with this because I find it applies acutely to our drinking of tea. You see, tea itself is rather impermanent—no matter how we try to preserve it, age it, keep it, one day it will always be gone.

Perhaps this ‘going’ will be replaced anew, but we must be reminded of the mortality of humanity as well, for we too will be gone one day, and we will bring the art of tea making with us. It is this very impermanence, and the appreciation of such, that has led me down the rabbit hole of Puer. I think that there is so much beauty held within these leaves, and perhaps too because of my adventures in tea mountains, the people who make them. But I am careful not to think only of this, for the objective quality of the material and processing should be up to much scrutiny as well.

However, there are many times when the stars align and the double-edged sword of Puer gets to shine in all its glory. In this wonderfully unusual trip down to Yiwu, I am glad to have reconnected with that side of tea. This Thanksgiving break, with a borderline psychotic travel plan, I traveled from the US to Hong Kong, then to Xishuangbanna to meet up with Zheng of TXM, this time as a changed tea drinker. I say this as, if you had not read the previous article, I had gone through a bit of a revelation through my drinking of mediocre arbor throughout the summer. Though I do not recommend such activities, the unfortunate lack of huigan and hefty body feels in these teas helped to regain a sort of lost sensitivity towards certain aspects of tea, which I explored heavily once I was back in the US. With this newfound perspective and a more defined goal, I think I spent my 4 days in Yiwu well.

First off, there’s the venerable ZhengSiLong, whose Walong and Yibangs I am sure we are all familiar with. In a way, I wanted to complete the story which started this blog, which was finding Mr. Li of JXJS and the resulting ‘completion’ of the decades-long mystery instigated by Dr. Zhang’s ‘Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic’ book23. Unfortunately, 郑必能 (Zheng Bi Neng) the founder of ZSL and participant in Dr. Zhang’s book/video series, had some health issues, and I was unable to meet him. His son, however, now running the business and himself making tea since 2006, I was able to meet. I first met 郑建平 (Zheng Jian Ping) in a bit of an accident, while I was doing my travel planning for this trip via Zheng of TXM, I had asked about ZSL and whether I could visit them. I don’t know why this didn’t click in my mind but, Zheng of TXM is not only related to the Zhengs of ZSL, but they were neighbors.

As such, after the rather bumpy road up to Yiwu, I paid a visit to ZSL’s 9-story Yiwu headquarters and had tea with 郑建平. The visit was quite fun. I believe ZSL is one of the more Western-connected tea makers in Yiwu, and as such, I was able to bring up plenty of Western producers. We both had a good laugh about many. We drank plenty of his Yibang productions, which I see very little of outside of the mainland. Starting off with a 2012 Black Forest, and ending with a 2022 Malishu and a 2018 Yibang. I liked both the 2022 and the 2018 enough to buy a cake of each. I believe the 2025 Malishu is sold on Tea Encounter—out of stock last I checked.

The ZhengSiLong operation is an appreciable one; the general organization, cleanliness, and deliberate-ness of their towering headquarters is one I do not see often from tea makers. Perhaps that speaks to how they make tea as well, which I think they have also done a fine job at. Zheng runs the business through several land leases, where his own team of processors, pickers, and maintainers makes sure the trees he sources from are consistently doing well. This specific model is somewhat common, but with how consistent Zheng’s productions seem to be, I think he is excelling at it. Certainly, there is no fear of pollarding with his trees. So too is the use of wood-fired woks to kill green, a step I appreciate very much.

Paying a visit to ZSL was just the start, however, as my main goal for this trip was yet to be fulfilled. Upcoming is my 18th birthday, a somewhat tragic event where I am suddenly imbued with many a responsibility, yet at the same time, quite a happy event. For my birthday, I thought it would be nice to press a celebratory cake (pun not intended) with some nicer material this year in anticipation of a tea brewing marathon on the day of. This was accomplished rather easily with the help of TXM and the Yiwu Tea Association, saving me a kilo of quite nice TMS tall pole from earlier this year.

I ended up going for 200g cakes, a deviation from the original 1 kilo or even 3 kilo cake idea, as they were the only size that would actually age and dry out in time for my leaving. For 1 kilo of material, I was able to press a nice Tong of 200g cakes. I’ve left 4 in Beijing and brought 1 with me to the US.

The material is already quite beautiful on its own, and I think I will end up drinking through my drinking cake rather quickly. It’s always nice having teas like this. I think I will try to do more in Yibang next year, as that has always been my favorite region to drink from and I have been networking some more there to see what I can find. Zheng did dig up several Yibang samples at the Yiwu Tea Association, which I have brought back to drink as well. They look exciting enough.

Another personal goal of mine was to step into the state-owned forests that we seem to talk about so often online, and I don’t regret that a single bit. The wonderfully preserved forests of Tongqinghe were basically just as I expected.

There was even the rare sight of a tall pole, somewhat legendary in name nowadays. If you have not waded through these waterways, climbed the admittedly quite dangerous cliffs, I’m not sure if you’d realize how hard it is to get to these places and how hard people work to get tea leaves down from these trees. We managed to hike to the first small grove of TQH trees, but to get to the true core area TQH, we would have had to hike similarly for another 4 hours. The absurdity of extracting anything from these deep, dense forests is something we do not appreciate enough.

To cap off this trip, I was able to finalize my exploration of the 6 ancient tea mountains with a stint at Gedeng. Though we stopped at Mansong to drop off some gifts for Mayor Luo first, also picking up the Mangzhi and Mansa mayors.

Gedeng is a hauntingly beautiful place, with the sea of clouds being just about in season for this trip. I think part of what constantly draws me back to these mountains is the scenery itself. I seldom see mention of how beautiful these mountains truly are, and I hope my own rather mediocre photos at least capture some of what is there. Once again, the appreciation of how ephemeral and impermanent tea really is is what will truly matter at the end of the day.

Drink steadfast and well,

Chilli.

I am forced to dump my entire US-based tea stash at a friend’s house every summer. Of course, this is a solution to an entirely unavoidable and very real problem of storage that has resulted in a careful choice that avoided the dorm’s hot attic storage and the negligence of a storage unit. It has, however, created a wonderful opportunity for me to observe my storage and the growth of my tea self. Every year when I return from China, I dig out my tea stash, air it out a bit, and methodically go through the previous year’s daily drinker picks. This year was no different.

If you knew me from the Tea Table, the 2019 LME I sourced was my main daily drinker for the longest time. It was also one of the first teas that went through the summer evaluation. Last year it didn’t fair well, I thought it had begun to soften up and lacked the vitality which it had the year previous. This year, however, the 2019 LME had a much more pleasant energy and vitality than I had remembered, and my opinion on it has shifted positively. This wasn’t due to the tea though, it was more due to the tea I had become familiar with the previous year and during the summer. I began to accumulate 2017-2019 Tong Xing Manor (Mainland boutique at Yiwu I’m close with) teas and acclimated to the greener processing and more erratic energy presentation of those. During the summer, my daily drinkers were mostly maocha and mediocre arbor (the maocha too was likely mediocre arbor), with the few unique ones being yancha from DXJD. I think that because of this—and my increased learning into tea processing and what my definition of a ‘good’ tea was—my orientation towards feeling, tasting, and judging a tea changed too. I exited summer drinking a lot more HK trad, a lot more weird arbor, and a more informed mindset on what I should be looking for.

With that in mind, I went back to the humble 2019 LME and my various boutique cakes that I didn’t bother to bring back. The 2019 LME beat them all. There was really no competition; the TXMs clearly presented as more green and more erratic, with a perfume pugency I had come to associate with teas like the W2T Last Thoughts series or XZH—neither of which I particularly enjoyed. Even the 2020 TXM GFZ, a tea that I was particularly fond of for its warmth and energy presentation, was completely unrecognizable to what I had marked it as in my memory. One interesting outlier to the tea hunger games was the 2013 XZH Sanchajing. I picked this particular example up from someone at the Tea Table for not a bad price but I was never fond of it. When I first tried it, it presented as a very boring and very unappetizing tea, but this time around it felt different. It was a lot more refined than I had remembered, and certainly the first few steeps became enjoyable. I even got the ‘juiciness” tea123 had been hyping up about for the last while (though, I am unsure what to think of it other than it’s subjective enjoyment in the moment). Unfortunately, I did not feel the same for the latter steps, where its presentation became more chaotic.

Certainly, my newfound experiences with teas such as the 88QB, various old Liuans, and the venerable 94QM had an effect on me. I was confused by the 88QB my first go, but the second go was very different. I was able to get a tetsubin over the summer to do my second go, and the increased heat plus some more careful brewing resulted in a tea that was really quite unforgettable. The 90s Small and Large basket SYS Liuans were similarly incredible. I was quite amazed at how young they presented for something of 30+ years, and I was grateful for the window into Liuans which they provided. The 94QM was a sledgehammer the first time, second time, and third time I tried it. It’s one of those teas you drink together on VC or in person and the room goes silent, yet it’s immensity is very well controlled and elegant. I thank Ming for the opportunity of drinking these wonderful teas, they have helped me further narrow down and contextualize what I have already and what I want to look for.

I think the contextualizing part is of utmost importance for tea; you really don’t understand what you’re drinking if there is no previous context to link back to. Of course, I understand that there is a part to tea in which it is just a beverage and that there are tastes which people simply prefer over something like coffee or teabags, but there is a certain beauty and passion in doing the work to contextualize and learn. I don’t think it is something we should force people to do, and certainly not something we should be looking down upon people with, but I do think it is a wonderful tool for wrapping your head around tea. Some of the best ways to do that would be to go outside, drink with the local tea community, heck even people who have no knowledge on tea will garner you a more diverse and interesting perspective and context to learn from. I highly recommend reaching out to people and setting up a tea session.

I am drinking the 2005 Dayi I got from Hung Chong Tai right now, a tea that I would have entirely brushed off in previous years, but a tea that I thoroughly enjoy now. What I have been looking for in tea was under my nose the entire time, and only now do I understand what I want.

Best,

Chilli

If you’ve spent time in the western puerh sphere, you’ve likely heard of HK trad. And, if not, I highly recommend you check out some of James’ articles at TeaDB. It’s a polarizing sort of storage, though one that holds a form of historical significance, too. I won’t get into it too much here; if you’re reading this, chances are you’re either in one of these Puerh communities or you were intrigued by ‘HK Puerh.’ Either way, there are many better resources out there talking about HK trad extensively.

I had drafted a plan beforehand on which shops I would go to and what I would be looking for, but I got sidetracked and ended up frequenting Hung Chong Tai for the most part. I did visit Fukien briefly, and even picked up some tea, but the majority of my time was spent at HCT.

I did intend to visit Yeeon and Dragon Tea House, but Yeeon was unfortunately not open on the days I visited—quite tragic, really, would have been a sentimental visit—and I could not fit in Dragon Tea House. Oh well, it's not like I don’t visit the region often—maybe next time. The majority of these places were recommendations from MarshalN’s HK tea shop Twitter thread, along with some help from James at TeaDB.

My history with HK trad started, as it seems to often do in the Western communities, with Yeeon's ‘Best Taste’. This house Shou blend was short-lived in my drinking, however, as my 100g bag quickly dwindled to a 0g bag, and I simply forgot to buy more. I have to admit, my experience with HK Trad teas was limited before this trip, and I’ve only had a few:

• Best Taste (Yeeon)

• Purple Mark (Yeeon)

• Seo’s 90s XG Brick

• LP’s Changtai Sipuyun (I don’t remember if this one was trad, but certainly HK)

• A couple more examples that I remember but cannot get the names of…

I don’t enjoy drinking tons and tons of samples…

Hung Chong Tai was told to me as an interesting purveyor of HK trad teas—a lighter and cleaner presentation of HK trad than Yeeon. That piqued my interest; I felt like that was what I was searching for. So HCT was at the top of my list, and completely oblivious to me… I ended up booking a hotel right next to it, and while I was walking back from a completely different commitment, I stumbled across it. Hung Chong Tai is one of those stores you might walk past without noticing much; they place their cheapest, highest volume teas in front, and their rarer, more interesting teas in the back. Shelves and shelves of tea dominate the store; a small wooden tea table is squeezed in the back, with a bare minimum electric kettle precariously dangling off to the side. There’s a counter for transactions, and anywhere from 1-2 employees running the store. So, quite a simple teashop. Based on some reflections of summer tea shop experiences, places like DXJD and a few other Beijing shops, I realized that I’m really quite fond of the tea table drink and talk setup versus a bar service setup. In fact, I quite prefer this old school style of tea shop.

I went to HCT 3 times while I was in Hong Kong, and I tried quite a few teas from them. They all harkened back to the HK trad profile I was familiar with, though some seemed mostly dry-stored. I tried some of their broken-up chunks (98 Yiwu), a 90s Paperless Jiangcheng brick (which I later bought), some of their house blend shou, and a 90s small basket Liuan. The tea table conversations revolved around everything from processing changes to storage changes, and even to business and life. That’s the magic of tea table conversations, you somehow cover so much ground whilst using tea as a social lubricant. As long as the tea flowed, everyone kept talking. Sometimes you get to witness a tea that calms the conversation, sometimes you get to witness a tea that ignites the conversation, but the role of tea is undeniably important.

I found the 90s Paperless Jiangcheng to be particularly interesting—enough so that I bought a brick—as it was not only pressed quite tightly but exhibited a yao-xiang and durability that I really enjoyed. The tea seems to like very hot and very long steeps, which is quite fun to play with at times. I also blind bought a 2005 Dayi Red Mark on the recommendation from the boss, though that one ended up tasting like a more standard dry stored example. Still delicious, with a certain resin and funky, powerful aroma aspect that did very well in my few brews of it. I did also buy a 600g bag of their house blend shou, which is really an aged sheng chunk + shou chunk blend. That one presented in good contrast to something like best taste, with more bite due to the sheng material and a more interesting presentation in the mouth. An enjoyable bag, for quite cheap, though it’s quite clear that its intended purpose is a daily drinker. The shop did carry some other notable teas, however: Everything from the great 88QB to the 99 BGT and DaDuGang was present. Stacks of 80s 8582 and plenty of old XG irons. A collection worth drooling at, really. Though… that may depend on whether you like HK trad or if the tea survived HK trad.

With the current economy and the decline in popularity of Puerh, more specifically in this context, HK trad, I am unsure of the future of the majority of these shops. Sure, they have plenty of tea, and I’m sure plenty of people come in to buy them, but who will run Fukien? Who will make sure the cellars of Yeeon and HCT get their yearly rotation? There is so much uncertainty everywhere, but these shops with their scrappy appearances and tea table conversations stand apart as an alcove to my love of tea. Look, I drink mostly mediocre and indifferent teas, but my personal orientation towards tea is something which only I can look after. These tea shops have provided the space for some of my favorite moments, and I hope they will continue to do so for many years to come.

Best,

Chilli

P.S. I will mostly focus on my blog and Instagram from now on. For a variety of personal reasons and after some consideration, I think my time on the Discord communities has reached the end, and it is no longer a space I will be active in.

Writers are often told to contextualize. I usually find it straightforward to describe the wondrous scenes of this world, or those I've imagined, in vivid detail. But what about the mind? How does a writer contextualize their inner world, providing an emotional landscape that creates the same immersion as well-described physical imagery? This, of course, requires introspection—only then can a writer begin to understand themselves.

I think introspection is something particularly important for tea. There's an aspect of Puerh, for instance, that isn't defined by traditional metrics of flavor or pleasure alone; it's an aspect you must feel for yourself. What's even more intriguing is that this feeling isn't consistent from person to person, day to day, water to water, or brewing method to brewing method. Like the individual undertaking this tea-based introspection, it changes. When I reflect on how I talk about or interact with tea, I realize it's rarely just about the tea itself. Getting ‘into’ tea has offered me a new breadth of understanding of the world—and by extension, myself—that I might not have otherwise perceived. My introspection through tea has yielded friendships and gifts of nature, but most importantly, it has brought me a deeper exploration of my own soul. This blog, therefore, isn't intended to be solely about tea—that would miss the point. Instead, I want to dive into the beauty surrounding tea: the beautiful teas themselves, the stunning mountains that nurtured them, and the beautiful lives that have shaped them.

When I visited Jingmai, my goal was not to get the best tea, but instead to interact with the best people. I think I accomplished that goal quite well. On my trip there this year, I met the last descendant of the Bulang King, Mr. Su Guo Wen (苏国文). For several decades, Mr. Su has been dedicated to the conservation of Jingmai’s ancient tea tree gardens. Much like Li from my previous article, and many others of his generation interested in old arbor tea trees, he has witnessed the transformation: forgotten gardens, slowly being lost to time, and a fractured mountain culture, gradually but surely, regaining their revered position in the world.

Now in his 80s, Mr. Su doesn't receive many individual visitors. His focus has shifted from merely protecting Jingmai’s culture and tea to actively promoting them. He wants to ensure his life's work endures, that the gardens his ancestors cultivated and meticulously kept never fall to weeds again. Mr. Su hopes to prevent a return of arrogance to these mountains, recognizing that his own ability to protect this land is waning. Our hour-long conversation was humbling. His points were well-considered, offering a refreshing perspective on tea and ecological protection—a rarity, I find, in the tea mountains. While I initially wanted to transcribe our full conversation, I feel it might be too extensive for this format.

Mr. Su explained:

The relationship of tea and humans is not stationary, it changes, it has changed and will continue to change. First, his ancestors used tea as medicine, chewing on the leaf for respite from poison. Then they used the tea leaves as food, a practice still somewhat echoed today with tea-leaf-fried eggs. Only after using tea in these utilitarian functions did his ancestors move on to using it as a beverage.

Our relationship with tea today continues to be as a beverage, at least for now.

Mr. Su then explained that when he came back to Jingmai, he uncovered the ancient tree gardens which had been left behind by his ancestors. They were in dire need of maintenance, weeds had overtaken the once pristinely kept grounds, and the trees were on the verge of death. To save these gifts of previous generations, Mr. Su spent several decades leading government teams and the local villagers to return these gardens to how their ancestors had intended them to be. Jingmai today stands as the tea mountain with perhaps the largest amount of well-kept ancient cultivated tea trees in all of Yunnan.

I realize that the trees themselves don’t particularly care for the existence of us humans; they might even loathe us for taking away their spring leaves—we go against their very nature, they give, and we take. Yet they still stand, tall as ever, still growing, still improving. We have much to learn from these trees.

Sometimes, tea is sorrowful. When I stand in the tea gardens, when I drink tea together with people I know and love, when I stand on a balcony which overlooks the sea of clouds at 5 a.m., I realize how lucky we are to be here. Ultimately, the trips to the tea mountains, my obsession with tea, and my obsession with nature itself lead to a realization and affirmation that every step I take in my life will lead me to become the person that I am now. I am the summation of all the steps I have taken in life, and I should not be afraid to take the next one. Tea is impermanent, yet so are we; we are not so different from these leaves after all.

Have a great day, Reader, may your next step be solid.

Best,

Chilli

“I need some blue skies and sunshine, I need a good forecast tonight.” - ‘Weatherman’ by Hank Williams Jr.

For the past week or so, I have spent my time at Jingmai. For the less informed, Jingmai is a tea-producing mountain in Yunnan right on the southern tip of China. Its recent (2023) expansion as a UNESCO World Heritage site has put much fame on an otherwise dismissed region.

Having (relatively briefly) visited the ancient 6 famous tea mountains, along with Bulang and Jingmai once before, I am no stranger to these places. I’ve walked through many tea gardens, hugged many tea trees, and picked a fair few as well. Though I am constantly limited by time, I try to squeeze in as much as I can so that my ever-growing interest in tea may continue to prosper.

There are usually a couple of options to fly from Beijing (Where I reside) to Xishuangbanna (Or, JingHong, the major city there)… it’s either at sunrise or just a bit after breakfast. We chose the after-breakfast flight this time, as I had just flown back to China from the US (20+ Hours on a plane nowadays, due to flight path constraints and other shenanigans…) and I was, admittedly, quite tired already. Besides, the sunrise flight usually uses the more dingy and cramped early Airbus planes instead of the comparatively more spacious 737-800 Hainan operates. These flights to Xishuangbanna are usually filled with tourists or tourist groups, I seldom meet tea makers, collectors, or the locals on the plane (Perhaps that has more to do with the timing of my trips, this one came right before all the nice ancient trees had sprung their first batch of harvestable buds and my previous 3 all came before or after busy tea-related seasons).

Once we got to XSBN (Not typing that long Pinyin name again!) we got a rental car, which was usually a TANK-300 that we found both suitable for the terrain but also quite cheap for the seasons we visit. Though on a map Jingmai is not located terribly far away from XSBN, the windy roads make it a 3 ish hour journey.

I have always loved, in particular, the dense forests in this region. They grow almost moss-like, the trees seemingly not protruding from the earth at all, rather the canopy they form is a true layer of the earth itself. You can tell rather easily whether a forest is old growth or new planted: the newly planted ones succumb to humanity's love of patterns, they are planted in neat rows with little vegetation or thick canopy reaching leafage. Instead, these artificial forests have trees that, albeit tall, form a thin and illusory canopy compared to the natural old-growth forests. When viewed from the top of the mountain, previously burnt-away bits of forest that have been replaced with these rows of new-growth trees look like patchwork you’d find on a bit of sentimental clothing. As much as I enjoy the random and chaotic ancient forests, these ‘patchwork’ forests are to appreciate as well. They represent our collective giving back to nature, and our collective efforts to heal and restore these previously neglected lands. We are only taking the first step to admitting and fixing the damage that we have done, our wielding of fire, axes, and saws has taken so much.

I also love the people here, with Jingmai in particular holding a special place in my heart. The first time I came to Jingmai, I was introduced to ‘Er Shu’ (Second Uncle) by my Kunming friends. Immediately upon sitting at the dinner table they had set up for us, they told us to call Jingmai our home.

My definition of ‘home’ has changed a lot in recent years, my time in New Hampshire created my first home away from home which I had to stay in during COVID, my time in Boston created my second home away from home which I continue to stay at, and then there was my home in Beijing.. my home, at home. To say that Jingmai was another home was not entirely an odd idea, so I embraced it wholeheartedly. Unlike the other mountains, the first things discussed or shown were not tea but instead shared laughter, and just in general: happiness. The adults drank an obscene amount of Baijiu, and the kids laughed along with them. At one point a guitar appeared, and the night reached a nice crescendo with music in our ears.

This was my first impression of Jingmai, and we’ve yet to discuss the beauty of the place! Jingmai is, by far, the most beautiful tea mountain I have been to. Though parts of Yiwu were more serene, the crown of beauty resided here at Jingmai.

So that prefaces my interest in this region. Now onto the tea. Jingmai tends to be citrusy and quite floral when young, and (if you find a well-stored example) turns to a thick honey profile as it ages. I find Jingmai’s GuShu to be quite loveable, both in terms of their beauty and their taste. The protection and conservation that has been afforded to these trees is unprecedented compared to areas such as LaoBanZhang, the lichen grows hog wild, and the parasitic plants grow much the same (e.g. ‘crab legs’). The trees here are, like Yibang, mostly ‘small leaf’ varietal (Camellia Sinensis Var. Sinensis) instead of the ‘large leaf’ varietal most commonly associated with Pu’erh (Camellia Sinensis Var. Assamica).

ErShu’s land has a very interesting tree though, they call it the Tea Spirit tree (茶魂树). Now, every Cun or Zhai (village) has one of these trees with this specific example being the Tea Spirit tree of MangGeng village. The selection process for these trees are based entirely on taste, its not the oldest nor the most revered tree—it simply tastes the best. Of course, I was quite curious about it and had asked for a sample from that tree. Instead, I was told I could just buy off the entire tree next year (As this happened in 2024, and we are in 2025, I am in the process of doing so) and that my Kunming friend had indeed already been buying off this tree since early 2018. I was, however, handed 4 bags of maocha from 2023, 2019, and 2020 of which I pressed 4 cakes of the 2023 into standard 357g cakes. I will not delve into the details of how this tree presents itself but the old folks are right—it’s fantastic.

For the most part, my last trip here served as a sort of affirmation. It affirmed my belief that Jingmai, though scrutinized my many for either aging or its tree varietals, had the potential to be much more than it currently was. At Jingmai was where I had the most genuine, human experience out of all my journeys into the tea mountains and I intend to explore it further. There is much more to write in the second and perhaps even the third part.

And with this being the preface, I wish you well.

Best,

Chilli.

Welcome to this unusual installment of Chilli Talks Tea, where I present some ramblings that have occupied my mind for nearly two years. Other articles are still being written in the pipeline, alas some finish faster than others (Usually, the information heavy ones come out later… I need time to fully parse information versus these more emotionally focused pieces only require me, myself and I to write.) Please excuse my occasional grammatical errors, formatting inconsistencies, and informal tone—I appreciate your open-mindedness as you read.

I often ponder the “purpose” of tea. Why do I devote so much time and effort to it? Why drink it? How has it shaped me, and what does that reveal about tea itself?

My interest in tea has unlocked a part of me I could never have accessed alone. Through tea, I’ve gained insights into my core emotions, desires, and actions, revealing aspects of myself I’ve yet to fully understand. On that note, tea has made me—for the first time in my life—feel worthy. Tea holds an innate sense of purpose, something I haven’t fully grasped mentally but have embraced dearly with my two arms. I cradle tea as I would a loved one, cherishing its warmth, its paradoxical blend of serenity and chaos, and its ability to anchor me amid life’s storms.

Early in my tea journey—after exploring Yunnan’s protected forests, experiencing the “body feels” of tea, and delving into its rich culture and history—I assumed those around me who advocate for tea would view it through the same lens I do. Now I realize this was a mistake, one I’ve repeated with all my hobbies.

The same people liken tea to harmful substances, comparing new teas to different strains of narcotics. They mock the peculiarity of my hobby, these foreign and unusual round tea cakes, abandoning their usual open-mindedness. It frustrates me how tea seems to isolate me socially—until I remember that tea itself grounded me to reach this perspective. To achieve my current clarity, I needed tea as a lens. Through tea, I rediscovered meaningful pursuits I once engaged in and still cherish.

Tea is fickle. Brewing parameters matter. Water quality matters. Origin and processing matter. Every detail matters because the tea experience is a beautiful, chaotic mess.

And what a mess it is! A session can go awry easily: you might scorch leaves, burn yourself, or grow irritable if already having a bad day. Yet tea pushes back. It demands better brewing, sharper parameters, and deeper self-awareness. Drinking and contemplating tea acts as a mirror to your inner self. Who are you? What are you? Why? Tea quiets the noise, urging reflection—a gift in our screen-saturated, consumption-driven modern lives, where ignorance often masquerades as bliss and action feels futile. My two phone-free years in rural New Hampshire taught me I can live without screens. Yet replicating that simplicity now feels impossible. I revert to my phone, adrift. But when I brew tea, I set my phone aside and gaze out the window. Tea’s reflective power is profound when met with the right mindset. Unlike escapism or fleeting excitement, tea confronts you with your inner voice, and your existence, serving self-awareness on a silver platter.

Tea is a manifestation of you, albeit abstract. Tea knows you because it reflects you. Your actions shape the tea, and with openness, tea becomes transformative. Society may judge. Society may not understand. But society’s opinion? Irrelevant. Drink the tea. Realize it’s all okay.

Signing out,

Chilli.

Thank you for the overwhelming support of my last article on Auspicious. Finding Li was a dream realized, and I hope that piece shed light on a figure shrouded in mystery.

This is not a follow-up—that remains in progress—but rather an exploration of Puerh tea’s existential quandary: What defines it? While most authors stake bold claims, I offer none. I simply adore tea. Yet Puerh, with its deceptively simple processing, defies rigid categorization. It’s identity fractures under the weight of variables—leaf grade, regional terroir, fermentation methods, and storage conditions—each compounding into a mosaic too fluid for fixed definitions. Unlike teas governed by strict protocols, Puerh thrives in ambiguity, its essence shaped as much by time and place as by human hands.

Before you continue I’d like for you to take a gander at some trees, for an appreciation of tea trees are in place for any puerh lover:

So what type of tree does your Puerh come from? All of the above!!

To understand Puerh’s identity crisis, we must first trace its roots through history. Shortly, and mostly to my own understanding Puerh’s history, looks about like this (We must also recognize the convoluted history of the border region of Xishuangbanna, which I will not talk about here):

• Tang to Ming Dynasties (618–1644 CE): Puerh began as compressed tea cakes traded along the Tea Horse Road, a perilous network of trails linking China to Tibet and Southeast Asia. Tibetan nomads relied on these cakes for survival, bartering horses for tea to combat scurvy in their meat-heavy diets. By the Ming era, Puerh had gained imperial favor (Though its cake form was abolished for loose leaf), lauded for its medicinal properties. (The Ming conquest of Yunnan was the final expulsion of the Mongol Yuan dynasty)

• Qing Dynasty (1644–1912): The concept of aged tea emerged. Merchants discovered that raw (sheng) Puerh, stored in humid conditions, mellowed into complexity over decades. This era birthed legendary producers like Tongqing Hao, whose 18th-century cakes now sell for fortunes. (TongXingHao as well! The ancestral precursor to TongXingManor.)

• 20th-Century Upheavals: Wars, industrialization, and the Cultural Revolution nearly erased Puerh. State factories prioritized mass production, while aged teas—deemed “feudal relics”—were destroyed. Yet in Hong Kong and Taiwan, exiles preserved traditions, fermenting teas in humid apartments and rekindling reverence for vintage sheng. But these new, young, factory sheng simply didn’t fit the bill for the tastes of HK drinkers.

• Modern Revival: The 1973 invention of shou (ripe) Puerh—a shortcut to mimic decades of aging—democratized access. By the 1990s, Taiwanese collectors sparked a speculative frenzy and revival.

At its core, Puerh processing appears straightforward: sun-dried leaves are compressed into cakes and fermented. But here, simplicity unravels. Sheng (raw) Puerh, a testament to patience, ages naturally over decades, its bitterness softening into honeyed depth. Shou (ripe) Puerh, born of 1970s innovation, accelerates this alchemy through controlled microbial piles. Yet even within these categories, chaos reigns.

• Terroir Wars: Does Puerh require Yunnan’s soil? Traditionalists say yes; modernists argue technique transcends geography.

• Storage as Alchemy: A cake aged in Hong Kong’s cellars (HK Trad) becomes earthy and fungal, while its dry-stored Taiwanese twin remains brisk and floral. A cake aged in Kunming, feels like it was cryogenically preserved- maintaining its youth. So what is right? Preferences… chaos…

• Grade and Authenticity: Ancient tree leaves command reverence, yet mass-market blends dominate shelves. Is a 5$ supermarket cake still Puerh?

Regulations for Puerh are sparse, focusing largely on hygiene—a far cry from the unregulated past, where teas occasionally harbored stray hairs (or teeth? There was a harrowing picture sent a while back in ‘The Tea Table’ Discord). Yet cleanliness alone cannot standardize an artisanal craft. Consider fermentation: Is a tea truly Puerh if it skips Yunnan’s soil but replicates its process? Debates rage. Myanmar and Laos grow tea from Yunnan’s ancient cultivars. Are their cakes imposters or kin?

The tea community splinters over Puerh’s soul:

• Some Worship aged sheng as liquid history, its flavors a ledger of time, and no modern production can ever achieve similarity, thus they are not puerh.

• Some Embrace a variety of younger, modern production puerh for its accessibility, and taste.

Even storage becomes ideological. Is a Malaysian aged cake superior to its Taiwan dry-stored counterpart? The answer depends on whom you ask.

Chaos is Identity

Puerh’s crisis is its strength. Its refusal to conform mirrors the chaos of nature itself—unpredictable, diverse, alive. To define it rigidly would stifle the very spontaneity that makes it extraordinary. Perhaps, then, Puerh’s identity lies not in rules but in its boundless capacity to evolve, challenge, and surprise. For Puerh is an incredibly human thing, it mirrors the chaotic nature of our own lives and the chaotic nature of the world we live in, it provides a respite from the chaos of our own lives by showing us chaos in the form of liquid calm.

As you sip your next cup, ask not what Puerh is. Ask what it could be.

Steep thoughtfully,

Chilli

We start off with this peculiar line written by Zhang Jinghong in her book 'Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic', where a tea trader referred to as ‘Wen’ is introduced as… above average.

Through Dr. Zhang’s video series—found here—we also get a glimpse of who Wen is, wearing his grey shirt, bead necklace dangling from the neck, humble yet already vastly experienced. The video linked shows Wen at Yiwu, specifically GaoShanZhai, buying maocha for his aptly named GaoShanZhai cakes. As Dr. Zhang follows him around, his ‘above average ’-ness is increasingly shown. The audience is shown his maocha selection process, his frustration at pricing, and his identification of small-tree material versus ancient tree material… the vastness of his experience and the ease at which he navigates the complex and stressful world of tea-making puts into place the mastery he possesses.

Above is the same 2007 GaoShanZhai cake Wen produced, this example has sat through Malaysian storage and ended up in my hands through Andrew at Liquid Proust. Coincidentally, my discovery of Auspicious was also through both Liquid Proust’s Discord and a sample of this very cake. I remember throwing a sample into my cart, as it was well-priced, not knowing what it was or how it would taste. Yet when I opened that sample bag, weighed the tea out, brewed it then drank it, I realized that this was quite a good tea. And thus, my journey around Auspicious teas began. As this article is surrounding Auspicious, and not me, I'll refrain on commenting on the teas themselves as samples are most likely still going to be available in the near future, with a plethora of well written reviews out in the forums and the discords already.

The amount of written, or at least easily accessible, written information on the internet about Wen is close to none. On the Western-facing web, even more so. The amount of information surrounding the Auspicious brand of teas is also quite sparse though through auctions and a slow trickling of supply to the US and EU reviews do begin to pop up. But so far, not a lot has been said about this mysterious figure. But my curiosity, and a bit of an obsession, got to me, I had to find the man himself!

As with most things I do, I didn’t know how to start finding Wen. There were two pieces of evidence I could use, Zhang’s video referring to him as ‘Wen’ and the factory who pressed his cakes: Tong Xing Hao. I chose to go with the second option, as I had immediately recognized both the factory in the video and the name itself.

My immediate recognition was not unwarranted, as the current owner of Tong Xing Hao (With its subsidiary spinoff Tong Xing Manor) Mr. Zheng is a close friend. In fact, I made the trek down to Yiwu twice this year and twice to the factory itself. This, of course, made it much easier to find Wen.

But what ultimately led me to find him was the venerable ‘Little Red Book’ —A social media app in China— on which one of his close friends had posted pictures of his cakes. This prompted my curiosity once again and, after many message exchanges, I bought some of Auspicious’s later productions. Through both Zheng and this online user, I was able to set up a meeting with Wen in Kunming.

My first stop at TXM is worthy of discussion, as this was my second time at the factory, some higher end stuff got brought out. We started off with a single-tree gushu Mansong (They were packing some so we drank some), moved onto Mr.Zheng’s passion project ‘Yun Quan’ then ended with a 2003 Yiwu and a 2019 Chawangshu.

I ended up buying a dozen or so cakes from them, and though I won’t focus on them much in this article, they’re part of a dying breed of mainland Chinese boutique that the West will seldom see. Making a mental note here to write something about them next time around.

Back to JXJS.

Meeting Mr. Li was a fascinating experience, one that has reshaped my perspective on both tea and life. The profound humanity of Tea shows itself here… sometimes filled with metaphors to live by, sometimes filled with lessons to reckon with, thats tea (and life) isn’t it?

Though our meeting was more related to tea than anything, tea table discussions are never well grounded… sip tea, talk about anything and everything… So, with the 3 hours I spent with Mr. Li, we discussed topics of Buddism, his own life, Yiwu, the destruction of ecological habitats, modern day tea prices, some of his own tea preferences, what constitutes a ‘good blend’ etc.

Keen eyed or sharp minded readers may already know that 吉祥居士 (JiXiangJuShi) means ‘Auspicious Layman’ where ‘Layman’ refers to a non-monastic Buddist and ‘Auspicious’ being one of Mr. Li’s names given to him by his mentor.

As such, it would be no surprise for Mr. Li to have been immersed in Buddist teachings and beliefs for a long time (in fact he spends most of his time in Tibet now). All his tea cakes have the 8 Auspicious symbols printed in a wheel pattern in the front, with later cakes featuring a ‘anti-trampling’ misdeed-diagram to protect the sanctity of the symbols in front.

Our chats quickly turned away from the tea itself and onto his life and exposure to tea. Mr. Li, as I only recently found out upon my exposure to his teas in the mainland, retired from tea making in 2017. Of course, later productions did end up getting made, though they were only seldom sold and mostly hoarded by collectors near to him.

Learning this, I asked Mr. Li why he stepped away in almost the middle of his ‘golden age’. Mr. Li then explained that during a busy spring tea picking season he neglected a easily treatable disease, originally localized to his right arm, that ended up spreading to his spine which caused him to be paralyzed for 19 days. In those 19 days, he decided enough was enough, and began to realize that though his passion for tea hasn’t dwindled, his frustration with a passion/hobby becoming his work kept growing. Having witnessed the original, pristine forests of Yiwu in their purest form early on, his frustration began to grow more and more against the investment tea market that pushed a lot of his early regions out of his reach.

Forests originally lush, turned into plantations of small trees or at worst, terraces. Entire ecological categories of tea at Yiwu like the ‘荒山’ (Barren mountain) categorization became obselete as the forest coverage began to fall. The passionate tea enthusiast within Mr. Li couldn’t help but watch in dissapointment and anger.

And that was that, no more Auspicious teas. A nearly 2 decade journey for Li came to a close.

Mr. Li then began talking about his begginings.

Born Li Jin Wen (李进文) in a Bai minority village (The Li surname is quite common for the Bai minority, having been used for 1000+ years) to a higher ranking family, his early life was filled with high expectations from his grandma, who believed he should uphold the moral and courageous values of their family.

Fast forward to early in his career, Mr. Li was first a English teacher in Kunming for 2 years, then working in a national food conglomerate. It was his job at that food congolomerate that led him around the major cities of China: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen. Though he only stayed for 1-2 years at each city, his interactions with early Taiwanese tourists were of utmost importance to his tea making.

Long story short, Taiwaneses puerh enthusiasts began to discover preserved puerh cakes from the early 20th century and a small group of passionate individuals wanted to learn more about both their production style and place of origin. They began to come to Yiwu, stopping in larger cities first during their travels.

Mr. Li came into contact with several of these enthusiasts, and got interested himself. He met Mr. Tony Chen of Xizihao in the late 90s for example.

As his interest grew, he followed the Taiwanese enthusiasts into Yiwu and learned along side them with the last remaining Haoji (read as pre-WW2 Qing dynasty-ROC period brands) tea makers. He began to make his own teas around the mid 2000s.

I think it’s better to let his tea speak for himself here, preferences change and his earliest teas may not be most representative of his ‘goal’ in tea. Mr. Li seldom posts about his teas, in fact I have yet to find online evidence of his existence other than Dr. Zhang’s book and video series.

I think it’s best I end this article here. There is so much more to talk about, but perhaps it’s best practice to split this into multiple parts.

Thank you Reader for making it this far,

Chilli.

天赐吉祥

‘Heaven bestowed Auspicious’ (A name for one of Mr. Li’s later cake productions)

好茶处于深山，自然稀有

‘Good tea resides within the deep mountains, natrually rare’ (Exerpt from a poem Mr. Zheng say he was inspired by)

There are probably going to be very few of you, however, my unwavering will to write mediocre reviews and posts is still excited to start this blog. I think it’s best to answer the title question very directly and, right now. This blog exists because I have a hobby of collecting hobbies, and one of the hobbies I’ve picked up is Tea. Now, growing up in Beijing and living there I get a lot of Tea passing around the house, but now that I’m in it as a hobby, it’s reached beyond just my enjoyment. And that’s pretty cool, it’s this said coolness that I intend to share here. I won’t live up to the journals and entries of Marshaln and other long-time tea writers/drinkers, but I’ll try to put out some at least interesting posts, which I hopefully enjoy doing. This blog will be more oriented towards the tea hobbyists and addicts of the West and not towards the teabag connoisseurs of the world.

The more I’ve interacted with Western tea drinkers (and mainland ones!) the more I’ve realized how incredible of a position I am in. I’m able to visit a great deal of tea-producing villages in China and have a lot of connections there, which has led to more than enough pictures, stories, and tastings than I could have ever hoped for. By sharing this here, on the interwebs, I hope more will be able to see what I’ve begun to describe as ‘cultural luxury’.

So, in a cliche-movie-start way, join me on my Tea… journey?

Best,

Chilli

Dayi owned tea field. Photo by author.

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