Potala

Yak butter and cheap Chinese tea of lowest grades in the market in Lhasa.

Tibetan tea room.

Not only tea stalks but little branches in the poor tea imported to Tibet.

This picture of beautiful tea garden which was on the wall in the high Chinese official office has inspired us. We decided to find it.

Little light spot in the right upper corner is the place where the only green tea garden is situated.

Green tea from Tibet is ofered only to Chinese high officials in modern sealed packings.

Tea bushes are protected by stone walls so local cattle and wild deers cannot pasture fresh leaves.

Maozedong once visited this place and decided to grow tea here. His summer house is stil there.

Because tea garden is in altitude 9,000 feet there is a lichen on the branches.

Tea leaves are plucked during the day but in only very small amounts.

Processing is situated in modern houses and starts in the evening.

Pans for shaping are heated from outside.

Final drying and shaping is processed in the night on electric heaters.

But the final tea is really delicious. It is called Mao Jian but not because Maozedong. Mao means “hairy” buds.

Experienced and photographed by Ales Jurina.

A well and clearly formulated question may often be the very best motivation of all for striding into unknown territory. And it often serves as the proverbial compass needle pointing in the right direction, eliminating ubiquitous dead-ends.

I have fielded questions like, “Do you know tea from Taiwan? What about Tung Ting? What a fragrance, eh?”

Because I was only familiar with a rather skimpy selection of teas from the island that was called Formosa for years thanks to its scenic beauty, I decided to expand my tea horizon. I also wanted to end the age-old dispute over whether the intoxicating fragrance of lilac and peonies ingeniously conceal in the little balls of rolled-up leaves is a natural consequence of expert processing or is added subsequently.

The Background Lies in Fujian

I first came across the name Tung Ting during my second visit to China, when I headed for the southeastern province of Fujian. There, I mapped the production of partially fermented Minan teas (Minan is the name of the southern half of Fujian, which is famous for producing partially fermented teas such as Tie Guan Yin aka Iron Goddess, Huang Jin Gui, Bao Zhong, Wu Long, while Shi Xian, Bai Mu Dan, and Show Mei are produced in the northern part, Minbei). Besides the loose teas which are commonly available in sundry grocery stores as well as souvenir shops, the celebrated Tie Guan Yin can be bought at entrances to Buddhist monasteries or temples where they are displayed right next to incense sticks and smiling porcelain figures of the Laughing Buddha Mi Le Fo. The quality, however, is very problematic and debating the topic of freshness or authenticity with the local merchants is pointless. Pose a question about the harvest period and even a layman will recognize that the merchant doesn’t know because he basically doesn’t care. But I did.

My trip to China led me to a magnificent food trade fair in neighboring Canton, which is held every year in mid-April and offers a unique opportunity to meet with the largest selection of teas from the entire “Middle Kingdom” in one not-so-large pavilion. Here one can meet all the major tea producers and exporters, thus saving lots of time and money instead of making complicated and many times adventurous trips to their home manufacturing operations. And so I visited dozens of stands of various tea merchants only to learn that the best tea was – surprise surprise – being sold right where I was. I was assured that the competition isn’t competitive and, above all, that nothing was a problem. Anyone can produce any kind of tea. Obviously! “No, no, no! Far from it,” I told myself, “they should all do what they do best, and not meddle in others’ crafts.” And I remembered the huge disappointment I experienced while tasting the teas – imposters – that were offered to me on my travels through China’s tea-producing regions. Long Jing harvested and processed in Sichuan is bitter as wormwood, and is absolutely devoid of the hint of honey in its authentic namesake from Xi Hu Lake near Hangzou. Bi Luo Chung produced in Fujian lacks the typical bitterness for which the original tea from Tai HuLake is coveted and equated with gold.

Experimenting with tea flavors is not advisable. I resisted the temptation to bring new names, stories, and flavors home to Europe, and thereby mix the proverbial palette and completely confuse those who have already started making headway in the spectrum of tea fragrance and flavor undertones. That’s what others do, not me. I attended the exposition, created and strengthened trade relations, and, with pockets full of samples and business cards, headed off to neighboring Fujian to have a look at the processing of partially fermented oolongs from the south of the province. It did not occur to me that these teas still weren’t being harvested in mid-April…

Believe It or Not, as You Please…

When you ask passers-by in China for directions, nine times out of ten, each will point you in a different direction. But no need to get annoyed. They’re not doing it to be mean or to make your life difficult. After some time, I got the feeling that, for whatever reason, they were ashamed to say, “I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it.” And so in posing the simplest question one learns not only where the place lies, but often also why it lies there. A new legend is usually born, and whether you believe it or not is only up to you. It is good to ask at least two or three more random passers-by, then analyze their answers and base your decision on the most convincing arguments. For the most part, those are orientation according to maps and the sun, provided it emerges from the steamy mist that usually prevails when fresh teas are being harvested.

The Chinese have a talent for believing the authenticity of their narrations and for regarding them as truth even when they are making up their content. The feeling that it could be that way is so strong that you simply believe it and accept it as reality. So don’t be surprised that, before another bitter experience, I, in a word, naively believed an eight-hour journey along dusty, rocky roads to the mountains in the south of the province wasn’t in vain. That I’d see there somewhere how they roll world-famous Tie Guan Yin, Huang Jin Gui or Bao Zhong oolong teas. Of course I had no idea it was closed there! I was to have that experience much later, a fact that had already been inscribed in my tea destiny long before.

When I evaluated the success of my Fujian mission in hindsight, I frankly wasn’t too satisfied. But what I did regard as a huge benefit was the distinctive, sweet, peony-lilac fragrance that stuck in my nose while drinking an extraordinary, lightly fermented tea called Tung Ting. I bought that in a small tea shop in the province’s capital city Fuzhou and discovered it was imported from Taiwan. I believed it!

Protect, but Don’t Harm!

The history of the charming island of Formosa is more interesting than it might seem at first glance. Separated from the Chinese mainland by a hundred-kilometer ribbon of sea, one would think its populace, history, and culture would be very similar, if not the same. But that was not always the case.

According to the surviving relics, the island was inhabited tens of thousands of years ago. But the natives were not ethnic Chinese, they were islanders who sailed there from the Pacific. It was not until the beginning of the 15^th century A.D. that a great number of emigrants from Fujian moved to the island, which was always slightly outside the main interest of China’s populace. The residents of today’s FujianProvince have always been keen travelers, and so it is no surprise the new fertile territory a ways “across the water” attracted their attention.

Neither did it escape the attention of Portuguese sailors who anchored here in 1517, and, thanks to its beauty, named the island Ihla Formosa or “Beautiful Island.” After that, history gained momentum. In 1624, the island was occupied by the Dutch, who founded the original capital city of Tainan in the western part of the island. But two years later, the Spanish seized control, only to be driven out by the Dutch again in 1641.

No local army capable of withstanding the supremacy of the colonizers or other powerful neighbors was ever formed in Taiwan, and so events on the neighboring mainland soon weighed in on the island’s development. In the middle of the 17^th century, some 35,000 soldiers from China’s victorious Manchu Dynasty (aka Qing or Ch’ing) descended on the island and began persecuting fleeing supporters of the Ming Dynasty. Thanks chiefly to their military might, the Dutch were driven off the island in 1661.

From then on, as a result of migration of the populace from neighboring Fujian, Formosa began taking on the character of its larger and more powerful neighbor – big China.

The Chinese-Japanese War did not devastate Taiwan much, as the battles were mostly fought on mainland China. Nevertheless, in 1895, Taiwan was surrendered to victorious Japan as war booty. Although Japan brought law and order to Taiwan, it also brought cruel treatment. That resulted in many local residents rising up against the Japanese reign. The locals even managed to briefly declare an independent republic, the first in Asia. But it didn’t last long, as the Japanese quashed the uprising by extremely brutal means. Taiwan became a part of Japan, and agricultural and economic growth set in. The Japanese built roads, railways, schools, and hospitals. They were also pivotal in developing agriculture on the island. Although many Taiwanese were recruited in the Japanese army during World War II, the island itself was not too damaged by Allied bombing at the close of the war. Nevertheless, by that time, Taiwan, like neighboring Japan, was in economic ruin.

China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, fell in 1911. As the leader of the national rebellion, Dr. Sun Yat-sen was largely responsible for that, and he became the first president of the Republic of China. To his misfortune, he was afflicted by insufficient desire for power and was soon replaced. The subsequent period of civil war, when groups of local warlords fought each other in attempts to seize power, came to an end with the rise of the nationalist army led by General Chiang Kai-shek. The civil war was suppressed, nevertheless, the Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, headed by Chiang Kai-shek soon came under threat again.

After Japan’s defeat in World War II, China gained control of Taiwan, which was confirmed by the Yalta Conference. The Taiwanese themselves were happy to see Japanese dominion come to an end. But their joy did not last long. Chiang Kai-shek appointed the corrupt and incompetent General Chen Yi as Chief Executive of Taiwan. That spurred another wave of unrest, this time by the local anti-Kuomintang forces. That rebellion ended with a devastating massacre in which tens of thousands of civilians died. That day, known as 2-28 (according to the date of the tragedy in 1947), became a black mark in the land’s modern history.

In mainland China, however, the communists seized power at the end of the 1940s, and the Kuomintang, still led by Chiang Kai-shek, was forced to retreat to Taiwan. At that time, around half a million Chinese, including 600,000 soldiers, emigrated to the charming island, whereby the population swelled to seven and a half million. But even that strong populace was unable to repel the anticipated invasion of the Communist Army. The whole conflict was ended by the United States, which sent its army to the strait between mainland China and the island to predestine the island’s future orientation.

But Where Did the Tea Come From?

 Equipped with information on the enchanting island’s turbulent history, I stand in front of the National Museum of History in today’s capital, Taipei, and I’m looking forward to going inside. I learn that the exodus of one and a half million Kuomintang supporters brought to the island not only China’s intellectual elite, but also an enormous amount of historical objects. This fact places Taiwan’s national museum among the most remarkable in the world. Assembled here are some 700,000 Chinese artifacts. The exhibition halls are situated in the depths of a mountain, which should protect them in the event of a nuclear attack on the capital. The exhibition space is limited, so “only” 15,000 objects may be exhibited at once. These change every three months, which means you could see them all in just under twelve years (if visiting the museum regularly).

“I don’t have that much time!” I say to myself. I study the signboard by the elevator hoping at least one floor will be dedicated to tea culture. But I don’t find even a mention of what is so tied to the history, culture, imperial court, literature, and bohemians, poets, and even ordinary farmers in neighboring China. You probably won’t believe me, but in the entire museum I found just one teapot, accompanied by information that it had been used to prepare tea! And I didn’t even cheat – I passed by all 15,000 exhibited objects!

I leave and it doesn’t even occur to me to return in three months. Imagine, next time there might not even be one tea-related artifact on display…

I expected to learn the most enlightening information about the history of tea in Taiwan in its national museum, but I’ve got hard luck. Then again, why should they have something so specific here, when there’s a museum devoted solely to tea on the outskirts of Taipei in a place called Ping Lin!!!

Not-so-long History

I’m traveling in a suburban bus weaving along narrow hairpin bends, and my heart is rejoicing. Tea gardens appear on the mountainsides, harvest is in full swing, and the weather is agreeable. Although it is almost the end of April, when precipitation climaxes in this part of the island and it rains almost non-stop, today the clouds broke and the sun is shining. But the bus stops relatively frequently to let other cars pass in the other direction. As it does so, it is avoiding huge green tarpaulins stretched over one whole lane of the road. “What is this?” I’m thinking just as I see it. Freshly-picked tea leaves are being spread out on those tarpaulins and left to wither. It is quicker, more effective, and less laborious than handling them in attics under rooftops when it rains outside.

I step out of the bus and ask the way to the museum. I expect it to be a large, several-storey building, but I am wrong. It is comprised of several small pavilions, ingeniously melded into the terrain, and adjacent to it a Chinese garden with a pond full of colorful fish, a little bridge, a gazebo, and a spate of gorgeous plants. Now this is my kind of place.

The information I obtain here adds another dimension to my journey. Not only did I learn who was the first to bring a young tea plant to Taiwan, but also where he planted it. And I can’t miss out on seeing that.

Traces of the history of tea cultivation in Taiwan are quite scarce. The first surviving mention dates to 1661, when European seafarers recorded that the natives drink a beverage made from tea leaves. They did not cultivate the plants, however. They picked the leaves from wild bushes.

Another preserved mention is from 1697 about how the Dutch planted tea plants around the city of Puli in Nantou County and the tea was reportedly even exported to faraway Persia.

But tea planting did not start booming until the mid-1800s. In 1855, a certain Feng Chi Liu returned from the Fujian province after taking his examination to become a civil servant and brought with him 36 tea plant seedlings, which he planted in his native village of Luku in mountainous NantouCounty. Twelve of the seedlings took root and the basis for Taiwanese tea production was established.

Then and there, I knew the small rural community of Luku was a place I had to visit.

Kung Fu on a Stump?

But before that, it was time to explore what was being harvested and processed all around me in Ping Lin. Practically every house along the road is a teahouse or tea shop with a small tea manufacturing operation in the back. My curiosity piqued, I enter a shop and I’m already ensnared by the owner, who very willingly explains what exactly is being done here.

The tea I was treated to is called Tie Guan Yin. It is not produced in other parts of Taiwan. I am thrilled because the method of processing this partly fermented tea had been a mystery to me till then.

I observe in silence and take notes:

After withering for a short time, the leaves, which had been spread out on screens, are enclosed in white cloth and tightened into packages the size of a blow-up beach ball, which are placed in special horn-shaped presses. Here, with a circular motion, the package is continually tightened and the leaves inside are rolled into wrinkled ovals. In light of the fact that they wait to harvest this tea – unlike other quality teas where only the tips of the buds and at most two leaves are harvested – until five perfectly developed blooming leaves appear at the end of each twig, this process is relatively demanding and must therefore be repeated. The man of the house, who guides me through the house, points out that there are many factors – such as the outdoor temperature, humidity, and the quality of the leaves themselves – which determine how many times the white cloth is unwrapped. The damp leaves are released from it and dropped into a rotating drum, where they tumble around as warm air is introduced, only to be tightened up in the cloth again after a few minutes and enclosed in the “horn-press.” This process may apparently even be repeated up to twenty times! Well, how about that!

Now I understand why Tie Guan Yin leaves often lifted up the lid of the teapot from my Kung Fu tea set – they are rolled up very skillfully and once covered with hot water they have a tendency to return to their original shape. I learn that the last step, which has the greatest impact on the dissimilarity between the flavor of Tie Guan Yin and Taiwan’s traditional and probably best-known tea, Tung Ting, is the intense final drying, which could almost be called roasting. It takes place in small ovens, like those in which baguettes or rolls are baked in small bakeries.

I sit myself down on a “stump,” which is the local substitute for a chair, and let the symphony of flavor and fragrance called Kung Fu Cha (also known as Gongfu Cha) start playing on the table, which is naturally also a stump. The tea ceremony in Taiwan has nothing in common with its counterpart in neighboring Japan. The tea isn’t prepared from powder or whisked, and there’s not even a need to seek a special environment with displayed Tatami mats or kneel with humility. Kung Fu Cha tea ceremony in Taiwan usually takes place on stumps, which are not only very carefully chosen (they must meet the strictest artistic criteria), but also crafted with exceptional skill. They can be purchased in special shops with other tea accessories and it should be mentioned that purchasing them means a fairly hefty investment. But not everyone can afford one. However, having at least one such stump and treating a visitor to tea at before offering tea for sale is a given for almost every tea shop.

The Kung Fu tea set itself contains a number of interesting properties, the most important of which is a double-bottom tray for catching excess liquid, a small teapot for infusing the tea leaves, a small vessel similar to a creamer, into which the brew is strained, and a set of miniature cups, one of which is cylindrical and the second, shorter, one rounded. Also required is a set of wooden utensils – tongs, a funnel, a tea needle, and a scoop, which are used very adeptly, especially when something goes awry or to keep the master from being scalded. The preparation itself deserves its own essay. But what every partaker in Kung Fu Cha must know is that the tea is not drunk from the taller, tubular cup into which the master pours it, but rather from the other cup. Through a skillful trick involving the taller cup being covered with the shorter one, both being turned upside down in the master’s fingers, and the liquid left to spill over into the bottom cup, the intensive fragrance is retained in the narrow, upside-down cup. The scent can then be taken pleasure in at will, while the brew in the second cup cools down. I say – like a dream!

After being served oolong on a stump, I’m not surprised by anyone willing to pay enormous amounts (reportedly as much as 100 dollars) for a 50-gram package of the highest quality Taiwanese oolong. I too was treated by the lady of the house and then bought several packs of vacuum-packed “Goddess of Mercy,” of course in a reasonable price range. As I learned back in my hotel room a bit later, it had nothing in common with the brew I’d been served earlier.  But who knows why. Perhaps the stump was missing.

Everything Green and That’s That!

From literature I learn about the center of production of green teas around the city of Sansia, which lies 30 kilometers southwest of Taipei. My theoretical knowledge takes another blow here. There really are tea shops every step of the way and most are also linked to a small manufacturing operation. But both are far from being picturesque. The selection of teas is varied, however… As I learn here, processing the local teas Long Jing and Bi Luo Chung is still in its infancy. Moreover, they are far, far from reminiscent of their Chinese brothers. Neither their appearance nor their flavor has anything in common with the latter, and the price is dear. I obtrude into the back part of the dwelling in order to see the production itself, and I am surprised. After withering, the tea leaves are thrown by hand into a rotating drum, which is heated from below either by gas or log fire; inside, the tea leaves heat up quickly on the hot walls, killing the eventual possibility of subsequent fermentation. Then they are poured into a small roller, where they are kneaded by the gyrating motion until they take shape of small rolls. After that, they are dried in a conveyor-belt dryer.

But all the sudden I notice that the man of the house is bringing just-withered tea leaves and tossing them in the roller without pre-heating them. “And what is that supposed to be?” I asked, just in case he hadn’t made a mistake. I pleasantly surprise him with my question. “Yes, you’re right, I didn’t heat it up intensely first, but put it directly into the roller. That’s because it’s a different tea. Now I’m making Bao Zhong.” I grasped that here they carefully observe the technological differences between how each tea is produced, nevertheless, in the end all the teas taste very similar. I bet that with blindfolded eyes the producer himself would not recognize Bi Luo Chung from Long Jing (which is not shaped in a roller, but in a type of tub, were it is buffed flat with special brushes). And the locals consider Bao Zhong – here’s the surprise – to be a green tea! I, however, know it is the least fermented oolong around, but I don’t want to trouble them. It would seem rather inappropriate for a Czech tourist to point out to a Taiwanese teaman that he was living in delusion.

The Same, Yet Different

I am headed straight to the heart of the tea industry, to the village of Luku, which lies directly under the “FrozenPeak,” or Tung Ting in Chinese, which lent its name to the most famous Taiwanese tea, and I’m looking forward to some hiking. Under the term “tea industry” one would be wrong to imagine huge factory halls. Tea as exceptional as Tung Ting can only be produced in small amounts and with the irreplaceable human touch. My first steps lead to the seat of the Association of Tea Plantation Owners in Luku. A good move. Secretary Mr. Tony Lin takes me in and tells me exciting news. At the end of the week, I can attend (only as a viewer of course) a tasting of five thousand samples of Tung Ting. The idea actually panics more than pleases me. I can not imagine tasting 5,000 samples of one type of tea, or even why to do it all. But I do suspect this giant-scale tasting has something to do with the tea trade itself.

The village of Luku stretches along a road at the base of a massive mountain crest with peaks over 3,000 meters above sea level, which crosses through the middle of the island. At first glance, the village is nothing extraordinary: the usual houses that can be seen all over the island, tropical vegetation, bamboo groves, and thin betel palm trunks towering to the sky. But what is different from other villages is the amount of tea shops lining the streets. Even in hotel lobbies there’s always room for a tea corner, and, if you ask, the personnel will give you a sample of tea from the canisters on display. I lose no time and take a seat at the table – a stump – and choose a tea. But there’s nothing to choose from. I can either have Tung Ting, i.e. tea grown in the nearby mountains, or Kao Shan, i.e. tea grown in the nearby mountains (but different ones). “I’m completely flummoxed!” They look exactly the same, but take note – even dry, each smells completely differently. “I think I’ll have both,” I tell the lady working at the reception desk, which causes her some inconvenience because, in a word, two teas can not be prepared at the same time in a Kung Fu set. The continuing stalemate is resolved by Tony, who puts both samples in a bag, loads me in his car, and takes me off to the mountains.

“I guess we’re off to Tung Ting Mountain,” I think to myself, “where else could we be going?” The car climbs narrow hairpin turns, all around us thick vegetation thrives. After an hour-long journey the bamboo and pine groves recede, and I can see something I honestly did not expect. If there is a heaven, it must look like this. Azure blue sky and majestic mountain peaks, silvery opaque clouds, and fresh green tea gardens. This place is called Long Fon Sai, or “Valley of Dragons and Birds.” The quietude is only disrupted by whispering winds blowing through the tea plant leaves. The multicolored dots in the distance between the rows of tea plants signify that the harvest is in full swing. But I am already being welcomed by the manager of the local tea processing operation, who invites me into his office. That is where we’ll have the tasting, I learn from Tony. I pass by the now well-known “horn-shaped” machines, drums, conveyor-belt dryers, and stretched out nets with leaves, which are just starting to wilt. The production process for Tung Ting is identical to the production of Tie Guan Yin. Tung Ting, however, is not dried as intensely in the final phase. Hence, it does not take on that lightly over-roasted flavor typical of Tie Guan Yin. Tung Ting is graced with a different characteristic flavor. It sounds incredible, but you can actually trace in it lilac and peony blossoms! Even though those plants are not found in the vicinity at all.

That Tea’s a Demon!

My taste buds are swimming in a sea of flowery fragrances when all the sudden – this sample is totally different. Instead of flowers in the sip, I find the sweetish hint of cream. Now what’s this? “A sample of Kao Shan,” I’m told. So the manager really did prepare the samples brought from the hotel reception. I am spirited away by the unusual flavor and pump my hosts for how it is achieved. I have no idea whether the tea isn’t aromatized or perhaps mixed with something. “No, no, the whole secret lies only in the processing technology and in the type of tea plants in the garden.” I suspect the tea industry in Taiwan is, just like other industries here, highly technologically advanced. That is why I am not at all surprised to learn that cloned TTE 27 tea plants are used for Tung Ting, which guarantee its flowery fragrance. Science is science. To produce Jin Xuan, as the creamy-flavored one is actually called, TTE 29 clones are cultivated. The commonly used name Kao Shan means something like “mountain tea” and does not denote a concrete type of tea. I fancy asking more about the uniqueness of Jin Xuan, but from the tone of the answers of my hosts, I gather it is not an appropriate theme. And why should it be when they don’t have it here and they probably don’t know how to produce it. To sort the thoughts in my head and clear the matter up, I pose the last question. “So why don’t you have it here, too?” I ask, feeling rather impertinent. Tony fields the question and explains: “Among tea experts, a flowery fragrance and flavor is commonly better rated than creamy. In a flowery undertone, one can find many more fine nuances and revel in comparing the most various flowery bouquets, of which there are thousands. But there is just one creamy character. Unless you know more creamy scents and can describe them?” he drove me into a corner. “All right, so I won’t ask any more questions,” I tell Tony, accepting his explanation. But my head is still churning with doubt. How many people in the world have come so far in recognizing flavors in tea that they are aware of the flavor undertones with traces of fragrances of lilac or violets? My preoccupied expression did not go unnoticed by the manager, who turned to me and said, “I’ll divulge something to you. That tea’s a demon! That has been tested by time and you, too, will figure it out in time. Jin Xuan is a tea with a very intoxicating flavor and fragrance, and it conquers everyone immediately. You’ll return to it with unusual zeal. You’ll have the feeling your desire for it is never satiated. And suddenly, in one go, that will come to an end. That tea will suddenly, overnight, abandon you, you’ll lose all interest in it! Not only that you won’t have a hankering for it, but the idea of drinking it may even arouse unpleasant feelings. It’s a tea of two faces. It is a tea like night and day.”

Well, that’s really what I needed to boost my already quite eroded self-confidence that I’ll ever understand Taiwanese teas. Tea – demon!

A Lake Can Not Have a Peak!

Communicating in English is not always ideal in areas not visited by hordes of tourists. I noticed that my guide Tony answered some of my questions noncommittally and others not at all. That’s why I did not, for example, learn if any of the peaks surrounding us while visiting the tea gardens was Tung Ting. No other choice but to ask again. “Of course it wasn’t,” replied Tony Lin. “We’re going there now,” and he instructed the driver, who set off on a road which descended down the slope. “Oh great, looks like I’m in for another trip,” I thought to myself, when I realized that, laid out before us, was a valley on the bottom of which floating clouds reflected on the surface of a large lake. “I guess we’ll have to climb the opposite mountainside, which will be a long journey. And so we’re stopping in some wayside inn on the lakefront to gather strength for the hike,” I told myself as we got out of the car and Tony uttered: “So we’re here.” I look around and assure Tony that it is indeed lovely here. “Well, enjoy it, you’re not in Tung Ting every day.”

First the “tea demon,” then the elevated plateau with a lake called “Frozen Peak” surrounded by mountain crests. I could not have asked for more good news. “And how many days a year does it freeze here?” I direct my question at Tony. “Not even one. Our tea plants would freeze.” So, thanks a lot, Mr. Secretary, for the information. As soon as you want to tell me that “cat” means “dog” in Luku, you’ll find me in my hotel. Or even better, don’t look for me at all around here. I’m heading to the south.

Don’t Lie on the Beach and Don’t Go in the Water

I have a feeling my brain hard disc is completely full of information and it’s time to perform defragmentation. Which is why I’m setting off to the south of the island to the city of Kenting, which is renowned as a resort with beautiful beaches, a place where one can relax and clear one’s head without disturbances.

I settle in to a hotel in Nan Wan Bay, near a small inlet lined by the throbbing colonnade of a picturesque town, and I’m relishing in it. Although it is warm, even hot, and the water in the sea is warm, I can’t see even one deck chair or blanket on the beach. Fantastic! I don’t pay much attention to the approaching group of students – almost all wearing three-quarter length pants, t-shirts, short cotton jackets, hats or baseball caps. I spread out my beach towel, strip down to my bathing suit, and lie down. Now I’m not sure whether I laid down on the sand too quickly or clumsily from joy or fatigue, but what I do remember for sure was the group’s quick reaction. They head straight for me, their spokesperson leans over and asks me if I don’t feel sick. “No, no, I’m fine. I’m resting and hoping to work on my tan,” I say, turn over on my stomach, and live in the hope that that is the end of that. But the muffled laughter behind me signalizes something else. “Can we take a picture of you?” I can’t believe my ears. They continue, “Nobody back home would believe us if we told them you were lying right here but nothing was wrong with you.” At that moment, I notice a little detail. Some of the students are wearing over their cotton jackets little backpacks with their personal things. No, I haven’t gone nuts. That’s how it works here. As I later learned, bathing and swimming isn’t in style, people rest at night and in bed, and those with tans are revealing their lower-class background or even that they are manual or peasant laborers. And those who just want to refresh themselves don’t take their backpacks off or even strip down just to wet their lower limbs. Such is custom.

I run into the sea and, with a long crawl stroke, swim further and further away from the shore. The figures in light-colored clothing on the shore get smaller and smaller. Luxuriating in the waves, I slowly start to return to the shore. The figures on the beach become increasingly distinct. They’re gesticulating at me wildly. “I guess they’re waving goodbye,” I tell myself, and wave back at them heartily with both arms. And just then I notice the colored buoys, which, located about 30 meters from the shore at a depth of maybe one meter, clearly signalize how far out swimmers can go. My waving from more than 200 meters has obviously been interpreted as a call for help. A shore patrol jet ski approaches. How embarrassing! I refuse to get on board and proudly swim to shore, escorted by beefy Taiwanese lifeguards. A crowd of fifty or more is waiting on the shore and it keeps growing. I don’t know if this custom of welcoming swimmers is widespread in Taiwan or whether it has deeper historical roots. I was, however, given a royal welcome. Slaps on the shoulder, photographs with the local beauties (I mean those in the jackets and life jackets), and an unceasing stream of questions – why did I do it? What was I trying to prove or suggest? At that moment, I recalled a scene from a very charming and human film, “Forrest Gump.” One day Forrest decides to literally run across America, and by personal example he sets a huge movement in motion. That thought took me aback for a second. All it would take is to add a little political or social subtext to my answers, and I would surely have followers immediately.

“No, no, no, my friends. Nothing exceptional. I’m lying on the ground because I want to rest; it’s no fun in the hotel bed. I’m sunbathing because I know that I won’t get a tan anyway in the two days I’ll be here, and I swam so far only so I’d know that you won’t forget me, and that you’ll follow your dreams. Thanks for your attention,” I take my beach towel and head to the hotel. A bus full of tourists interrupts my musings when it slows down next to me and I become the target of camera lenses aimed from the bus windows. And why not – I am, after all, walking down the street in nothing but my swimming suit! “I’ve perplexed them all,” I tell myself, “tomorrow I’m going back to Luku!”

Once the Lid Turns, You’re Out!

From the morning hours, the atmosphere around the headquarters of the Association of Local Farmers is festive. And why shouldn’t it be when everyone has been waiting for this day all year long? Delegations are arriving. Not official ones, with high-level public servants. The delegations are from various countries in Europe, America, and even nearby Japan, comprised of merchants and their tasters, as well as little groups of lovers of good tea. The moment the samples from local farmers (and in fact not only from them) start accumulating in Luku, it is a holiday. The contest that was started in 1976 by Mr. Kuan Yen Lin, today its general manager, already has a reputation that spills beyond the region’s borders. It could be considered the climax of the whole harvest of partially fermented teas in Taiwan. Once the samples have been turned in, the result can not be influenced and there is no choice but to wait for the jury’s verdict.

The only problem is, Tung Ting is the only tea tasted and judged here. If another type of tea is harvested and processed somewhere – tough luck.

In the back part of the association’s headquarters is a large parking lot. On this important day it is filled with cars. Each may be hiding a real treasure in its trunk. That treasure is of course Tung Ting. The condition for entering the contest is delivering twelve catties of tea (one catty equals 600 grams). But each producer can enter as many different samples he wants. And so there can even be 4,000 samples entered in the contest! In 2006, there was a record 4,822 samples! One catty of tea is divided into three samples, where the first and second are used for tasting and the third for comparison with the tea which is sold at the market, which closes the festival after the winner has been announced. One catty belongs to the contest organizers. The competing teas are poured into universal red containers, carefully weighed and tagged with a number, which is hidden inside the tea and must not be known by anyone other than the recording clerk. In the throng of samples, the clerk barely has time to record them in the registration book, let alone remember which is which, so anonymity is thereby guaranteed. That is surely safeguarded with other measures, but those weren’t discussed even during the lecture held inside the association’s headquarters.

Among other things in the association’s seat is a lecture hall with various information panels from which the visitor can learn everything about the history of tea and how it is produced in Luku. There are also a number of various historical artifacts and sketches recalling the trailblazing efforts of tea pioneers. One fact worth mentioning is that Tung Ting was not kneaded in horn-shaped motor-driven machines in bygone days, but in a much simpler way – by foot! The farmer simply wrapped the tea in tarp, hopped on it, and treaded…

But I was most interested in how the tasting itself was organized. After all, tasting more than 4,000 samples is no funny business.

“We establish five five-member tasting teams from selected and experienced experts, which then taste the prepared samples. It is important for the team to agree on every tea and mark it accordingly. Each team has more than 35 samples, prepared by assistants, before it at a time. All five team members taste the samples in order, and the fate of the tea is decided by the tasting cup’s placement in relation to the bowl and by the position of the lid. When the cup is at twelve o’clock position, it indicates the greatest success. A cup at three o’clock means commendable, at six o’clock means good, but nine o’clock – watch out! That means the lid is even turned around next to the cup! And that’s a sign that the tea is out of the contest,” Tony clarifies the system of judging the competing samples. The contest itself lasts several weeks and each team gradually gets to taste each tea. The results are then evaluated, and those with the same number of points are tasted over and over again anonymously, until the contest is decided.

12 Kilos for the Winner

The day all the results of the contest are announced determines the pricing of tea in the broader area for the entire next year. On that day, not only does one of the participants become the winner and the bearer of the title “Champion No. 1,” but, according to the contest rules, he also gets to sell 20 catties (12 kg) of his winning tea at the festival’s market, which follows immediately after the results have been announced. In the last auction, the price of the winning tea reached an unbelievable USD 400 per kilogram.

Roughly 2 percent of the samples (appr. 80 entries) obtain the title “Tea No. 1” and their producers are rewarded with the chance of selling their 12 kilograms for up to USD 100/kg.

The third place gains the title “Tea No. 2,” which around 5 percent of the judged samples win.

Fourth place, which up to 8 percent of all competing teas are rewarded, receive the title “Tea No. 3.”

Another 15 to 20 percent gain the right to use the mark of three plum tree blossoms on their tea, and the remaining 30 to 40 percent are eliminated from the contest.

So it is more than obvious that the tea producers prize a good evaluation for the next tea season and how they use it to set the price of their products. After all, it is logical that whoever who can pride himself on a title acquired in the contest must know how to produce tea, even for the rest of the year. And he also deserves to be paid well for it.

And so once the contest in Luku has ended, the winning tea becomes not only the envy of local merchants, but also the product setting the quality bar for the whole season.

In silent astonishment I listened to Tony’s interpretation of how sweet victory can be, and after it I yearned to taste at least one of the teas vying for glory in the contest. I unobtrusively asked Tony if I couldn’t enter the tasting room and take a few pictures. Albeit unwillingly considering the tasters’ concentration, he agreed. I hastily took a few pictures and swarmed over to the table with already judged samples and asked Tony if he wouldn’t take pictures of me with them. Feeling like a king, I lifted the cup of still warm liquid to my lips and sipped. I was overcome by a rapturous feeling, then a quick flash of the camera, and we scramble out. Quite an experience. “It was the last sample on the first table,” I told myself as I exited, “I’ll never forget it.” Only when I got home and browsed the photos did I realize that “my” sample had been eliminated from the contest – the lid was inverted…

So How Did It Start?

I’m sitting in a bus, parting with Luku, and ruminating over everything I experienced on that small but gorgeous island. I saw the production of green tea that isn’t green. I took delight in gorgeous mountain views and incredibly beautiful tea gardens on their slopes. I went swimming and thereby caused a riotous assembly. I met lots of nice people and I basically had no negative experiences during my entire stay. I learned about tea which they say is a demon, and I discovered the secret of the fragrance of Tung Ting. The only thing I regretted was the ‘FrozenPeak’ itself. “That just isn’t possible,” I told myself. “I visited a peak that wasn’t even pointed. It was rather flat, and a lake was on it! And it reportedly hasn’t even ever frozen over up there! That’s just strange.”

A fluke was needed. When changing buses, I had to go from one bus station to another. On the way I got a bit lost, but I was taken in by an amiable young lady by the name of Katy, who was also traveling from Luku, going in the same direction as I was, and accompanied me to the right bus. I was so overloaded with impressions that I had to tell her about everything I encountered in Taiwan. “They are all big mysteries to me and one day I’d like to get to the bottom of them,” I told her. As is my custom, I presented Katy with my business card.

When I returned home, I almost forgot about the brief encounter. But one day I came into my office and discovered an envelope that was, according to the characters (I mean the Chinese characters), from Taiwan. I opened it up in suspense and removed two snapshots. On their backside was a friendly greeting and two words: “snow-covered gardens.” At that moment I realized I was finally holding evidence in my hands. Even the locals couldn’t explain to me why that special place is named “FrozenPeak.” But now I know what many don’t – that sometimes far up there in the mountains, where nobody goes in the winter, where only birds, and possibly even dragons, soar during that sad season, something white and damned cold swoops down from the skies. But ever so briefly…

And so I don’t want to ascertain any more details or dissect the local vernacular. It is so lovely to let yourself ride the waves of legends and myths or revel in the notion that there, somewhere above, fly dragons above snow-covered tea plant beds. Who cares if it’s really otherwise?

Written by Jirka Simsa in Fall 2006

I have been travelling to Asia once a year for many years now. India alone I have visited four times. In fact once back in 1995 I even secretly crossed the Nepal border during my first trek along the mountain ridge between the Sandakphu and Phalut peaks in the Darjeeling region. But Nepal itself remained a mysterious, unexplored country to me. I don’t know what repeatedly delayed my decision to set out on the trail of Nepal tea. In the spring of 2003 I ultimately decided to journey to the country and try to map the tea production of the Kingdom of Nepal.

I also planned my trip’s route to include a short stop in northern India. I decided that I would go there all by myself. This was not at all an unusual decision; I had already spent several months unaccompanied in southern India, Sri Lanka and Sumatra.  So I knew what I was getting myself into. What I didn’t suspect, however, was how the circumstances would develop in the places I was heading to or the adversity I was to encounter.

It is worth mentioning, right at the outset, that I fell madly in love with India right during my first visit in 1995. I have visited it again twice since the events described below, and I trust there will be more visits to come. India is something like a drug. When the fates smile down on you it can be an unbelievable, even mystical experience. But when they turn against you it could, in the worst case, cost you your life.

I would also like to apologise to the thousands of polite, peaceful and godly Indians that every visitor to India meets on their trip. I do not talk about them in the text that follows. I am, however, well aware of their existence.

I only wanted to spend a few days in the capital city of Delhi and didn’t really expect any surprises since I had already been here and had walked (literally) the width and breadth of the entire city. I had a meeting arranged here with a family of local entrepreneurs who were interested in the idea of opening a Dobrá čajovna. Some of the family members who had worked in the tea industry in the southern tea-growing region of Nilgiri asked me if I would take a look at a few selected locations in the centre and let them know my opinion. They were interested to know whether our type of tearoom could make it on the local rapidly developing market of services. And so the main point of the program was a meeting with representatives of the rich social class of Indians.

But all that was to be preceded by a kind of “baptism” by India. Probably so that I would thoroughly realise that the idea of doing business on the Indian subcontinent is not an easy prospect.

I flew into Delhi early, sometime between 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning, and, almost inevitably, I became a victim of the taxi mafia. Even though I knew the name of the hotel that I wanted to go to and, like a seasoned traveller, I paid for a voucher at the airport to take me there right from the airport and even though it should have been enough to give the taxi driver this voucher, I ended up somewhere else entirely. Right after departing from the airport the driver picked up two local types and they started playing a game with me. I learned that the hotel I was going to was under reconstruction and was not taking guests. The other hotel I drew their attention to was allegedly full because it is the time of trade fairs and there are an unusually lot of businessmen in town. But I was allegedly in luck because I had happened to run into them. But by that time we were somewhere on the very edge of the city, where there were no streetlights, and we pulled into a dark courtyard. Some kind of armed guard closed the gate behind us and I got the feeling I was in trouble. A dark figure opened the trunk of the taxi and I was without my luggage. A brown bloke peered at me with red-rimmed eyes in the poorly-lit reception and from the blood-red liquid spittle in the corner of the room I understood that he was at least under the influence of the local heavily-used drug named Betel. The price for the room is $50 and I supposedly have to check out early. There was no point in haggling! I curled up inside my own imported sheets on a greasy and sweaty couch and fell asleep. Luckily my suitcase and backpack were already in the room.

But around six o’clock, not even an hour later, I was awoken by an unbelievable racket. Dawn was just slowly starting to break outside. I drew back the curtain and saw that I was accommodated in a building that was slated for destruction. The rear two-thirds of the building no longer existed and half-naked workers were gradually tearing down what was left. They were using sledgehammers, clubs, crowbars and also pneumatic jackhammers. Racket, ruckus, dust, sweat and stench. The air conditioning wasn’t working; electricity had already been cut off to the hotel. I went down to the reception in despair. “Bright Wiew Hotel” a derelict sign, covered in the excrement of the intrusive insects, boasted on the wall between dials showing the time in Tokyo and New York. Yes, that view of the construction sight was as bright as day, the name of the hotel was fitting… A completely different person than the one who checked me in during the night was standing in the reception. I asked for an explanation.

Instead of an explanation, however, I learned that it was high time for me to clean out my room. It was apparently “Checking out time!” There was no sense in arguing. It would be best to be leaving. I refused the offer to find me a taxi for fear of it ending up like last night and I relied instead on my own travelling experience. I packed my things and headed out. “I have to get somewhere where there is some sign of life. I can catch something there. Maybe a rickshaw,” I said to myself. But it wasn’t as easy as that.

There was a swarm of rickshaws around the corner. I noticed that they were dominated by some kind of boss festooned with thick, golden chains who was dictating who was going where. And so I too was assigned a driver and was told the sum for which I would be taken. A sum that made me weak in the knees. It couldn’t be helped. I made one futile attempt to approach a random young rickshaw driver that was going by, who stopped and agreed to take me for a tenth of the price. But he got such a slap in the face from the local boss that he decided not to risk his life and took off.

“Okay, then, I’ll take it. Let’s go,” I said and loaded up my bags. “Let’s go to the centre to this hotel,” I said pointing to the map. “It is this one right next to this large mosque,” I elaborated.

“Payment in advance,” the boss responded, “and to me!” So I paid the price and found that I had very few “rupees” left in cash. I assumed that I would be able to pay by credit card when I got to the right hotel. We departed and I was not put at ease at all by my view of the driver. I don’t know how many metres we went, but it wasn’t far, when he stopped all of a sudden and told me that I have to pay extra for the suitcase and the backpack. That he had forgotten about it and would not like to argue with me about it later. And if I don’t like it I could get out. “No, we’re going! You are not getting me off of this motorbike! And if I am going to pay you anything extra, then maybe when we get there.” He was really surprised by my defiance, which had already started to arise from my hopeless state. I knew that I simply had to risk it. During the ride I noticed that the driver was deep in thought.

After about a ten-minute drive we can to some kind of small unkempt park where water from a broken water pipe was spurting from the ground. There was mud everywhere and bits of scorched grass that emaciated sacred cows were grazing on. Tonnes of garbage spread out hundreds of metres in all directions and beyond that, beyond the wall of trees, a minaret poked out. “So there is that mosque and the hotel is right next to it,” the rickshaw driver told me as he placed my bags on the ground. “We aren’t allowed to go in there, you will have to go on foot,” he said, forgetting his surcharge, and with that he was gone.

I gathered the rest of my strength, waded through the garbage and anticipated that the truth would be something else entirely. I stopped at a stand selling fried stuffed balls called samosas and asked where on earth I was. The seller did not understand English and by all indications had not often held a map in his hands in his lifetime. Instead of advice, however, he offered me three samosas wrapped in newspaper and asked for a few coins for them. Why not?

I bit into the first of them, swallowed my first bite and I knew it was going to get even worse.

Every cloud has a silver lining!

I fell into unconsciousness in a few moments in a family-run hotel that I found already half in a trance since my innards were clenched in a stinging pain that, combined with the unbearable heat, jet lag, two nights without sleep and mental exhaustion, caused my organism to totally collapse.

I only awoke in irregular intervals and only in order to evacuate my “burning” stomach and “knotted” intestines, falling back into unconsciousness. I was not troubled at all by the thought that I had caught mononucleosis, hepatitis of all kinds or even typhus, which would have otherwise worried me, since there was no strength left in my exhausted body for them. And so I slept and slept. 36 hours of sleep.

“Life is made up of small minor acts that, though seemingly unimportant, as a result influence our subsequent important life-changing decisions. It is not necessary to think about whether cleaning the table or not will have an influence on things to come. It is necessary to do it. Only in this way can things move forward.” – that was my first entry into my travel diary, something I regularly keep on my trips. I don’t even know why I grabbed on to that thought and made a record of it. I only know that I was in such bad shape that I couldn‘t even find the strength to eat a bit. “Now you will get up and go to the bathroom, there you will wash, it is important,” I told myself. “And now you will make some tea and eat at least a bit of a biscuit, it is important,” I reminded myself compulsorily of my tasks, so that I would return at least a bit back to normal. I couldn’t do anything. Everything seemed absolutely hopeless to me. I only want to be prone and sleep.

A tea missionary!

But I didn’t have time to sit and “lick my wounds” for long. My program had been agreed upon in advance. It now was only up to me to take full advantage of it. And that’s what happened. The following day I was to meet with prospective business partners and plant the seed of the Dobrá čajovna in India. But everything was happening too fast all of a sudden.

They came to pick me up at the hotel (I probably called them sometime the previous day in a state of semi-consciousness combined with lethargy). And oh, what a disgrace. “Come, we shall take you to a better hotel somewhere close to the centre, or better yet, you shall be our guest and stay with us for a few days,” was the offer from my potential business colleagues, who had come out in full force in two cars to see me, which meant: four siblings aged from 35-50 with their children and wives. And the eldest brother started talking away with the receptionist. He said I was leaving the hotel, packing up and going to a better place. But the receptionist didn’t like the negotiator’s slightly arrogant tone and so he countered. “The gentleman has not paid yet and by all appearances does not even have anything to pay with,” I overheard. It was true, but it was also a monumental disgrace. I really didn’t have enough cash to pay and my credit card wasn’t worth the plastic it was made of. “If you have no money, then we shall pay for you,” was the offer I received from my potential business partners. At this moment I realised that only I could get into such a situation and it is actually maybe good that I am so ashamed. Often these extreme incidents are decisive in whether businessmen come together or not.

And so I refused the offer, telling them I would stay in the hotel and to let them keep my luggage as a deposit on the price for the accommodations.

And then we got moving.

First up was a visit to a few places around Connaught Place, known as the “Circle,” and a tour of spaces said to be suitable for renting. Rates ten times those on Prague’s Wenceslaus Square didn’t seem high to my potential partners. They did to me! As I later discovered, they understood my offer for cooperation to mean that our side would bear the costs and they would keep the profits. This was followed by a trip through the city in a BMW with a spoiled son, who only talked about money and pronounced the word bucks, the slang expression for American dollars, with immense gusto. He threw half-eaten hamburgers and half-empty packages of cigarettes out the car window. Next on the agenda was lunch in the salon of an opulent restaurant, where the staff became the target of inconsiderate and, moreover, unwarranted attacks by my hosts, and a family celebration at the very end. The main themes were money, the amount of the investment from the Czech side (with an emphasis on zero guarantees on the Indian side) and absolutely no interest in tea. My attempt to show our untraditional method of making and serving tea ran up against a brick wall. The lady of the family decided to end my practical demonstration and tasting so fiercely that in the end the actual tasting was aborted. The staff was ordered to take my paraphernalia to the kitchen and they started to serve vodka…

I fled.

Solitude

I was overcome by a feeling of absolute futility. Maybe I was being oversensitive at the time due to my meeting with the taxi mafia or my poor state of health. “So far the result of my trip has been a huge flop. Broken health and psyche, no prospect of cooperation and tomorrow I am heading off in the direction of Nepal. What else do the fates have in store for me? On the way I have to stop in Agra and take the mandatory photograph of the Taj Mahal. I really don’t want to go there,” I reflected.

And on top of all that, I discovered on the Internet in town that we lost against Russia in the group match at the World Hockey Championships. Now those are the depths to which I had sunk…

‚Last night I was thinking about the meaning of the word “solitude” and especially about the feeling of solitude. I found that it is all around us and there is no escaping it.  Plus a person either has it in his head or he doesn’t.  I sure do. I miss my family, my friends, but I am learning to live with it. I have the feeling that the book about Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse could help. I will try to concentrate on reading and will not agitate my mind with anything too intensive such as memories of home. The reading could be the beginning of my new journey…’

Another entry in my travel diary. By this “new journey” I wasn’t thinking of my pilgrimage for tea, for the tea business, but mainly a spiritual journey. I was experiencing a very intense feeling at that time that it was necessary, no matter what, to resolve the question of what direction I should be taking. Whether it was silly to “waste” my life chasing after a career, success in business, money, when it could be possible to retire into seclusion and enjoy divine favour. I also realised that a person must have certain responsibilities to his children, wife and loved ones. He can’t renounce his responsibilities and dedicate himself fully to a spiritual life with all its enticing endeavours such as meditation, all kinds of spiritual exercises and perhaps even yoga itself, can he? On the journey from India to Nepal I was expecting to “cross that river” and achieve some kind of enlightenment. Thus I was also planning on visiting a village on the border of India and Nepal called Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha Sakyamuni. His personal example was, and still is, a great inspiration and challenge to me.

Before my trip I was trying to resolve a huge personal problem. I had the feeling that I was extending too much attention and love to those closest to me. This finding was not that great a difficulty to me in and of itself. The problem was that I did not sufficiently feel that my feelings were fully returned, and this hurt me greatly. I didn’t know which way to turn. I was tormented by a feeling of futility. I was afraid that the mistakes that I made in my impotence and blindness, whether to my children, wife or colleagues, could already be irreparable. I wanted to get away from all who were close to me, at least for a while.

And the visit to Kathmandu itself, a pilgrimage site for hundreds of thousands of believers, was to help me in this. “Something just has to happen along the way,” I hoped.

But I was still in India. The Bus to Agra departed before noon, so I still had time to go on the Internet and read my emails. There was one there that was still very recent. It was from a woman from the family of businesspeople from Delhi, who were trying to convince me at the last minute of their pure intentions and the excellent opportunity to invest in India. I decided to be strict and to snuff out any senseless anabasis in clear words. “Yes, the project for building a brand tearoom in India is possible. But perhaps it is not yet the right time. I need to think everything over,” I began, playing a little for time, as my professional habit commanded. Then I realised that I had wanted to be strict and I permitted the message: “I know that the entire project’s success is not only based on the quality of the product we offer, but primarily on the ability of the Indian side to adapt it to the local context. I am afraid that you do not fulfil one basic condition, and that is that you are not interested at all in tea itself.” Period. The end. The end of the dream of a Dobrá čajovna in India. At least for now. Definitely.

Thoroughly knocked about by an Indian bus I arrived in Agra after a few stops at small roadhouses and my head was full of information about unrest in the neighbouring Indian state of Punjab. Apparently a Muslim mosque (which of course was built on the site of an original Hindu shrine) was torn down on the government’s orders. Both sides immediately started to interpret it as an attack on their independence. Fighting in the streets had already claimed dozens of lives. The Indian army was on alert and was gathering its forces on the border with Pakistan. This suited them to a tee and, as always, was threatening “international aid” for alleged injustices perpetrated on the local Muslim community.

“I am glad I am heading in the opposite direction, it will be peaceful in Agra,” I thought to calm myself, not knowing how wrong I was.

I exited the bus and immediately had several rickshaw drivers hanging around my neck, trying to offer me accommodations and transportation to these facilities. I chose one of them and showed him the name of a hotel in my guidebook. He acted like he understood me and away we went. His head was adorned with a white cap, his thick beard was billowing in the wind, giving his words that all hotels only steal these days the proper weight. I noticed that the heads of all the rickshaw drivers were adorned by caps and all had beards. And the taxi drivers, too. With the exception of regular pedestrians everyone who is doing, selling or offering anything follows the teachings of Mohammed.

“But of course, I mean the Taj Mahal is a symbol of the Islamic faith in India, just like Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula or the Blue Mosque in Turkey. The death of Princess Mumtaz Mahal, who died in 1631 while still a child, was the cause of such despair for Shah Jahan, one of the greatest rulers in Islamic history, that he decided to build a mausoleum of unparalleled dimensions. And that naturally had to attract his fellow believers,” I mumbled to myself beneath my own beard as I noticed that the hotel that we had pulled up to had a completely different name than the one I was headed for. My luggage immediately disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the hotel, the driver was asking for money and the hotelier was showing me pictures of rooms for me to choose from. Wait a second! I turn to the rickshaw driver and demand an explanation. I learned that throughout the entire trip he was telling me how dangerous it is to stay in unknown hotels and how much better it is to stay with the people he knows. Well, since I didn’t protest much, he said, he considered my silence to mean I agreed with the change of plans. What a simple explanation, and how easy to understand!

I got angry and put my foot down. At the same time I felt that my stomach had “something to say” about this new impasse. It was as if the pressure generated on my mental state by the circumstances had also stirred up a physical reaction similar to the one in the capital city of Delhi a few days earlier. I felt sick!

The hotelier, seeing my persistence, ultimately gives the word and my luggage is loaded back on to the three-wheeler. He asked the driver where we were headed and laughed: “That hotel is under reconstruction and not taking guests. Ha ha ha.”

“I have heard that song before, you can’t trick me you bandits!” I thought proudly while remembering my recent experience. Of course the hotel in Delhi I was originally heading for was not under reconstruction, nor was there any trade fair being held in the city. These were all just simple tricks. “Let’s go!

At the very moment when the rickshaw stopped its car in front of a building girded by scaffolding made of bamboo poles, my stomach gave up the fight. Thus the receptionist was able to get to know its contents right on a marble staircase installed a few scant hours before. He was kind enough to offer me accommodations in the subbasement rooms that were already available. Construction was going on above them, however. But that is normal here. I accepted his generous offer. It was only for one night, after all.

Don’t get too full of yourself

It is awfully stuffy in the room, which has a single solitary little window under the ceiling. I feel sick and am shivering; I have to get out of here. “I can’t stay here. I have to get out. I will take a walk to the Taj Mahal. It is just a short way across the park. And I am not going to drag my camera around. Tomorrow is another day,” I say to myself and head off in the direction of the “building of dreams.”  But not alone! The moment I left the hotel grounds I was joined by an old man with a bike and he offered to take me for part of the way through the park to the palace. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or ride a bike. I wanted a nice and quiet walk, and not another battle. I gave the old man the price he was asking to take me, but refused the ride itself. I figured that would take care of it – that I would get rid of him. It didn’t help, quite the contrary! With this gesture I attracted all the cycle rickshaw drivers within a large radius along with all the children selling postcards, models of the Taj Mahal, beads and other unbelievable trinkets. I could forget about a nice and quiet walk. I had demonstrated that I was a weak person and did not act decisively enough. I was weak, very weak. The old man who was still at my side suddenly leaned over and asked: “Why don’t you want to take a ride on my bike when all foreigners want to? Nobody walks through here. They are all in a hurry.”

Oh, how proud I was of myself. “So my transformation is already beginning. It looks like I am slowly starting to be different from the run-of-the-mill tourists. Even he, that wise old man, noticed,” I praised myself in spirit and stepped up to the main gate of the fenced-in complex, in the middle of which the “building of buildings” proudly stands.

The high entry price couldn’t shake me, since I am here for the first and maybe also the last time. I paid and went to read the information panel. I learned that tomorrow, being Friday, was closing day. And darn it! I don’t have my camera. It will be dark in an hour and I won’t have a photo! So fast now. I have to find a bike. But where? I stuffed a roll of banknotes into the hand of the nearest cycle rickshaw driver, shoved him off his seat and pedalled off by myself back to the hotel. I was racing with the wind. On the way I enountered the old man. He was walking with deliberate steps, pushing his bike. ZOOOOOOM! I went by him, hoping he didn’t see me. I jumped off the bike, ran into the hotel, wrapped the camera around my neck and ran back. I looked like a madman. I tore down the gravel path through the park and caught the old man’s pitying gaze. “So that’s how someone who claims that he is not like other harried tourists acts,” I read in his expression. I jumped off the bike by the astonished rickshaw driver who was still trying to get over the shock that some foreigner had grabbed everything he owned as well as the source of his whole family’s income right out of his hands. He was so appalled that he hadn’t even managed to call the police. I thank him as I run off to the gate. They close in an hour, but it is already starting to get dark. There’s no time to lose! I race inside. But wait, the gate control finds I have a mobile phone on me. I can’t go in with that. But now what? I am shown to a wooden ramshackle shack where a sign on a weatherworn untreated piece of wood, likely painted with a finger, announces that this is where the mobile phone depository is. I am offered a soiled tag with the number one scratched on it for my mobile phone, my only link to home. This can’t be possible! I can’t do that!

“And if you want to use our depository’s service, please keep in mind that it will cost you five dollars and don’t forget that we close half an hour earlier than the rest of the complex. That means that if you come and I am not here anymore, you can come by on Saturday or Sunday. Tomorrow it is normally closed and there is also that strike. Nobody knows how long that is going to last.”  At this moment I know exactly what it means to be caught over a barrel! I exchange my telephone for the token, I even have to pay for it, and race for the entrance. The sun is touching the horizon and my fight with time is beginning. Or more specifically with the depository. The idea that I would have to rot here for several days because of my telephone does not appeal to me at all. “And what was that he said? What strike?”

Ach, that religion!

‘The name of this game is Sansara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable to play once, twice, ten times – but for ever and ever over again???’

(This is the first of the passages from Hermann Hesse’s book that I noted in my diary.)

It is morning, and once again I am overcome by a state of total depression. Yesterday was quite a day. I fled from the punters from the surrounding restaurants and bars and the sellers of all things sundry to my basement. But instead of sleep I found suffering. The construction workers were billeted in the surrounding rooms and they simply didn’t want to sleep. And the rooms were not separated by a partition all the way up to the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed that before.

I am awfully homesick and once again I have to force myself to do the slightest activity. I am not hungry or thirsty, though I have already lost about 5 kilograms. I miss all my loved ones. Here it is again! I am lying scrunched up in the “foetal position” on the bed and my whole body hurts. How can I endure this? Is a person able to suffer through this without any effects? How long is this going to keep recurring? Or is it all about those effects? I realise that I can withstand a lot, but it is getting to be pretty bad when everything around me is against me and I have the feeling that I hate it here.

“Now you have to get up and go wash yourself! Now prepare some tea. It is important! And now those biscuits. You have to eat something!” Over and over again. “And also a train ticket, that is also an important point for today’s program.”

I leave the hotel and notice something very strange. The streets are awfully quiet. I look for a rickshaw, but none are to be found. All the stands in the vicinity are closed. I return to the hotel and learn that the Muslims declared a strike in support of their brothers that perished in the street fighting, and that it affects everything. And woe to he who violates it. “But I am sure the trains will be running…” I say with hope in my voice.

I walked across the entire city to the station building and the idea of dragging my two suitcases doesn’t mollify me. Of course the train is sold out. My name is taken down on a “waiting list” and right before departure I will find out whether I am going or not. I skip the tour of the town and go back to my room. I am free until the evening departure. I try to amuse myself by reading.

‘His son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy!’

I write another point, Hermann, in my diary. I read on.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

‘Deep in his heart he felt love like a wound and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine!’

I feel that this quote could be the key to the battered state of my being.

I get up and start packing. A walk in the dark to the train station and then maybe a train to Gorakhpur await me. If I am lucky…

I arrived at the station under a cloak of darkness next to a bribed and scared rickshaw driver of Hindu faith who sometimes took me and sometimes acted like he had never seen me before, depending on the situation we currently found ourselves in. We went all the way around the city, sometimes on field paths, and we even forded a creek so that we wouldn’t be caught by the watchmen that were guarding the adherence to the strike order. We succeeded. And now for that ticket. The empty, barred ticket window at the station yawns at me. It is already nine thirty in the evening, I think to calm myself down, though I know it is not due to the late hour. The strike has ultimately reached here, too. If this had happened yesterday, I would probably have broken down. Today, however, I feel stronger. It is as if a tiny flame started to flicker somewhere inside. I see that some kind of new strength is starting to awaken inside me. I no longer doubt that I will get a ticket, I stop thinking about whether that train will even come. I sit down on the platform next to other people keeping their hopes up that they will be leaving town, pick up my diary and start writing.

‘That overflow of love that I felt to my loved ones and couldn’t direct to them since they were not able to return it, had to be suppressed. This was because I had forgotten to love myself as well. To allow some of it for me. And it is only through oneself, by realising this fact, that it is possible to better control and direct things to where they should go. It is not an expression of selfishness, quite the contrary; it is a method of giving to others through oneself.

I wrote into my diary that evening.

That lizard that had made itself at home in my bag and then rested a while longer on my folded pants on the bed in the hotel in Agra was a harbinger. A harbinger that brought me hope that things would turn out for the better. I realised that the moment I set my eyes on it.

And then everything started falling into place.

It is interesting how differently a person reacts to an adverse situation.

I did get a ticket with a seat reservation to Gorakhpur, though for the same couchette as one older corpulent Indian woman who immediately occupied it. There was no way I was going to get even a slice of the bed to sit on. I appreciated the bureaucracy of the Indian railways when I was required to fill in my age and sex on the form that had to be completed and submitted with the request for a seat reservation.  “I guess it is so men and women won’t be travelling in the same coupe,” I originally thought to myself…

But, much to my surprise, I was not taken aback by this new situation. I waited until the conductor came, told him what the problem was and he put me into a different coupe that was free. Then a delightful 16 hours of sleep awaited me until my arrival in Gorakhpur. How simple! No anger, feeling of injustice or stomach problems.

I transferred from the train station to the nearby bus station. One bus was just about to leave from there and was packed to bursting, though a barker, or helper to the conductor, was constantly looking for more and more passengers. Seeing that he was relentlessly crying SONAULI, SONAULI, I succumbed and jumped on. Sonauli, a small settlement on the border with Nepal, was right where I was heading. I was seated in the first seat right behind the access door, a seat originally meant for the conductor or for alternating with his barker. I appreciated their helpfulness. It wasn’t until later that I came to understand. For a full three hours until we reached our destination passengers jostled past me to get in or out and back again. For part of the trip I had a couple of them on my lap. So what? The door was open for the whole way and it was raining part of the time. I was terribly cold and since I was travelling only in a short-sleeve shirt the barker noticed that I had goose bumps on my arms. He got quite a kick just from the fact that my forearm is quite hirsute. But when he noticed that my hairs stood on end when the door opened on me and then settled when he closed it he was fascinated. He also showed this trick to his colleagues – the conductor and driver. It was quite a situation… I made no show of noticing, however, and smiled pleasantly and he got bored with it in short order.

The need to “cross the river”

I made my next diary entry two days later. By that time I was already sitting in a small family hotel in the town of Bhairahawa on the Nepal side of the border. The hotel was named Shambhala. The name itself symbolises a place of repose, a small kingdom hidden somewhere in the unknown in the inaccessible Himalayas. And that is how I felt in it.

I already knew that I had hit rock bottom and I couldn’t imagine anything that could surprise me. I was enjoying each and every moment and had something to look forward to. Today I am going to the very birthplace of Buddha Sakyamuni. Will the visit to this site be the definitive turning point of my “journey”? I think back to the question that I had recently asked myself: “Is it possible for a person to suffer through this without any effects? Or is it all about those effects?”

I prepare some Cheng Hao black team and savour every sip of it. I look forward to the new day and also finally to some of those “effects”. And that’s precisely what I get.

The day is right out of the film Little Buddha. And that site, the countryside, is precisely the way I had imagined it. I go out there in a small bus that sets me down a short ways from the place where, on 8 April 642 B.C., one of the most important events in human history took place. It is hard to believe, but apart from a few villagers there was not a single tourist on the bus. Nor were there any souvenir stands. Young monk boys are playing with a broken wheel in a ditch by the side of the road. Their game reeks a bit of bullying since the older ones do not let the younger ones push it. But it is not my place to get involved, is it? I come closer to a small brick structure that is used as a dormitory for the monks (it really cannot be called a monastery) and my gaze alights on the woven orange cap of a sitting monk. I can see that he would like to have a few words with me. So I sit on a bench and listen to the legend of the magnificent Maya who one day gave birth, while holding on to a branch of a tree, to a boy who received the name Siddhartha. I know the legend inside and out, but still I let myself be carried away with the tale! It feel like I am dreaming. How many times in his life is a man at the right place right at the time when he is perfectly in tune, so to speak. I gather up all the omnipresent energy inside myself and don’t care that I am walking among mounds of dirt from the current archaeological excavations or that the statue of Buddha himself is covered by rusty corrugated iron. I am savouring this curious feeling – RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW!

I really don’t want to part from this imposing place, but I have to. Tomorrow I am already speeding off to Kathmandu, where further obligations await me.

‘Do not give in to desires you do not believe in. Either you manage to give up these desires or you or else you have to desire them consistently. As soon as you will be able to ask so that you yourself will be sure of fulfilment, then it shall be fulfilled. But you desire something and then you regret and you fear this. This all must be overcome.’ 

Hermann Hesse writes.

I can see the bus arriving in the distance between two fields. It is clear that I will not be able to reach the stop at the crossroads, even if I run. I also know that another will leave in about two hours. So I say to myself: “Let’s try something and see what happens.” I walk on at the same tempo and wish, very intensely, for the bus to wait. But I don’t even really have to wish for it to wait anymore. I am simply certain of it. I continue to walk at the same speed and see how the bus stops, people get off, people get on. I still have about 800 metres to go. “No, I won’t give up. I won’t run or even wave, he’ll wait,” I tell myself. The driver closes the door. But then he opens it again, goes to the motor, lifts the cover and pours water into the radiator. He closes the motor, sits back in his seat and closes the open door. But I am already sitting inside next to a young Swede who is heading to Varanasi in India. “Now that was a neat trick that you pulled off,” I wrote in my diary that evening. And what about tomorrow?

I learned from the young Swede that the Belarus hockey players eliminated team Sweden from the World Championships. What is our loss to Russia in the preliminary round compared to that? But at the same time I learn of another, no less important piece of news. Intensive fighting with groups of armed Maoists has broken out again in the mountains on the way to Kathmandu. The King issued a decree that no one may leave populated areas after dark. He prohibited any night-time transportation in the country and informed all tourists that they are a tempting target of Mao terrorists, who would take them hostage to exchange for their captured warriors. In short the notice meant that I would not be getting to Kathmandu anytime soon. But I believed I would go there, and bright and early the next morning in fact.

I learned from the receptionist in the hotel that no bus ticket is available because the bus will most likely not be running. The one that was supposed to come in the evening from Kathmandu didn’t, and nobody really knows what is actually going on.

“Just wake me up at dawn. I am going,” I told the receptionist and he quietly marvelled at the certainty with which I informed him of this.

The journey to Kathmandu was not pleasant and, what’s more, it was long. But so what? Soldiers controlled us at about ten places. We had to exit the bus, take our luggage and cross to a designated zone so that the thoroughly-inspected empty bus could come to us. But we were there that evening! Kathmandu! Its not a city, it’s a swarm. Crowds of people surge from all directions and there are shops with trinkets, knick-knacks, brass statuettes, wildly colourful woven wraps, Tibetan carpets and incense sticks everywhere. “And what about that tea? It is time for me to revive the commercial half of my trip,” I tell myself.

Pretty doesn’t always have to mean good

The catchy packages that are available in the markets promise, but do not deliver, quality tea. They generally contain tea from low altitudes and second-rate grades.

There are few tearooms in Nepal and they are generally places to relax just like elsewhere in the world. But they are not the typical stone temples of refreshment we have, but more like small bamboo or wooden stands, where they prepare tea over a fire or on kerosene cookers. Only strong black CTC or BOP prepared with milk is served here together with simple biscuits or cookies.  The paraphernalia necessary for its preparation is the same in Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – a large saucepan for cooking, a strainer and a teapot.

I was not pleased by this discovery. I didn’t drag myself all this long way just to find out that there is nothing of note here.

I meet up with one businessman, a local boss in the tea trade, just to learn that Kathmandu is not the right place to buy quality tea.

One of the biggest problems that is slowing the development of today’s Nepal is the poor, if not almost non-existent, infrastructure. Telephone connections are rare, electricity is only in the larger cities and the roads are in poor shape. The entire country is connected by one roadway which is called the Mahendra Highway, and it runs down at the foot of the Himalayas. If you want to get from one place in the mountains to another, whether in the east or west, you have to go down and then up again. And it also happens that in one valley, which has, say, excellent conditions for growing mandarin oranges, they also sell mandarins there, but in the next valley over they have never heard of them. The same can be said about tea. Tea is grown exclusively in the eastern part of the country by the border with India’s Darjeeling region and there is not the slightest reason to transport it to the capital city, from where it could only be exported by air anyways. And so the main city of the Nepal tea trade is India’s Calcutta.

But quality is grown in Nepal, of that I am sure. I only have to go to a “different address”. And that “address” is the westernmost valley projecting in a northern direction, parallel to the border dividing West Bengal and Nepal, called Ilam.

Even though the first tea garden, Ilam Tea Estate, was established in the city of Ilam way back in 1865, the tea industry has not seen such development as in neighbouring India. There is no tea exchange in the Kingdom of Nepal, no institution similar to the Tea Board of India exists and the tea sciences cannot be studied at any of the universities. And since there is an absence of any tea “research institute” or “school”, the peasants breed tea and cultivate the tea seedlings themselves, or smuggle them in from India. I learn this from the local tea boss.

In order for me to verify the information in practice, it will first be necessary to buy a plane ticket and be carried on the wings of Buddha Airlines a few hundred kilometres to the east to the city of Biratnagar, where there is a small airport. There the manager of Ilam Tea Producers is already waiting for me to invite me to the mountains. To their plant just under the peak of Antu Dada.

What would you like for dinner?

While an asphalt road crosses the Ilam valley, if you want to turn off it you will have to use the services of one of the all-terrain vehicles. During the rainy season the higher-situated sites can only be reached by horse. And the access road to the plant in the Antu Valley is one of those that is impassable during the monsoon season. In the town of Ilam we switch from a car to an older Range Rover and turn off between some buildings onto a rocky road. After driving for another hour I realise how huge the difference is between this part of Nepal and the Darjeeling region in India. Both of the valleys are side by side and have exactly the same atmospheric conditions. The soil composition and the altitude are the same, and India is still considerably further along in development.

The reason is simple. For fear of losing control over the outlying areas, Nepal’s rigid government has essentially prohibited any economic activity. It reserved the right to issue a licence for everything. Local farmers, however, took inspiration from their Indian neighbours and planted young tea plants that they smuggled in from Indian tea nurseries on their land. But since it was not possible to process the harvested leaves on the Nepalese side and nobody bought the crop, it went back to India by the basketful where it was processed and sold as Indian tea. The border is not that well guarded because both countries get along relatively well. It is evident that eventually even the stupidest state official had to realise that this method of doing business was not that advantageous and so the “ice started to break”.

Ilam Tea Producers Pvt. Ltd., however, was founded in 1998. It built two large plants for processing tea leaves at the elevation of 1650 metres and it purchases tea from roughly 400 private farmers. They started growing tea relatively recently. The oldest gardens are only 20 years old and are planted with quality tea bushes such as Clonal.

Tea growing is now legal and the handsome rural buildings situated among the tea gardens testify to the fact that tea growers are doing well for themselves.

It is getting dark and we finally arrive at the Antu Dada plant. The gatekeeper opens the gate and does not conceal his surprise over our arrival. It seems incredible, but they really do not have a telephone here. The electricity is provided by a diesel generator and that only runs when the factory runs. Otherwise it is dark here. When I came the harvest was not up to full speed and the leaves were only picked three days a week. And I had the misfortune of “hitting” the down time. I ultimately was not that disappointed because when touring the factory space I discovered that the processing technology did not differ from that used in India at all. And I had the opportunity to experience the Indian technology many times.

What really struck me, though, was the question posed by the manager that accompanied me. “And what would you like for dinner?” he asked in the utter darkness as soon as we were sitting in a small glass arbour and the Range Rover driver left to look for candles. I was a bit taken aback by this question. “Oh, I don’t know. What would I like?” I replied modestly. “And how about a hen? Just a moment,” he said and departed. In a moment I heard some steps in the dark and the lights of our car came on, lighting the bushes next to the tea plant’s entrance. “Come quick and choose which one,” I heard. And sure enough, several hens about half the size we are used to from our rural coops were crowded together under the bushes, probably asleep. “Well, that one then,” I pointed to a black one. The driver grabbed it……, I soon heard him chopping some wood…….., and two hours later we were eating.

That evening was seared into my memory. I was in a place from where there was no place else to go. There was nothing to do there in the dark and the cold. There was no electricity, no television, internet or mobile phone network. And so I only sat and watched the stars and the twinkling lights that lit the Thurbo T.E. processing plant on the opposite Indian side. Before lying on the wooden pallet my guide said that if it starts raining tonight, then we are not going to be able to get out of here…

“You can’t get me with such horror storied anymore,” I said to myself and fell contentedly to sleep without any worries about it actually starting raining in the night. My return airline ticket would likely be forfeited and I don’t know what would happen then.

The student becomes the teacher

Everything turned out as it should. Of course. In the morning we descended to the town of Ilam, where we visited another Ilam Tea Producers processing plant, but again with the same result. Tea leaves were not being picked that day. And so I accepted an invitation down to the lowlands where lowland tea is grown, the taste of which could be compared to the Indian tea from the Doars region. The reason is simple. On the slopes of the Himalayas in West Bengal, just like in these eastern reaches of the Kingdom of Nepal, tea flourishes that is not the most elite of teas, but thanks to the multicoloured packaging from various materials as well as the many added aromas or spices, it has become the most prevalent of the teas. It is precisely this nameless tea that is offered in countless kinds of boxes, bags and colourful pouches.

These lowland tea gardens, which were established under the supervision of state officials (often in collaboration with experts from the brotherly Soviet Union) and which are still frequently held by the state, are not even abandoned in the wintertime when the tea is not picked. The bushes have to be pruned, cleaned of garbage that drifts in and fertilised. The harvest of leaves in these areas begins around March 15^th.

I made my goodbyes and returned to Kathmandu on the wings of Buddha’s airline. In the plane I realised just how much important information I had received. I thought about what a malignant impact a country’s bad political orientation can have, even on ordinary farmers cultivating their rocky fields in the inaccessible valleys on the slopes of the Himalayas. I put the pros and cons of the British colonial policy on the plates of this imaginary scale…

I awoke when the airplane was descending to the airport. The Bodhnath complex’s main stupa, which is one of the largest in all of Asia, loomed down below me. It bears the name Khasa Caitya and it allegedly holds the remains of a Tibetan lama of the same name who died on his pilgramage across the Kingdom of Nepal.

“So I also have to take a look at that down there. And not only there; there is so much to see in the capital city,” I thought to myself and started to mentally plan the program for the next three days that remained to me in the city.

On the second day I had a meeting planned in the nearby city of Bhaktapur, only 16 km away from the capital. As fate would have it, before I left Prague I met a very nice and self-confident woman who was a doctor of psychology. Not only had she studied classic medicine at Charles University, but she had also pursued alternative medicine with a specialisation in homeopathy. She was also very interested in Buddhism and she particularly surprised me in how naturally and confidently she talked about the very innermost of themes. About love, faith, self-confidence, moderation or the Middle Path, which leads to the highest of goals. About things that I only dared to think about in solitude and only when I was feeling particularly strong. It was right before my departure to Nepal when I learned from her that she would be there at the same time I would. And so nothing could have been easier than setting a time and place. Oh, how sensible I was when I proposed that I would seek her out instead of waiting for each other somewhere.

The doctor’s job was to oversee the operations of a homeopathic clinic built through the aid of international organisations in Bhaktapur, and at the time it didn’t seem difficult for me to visit her there. It didn’t take that much effort and sometime around four in the afternoon I knocked on the door of her office. As is usual in this land, the door was opened by an armed guard who did not let me in. He said the doctor was busy and finished at five. The waiting room was full of people and so I didn’t put up any resistance and went for a walk in the neighbourhood. It was about a quarter to six when I spotted someone come out that was more like a shadow of the person I had known in the Czech Republic.  The doctor had hit rock bottom. I could see that right away. I didn’t need any special education to spot that.

I proposed that we go for a walk through the ancient streets of Bhaktapur, the historical centre of which is listed by Unesco and known as an open-air museum. I also suggested going to sit somewhere and have some tea. I had a feeling that there was a lot to talk about and it wouldn’t be me who would be needing cheering up.

And so I gradually found out that the farthest the doctor had ever been in her life was Eastern Germany. That she had no experience in travelling in Asia and that she was not capable of finding her way around the country. That she had to spend the first night upon her arrival in a hotel because she had arranged to meet the person who had set up her accommodations on a busy square where there were so many people that they simply did not find each other. That she is not that sure of herself and that she is awfully homesick. That she can’t even eat because she constantly has digestion problems and feels like she can’t handle it anymore. That the clinic is rife with corruption and that the local doctors had only created an extensive clientele with the money from the international funds. But these clients were led to their own private offices. She started to cry…

Where was that self-confident, emancipated woman that I remembered from Prague?

Suddenly it was clear to me that life isn’t only about being up and being down!

Or actually it is; sometimes you are down and sometimes up, but where is down and where is up? How do you recognise it?

Is a person who is in despair from his solitude, without his friends and loved ones, down or up? He himself has the feeling that he is down. But what if it is thanks to this state in which he finds himself that he experiences a turn of events that makes him independent, resilient and experienced. Isn’t this reaching the top?

Is a person who is surrounded by love and abundance truly up? Or is he only in artificial hibernation, preceding a hard battle for a place in life, which he is not well-prepared for. Is this half-dead state the bottom?

I really realised, when travelling around India and Nepal, that it truly only depends on the perspective that the person looks at the situation from. A height can become a depth all of a sudden and darkness the sweetest of nectars!

I also came to understand that it is enormously useful to try to consciously see important situations from the other side. Sometimes it is difficult and it can often also be very unpleasant, but in doing so you can avoid Sansara, the carousel of cause and effect. What does it matter that sometimes it is this carousel itself that we are searching for. It is good to know about the causality of effects.

My other experience was that some people have more of a calling than others. These people have to undergo ordeals and look for solutions and enlightenment. It is not about adrenaline or risking ones life in dangerous situations. It is an active search for answers. For some an active search can mean searching through books, for others a constant fickleness in personal relationships. Whether it concerns searching in interpersonal relationships, in encyclopaedias, in lectures or in study halls, all of these methods can one day stop being a full source of knowledge. Progress does not come, the person is going in circles. Of course all sources of knowledge can be combined in all kinds of ways. But I think that, no matter what, there logically comes a time when it is necessary to get up and cross that river.

I do not claim that this symbolic crossing of the river is a guide for notorious debtors to borrow even more.

Nor do I think that a person, disappointed by his family ties, should get divorced.

I don’t think it would make sense for a workaholic, longing for success, a career and money, to become a monk all of a sudden.

This “crossing the river” of mine is only the view of a “Thing” from the other side. The essence of the thing is not changed by this view. A river always flows from the source to its mouth in the sea. But a person sees it from the other side.

And this is what I told the doctor. And that’s not all. I read to her from my diary. I described my experiences in India.

When we said goodbye to each other that evening, I had the feeling that I had pulled a drowning person out of the waves of a raging river.

I fell asleep that evening with a good feeling that I had helped somebody and that my journey for tea and to Nepal had also achieved this unexpected dimension.

I smiled blissfully and tried to sleep, when all of a sudden I realised that I don’t even know which riverbank I had helped the doctor to reach. That evening it occurred to me: “Did I help her onto the opposite riverbank or did I pull her back onto the one from which she plunged into the current?”

I have not seen her since then, so I do not know.

]]> https://teapioneer.com/a-visit-to-the-younger-brothers-of-the-tea-family-in-nepal/feed/ 0 https://teapioneer.com/chakabuki-tea-show/ https://teapioneer.com/chakabuki-tea-show/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:43:13 +0000 http://teapioneer.com/?p=234 Whilst upon my return from my first visit to China I immediately began contemplating my second trip, truth be known, I was never really that interested in going to Japan. Perhaps it was because Japanese society, thanks to its well preserved traditions and very distinctive culture influenced by years of isolation, intimidated more than enticed me. It was never my intent to aim for perfection by practicing the way of Zen, various martial arts, flower arrangement, or the hardly accessible and thus barely comprehensible traditional religion. And I regarded the Japanese ritual of preparing tea – Chado – exactly the same.

In the late seventies and early eighties, when the Iron Curtain majestically towered up to the sky and the feelings commonly shared by us – ordinary people – suggested it would probably last forever, it was hard to satisfy one’s cultural desires. Books were not imported, and those that were published passed through the thorough hands of communist censors. The spiritual plane in them had to be eliminated or at least suppressed, and the ideal was scientific literature rather than popular educational writing.

The Internet did not exist back then, and traveling abroad was not an option. Or at least not to destinations worth visiting…

The luckier ones who had the opportunity and, for whatever reason, visited the land of the rising sun, for the most part were not enlightened about the mysteries of the local cultural traditions. As a rule, the imported information was shallow, limited to descriptions of a tradition’s outward appearance, while its actual significance was almost always disproportionately exaggerated and thus distorted. And so it was that the body of information about the “marvelous Japanese culture and its untouchableness” that made its way into our communist-controlled country could trigger only that which was triggered in my mind – total chaos, misunderstanding, and disdain.

Even today I don’t understand why there was so little talk of China, which has always – perhaps because of the lack of information – interested me enormously, back then.

Figuratively speaking, I had simply parked Japan in a blind alley.

First, a little theory

But my line of business – tea – did not allow me to ignore the Japanese tea culture for long and I sensed it would have to come someday. By that I mean a direct confrontation in the field, face to face. I started preparing for the trip, but unfortunately I did not take it to the proper end. I turned to my friend Chaki, who was, and still is in my eyes, one of the biggest promoters of Japanese culture in the Czech Republic, especially when it comes to tea and modern music. Chaki had already been to Japan numerous times and had even visited lectures on the Japanese tea school Urasenke, where he studied the art of the tea ceremony.

And so I was treated with some “first-aid” from Chaki:

“You come to the tea ceremony 15 minutes early and pass through a gate, a gate that leads you from the chaotic world of everyday life to a clean, polished space, where in many things details are revealed in their essence. You sit for a while in the garden in order to relax, purify, and focus your senses on perceiving. The hierarchy of the guests is also established.

Before entering the teahouse, you must rinse your hands in a basin with water and rinse your mouth out to wash away sins.

After entering the tea room, the guest bows and goes to inspect each area, first the alcove where the scroll is hung, then the fireplace with the iron kettle for hot water, the ash bed, and the dim glow of lit charcoal. Then you go to sit in your place, which is designated beforehand by the hierarchy of guests according to importance. The host speaks of the time, thus the day, when the gathering takes place, of the scenery in the garden, of the scroll hung on the wall. He speaks to each of the guests.

The speech concerning the scroll commences the first part of the main action. The host brings tea sweets.

The guest expresses thanks by bowing, and also thanks the guest on his left-hand side (who is next in line) and apologizes to him for taking sweets before him. The tray of sweets is lifted as high as the stomach, and only then is the right hand used to bring a piece to one’s mouth.

The same procedure of bowing as an expression of thanks to the host and subsequently apologizing to the guest on the left-hand is repeated as the bowl of tea is served.

How the tea is drunk would actually deserve a whole chapter itself, but I would briefly state that the tea bowl is grasped by the right hand and placed on the palm of the left hand. The bowl is grasped by the right hand so that the palm and outstretched fingers are aimed forward and the thumb retracted from the fingers is propped on the front of the bowl (the side facing you). This is followed by a light, respectful bow while lifting the bowl slightly and partially turning it twice in a clockwise direction. In so doing, the front of the bowl (frequently adorned with a decorative painting) is on the opposite side of you, as your lips should not touch it. The position of your right hand changes so that its palm hugs the right side of the bowl and you can press the bowl to your lips. The bowl, however, is still resting on the palm of your left hand! Now you can drink the tea in small sips. But you must never set the bowl down between sips. It is desirable to drink all the tea and to accompany the last sip with an audible slurp.

After it has been drunk, pass your right thumb and index finger over the place where your lips touched the bowl and wipe your fingers on your paper napkin. The bowl still rests on the palm of your left hand. Then half-turn the bowl in the manner already described, but in the opposite direction (counter-clockwise), so the front faces you again. It is good to closely examine the decorative painting and set the bowl in front of you with your right hand.

It is important to realize that the entire ceremony must be completed in the traditional Japanese position seiza!”

When practice lags behind theory

The theoretical part of my preparations was over. I thanked Chaki and, as a precaution, asked him whether there was any hidden danger of embarrassing myself or whether the whole ceremony could be ruined by an unexpected faux pas.

“Rest easy, but your knees might hurt a bit,” was the answer. And so I started looking forward to my first tea ceremony, with no notion of what might be lurking behind Chaki’s succinct reassurance.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, very reputable and important guests started coming to the Czech Republic. From the most prominent politicians, businessmen and cultural figures to esteemed spiritual leaders like the Dalai lama. And so it happened that I myself headed to see Soshitsu Sen XIV, Grand Master of the Japanese Urasenke School of Tea, the supreme guru of connoisseurs and devotees of Japanese tea culture.

The gathering with Soshitsu Sen took place in the Prague Castle under the patronage of then president Václav Havel, and only a select elite could participate. Nevertheless, even ordinary citizens were not forgotten. They had the honor of squeezing into the back and sides of the hall where the gathering was held, and so could at least observe the events from afar.

Soshitsu Sen XIV prepared for the invited attendees a tea ceremony, which, however, was not taking place in the intimate atmosphere of a teahouse, but was instead conceived so the guests were seated in armchairs as if in a theatre, the tea was prepared on stage, and contact between the Master and the guests was intermediated by his assistants.

Designated as the main guest was the then chairman of the Czechoslovak parliament, who had claimed a place in our country’s history as a central figure in the communist reform movement and subsequently the main leader of the Prague Spring in 1968.

The ceremony was long, which is normal, the armchairs comfortable, and the fatigue from the statesmanship great. At one point, the ceremony’s main guest even dropped off into a heavy slumber. That was probably not such an unusual occurrence in and of itself, and the Master himself had surely met with similar excusable transgressions of etiquette numerous times in the past.

But what was definitely memorable the sentence the ceremony’s main guest uttered when he awoke and saw before him the Master’s assistant, leaning toward him with a bowl of ceremoniously prepared Matcha tea. Auricular witnesses reportedly overheard him say, “Yes, I’d love a coffee!”

I realized then that I’d have to take Chaki’s comforting words with a grain of salt, and my warranted concerns about participating in a tea ceremony began to grow.

A tea ceremony arranged exclusively for me and my friends was to be a trial by fire. Equipped with theoretical knowledge, instructed by the chairman of parliament’s folly, and full of determination, I seated myself at the head of the guests as the main guest. I would hate to see the word “seated” slip past the reader without notice. I write seated, but I mean knelt. Because seiza is exactly what differentiates us Europeans, Americans, and Africans from the Japanese. Enduring this position without training is simply impossible. And when I say impossible, I concurrently stress that in this case you have to!!!

Our hostess, who had lived with her husband in Japan, where she studied an offshoot of the Urasenke Japanese tea school presented by Soshitsu Sen. She belonged to the reformed branch Omotosenke, which differs from the main school in certain details of how the tea ceremony is performed. There was plenty to observe, ask about, and learn from. But while time flew, my legs stiffened…

I spent the final part of the ceremony – when we learned that the bamboo spoon our hostess had used was of unprecedented value – worth up to 7,000 dollars – and that after each ceremony she places it in a special box with the other utensils laid out before her and stores it in a safety deposit box in a bank – in total suspense.

The incredible pain in my knees, insteps, and hips had long left me, and I suspected it was not a good sign. “Maybe after overcoming that suffering I’ll start transforming into Bodhisatva from bottom up,” it occurred to me…

The ceremony came to an end and I was proud of the rest of my body where I felt I hadn’t erred. The other guests gradually began to get up and tried to get near the hostess in order to have a closer look at the tea paraphernalia. I sensed I was in the way, but I did not want to drag off the deadened part of my body with my hands like an ape, and so I stood up!

I remember the look I saw in our hostess’ eyes the moment I toppled over on her: it reminded me of the scene in the film Jurassic Park where the crew in the broken-down car is attacked by Tyrannosaurus Rex.

What else to add? Perhaps only that, excepting the hostess’ shock, my disgrace and the major blow to my confidence, no other damage was done. Like an injured animal I waited until the blood returned to the lower half of my body, and I exited the scene of my first personal “conflict” with Japanese tradition.

But Japan is not only Matcha

Chaki was very amused by my experience and attempted to reassure me: “Don’t worry, Japan isn’t only Matcha and Chanoyu. In Japan they also drink ‘scattered’ tea, that is, loose leaf tea, and there are many ways of preparing it.” “That’s interesting,” I said to him, “and why is so little written about it?”

“In many areas Japan has achieved the absolute top in the world, and it is rightly proud of its culture and traditions. And Chado, that is, the tea ceremony, is naturally among them. The fact is that drinking green leaf teas is an everyday affair in Japan and therefore does not seem exceptional to anyone, which is why it’s hardly spoken of,” I was informed.

I must confess that it was indeed drinking leaf tea that ultimately took me to Japan.

I set out for Japan with a clear goal. While many others before me had captured the ritual of the tea ceremony, I would try to capture the ritual of everyday tea drinking. Helping me in my search was my longtime acquaintance and expert in the tea business, Mr. Masahiro Takada.

And it was a shock anyway

No matter how well a person prepares himself for the land of the rising sun, he is still surprised when he gets there. “I CERTAINLY WASN’T WARNED ABOUT THIS!” I thought, shaking my head in disbelief before the glass window display full of cans of tea. All the different types! And one could even choose whether he wanted a cold can or a warmed can. “Don’t even tell me that in such a culturally advanced country people drink tea on the go! And from cans!” I decided I’d do a test and wait to see how many people stopped to buy a can of tea from a vending machine. When the tenth one rolled out with a bang within fifteen minutes, and the buyers were children, old people, women and men, I understood that that’s how it is. For me, what became symbolic of contemporary Japan was the young lady in a traditional purple kimono who also bought a can.

“Fine, it’s practical and quick, but that’s enough. I can’t take any more,” I said to myself and rushed off on the train for Yokohama’s Chinatown. “That’ll be tea heaven,” I consoled myself. And to some extent it was. Picturesque shops crammed full of all types of teas from Japan, Taiwan and even mainland China, high quality. “Would you like some tea?” asked a friendly shop-owner. “I’d love some, thank you,” I replied. “And what kind?” “To be honest, I’d really like to try the one you drink most often,” I replied. “Are you serious? But it’ll be cold!” he smiled and gave a cue to his young assistant, who crossed the street to a simple Chinese bistro. The salesperson there tapped a dark liquid into a paper cup from a rectangular device that we’re used to getting Coke, Fanta and Pepsi from, and the assistant was back in a flash. “But I meant tea,” I apologized, assuming there had been a misunderstanding. “But it is tea. Wu Long. Black dragon.”

I had a taste and it wasn’t bad. Pretty normal oolong, which I sometimes make and keep in the fridge on hot days. It also tastes great on the rocks. And here it’s sold in vending machines. Who’da thunk?!

I parted with Tokyo and headed for Kyoto. Taking a seat on the overnight bus, cans of tea jangled in my bag. They’ll come in handy, and tradition is tradition, after all…

A ryokan’s a hotel too!

But there are no beds in it!

Masahiro Takada wanted to do something nice for me and so he arranged accommodation in a traditional Japanese hotel, a.k.a. a ryokan. Entering my room, I quickly realized the main difference. Had I been anywhere else besides Japan, I probably would have asked in astonishment why there were no beds and chairs in the hotel.

But I didn’t want to appear dense and so I pretended it was normal. The ryokan lay on the bank of the fierce Uji River, and from the window local fisherman could be seen catching fish on small wooden boats. Now that would obviously not be too surprising in and of itself. But they were catching the fish aided by tamed birds which kept diving down and retrieving the fish from the depths in their beaks. Now that was definitely a first for me!

As Masahiro comfortably sat on his heels, it hit me that there would be no chairs. And so I sat down too. I was acquainted with the itinerary for my stay and I was exulted. Our first destination was the windmills! But before that, it was time to get into my kimono, my rattan slippers five sizes too small, and scramble off to the traditional Japanese bath – onsen. In all ryokans, besides the traditional tatami mats on the floor, every room is equipped with a smallish pool with hot water, where, following a good shower, guests can warm up to satiation.

Hill full of windmills

Masahiro and I set off for Ujitawara in the Ohbuku-chaen region, where the greatest number of tea fields are concentrated together (otherwise they are generally interspersed between vegetable fields and fruit orchards), and I never ceased to be amazed. The view onto the geometrically perfect rows of tea bushes, stretching across the horizon and copying the little hills and valleys in irregularly regular compositions, carefully shorn into arches so the sun could penetrate through the crown to as many budding light green shoots as possible, is unlike anything else in the world. For me, it was probably the strongest experience the land of the rising sun had in store for me. But what about the windmills?

The tea plantations on Japan’s islands are planted mainly below the 35^th parallel of latitude, but in exceptional cases you can find them all the way up to the 38^th. The climate here is much warmer than on the same geographical latitudes in, for example, mainland China, but, despite that, it is still necessary to use technical advancements from time to time to protect the harvest. After a period of vegetative dormancy when the tea bushes rest, with the arrival of spring they begin to awaken and light green leaves appear on their carefully machine-shorn crowns. But those leaves are very fragile and would hardly survive the morning coolness of ground frosts. And that’s what the windmills are for! Japan has no trouble solving technical problems, and so as soon as the outdoor temperature approaches the critical point, the propellers automatically switch on, blasting the warmer air from above under the bushes. In this “land of green dreams” it is not exactly romantic, but it is definitely effective!

Japan suffers not from an inability to develop or apply technologies. Japan’s problem lies in ordinary manual labor. And so where paid laborers in India, China or Sri Lanka receive minimal wages, in Japan they are replaced by machines. Whereby with hand sorting the main burden of separating the freshly budding shoots from the tough branches or old leathery leaves remains in the tea fields, machines don’t differentiate while cutting. Whereby after careful hand sorting in Hangzhou, China or Darjeeling, India only minimal treatment by hand or machine is required and the product can be sent to market, in Japan an incredible technological process, comprised of dozens of steps, is just beginning. It all starts with an intense infusion, followed by cooling and partial drying. The next step is a sort of machine kneading, then drying again, polishing with the aid of brushes, and finally sorting. Sorting Japanese tea leaves is a process that has no analogy anywhere in the world. The tea leaves are passed through a complicated machine unit where not only mechanical but also electronic procedures are used to sort the branches, stems, splinters, light or dark colored leaves, or even rounded or oval shaped green leaves.

Light green butterflies

No matter how monstrous the machine may look at first glance, even in this phase one can meet with poetic moments. At one point during the drawn out process hot, dry air is blasted under the moist leaves. The flying leaves are surrounded by mosquito nets and the impression is surprising – light green butterflies floating in the air!

It is common practice for local wholesalers to buy a semi-finished product called Aracha and to store it in giant coolers. Aracha is a mixture of leaves that have been fully processed but not sorted. And having Aracha is actually the same as having capital. But that’s another story. The development of modern technology for utilizing raw materials from tea bushes and the manufacturing and sale of such technology is a Japanese domain. And so you find an incredible variety of uses for them on the Japanese market – from canned tea to ice cream to various sweets and even noodles.

Hands are hands

 However, there are always exceptions, and so there are times when human hands can not be replaced by machinery. Not many, but there are some. Perhaps the best example is collecting tea leaves for making ground, powdered Matcha. Unlike other types of tea, the tea bushes are cultivated in the shade of sheds covered by rice straw, the bushes are not trimmed by machine throughout the year into neat rounded shapes, and the leaves are combed solely by hand. The remainder of their processing is, however, entrusted to machines.

The ceremonious preparation of powdered Matcha requires many special instruments and dishes. The most crucial ones – those it would be impossible to do without even if simplifying the process to the max – are Chawan and Chasen. While potters in the Czech Republic have embarked upon making the ceramic dishes called Chawan (and I have to acknowledge they’ve been surprisingly successful), only a master with years of experience can venture into making Chasen bamboo whisks. They mostly live in Japan, and there aren’t many.

And so I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation of Master Kizoh Nakata from Ikoma City; we drank tea together by a pot of bubbling water and I listened to his account of the love of his life – bamboo, from which he makes every day, imagine, three Chasens! I understood why the price of one bamboo whisk is so exorbitant, and I realized that no one chasen is the same. It depends on the source – the bamboo. The fundamental requirement is that the bamboo trunk is properly matured. The bamboo must be at least 15 years old before it is stowed away under the roof. Of course there are many types of bamboo, and dozens are suitable for making Chasen. Among the most expensive are black bamboo (phyllostachys nigra) and a special variety of bamboo – tortoiseshell (phyllostachys heterocycla). Chasens made of bamboo poles from the roofs of centuries-old dwellings that were heated by open fires fetch truly astronomical prices. Over time the rising smoke created interesting irregular ornaments on the surface of the bamboo stalks, which were interconnected by cords. Master Nakata showed me such pieces, and he was clearly duly proud of them.

Tea gardens

 While visiting Japan, and especially Kyoto, it is almost impossible to not to come across a Japanese garden. And tea gardens are a special group. To be precise: coming across a garden does not necessarily mean taking a look at it or visiting it. Gardens are among the centerpieces of Japanese cultural heritage, and are thus befittingly protected, for example, by only letting in a precisely set number of visitors, and not even every day. But this protective measure brings with it a problem. When and how to handle the waiting list of visitors from all over the world who race the clock to change their flight dates due to the scheduled term of their visit to the garden? I was more than concerned when I recalled the account of traveler Zdeňek Thoma, who spent years in Japan just to photograph gardens. Before receiving permission to enter a particular garden, he had to undergo a test that consisted in reproducing calligraphy presented to him. Only then did his calm hand leading the calligraphy brush convince the ticket seller he was ripe to visit the garden!

“My hands don’t shake!” I thought to myself as I confided to Masahiro my wish to visit at least one, say, the “least guarded” one. Three days before my departure from Kyoto, it was like asking a goldfish for a wish.

After a period of intense telephoning, among the short and hectically pronounced Japanese words I heard “Czechoslovakia,” “Věra Čáslavská,” and “Václav Havel,” and Masahiro’s glum face began to light up. I grasped that the name of the 1964 Olympic medalist who captivated all of Japan with her three gold medals for gymnastics disciplines in the Olympics in Tokyo, and the name of our first post-Velvet Revolution president, were the keys to the gates of Japanese temples and gardens. In the end I was even given a choice, and I chose very well.

The Sento Gosho tea garden from the Edo period (1603-1868) was established near the residence of Emperor Gomizuna (1596-1680) when he went into imperial retirement. It was designed free-form by its creator, the architect Enshu, particularly for walks, but he also managed to create an intimate location Uchi Roji (internal garden), characteristic for tea gardens. In it, the visitor can approximate the atmosphere that prevailed here four centuries ago, when he passes through the “central gate” Naka kuguri, and on its threshold has his first view of Nijiriguchi, or the low entrance to the teahouse, so he can – over Tobi ishi (well-worn stones) and led by the Ishi doro (stone lantern) – make his way to (with a short break at tsukubai – the stone pool for rinsing one’s hands and mouth) the Yushintei, that is, the tea room itself.

“What beauty and grandeur!” I realized, but at the same time acknowledged that I was getting back to the very beginning of my Japanese story. Because there, inside the tea room, was where ceremonies like the one I had experienced in Prague and which weren’t exactly my focus once took place.

From the ceremony back to the people

From the outset of my acquaintance with Masahiro I knew that he was among the most enlightened of Japanese tea officials, and therefore even open to unorthodox external influences. That’s why I was not surprised when the day after I expressed an interest in something unknown, hidden from the usual visitors to Kyoto, he took me to the small Chasohmyo Shrine. Hidden under a canopy of tree tops, was my introduction to a historical figure unbeknownst to me, Nagatani Soen. And it was he who, sometime around 1750, in a small bamboo hut on this exact spot in Ujitawara-go – Yuyadani, discovered and perfected the method of processing fresh tea leaves that is most common to today – aided by hot steam. Masahiro and I bowed to this important, yet somewhat forgotten, figure in Japanese tea history. Without wanting to offend him, I had already managed to open up to Masahiro about my not entirely warm relationship with the traditional Chado tea ceremony. “You’re like our young generation,” he retorted. “They don’t have much respect for our traditional values either!” It wasn’t that I didn’t respect them, but there are some things that are problematic for us “non-Japanese.” I am among those who don’t like to rashly adopt something that isn’t pleasant to me only because others are doing it. Masahiro nodded: “Yes, we have a problem with that. Traditional tea rooms have almost disappeared, the Japanese youth are degenerating under the pressure of fast food chains from the USA, and nobody knows what to do about it. But let’s not throw in the towel. Tonight we’re invited to a Senchado tea ceremony. We will be the guests of Mrs. Soukan Miyake, who will show us a new type of tea ceremony.” Trepidation set in…

Although the Senchado ceremony took place on tatami mats which I was used to by then, it was a very pleasant gathering. This ceremony was not about clinging to precise compliance with the long-lived procedures of traditional ceremonies. The main thing was to create a friendly yet cultivated atmosphere, and to drink tea from non-ground leaves. “That is exactly what they don’t get in Japan and even in other countries,” Masahiro and I agreed. “The Chado tea ceremony is unacceptable to most of society due to its conservative nature, while drinking tea from cans is too degrading.”

Chakabuki   

In the end, I returned home very satisfied. I realized that the way of preparing and serving tea we aimed for in our Dobrá čajovna (Good Tea Rooms) back home was the right happy medium for our customers. I was glad we hadn’t succumbed to temptation to try to match the untouchable and unattainable tea masters, but that we had still managed to maintain the culture of preparing and serving tea at such a high level that for our customers visiting a teahouse still represents a challenge, an inspiration. “Maybe it is just a form of ‘tea theatre’ for the customers,” it occurred to me. “But why not, if we are well prepared for it and act with a clean heart and put our all into it?”

Several years have passed since my last and only visit to Japan. Despite that, my memories are still alive and extremely clear. I still correspond with Masahir Takada by e-mail. I even had an opportunity to meet with him in China, where our tea business paths crossed one day. While I had gone for new experiences and ideas for importing back home, Masahiro was there for something else entirely. As a representative of the traditional tea culture, he had been invited to present a new ceremony for preparing Sencha and Gyokuro green teas at a variety of occasions. He exported his experience of preparing tea to all corners of the world. And one day he even made it to Prague at the invitation of the Japanese Cultural Centre of the Japanese Embassy.

It was unthinkable not to meet and share our latest impressions and knowledge from our common line of business. From the meeting I had a feeling of commune, but it was not until I got home and studied the printed itinerary for Masahiro’s official visit closer that I noticed something very interesting: his tea ceremony is called Chakabuki – tea theatre.

November 2005

Jirka Simsa

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

Rize has given its name to the local original Turkish tea. Tea cultivation was started here in the 1940s at the instigation of Attatürk, the greatest leader in modern Turkish history, but the local tea has already made quite a name for itself. The way the tea is prepared and served, in particular, has made the beverage a ritual delicacy in Turkey.

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

Which Club Football Do You Support?

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

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

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

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

Dawn was breaking and the British jumbo jet roared over the snowy vastness of Siberia as it carried our expedition to its first destination – the airport in Peking. The hours went by and Lake Baikal appeared below us. The white of the snowy forests gradually turned to reddish brown, and the sparsely scattered tips of yurts showed that we were flying over Mongolia. The Gobi desert, feared by the caravans for so many centuries, gave way to more densely settled areas of Central China. The plain began to ripple and undulate and across the forested summits of the hills we saw a thread weaving up and down. It was that symbol of Chinese majesty – the Great Wall.

 To see contemporary Peking is to sober up rapidly from any illusions of a China full of romantic nooks, refined gardens, pagodas and bonsais. Peking today is one vast building site, with new banks, export company buildings and hotels shooting up to immense heights in concrete, glass and steel. Like it or not, anyone used to Central European dimensions and proportions has to feel at the least a certain admiration at the sheer scale that dominates in the great cities of the Middle Kingdom. The squares are larger, the boulevards longer, the streets more crowded and the temples grander.

Marco Polo went through the town of Hangzhou on his 13th century travels and wrote that it was one of the superb in the world. The town interests us because it produces one of the most celebrated of Chinese teas. Long Jing, which can be translated as “dragon well” is the name of an excellent green tea that has maintained the traditions of primitive hand production over the centuries except for the fact that the pans in which the tea leaves are processed are no longer heated over a fire, but are electrically heated.

The highest quality Long Jing is produced in a village of the same name, and always in April. At this season pale green leaves appear on the tea bushes after their winter rest, and are torn off by hand while still undeveloped. In size they are no larger than 2 cm and several hundred must be gathered to make 100 gr. Over one season private farmers manage to produce around 30-50 kg of this highest quality tea, which sells for a price varying in the range Y 100 – 125,-. but as the weather becomes hotter the quality of the tea falls, and so does the price. We buy the first samples of fresh Long Jing and look forward to the hotel, since everyone at last has his own tea jar waiting there, with the remains of tinned mandarin compote already washed out of it!

 In the train a routine police check on the contents of pockets and baggage is underway and beyond the windows the face of the landscape is gradually changing. The foothills of Huangshan begin to rise on the horizon. We cross the borders of our second tea province – Anhui – and head for the town of Qimen which has given its name to a world-famous black tea. The police officer conducting the checks in the train asks us where we are going. Apparently it’s just a formality, but our subsequent meeting with armed police in the station at the town of Qimen is far from a formality. We are not allowed to leave the station and enter the “forbidden city”. We have to leave by the next train, but this doesn’t leave for another 24 hours…We have already long been swallowed up by a hundred-headed crowd of curious passers-by. The chief of police, however, who has been informed of our arrival by walkie-talkie direct from the train, gives way after some heated discussion and allows us to stay in the town in a hotel designated by himself (and much too expensive for us). We are escorted to the hotel, which we are not allowed to leave (armed police guard the doors of our room) in a police vehicle. We have to pay the police chief for transport from the station to the hotel! It is all very strange, but we don’t have the courage to ask why the town is hermetically sealed. We’re afraid we would be taken for spies. In the morning we pay the police chief for the hotel and once again we take the police vehicle (for a bribe), this time to the bus station. It is only when our backpacks have been loaded onto the bus that the chief thaws, takes his leave in laddish style and gives us his visiting-card – in case we need something again. In the bus our interpreter explains that the man’s name and police function is written on one side of the card, and on the other side the same person offers transport and accommodation services as a small businessman… Outside the town we pass a barrier that prevents foreigners entering the town. The locals have to show a special identity card.

One of the most famous of Chinese tea provinces, celebrated above all for the production of white and half green teas, is Fujian [futien]. In its northern area the superb Wuishan mountain range rises to heights of more than 2000 metres. And tea is cultivated everywhere! We start to feel embarrassed with our jars at our belts, since here tea is drunk from special small bowls of unglazed earthenware. The whole ritual of preparing the tea, which is called “Kungfu Cha”, consists of pouring boiling water several times onto a relatively large quantity of half green tea in a small teapot. Roughly a minute after scalding the leaves in the pot, the light brown infusion is poured into the tiny half-decilitre bowls. This procedure is repeated up to seven times, depending on the quality of the tea. We therefore buy Kungfu sets and learn to prepare the high quality half-green Tie Guan Yin.

We have discovered that a mere 65 km away (meaning roughly half a day’s wild d bus ride along winding stony roads), the “aristocrat” among White teas – Bai Mu Dan – is gathered and processed around the town of Jianyang.

The production of Baimudan is very simple. The picked tea is spread out on a shallow baskets woven of bamboo and roughly 1 metre in diameter, and left to wilt in the sun for several hours. The baskets are then transferred to an attic space under a scorched roof, where it is very hot and dry. The tea is subsequently shaken manually with circular but jerky movements at roughly half-hour intervals until it is thoroughly dried.

The next phase is the crucial one for the establishment of the price, and this is hand-sorting. Young and old Chinese women, and sometimes even whole families including children sit down around the flat baskets and painstakingly remove pieces of leafstalk, dark, over-fermented leaves and the remains of branches. The sweetish superfine taste of the downy white tips must not be muddied in the brew by the presence of the bitter tannic acids contained in older leaves and stalks. We find that for the preparation of this kind of tea it is very practical to use a bowl which broadens conically towards the rim and has a cover and a saucer. The cover has various advantages. It means that steam from the hot water cannot escape and so scalds any tea leaves above the surface. The tea keeps warm, and the intoxicating aroma that could otherwise have escaped without being caught be the vigilant smell cells of the honest tea-drinker is preserved under the lid. Another decided advantage of the lid is that just by sliding it a little way of the cup you can create a slit through which you can drink the tea without getting the scalded tea-leaves in your mouth. The saucer means that you can carry the tea around “painlessly”.

We are now in our third week in China. We are beginning to get used to the local conditions and so we take in the information that the train to Kunming, the capital of the tea province of Yunnan takes 60 hours without a trace of surprise. We amuse ourselves on the way by trying all the snacks offered by the vendors on the stations (poultry claws, dried fish, snails and so on), and we compete to see who is the bravest. The result of the tastings is agreement that the best delicacy is “nyo ro”, which is spiced drief beef, and the worst of all is instant noodles. Our jars mean that we never miss any chance to taste the tea.

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

As the distance from the capital of the province increases, travellers’ comfort diminishes. After 30 hours of a wild ride by so-called “sleeper”, which is a bus that instead of seats has unbelievably short and fantastically uncomfortable seats aligned with the direction of the journey, we reach the very heart of an autonomous region with the charming name Xishuangbanna – the town Jinglinghong. This area is the home of the Dai national minority.

 They are a people who historically, culturally and ethnically have more in common with the Southern Thai peoples, and also differ from the other inhabitants of China in having been the least remoulded by communist machinery. The marks of the communist cultural revolution are hard to find. People dress colourfully, the cuisine is spicy and diverse, there is life in the small Buddhist monasteries and all around – the atmosphere is distinctly un-Chinese.

We stay in little bamboo huts and gradually get used to insects and spiders of a size we never imagined before. In the restaurants we uninhibitedly order toads, snakes or fat worms, artificially bred – we are told – in the bodies of dead pigs. Our enthusiasm for all this exotic world around us is enhanced by the brilliant range of teas produced in the area. Teas of green type Mao Feng or Yunnan Lu, teas of red type Yunnan Hong, and above all darj teas Yunnan Puer, loose or rolled into all kinds of shapes, evoke states of euphoria. The jars are worked hard.

We learn from villagers and private tea producers that the Yunnan red tea so highly rated by Europeans isn’t drunk here at all. The locals don’t find the taste appealing, and so it is produced only for export. The green tea on the other hand is a great favourite, and drunk on every occasion. We try to find out a little more about the closely guarded secret of how puer is processed. It is a dark, twice fermented tea, distinguished by a fine mustiness on the surface and the unusual scent of old Buddhist temples. But we don’t have the necessary permission from the Ministries of Secret Facts, Agriculture and Foreign Affairs, and so the gates of the 13th chamber for the production of puer remain closed to us. We have no alternative but to let our imaginations do the work…

The goal of our journey, however, is within our reach. Starting out early from the last town indicated on the map, Menghai, we head for the Burmese border. We are travelling in a bus that half an hour before our departure we still thought was a disassembled wreck. The going gets really rough. On the stony track the bus whimpers, scrapes and squeals. Villagers in traditional dress are taking the most extraordinary objects with them such as a giant electro-motor. They are squashed in fours on seats for two and all of them (including the old ladies) smoke. A group of hens travelling loose take a fancy to our backpacks. Border guiards returning from leave look disorderly and are slightly drunk. We feel as if we don’t belong in these parts. Towards evening we reach an anonymous settlement on the frontier itself. The only walled building on the village green belongs to the commander of the border guards. We are aware that since China has no border contact with Burma (but only by air) our presence is highly suspicious. Our interpreter Petr has difficulty understanding fragments of conversations in the local dialect. We are the first “long noses” (as the Chinese call us) ever to have come to this place in history! Once again we are arrested.

The drama of lengthy explanations begins again. But what is to be done with us? The natives don’t want to let us in, the soldiers want to deport us, but the bus isn’t leaving until the next morning. Salvation in this hopeless situation comes unexpectedly. The Tea King himself rescues us. When the local inhabitants hear that we had come all the way from faraway “Czechoslavia” to see their Tea King, we are all at once “in cdevotee”. We are allowed accommodation for Y 5,- each in a wooden animal shed, and are even invited to the bamboo “culture house” which houses a television powered by petrol aggregate. “Don’t go out at night without a torch. There are cobras everywhere”, the soldiers warn us before we go to bed. They are looking forward to the next day, since they have made a deal with us to provide us with an armed escort to the King for 40,- Y.

Over the last few years we had travelled through many tea countries. We had been soaked to the skin in tea gardens in the foothills of the Himalayas in Darjeeling, we had warmed ourselves at fires in the clay huts of Nepalese shepherds, and drunk their salty tea with rancid yak milk. In North-East India we had bowed before the immensity of the River Brahmaputra, which brings life to the huge tea valley of Assam. In the middle of the bewitchingly beautiful tea island of Sri Lanka we had meditated with Buddhist monks, and near the Georgian frontier and with machine guns trained on us we had explained to armed Turks that it was interest in tea that had brought us so far. On our tea pilgrimages we had met many tea experts and tea laymen, and we had discussed with them whether it would be possible to find the Tea King somewhere. But we had always had the feeling that our conversations were verging on the borders of fantasy and legend. A few people had heard of the King, some had an inkling, but none at all could point to a place on a map,

But we , the Tea-devotees of Prague, actually found the King on the 6th of April 1997 at 10.15 all-China time…

Honestly.  Based on local conditions, the above-average dwelling of Mr. Long, visible from afar, let us know that we would have the honor of meeting with somebody of importance.  AUNGLGA’S House was the right title for the house of a man who was perhaps instrumental in the development of growing and manufacturing tea in Laos.  Mr. Long, originally a citizen of neighboring Vietnam, a day after drawing enough experience in the Vietnamese tea industry, decided to move to Laos.  Here he founded the first-that-we -know-of tea gardens and produced the first tea.

During the interview with Mr. Long, it emerged that it is not too complicated to grow and process tea in Laos.  The greatest problem is the question of selling.  He entrusted to us that he relies heavily on his knowledge of business contacts in Vietnam, and so is able to export the tea he produces.  In Vietnam, particularly in comparison to Laos, the culture of tea drinking is at a much higher level, and data on green tea consumption is many times greater than data on consumption in his local market.  Citizens of Laos don’t belong, and have never belonged among renowned tea drinkers.

  The activities of Mr. Long did not escape the notice of the surrounding residents.  After all, to put any plant into the ground in this climactic zone is easy.  „And how Mr. Long picks and warms and kneads the tea leaves, even a small child can copy,“ said the neighbors who followed the tracks of the tea pioneer and began to imitate his activities.  On the 36 kilometers of the above-mentioned road, it is possible to see villagers, who on improvised tables, very inexpertly, with difficult-to-foresee-results, and covered in smoke, create balls from fresh tea leaves.

 And because it is difficult to estimate what the results will be like, instead of green tea, black tea sometimes appears at the end of the process.  And it doesn’t just happen once.  „What can’t be helped will happen, but after all, even then someone will probably buy.“  In this way, the local producers of tea somehow performed for us.  On the 42^nd kilometer we even found that the local producers had united into a company called „All Village“, but even here the situation is complicated.  Quality tea is unstable, the results uncertain.  Managerial experience minimal, business contacts almost non-existent, and in comparison with their foreign colleagues, these producers can’t rely on the internal market of the country.  We couldn’t help but admire with what patience and devotion they undergo this pioneering fate.

We reached the main city of Vietnam – Saigon, and began to be a little bit nervous.  Despite it being March, it was very hot.  A completely normal phenomenon which we met on nearly every step of the journey was the drinking of cold coffee „on ice“.

We could say that we didn’t see a single person who would drink tea.  Afterwards, we understood something about Laos, that the country is not exactly a „tea paradise“, and we began to fear that Vietnam would be similar.

Street sellers of tea however, gave us hope that the situation would be better.  They offered exclusively green tea, leaves and by the look of them – homemade.  On the green market we even ran into a seller of fresh green tea leaves.

The shelves of the food stores and assorted supermarkets buckled under the weight of colorfully packaged homemade teas and we understood that the situation was essentially different than in the neighbor – Laos. And with information about the developed tea industry, which we received from sellers, we set off for the mountain province of Lam Dong surrounding the city of Dalat.

And truthfully, the extensive tea gardens bordering the roads gave us a clear understanding that the growing of tea and its processing was very widespread in these parts.

A visit to the tea factory or Cau Dat should’ve been only a polite formality, nevertheless we ran into relatively stiff resistance.  We realized that the gold star on the red state flag wasn’t only a nostalgic legacy of the past, but still a symbol of the hard reality which is socialism.  The gatekeeper decided that he wouldn’t allow us behind the gate.  When I took out my camera, it looked like he would take out a submachine gun.  The luck in this stalemated situation for us was that just at that time the manager came and was very interested in these strange foreigners in shorts and baseball caps and what they wanted.  Socialist type tea factories received mainly, as a matter of principle, announced delegations in black limousines.  The most important part of the program was generally the food.  In the following spontaneous and relaxed social portion of the business negotiations, fat comrades with glasses of vodka remember as a rule, the times when thanks to central control of production from somewhere above, it wasn’t necessary to work very hard and party loyalty was richly rewarded.  These thoughts came to me when I sat in the negotiation hall in revolutionary tradition.  We had something similar even in Czech when it was communist governed.

From the mouth of the manager we already knew that in Vietnam tea was made in a number of places, but that theirs was the best quality.  The worst was allegedly grown privately.  They didn’t have experience or proper technical equipment and their tea wasn’t worth much.  I would have liked to believe the manager which weren’t even their own products?  I asked him about their own green tea production and was very surprised by his reaction.  The manager thought at first that it was a joke.  “Yes I have a number of samples,” he confessed ”but you know, I can’t promise you anything.”  I didn’t know what to think and looked through the bags of green tea.  Some looked like quite ordinary tea for general drinking, but two struck me very much.  The tea leaves were very small, regular and rolled into half-moons.  I was fascinated by their silver reflection.  “This would be it!” I thought and showed him the samples.  The manager frowned.  “Don’t pay attention to these.  They are designated for export,” he said trying to calm me.  “Yes, but I am here because I want to help you export,” I said with hope in my voice.  “But this tea is being exported to Korea,” he answered.  I understood that this socialist beauracratic system was “for us a train that would not run”, that it was better not to ask which of the two Koreas was it actually being exported to, and I said goodbye.

During our stay in Vietnam, we still visited other socialist businesses.  The private businesses could be distinguished from these at a glance.  For example, only because the tea plants were cut.  This kind of brutal treatment is completely unique.

One of these kinds of factories was built in 1959 in the city of Moc Cau of San Lon province east of Hanoi.  Here they could be proud not only of the quantity of tea produced, but also the variety.  Besides green tea, they also processed black tea and thanks to enterprising Taiwanese, oolong.  Complete machinery and equipment was exported from Taiwan and local supervisors came regularly to oversee the quality of the tea designated for the Taiwanese market.  For the rest of the year, they produced Vietnamese oolong.  We were sorry, but the tea there was not to our taste.

Our route led further to the north towards the Chinese border to the city of Sa Pa, which lays between extensively terraced rice fields under the tallest peak in Vietnam, called Fan Si Pan by the locals and measures 3,143 meters.

 It is true that the main goal of the trip to these places was not focused on tea plantations because of the fact that nobody had ever heard that tea could appear in these parts.  This gorgeous and difficult access to this corner of the world is renowned mostly because a large number of tribes live here whose members have for centuries lived the same traditional lifestyle.  They have built here gorgeous terraced fields, raise domestic animals and color fabrics in natural color – indigo.  On these fabrics they embroider beautiful colored ornaments and make from them national costumes which they sell, but also wear.

They invited us for tea!

A humble tea condition fit the conditions in which local people live and we had no choice, but not to be afraid.

As regards the source of green tea to which we were treated, we didn’t have to be worried.  Behind the country house grew wild tea plants which were picked regularly (as needed).  The locals dried the leaves and therefore had ample supply.  Our road nevertheless continued on.

Perhaps 75 kilometers north of Hanoi the province of Thai Nguyen is situated whose capital city has the same name.  The place is quite idyllic with a very pleasant climate.  The hundreds of private teagardens with buildings planted between them gave us a very clear understanding, that here tea not only flourished, but also sold well.  For us it was a clear signal, that here we could wait for proper quality.  The blotch in this beauty exhibited to us was only the pink brick face buildings in “Vietnamese baroque” style.

The lady director, Tran Hong Tien, from the renowned private tea factory Hoang Binh Co., welcomed us with considerable embarrassment because we came unannounced and without a translator, but finally there suddenly appeared a secretary with a grasp of at least some business English and it was alright.  We left loaded with kilograms of tea samples and also pricelists, which we , in a wave of euphoria, didn’t care for with much attention.  The tea was truly magnificent.

We came to Vietnam fearing that it would be a big problem mainly to find export quality tea.  Our imagination can be best characterized by this photographs.  “Pay for tea in dollars and take your tea in a basket on your back,”  as small farmers somehow imagined business in the environment of new developing markets.  But the reality was different.  Air conditioned offices, quality automobiles, computers, internet and electronic banking.  We left excited.

 “The trip had meaning!” we said after the return home and drank the samples of the imported tea.  Only that the prices seemed to us somehow high.  We checked electronically if there wasn’t really some mistake.  The price of the green tea Che Xanh reached the level of the most delicate tea from Japan. We couldn’t believe our eyes.  “No one would pay this!  Our customers wouldn’t have the money for it!”  when suddenly – bang, bang – at the door stood a Vietnamese door-to-door salesman with tea samples.  “Don’t you want tea?” he asked.  In his hand he carried packages of tea which we recognized with confidence.   They were packaged by the firm Hoang Binh z Thai Nguyen.  “Just come in,” we invited.

 We did well that time.  The tea which he offered us was the same quality as that which we brought from Vietnam.  Only it was 5x cheaper and included transport right to our storage.

We didn’t understand, but we made the deal.  Also we admitted that we were in Vietnam and tea, samples of which we’d brought back, were many times more expensive than his.

 “You know, we Vietnamese have to help each other.  And the prices between us are different than what we offer to you.  But this time, the people at home exaggerated a little…”

Frequently when I asked a concrete question I received a very flowery fairytale or incredible stories that I regarded more as social pleasantry than as real information. Still, there were times when the unyielding attitude of the Chinese officials and their bureaucratic approach truly disappointed me. This was the case with my efforts to obtain information on the production process of the mysterious tea pu-er.

First Encounter

In 1995 together with friends I set out for the little explored primeval forests of Yunnan to look for the ancient tea tree Cha Shu Wang. On our way we arrived in the small town of Menghai in the autonomous region of Xishuangbanna, where we discovered a tea-processing factory.

The factory management were very friendly and kindly let us into the otherwise guarded building. We were allowed to take snaps and notes of the production of red tea, saw most of the factory where the green tea was processed, and were even allowed a glimpse of the pressing of pu-er into all kinds of forms. …

On the other hand, we received no answers to questions relating to production. On the contrary, it was implied that if we didn’t stop showing an interest in this, we would be told nothing more at all.. We managed to find the ancient tea King on that trip, and so we considered that our journey had achieved its goal, and with plenty of other tea experiences in our heads we returned to the Czech Republic after an absence of more than eight weeks.

Urge

The longing to solve any kind of incredible mystery is somehow in the Czech bloodstream, and so it was not long before I set out again for South China, armed with all the available information in a whole range of books, to have a second shot at cracking the secret of pu-er. The first records of pu-er tea go back to the period of the Tchang Dynasty (618 – 907). At this time, however, they do not refer to a dark tea in the modern sense of the term. The members of local national minorities would just tear tea-leaves from scattered wild trees and boil them, adding pepper, ginger, cinnamon or other spices. Only under the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) did people begin to pour hot water on the tea and roll the leaves into little balls. The type, however, remained unspecific. The division of tea into three categories – Mao Jian – tips tea, Ya Cha – shoot tea, and Nu Er Cha – virgin tea started later, under the Ching Dynasty (1644 – 1911). Why was the last of these teas called “virgin”?

It was because the best varieties of tea, mainly destined for the imperial court, were picked only by young unmarried women and girls, who in this way made extra money for their dowries. It was not long before the Yunnan tea known as pu-er developed a widespread fame. In the mid-19th century the small town of Simao, where the local provincial government had moved bringing with it officials overseeing the tea trade, was regularly visited by thousands of caravans from Tibet, India, Laos and even faraway Cambodia.

Was tea first cultivated in Sichuan or Yunnan?

It is hard to answer this question. The only evidence we have is indirect, and purely a matter of tales, various legends, or entries in chronicles, The Chinese themselves happily offer all kinds of variant interpretation, depending one whether one tale or the other increases their prestige in the eyes of the inquirer or could encourage an increase in the export of tea. I myself would incline to the following interpretation…

 The crucial period for the cultivation of tea here was that of the “Three Kingdoms” (220 – 280). Specifically – the first minister of the Shu state, who was called Zhuge Liang is given the greatest credit for encouraging tea cultivation on the grounds that following his tour of inspection the local inhabitants started to found tea gardens. In 1570 the imperial representative Dao Ying–meng divided the territory in his jurisdiction into 12 “bannas” (in the Dai language the word “banna” means government region) and one of these “bannas” was a region called the Six Tea Mountains. The reason for the division was probably related to imperial tax gathering.

The traditional story is that each of the Six Tea Mountains was named according to an object left there as a souvenir by the first Minister of State Shu in the period of the Three Kingdoms (220 – 280) Zhuge Liang, who travelled through the mountains. The “Chronicle of the Town of Puerh” compiled in the reign of the Emperor Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty records that: “In distant times the Marquis Wu (Zhuge Liang) travelled criss-cross fashion through the region of the Six Tea Mountains, leaving a copper gong in Youl, a copper snake in Mangzhi, a brick of iron in Manzhuan, a wooden beater in Yibangm a yoke harness in Gedeng and a seed bag for sowing in Mansi. These places were named after all these objects. In Mangzhi and Gedeng there are tea trees planted according to legend by the Marquis Wu himself, whom the local national minorities revere to this day, and they are much bushier and higher than in the other Tea Mountains.” The area of the Six Tea Mountains – Youle, Manzhuan, Mansa, Mangzhi, Yibang and Gedeng in the autonomous region of Xishuangbanna, which Zhuge Liang visited and where e a wild variety of tea tree grew in abundance, is therefore probably the legendary place where cultivation of tea started in China and the entire world.

According to the chronicle already mentioned, tea bushes were planted here even before the period of the Three Kingdoms, i.e. before 220. At the end of this epoch tea was being sold as a commodity to the other parts of the state. In the middle period of the Qing Dynasty the Six Tea Mountains area was flourishing and its teas, for which the area was known both at home and beyond the frontiers of the country, were being sold as far way as Sichuan, Tibet, Hongkong, Macaa and South-East Asia.

Why the name Pu-er?

The reason is very simple. The first larger administrative centre in the vicinity of the Six Tea Mountains was the town of pu-er. Hence the name of the tea – derived from the then “Mecca” of the tea trade. Today tea leaves are still picked on the slopes of the Six Tea Mountains, but the strategically important sites for tea production have long been shifted to the west, to the border areas of previously virgin mountains. Today agricultural production here is extremely intensive. The once impenetrable jungles, thousands of years old, are retreating before endless fields of agricultural monoculture.

In the area of South Yunnan several tea-processing factories were set up in the mid-20th century. The largest of these is located in the town of Menghai. It annually produces around 7 500 tons of first-grade tea in a very broad assortment. With the exception of the red teas that are sold as Congo Black Tea or just CTC, they all near the name pu-er, although in many cases this is not the famous, twice fermented tea associated with the name.

Chance or Design?

Although we have no way of telling exactly how the mode of production of this tea was discovered, one explanation seems particularly plausible… The distinctive and indescribably aroma and taste of dark pu-eru could have come into existence accidentally during the transport of teas in sacks on the backs of the horses, oxen and mules that trudged the caravan routes radiating from the town of Simao to the neighbouring and distant world.

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

Decision

Now you are expecting me to reveal the entire technical procedure for the production of pu-er, but matters are no so simple. What I can offer is only a mosaic composed of fragments of information obtained from books, magazines, the accounts of Chinese country-people, hints from tea experts and my own deductions supported by my personal experience. It is clear that my opinion may have very little weight at all. On the innumerable tea travels that I have made in recent years, I have realised perhaps a hundred times, when “face to leaf” with the tea plant, that production techniques are not in themselves transferable. The taste of a processed tea is directly dependent on a quantity of factors such as soil composition, variety of tea-plant, climate, season, height above sea-level, quality of leaves picked and, last but not least, processing procedures. It is completely impossible to achieve a comparable let alone a better tea than the original by simply copying procedure. While tea innovators have been trying to take this road in many places in the tea-producing world, I have never yet encountered a copy that would improve on the original. The combination of the natural environment of a specific locality and the new technology logically produces what is simply a new original tea!

Whether or not it is viable is then simply a question of the market. If a process hadn’t been copied we would never, for example, have had the new original Bi Luo Chung tea from Taiwan, not to mention the whole range of Japanese teas. The following passages should be taken as a summary of several years of my research, but definitely not as confirmed and verified information.

What is actually going on …

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

The picked tea-leaves are transported here and allowed to wilt on a concrete floor under the roof of a very large hall. The leaves are spread out and later raked back with special wooden rakes, used very roughly. The leaves are not just left to wither and partially dry out, but are also sufficiently beaten about. After several hours of withering (including overnight) they are spread out in a thin later outside on concrete and dry out exposed to direct sunlight. A special technology (see photograph) turned by foot is used over a day to dry them out perfectly.

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

Pressing into all kind of shapes is carried out after the tea has once again been steamed. After being taken out of the forms the tea cakes, bricks and so on are put on wooden trays and kept in special rooms in which a constant temperature and humidity are carefully maintained. Here the pressed tea matures and dries out, but not completely, since it is highly desirable that the fermentation process should not stop, but should continue. The tea processed in this way is packaged in fine paper, boxes or banana leaves, but must never be hermetically sealed.

 Does older mean better?

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

Not that this information should put you off buying pu-er. But be careful when choosing your brand! Make sure you have real pu-er!

It was again the urge to solve a mystery which brought me on a new journey to China in 2001.

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

“Huo Shan Huang Ya” –Anhui Province,

“Ping Yang Huang Tang” –Zhejiang Province,

“Chong An Lian Xin” –Fujian Province,

“Meng Ding Huang Ya” –Sichuan Province,

and

“Bei Gang Mao Jian,” “Yuan An Lu An” –both with no known area of origin.

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

Tea and Tea Rooms in Sichuan

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

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

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

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

Trekking in the Mountains

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Difference Between “Yellow Tea” and “yellow tea”

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

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

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

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

Another Secret

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

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

“We have found it!” we thought to ourselves as we returned to the provincial capital Chengdu. We were missing only one piece of information, the temperature at which the wet leaves were dried out, causing the decomposition of the green chlorophyll and so the change in leaf color from green to yellow. On that subject our host had refused to talk, not even promises to buy the best of his production in future had had any effect.

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

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

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

Yet despite my past “resolutions,” here I am flying to India for the fourth time, once again of my own free will and again in the hope that this beloved land with its oceans, great mountains, unending sun-baked plains, crammed railway cars, people shining with the bright flame of faith and above all some of the best teas in the world, will hold no grudges against me and be generous to me. It has always been so in the past. It has always given me my share of deep experiences. And during the ten-hour flight I keep going back over those experiences in my head, and I’m a little nervous. I don’t know what is waiting for me.

Faithful to the Legacy of Mahatma Ghandi

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

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

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

In the end there was nothing left for it but to use Indian weapons to get results. On our unending trips across the city we were fascinated by the traditional costume worn by some Indians and we decided to try it out ourselves. We bought ourselves long shirts and loose trousers made of natural material and I even acquired a boat-shaped white cap. When I first put the whole outfit on and went out into the streets I was surprised to find people pointing at me, clasping their hands in gestures of greeting and addressing me as Papa Nehru. And then it came to me that I might be able to use the effect to my advantage. I thought of the non-violent way in which one of the greatest figures of modern Indian history, Mahatma Ghandi, managed to achieve his aims. So we donned our traditional Indian costumes and set off for the Ministry. Once again they welcomed us with “poker faces” and ignored us. But then we sat down on the floor in the lotus position and announced that we did not intend to get up again unless and until the permissions were issued, and we were starting a hunger strike. The permissions were in our hands within five minutes.

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

Is Paradise Green?

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

A wonderful surprise awaited us the next morning. The sight of the boundless Assam tea plantations full of women pickers with timid doe-eyes, the sound of the unending silence that reigns there, interrupted only by birdsong and the rustle of the tea leaves, truly an unforgettable experience.

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

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

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

In Jail in Assam

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

No Help from Scientists or a Rhinoceros

Before we left we had a chance to visit the institute. There were tea bushes growing “wild” because nobody was pruning them, but little help as to where to find wild tea trees in the jungle. We left Jorhat and rode into the Kaziranga National Park, which lies on the route to Guwahati, the main city of the state of Assam. Not even on this leg of the route did we see genuine virgin forest. On the back of an elephant and accompanied by a one-horned rhinoceros we made it into genuine wilderness, but just when we were starting to cheer and hope that the real adventures were beginning, we were brought up short by a warning notice. We had reached another prohibited area where a soldier with a loaded machine-gun did not look as if he was interested in discussing the reasons for our visit. We turned back. Who could we ask for information? We looked at the rhinoceros, but he pretended he didn’t understand. Maybe some other time – or some other place?

The Grave of Charles Alexander Bruce Rediscovered!

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

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

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

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

The Spring Tea Races of Darjeeling

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

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

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

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

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

Drawing on the experience I had acquired on visits to China, I decided to try and produce a new type of Indian tea, by using a hand technique tried and tested for centuries. It was supposed to be a white tea, because in China white teas (such as Bai Mu Dan) are processed in this particular way, which involves kneading the leaves and drying them on flat bamboo baskets. I asked for a sufficient quantity of fresh tea leaves, and one morning, braving the incredulous looks of the managers of the tea factory and all their employees, I put my hand to the task. I divided the tea leaves into several heaps of the same size, which I then left to wilt partially in the sun and partially in the shade. After the wilting I kneaded some of the leaves thoroughly by hand (for about 30 minutes), and some I merely shook on a bamboo tray. The fermentation took place both in the sun and on the cool floor of the fermentation room.

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

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

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

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

Yes, It’s a Good Direction …

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

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

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

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

The Best Laid Plans!

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

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

Although my activities had in no way been responsible for the problems with my friend’s plantation, I remembered my earlier presumption with a certain embarrassment and wondered if someone like me had the right to interfere in established systems that worked reliably and had been tried and tested down through the centuries. But mostly I was sad, because I was sorry for all those people I had gotten to know during my stay among the tea gardens. I had no news and wondered how hard things were for them.

Long Live Indian White Tea!

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

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

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

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

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