Picking up from the last post, we had just been bidden to enter his an Anxi family’s home to drink tea. The tea tasted damn good to us (even though we’re still not quite connoisseurs), which we told our host, but of course, he let us know in the Chinese tradition of self-deprecation, “No, it’s bad, it’s bad (不好喝，不好喝!).” All the while we sat talking, a dog,  several chickens, three young children, his mother and father, and two young women were walking all over the courtyard, which was messy with tools, stacks of baskets, and lots of machines for processing tea. It was a mess, but it was the kind of lived-in mess that gave warmth to the place.

Huang Peibin chats with us over gongfucha in his family's courtyard home. Photo by Andy

After not very long, young 30 year-old Peibin began explaining the recent history of his family. His father had been born in Xiamen (廈門), but in 1969 at the age of 19 was forced to relocate to the countryside (下鄉) during one of Mao’s great movements (大運動). He had grown mostly rice and other vegetables in Xianrong, where he had married and had children, until about 20 years prior, when he became the first person in the village to convert his hillside paddies into terraces with tea trees. Peibin, the third of three children, had grown up his whole life with tea. The family, he explained, spends six months of the year actively cultivating, harvesting, processing, or selling their tea, divided over two seasons.

During the 30-day harvests, the house is full of around ten tea-picking women from neighboring Dehua County (德化縣), and he gets around three hours of sleep a night. It is the women’s job to pick the tea since they are “better suited to that job (她們更適合那種工作),” while the men are responsible for fermenting, heat-processing, and drying. His family’s profit from the tieguanyin trade, he told us (it’s not weird anymore for Chinese people to divulge private numbers to us) is 100,000 yuan per year (selling at 100 yuan per half kilo), coming in through three distributors with whom they have history. That sum, though being astronomically higher than most peasants in this country could ever hope for, “doesn’t leave much over (剩不了多少),” he said, especially considering the brick building going up next door, which is intended to house Peibin, his wife, and his two daughters. The other six months, on the other hand, are chock full of painful boredom (太閒了). As if to prove his point, his father was at that moment standing in the doorway, quietly staring at passing traffic. Peibin makes up the gap (彌補) by chopping lumber or doing odd jobs (打工) around the village and in his off time sometimes playing cards in town. Andy asked if he wanted his children to continue in the tea business, to which he responded, “Right now we can make money on tieguanyin because it’s popular, but it can’t be popular forever. When the wind stops, there are no waves (風平浪靜). I don’t think this will last forever.”

Huang Quanti, displaced from Xiamen to the village of Xianrong at the age of 19, has made a nice life for his family in the tea business. Photo by Andy

After maybe an hour of discourse, Peibin’s father Huang Quanti (黃全體) took over the gongfucha while Peibin played with his newborn daughter. Mr. Huang’s Mandarin was a little out of practice, but he got his basic meanings across well enough anyway. After his relocation from Xiamen, he grew rice in the area for years. Once the movement was over, he thought about returning home, but decided to stay since he had been married and started his family in Xianrong. When one day a friend of his suggested he get into the tea business, he headed to the county capital of Anxi (安溪縣城) to buy the seeds, ripped up all his other fields, and planted tea trees full tilt. To this day, the family grows nothing but tieguanyin and buys all their other food from the market since growing other crops “isn’t worthwhile (不合算).”

Periodically as we chatted, different old friends would stop by the front door to say hello, and one even came in to drink tea with us for a while. We complimented the beautiful home he had built in 1988 over and over, but Mr. Huang could only say that it was old and lousy (這房子很老很破!). His son was building the “Western-style building (洋房, although buildings as ugly as it wouldn’t dare to be bear that name anywhere in the West) since the breezy, open style of the old house “isn’t popular anymore (不流行了).” He even agreed that his courtyard house was spacious and allowed for a good flow, but to him it was just an artifact of the past that doesn’t deserve consideration for  the future. The walls were badly in need of paint, and the rhymed couplets on the wall (对联) looked as though moths had eaten them. It boggles my mind to think that somebody would abandon something beautiful and practical because it’s not popular anymore, but then again lots of things about China boggle the mind.

Mr. Huang's wife, Mr. Huang, and Peibin in their "sitting room." Photo by Evan

After a bit Peibin grabbed probably the fifth single-serving package from the freezer and took back over the tea, which we had already consumed to the point of being jittery (發抖). When a young boy ran into the house to talk to us, we naturally assumed it was his son, but he explained that this was the son of his older brother, who left his wife and son behind to pursue a life as a tieguanyin salesman in a Guangzhou market. We asked why Peibin doesn’t follow in his big brother’s footsteps, and he answered, “He does make a lot of money, but he has the right personality for that job. I could never do it because I’m too irritable (太暴躁), and there’s too much numbers-work involved. Besides, I tried to work in Xiamen once years ago, but I didn’t like it in the city, too hectic (太亂了), so I came back home to work with my father.”

Around this time we realized darkness was on its way, and so we asked if there was somewhere in the area we could pitch our tents. His father heard and initially offered the concrete roof of the new house next door, but then he remembered there was an empty bedroom, which we could take if we wanted. This family was turning out to be only too great! We moved all our junk into the house, and the women moved into the kitchen to start preparing dinner. We asked if we could help with dinner since we were barging in on the family so rudely, but Peibin explained, “Women make the food here. Here we’re all about men-rule-the-house-ism (大男子主義). Don’t worry about them.”

Look at those intricately carved flowers on the Huang house roof! I had no idea such work was possible in 1988, and I have even less of an idea why locals with money wouldn't want to emulate this kind of building style. Photo by Evan

In no time his fastidiously straight-backed mother, who sported very short hair and a tidy gray peasant suit, put the world’s biggest bowl of fried rice noodles in front of us, followed shortly by some rice congee (稀飯) and several varieties of pickled vegetables (酸菜). Strangely, the family other than Peibin all took their meal of congee in the kitchen, leaving the four of us in the courtyard alone. Moreover, the women seemed very self-restrained in their responses to us every time we tried to speak to them, and his classically doting mother insisted over and over that we “Eat more! Eat more! (多吃多吃!)”It’s dawning on us that it will be difficult to get many women’s perspectives while out in the Chinese countryside.

After dinner, the women started tidying up, and Mr. Huang left on some errand to town. Left alone with Peibin and the children doing their homework, we started talking about deeper subjects. It turns out that his dominant emotion is frustration. First, he’s frustrated about officialdom in Anxi, which he called “crooked (歪).” The government sets a standard for construction so high that “nobody can reach (沒人能合格)” without “thinking of other ways (另外想辦法) to get around them,” he said quietly with his head turned toward the open courtyard door, seemingly afraid to have his words overheard. We couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was going around Sichuan before the earthquake. More than just the authorities, though, he’s frustrated by his prospects in life. “I can’t do anything I want to do (我沒辦法做自己的事情),” he said repeatedly. He’s bound to Xianrong by obligations to his family, and there is simply not enough money for him to just leave them on the side and travel around on his own. “Everybody has a dream (每個人都有自己的夢想),” he said. What is your dream then, I asked. Strangely (to me at least), his only response was, “Everybody wants life to be a little better (人人都想日子過得好一點).” He said no more on the subject. Everything he had said all day was all pointing to chronic discontentment with being caught in a rut (生活太軌轍了). The combination of obligations to his family and the labor-intensive tea business keep him firmly rooted in Anxi, while his “irritable” personality makes him a little restless. Nevertheless, every time his 7-year old daughter or newborn were around, he would pick them up and smile ear to ear. As she was sitting next to us reading from her literature book at the time, I suggested, maybe she will be the one to fulfill her dreams one day. His response was completely unexpected: “She has a lot of pressure on her because our population is so big (中國人口太多了，所以她的壓力很大). If she doesn’t do well in school, she’ll end up as a waste product (她要是書讀不好就會成為廢品). Take me, I’m just a waste product (像我呢，我就是廢品).” His words made all three of us deeply sad, to know that a man of 30, who knows how to make excellent tea and is raising two beautiful children, could think of himself as trash. What’s worse is that he seems to have almost no hope for his poor daughter either. At this point I’m still not sure to attribute to either the present state of China, the nature of Chinese culture in general, or just the pessimism of the one man. Probably it’s a little of all three.

After an afternoon and evening of tea and talking, we finally hit the hay in an upstairs bedroom next to the nephew’s room. In the morning, the mother made us more rice congee and pickled vegetables. We announced we should really be hitting the road, when Peibin wrote his number and address on a piece of paper for us. “When you finish your trip, call me. Maybe you can sell some of our tea. It’s a good way to make money!” We took his number, thanked the entire family many times, and finally departed from the house of our new friends toward the city of Anxi and Xiamen, by far and away the city with the most character we’ve visited so far. So long for today.

Two years ago when I visited Anxi (安溪縣) with my mother as a day trip from nearby Xiamen, I was impressed by its giant “City of Tea (茶都),” which I remembered afterward as resembling a hastily assembled Vatican with the merchandising of tea as its religion. Afterward through the years that I spent in Beijing and Shanghai, whenever I went to a tea market — which I often did — it was usually exclusively in search of the type of tea that I had discovered on my first trip to Anxi, tieguanyin (鐵觀音, Iron Avalokitesvara, or Iron Goddess of Mercy, a type of oolong tea produced in Anxi, article 1 & article 2). Not only was the tieguanyin I kept at all times in my freezer always produced in Anxi, but every one of the hundreds of merchants selling it for between 100 and 1000+ yuan ($15 – $150) per half kilo (I usually bought in the 200 yuan range) was a native of said mountainous county in Southern Fujian. A year or so ago Andy also began his appreciation for the hot, green beverage, and so when plotting our route, it was only natural to plot a course through one of chief production centers of one of China’s greatest gifts to the world. By way of a metaphor, Anxi is more or less to the world of Chinese teas what Napa Valley is to US wine production. Yes, it’s kind of a big deal. 

An Anxi woman crops her tea trees with extended shears. Photo by Andy

As we neared Anxi in neighboring Datian County (大田縣), signs for tea workshops (茶廠) began to appear regularly on the sides of the road, although most producers with whom we stopped to speak told us they had tea only immediately after production and had long ago sold the entire batch. One old man informed me that due to the profitability of tieguanyin production, its cultivation had spread to Anxi’s neighboring provinces of Datian, Yongchun (永春縣), and Dehua (德化縣), and further that Datian’s tea was superior to Anxi’s since “our tea industry has only recently been developed, and their trees are old (我們的茶業最近幾年才開發起來的，而安溪那邊的茶樹都老了).” Not only that, but some producers from Anxi even travel to Datian to buy tea and then sell it with an Anxi label slapped on the packaging, he told me. The veracity of his claim is of course up in the air, but from the long row of tea producers all lined up in a row with giant mechanical tea cookers out front and the brand new “International Tea Trade Center” across the street, it was clear the industry was growing. 

Women of one Huang family sit in front of the family storefront picking stems from a batch of tieguanyin. Photo by Andy

Without having to ask or see a sign, I knew immediately when we had crossed from Yongchun into Anxi, as the villagescape changed noticeably. Whereas for days, all the villages (村子) we had passed were rugged, simple, and sparse, the first of Anxi, a place called Xianrong (仙榮村), was full of multi-story, redbrick structures, densely packed and clearly recently built. We later found out that just about all these buildings were built on “tea money.” On the first floor of many of the buildings — especially those marked with Anxi’s single most commonly occuring character: cha (茶, tea) — were what I call “tasting desks (品嘗桌).” These desks are all fitted with a tea tray and built-in plastic drainage tube to a bucket, and on them sit large, plastic bottles of spring water and little metal pots on electric stove plates. In front of one such room we saw a group of three women and a man sitting around a shallow circular bamboo basket full of green tea leaves, picking out and discarding the stems. We approached, and immediately the man, Mr. Huang, thin, in his twenties, and with densely knotted hair, invited us to sit in front of his desk for tea. Though he was very skittish, and his Mandarin was nearly unintelligible, we were able to gather from the group of his male friends who arrived presently that his family has been in the tea business for years, just like all the other families, and that they bring in 200,000 yuan (~$30,000) a year on the trade. All the men in the room (the women stayed in the background) had very yellow or brown teeth, probably explained by their common habit of slurp-aerating every sip of tea over their front teeth, a somewhat disgusting practice that Andy explained is common among wine connoisseurs. 

Hillsides full of tea trees like this are everywhere in Anxi. Photo by Andy

Over nearly a hundred little cups of gongfucha (功夫茶, quickly steeped, strong tea), the men explained the cyclic nature of the business. Spring tea (春茶), the more delicate tasting and thus more sought after, is harvested and processed over a 30-day period starting from around May 1. Fall tea (秋茶), with a stronger but less nuanced flavor (比春茶的味道濃可是沒有春茶的味道微妙), which we were drinking, is also processed over a 30-day period, starting around October 1. Whereas back in the day tea masters had to pay close attention to the ambient temperature when fermenting (發酵) their tea, nowadays most producers use air conditioned rooms (空調房) to keep the tea at an even 17 degrees Celsius, assuring uniformity. Afterward the tea is fired in a machine that looks a lot like a drying machine for a few minutes at 2-300 degrees Celsius before being dried and packaged. All the while that we sat inside drinking tea and shooting the breeze with the men, two young women and one middle aged woman sat outside around the basket of tea picking out the stems. After a good long time with Mr. Huang and his pals, we said adieu and headed down the road, hoping to find another tea growing family who would be willing to take us in for the night, which we figured more likely to happen if a family invited us in on their own initiative. 

Five minutes later on the edge of Xianrong, we passed a striking old courtyard house with a very ornate roof, especially as contrasted to the monotonous, redbrick boxes back in the village, and stopped for a moment to admire it. Seconds later a young man in a white t-shirt standing in the doorway hollered at us just the invitation we were hoping for: “Come in for tea! (進來喝茶吧!)” Within five minutes we had stashed our bikes in the concrete frame house under construction next door and were sitting under a 20-foot-tall recession in the courtyard in front of a deep freeze and the family’s ancestral shrine, complete with a sketch of the recently deceased grandpa. Our host, the very skinny and cheerful Huang Peibin (黃培斌), fetched a small pack of his family tea from the freezer, sat across from us, and began pouring us small cups of gongfucha. The rest of our time with the Huang family will be detailed in the next post, which ought to be coming out tomorrow. Goodnight until then, Happy New Year in advance, and GO SAINTS (if miracles can happen in South Louisiana, who knows what’s possible in this crazy country)!