A snoozy street in the Fengqing old town, by Andy

By Andy

2010/05/29 – 78 km

We start the morning with a search through town for the post office so we can send the tea we bought the previous day to a friend in Shanghai. During our search, we find that Fengqing actually has an old section of town. By old, I mean it looks Communist-era, with most things appearing to be built in the 1950s when the real Communists were around. With the exception of a few white tile buildings (why they built everything to look like a bathroom in the ‘90s is beyond me), everything is built in blocky, imposing, Soviet style).

What’s striking though is how alive the area seems compared to the new section of town where we stayed the night before. The streets are narrow, a single lane in each direction, and everyone is out and about. Street vendors peddle snacks, goldfish, bamboo brooms and anything else someone might be interested in purchasing on the cheap.

There’s even a big mosque, at which we take a quick peak on our way back to the main road. It is one of the unfortunate, white-tile monstrosities of the 90s, complete with cheap, blue, reflective glass windows. Unfortunately, there’s no one around from whom to learn any of the history, so we head back out to the main road and begin climbing.

The road, paved and in good condition once we get out of town, takes us straight up the mountain to the northwest. Below and to our right is the still under-construction highway that will soon make our road obsolete. On it, the occasional car or motorbike climbs over the piles of dirt that have been set up to keep vehicles off, a fairly ubiquitous but ineffective way of closing off roads in this country. Above, our road’s numerous switchbacks snake up the mountain, and the bridges and overpasses for the new highway, held up by tall, concrete columns, cling to the mountain face.

It’s nearly noon by the time we’re crawling up those switchbacks, and just as I’m considering a break to munch on some trail mix, we spot a small tea factory and stop to have a look.

Mr. Li finishes eating lunch before offering the rest to us, by Andy

Inside, the smell of drying tea leaves surrounds us, mixed with a hint of coal and wood smoke. A man in a blue jumper is loading rolled, green tea leaves onto a machine that appears to be wood-fired.

“Hi there! What’s that machine do?” Evan asks.

“It’s the dryer,” the man responds, loading another batch of the rolled leaves on.

The man says we’re free to poke around the factory, and tells us his two coworkers are down below eating lunch.

We walk down a short set of stairs into another room where two machines are rolling up fresh leaves, which are strewn in piles on the dirty floor. Down another flight of stairs we find two more men in blue jumpers eating lunch at a small table in a kitchen-like space.

“Come, sit down,” beckons Mr. Li, a man in his mid-forties with a crew cut, high cheekbones and a vein pulsing on his cheek. We sit down on tiny little stools, and they tell us they’re just finishing up and invite us to finish the rest of their food, which we’re all too happy to do. The other man, surnamed Luo, short, skinny and with slightly greasy hair brushed straight down over his forehead, stands up and returns with a cup each of green tea and black tea for us to try, after which they both return to work.

Mr. Luo sticks rolled leaves into a machine that shakes the crap out of them, by Andy

The green tea is a bit too tannic and bitter for our tastes, but the red is soft and sweet, with a texture almost like milk.

As we eat, the crew-cut Mr. Li returns to chat.

“Where did you learn to make tea?” Evan asks.

“Everyone in a tea village knows something about tea,” Mr. Li responds. “Everyone knows how to grow and harvest tea, most people know how to drink and enjoy tea and quite a few know how to make it.”

Mr. Luo returns and Evan asks who’s the boss in the factory.

“I’ve never even seen the boss,” Mr. Luo chuckles. “He’s in Kunming and just has the factory as an investment.” Knowing how hard it is for all these Western companies like Apple or Nike or anybody else to keep things in order at their Chinese factories and avoid getting cheated, this strikes me as a little crazy.

Before we leave, we ask if we can buy some of the red tea.

“You’ll have to go to the city below for that,” Mr. Li says, “but we’ve got some here for ourselves that I can give you. Hold on.”

A few moments later he’s striding back with a large, zip-lock bag of dark tea leaves, insisting that we take the whole thing. We offer profuse thanks, split the tea into two bags at our bikes, and continue up the mountain.

A man carries a cage to be filled with rocks and used to hold back the river on the under-construction highway into Fengqing, by Andy

We crest the mountain pass at 2,100 meters, which is a new record high for the trip. As we begin our descent, we pass the welcome sight of a blue sig reading “Continuous downhill next 18 kilometers.” I get such conflicting feelings abnout these signs. They always come at a point when I’m dying to do anything but go uphill any longer, but I can never help but think about what a hole we’re going to have to climb out of when we slide into the valley below.

This is certainly no exception. We descend for over 20 km (wait, Chinese signs aren’t accurate?) on gentle turns for which we don’t have to break (my favorite!) into a wide valley covered with green, reflective rice paddies, and then we’re climbing again. We climb for 16 km and gain back most of the altitude we just lost!

The final 30 km is rolling hills, 15 km of which is under construction, but we manage to get in, eat a small second dinner and find a hotel, all before dark.

2010/05/28 — 35km

After a rushed breakfast of baozi (not noodles, finally!), I walk Devi to the bus station to see her off to Dali, where she’ll spend the night before flying to Kunming and then Shanghai for her summer internship at the consulate. It’s sad to see her go, but I’m sure glad she extended her ride with us for as long as she could! If my finances look okay, maybe I’ll even get to fly to Shanghai for a weekend at some point during the summer to see her. If not, she’ll hopefully meet up with us, along with some other friends (everyone’s invited) when we get to Chengdu in mid-July.

After her bus departs, Evan and I hit the road again. It’s not long before we’re following another river the wrong way — up into the mountains.

Today’s ride is short though. We had modified our original route to Baoshan through the mountains of western Yunnan on back-mountain roads in order to get Devi to Yunxian where she could catch an easy bus to Dali. Our new route to Baoshan is on provincial and national roads, and there are two county seats on the route. Since we didn’t have Internet in Yunxian, and we didn’t get enough rest due to birthday shenanigans, we decide to hit both of the county seats and get a hotel with Internet in each.

In no time, we’re pulling into Fengqing, the hallowed home of some of Yunnan’s best black tea, Dianhong (滇红茶). With the early arrival, we plan to do an afternoon of tasting and then ship some back to Shanghai.

We stash our stuff in the best hotel we’ve stayed in for weeks (it even has a sit-down toilet!), grab a bite to eat, and head to a teahouse/shop that we saw on the way into town. The upstairs has private rooms, so we head up there, intending to spend the afternoon drinking tea and writing for the blog.

But as fate would have it, there’s a 160 kuai ($23.43) fee just to sit upstairs (not including whatever you drink!). We walk back down the stairs in a huff. On the wall as we descend, there are four framed, black-and-white photographs of tea-making back in (real) communist times, including pictures of inspections of the tea-making process by party leaders.

“I bet it’s all officials that come here — that’s why the charge so freaking much,” I tell Evan.

When we get downstairs, Evan pokes his head into the main tea tasting room and asks bluntly, “Is your clientele all party officials or something? It’s too expensive up there”

Strangely, we get an honest reply of, “Yep.” Right on. Then the sales manager, taking pity on us we assume, asks us to come in and taste some tea.

Immediately, I notice the wall-display of expensive baijiu to the side of the tasting table. Yep, this is the place where officials come to throw around The People’s money.

We sit down at a large tasting table opposite a young man in charge of the tasting. In the usual fashion, he sets out tiny cups for us, boils water, steeps some tea leaves, and then pours the deep red water all over the cups, tea utensils and anything else in the vicinity that looks like it could use a bath in boiling water. Then he steeps the leaves again and gets down to business, pouring us cup after cup of delicious black tea.

Evan keeps plying the little guy with questions about the tea we’re drinking, the tea-making process and all variety of other tea-related topics, but it’s quickly apparent that he doesn’t know a thing of any value.

“The largest producer of Dianhong black tea is Dianhong Group,” he tells us.

Are they state-owned?

“Yeah, they’re state-owned.”
Are there private producers too?
“Yes.”

Is their tea good?

“Dianhong Group is the largest producer of Dianhong black tea.”

Yeah, but wouldn’t the little guys be better since they’re private and probably care more?

“Obviously Dianhong Group’s tea is the best because it’s the largest producer.”

Okay…how much does the tea we’re drinking cost?

“Umm…” he stammers as he looks around and thinks for a bit. “Three hundred sixty I think. Yeah, three-sixty per kilogram.”

At this point I pick up a bag of green tea on display behind me and see “Dianhong Group” written on the back. It’s the same on all the others.

No wonder this guy doesn’t know a thing about the stuff he’s selling! He’s just an hourly employee of a giant, state-owned company!

This is the first such tea experience we’ve had. Most of the others have been with owners of small, independent shops who know their trade as well as most anyone in mainland China could (much of the art of tea was lost in the years of pure state production, quotas, and all those wonderful things from about 1949-1981), and are just happy to have the opportunity to pass on their knowledge to a couple curious foreigners. The remainder of our tea experiences have been with the actual producers of the stuff.

Evan stands up and begins looking at the teas in the shop and is quickly approached by the sales manager. She’s about a hundred times more knowledgeable than the guy at the table and introduces us to some teas it sounds like we’d like.

Can we taste them?

“No problem!”

I’m a real fan of black tea (in addition to tieguanyin), so it was a real treat for me when they invite us to taste a broad range of their tea (in terms of price point), ranging from 40 kuai ($5.85) per kilo to 590 ($86.39). When our taste buds are finally burnt out and we start to worry about our ability to fall asleep that night, we find we’ve both settled on a tea the company calls Golden Chrysanthemum (金菊紅), and each buy two 300g bags at 56 kuai ($8.20) a piece to send back to Shanghai.

As we turn to walk away, the sales manager says nonchalantly, “And another 100 kuai ($14.63) for the tasting.”

What? You didn’t say anything about a tasting fee up front!

“But you two drank so much tea!”

We go into defensive mode and tell her she’s cheating us.

“Sit back down, drink some more and talk,” she says, I guess hoping that if we drink more we’ll feel like we’re getting a good value out of a 100 kuai tasting fee, which is 50 percent more than you’d pay for a wine tasting in Napa Valley.

We don’t want to sit anymore! We didn’t come here, drink your tea and then leave — we just bought four bags of it!

We run through the whole litany of reasons why it’s insulting and dishonest to slap a tasting fee on as we’re walking out the door. Eventually, she relents a little, saying, “Okay, then it’s up to you,” probably assuming we’ll agree to hand over a 50 or something.

Fine, we say angrily and walk out, the whole experience ruined in a matter of two minutes. There’s the customer service Chinese SOEs are known for!

For days, we can’t stop ranting about the woman and the whole sour experience. That’s the last time we go to a tasting room owned by some behemoth SOE group!