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. (more…)
