Someone must have told Mr. Huang about my grove or A-ma’s special tea, because not a day goes by that he doesn’t ask, “When are you going to take me to your tea trees, young lady?” or “I hear your trees are the oldest,” or “People say your mother provides the best cures on the mountain. Tell me, where do they come from? Your trees?” Aware of his entreaties, A-ma doesn’t allow me to give him even a single leaf.
I have no time to miss San-pa, but I carry thoughts of him always. I have no time to spend with Ci-teh, but I catch glimpses of her here and there. I might smile in her direction, and she’ll wave back. Or Mr. Huang will ask her to do something, and I have to translate as though she’s just another villager instead of my best friend. I have no opportunity to explain myself, because I’m always at Mr. Huang’s side. In the mornings, his little boy stays close, and he so quickly picks up Akha words and phrases that I think soon Mr. Huang won’t need my help any longer. In the afternoons, the boy rests in the women’s side of our house. (Even though A-ma doesn’t care for the father, she’s become quite fond of Xian-rong, brewing him tea, and letting him stay with her when he needs to nap or requires a break from his father’s obsession. “All Akha love their sons,” A-ma observes, “but that man would take a life for his boy.”) We also have a newcomer to our village—the tea master from Yiwu whom A-ma had recommended without considering that he might come here. Tea Master Wu is nearly blind, but he seems to know what he’s doing.
Mr. Huang and Tea Master Wu inspect each family’s baskets as they enter the village. Sometimes people bring leaves from trees they claim to be eight hundred years old. Some are; most aren’t. Some promise that the leaves have grown in a completely natural environment. Again, some are; most aren’t. Mr. Huang has an uncanny ability to see through the layers of declarations and lies.
The next step is a period of wilting. “So the brittle stems can soften,” he explains, “while increasing resilience in the leaves and buds.” Then comes “killing the green.” Wood fires are set under woks stationed outside our homes. One family member stokes the fire, while another tosses and turns the leaves in the wok. It’s hot and very hard work, and lasts long into the night. Then the leaves are dropped into flat baskets and kneaded. This is even harder work. By the next morning, the leaves are ready for their sunbath. “So they can absorb that great orb’s fragrance,” he tells us.
Most families decide that the area just outside their homes is perfect because it’s flat, but the dogs, cats, chickens, and pigs all come nosing around, pawing, scratching, and doing who knows what else right on the exposed leaves. Others ignore the sun requirement and lay mats in their houses, where people are living, eating, and doing the intercourse, smoke fills the rooms, and kids are picking their noses, drooling, and crying. At the end of three days, each batch of twenty kilos of fresh tea leaves has been reduced to five kilos of what Mr. Huang calls maocha—raw tea made from the leaves of trees. Then comes the most tedious chore: sorting. Every woman and girl in Spring Well joins in this activity, sitting in groups around large woven trays to sort through every single leaf—one at a time!—to remove those that are yellow or otherwise defective.
At this point, Mr. Huang and the tea master divide the tea so it can undergo two separate processes to create two separate test batches. The first process is for natural fermentation. The highest-grade leaves are wrapped in muslin, which is tied into a distinctive knot, steamed, and pressed under a heavy stone into a flat cake round in shape. Once this is done, the cake is placed on a rack with other cakes to dry. In a day or so, the cakes are individually wrapped in paper on which we’ve printed a design from woodblocks. These are bound together in sets of seven to seal in the flavors but still allow the tea to breathe. The tea is now ready to be stored to ferment naturally.
Mr. Huang is striving for something none of us have heard of—huigan, mouth feel or returning flavor. “The taste should be slightly bitter as the tea first enters your mouth, then will come the cool minty sensation that will linger on the sides of the tongue and open the chest, followed by a fragrance that will rise back up from the throat,” he explains. “I’m hoping for specific flavors and scents to emerge: orchid, lotus, camphor, apricot, or plum.” Time will tell if any of that happens.
The second method is for experimenting with artificial fermentation.
“We don’t have time to wait decades for our tea to ripen,” Mr. Huang says, “but I have a solution for that. Artificial fermentation was invented in Kunming almost twenty years ago. We’ll use those techniques, and invent some of our own, to make the perfect Pu’er.”
His enthusiasm never ebbs, but the results are disastrous. The sun-dried tea leaves are gathered into big piles, water is splashed on them, and then the whole mess is blanketed with cloth. The piles are uncovered every so often, the tea turned, more water sprinkled, and everything covered again. The stink! Like rotting forest undergrowth. Every so often, Mr. Huang and Tea Master Wu make a tea from one of the piles. They are less than satisfied. Mr. Huang calls some of the tea “too earthy,” an insult we know all too well. Some piles smell like ox dung. Others are as moldy and foul as the armpits of a man’s tunic at the height of monsoon season. One pile even catches fire!
The only thing we can do to his standards is provide springwater for brewing. “Springwater provides a flavorless flavor.”
When A-ba says, “How fortuitous,” I know he means, Whatever the stranger says is fine, so long as he keeps opening his money pockets.
Our water is acceptable, but we have to learn how to heat it! Mr. Huang lectures from The Classic of Tea, which, he tells us, was written in the eighth century by Lu Yü, “the greatest tea master the world has known.” Mr. Huang instructs us on what to look out for. “First, the heating water should look like fish eyes and give off barely a hint of sound. In the second stage, the water should look like pearls strung together and chatter at the edges of the pot like a bubbling spring. Water has reached the perfect stage when it leaps and foments like the ocean and sounds like waves crashing on the shore . . .”
In the end he has taught us nothing, because what do we know of pearls, the ocean, or waves?