“I want to see what you think of these.” He tosses the leaves A-ma sent me from the gaiwan even though another ten infusions could be made. “Your maocha is good, as I said, but I personally prefer a naturally long-aged Pu’er. Man becomes wiser and more mature through life experience. The same can be said of tea.”
We sample five teas. Each time, Tea Master Sun guides me through the flavors. “I can brew these particular leaves up to fifteen times. With each new infusion, the taste will change, coming from different parts of the leaf and invigorating different parts of the tongue. Terrace tea is cloned, so the flavor is very consistent, but tea from wild trees is complex and enticing.”
The more I taste, the more captivated I become. The tea itself is physically seducing me. The third tea, he tells me, would cost the equivalent of two hundred yuan for a cup if I drank it in Hong Kong. It’s delicious, but to me it’s not the monetary value that’s important. I know from living in Kunming that this is arbitrary. Do you want a yellow or blue T-shirt, when a decade ago I didn’t even know what a T-shirt was? Guests at the King World Hotel have a peculiar view of value. They refuse to stay in a room if it doesn’t have a sit-down toilet. This took me the longest time to accept, because who would want to sit in the same place where someone else’s rump has been to do your private business?
The tea master once again empties our cups, rinses them, and then brews a new tea. The huigan from my first sip opens my chest so quickly that I feel I might faint. Warmth washes up from my chest and flushes my face. What’s happening to my body feels as potent as those early days when I first fell in love with San-pa.
The tea master chortles at my reaction. “Is it smooth?” he asks. “Does it have good qi—life energy? Examine your emotions. You’re hearing nature sing through the leaf.”
“The taste is light—like dew on flower petals,” I say. “Elegant—”
“Elegant! You’re right! This is Truly Simple Elegant tea. Have you tasted it before?” When I shake my head, he continues. “I thought you might have. Eleven years ago, a certain Mr. Lü from Taiwan went to Luoshuidong, then an isolated village in the tea mountains.”
That was a year before Mr. Huang came to Spring Well.
“Mr. Lü wanted to make a batch of tea from old trees in the traditional style,” the tea master goes on. “He found a retired tea master. He—”
“Mr. Lü?” I interrupt. “Are you sure you have the correct name, country of origin, village, and year?”
Tea Master Sun gives me a dismissive look. “Yes, and I’ve met Mr. Lü many times, which is how I came to buy several of his cakes.”
Could there have been two men around the same time doing the same thing?
“Have you ever heard of another tea that was made—”
The tea master cuts me off. “The world of tea is very small, so I know the tea of which you speak. I have some of that too. If it had been the only tea made after so many years, it would have become iconic. But Mr. Lü used leaves solely from Luoshuidong. As I said earlier, leaves from Nannuo Mountain are good and one day they’ll be prized, but for now they cannot compete—taste to taste—with Truly Simple Elegant. However”—he leans forward to confide—“the creator of the tea you mentioned has a separate vintage which he has not shared with anyone. He made just two tea cakes . . .”
The ones I processed using the leaves from the mother tree.
“Rumor has it that the man who made them has not even tasted tea brewed from those cakes,” he says. “If they’re so special, then he should share them with people who’ll appreciate them, no?”
This topic is making ghost spiders crawl along my arms and legs.
“Now for one last tea,” he announces. “Before Liberation, our province had many private labels for making tea. After Liberation, we had just four state-owned tea companies. One of them was in Menghai.”
“The tea collection center where I grew up sent all of its leaves there—”
“This is called Hong Yin—Red Label—and it was the first batch to be made after Liberation,” he continues over me. “A single cake like this one, forty-five years old, sold this year for eighty-five thousand yuan. That’s over ten thousand U.S. dollars! Now we will try it.”
The color of the brew is rich and dark with mystery. The first flavor is peppery, but that fades to divine sweetness. The history of my people shimmers in my bones. With every sip, it’s as if I’m wordlessly reciting the lineage. I’m at once merged with my ancestors and with those who’ll come after me. I grew up believing that rice was to nourish and that tea was to heal. Now I understand that tea is also to connect and to dream. That seduction is deeper and more profound than could happen with any man.
Tea Master Sun seems to comprehend that I’m being transformed, yet his words are as colorless as can be. “So, Pu’er. Tell us what you know about it.”
The minute he asks this question, I understand two things. First, I want this opportunity so much more now. Second, I may be the lone applicant from a hill tribe and unacceptable to the others on the panel, but the tea master is the only person in the room who matters.
“Not everyone is looking for aged Pu’er these days,” I answer. “They want raw Pu’er—maocha—because it’s considered healthier and richer in cultural meaning. Still, no matter how a person looks at Pu’er—raw, artificially fermented, naturally aged, young tree, old tree, ancient tree, wild tree, cultivated tree—no one is throwing away tea after six months any longer. Everyone agrees: the older the better.”
“You’re telling me two contradictory ideas.”
“Two contradictory ideas can exist at the same time. Maybe more than two.”
He laughs; the others don’t.
“You asked why I look so young,” I say. “Would it be too bold of me to ask your theory?”
He sweeps his arm around the room, echoing the welcome style. “Everyone here knows why. You drink Pu’er. If all women in our country followed your regimen, we would have the most beautiful women in the world.”
The two women on the panel give me sour looks, and the tea girls blush, but the master isn’t done.