When I enter my apartment, I find a note from Teacher Guo, asking me to visit him immediately. He breaks away from dinner with his family to give me the news. Of the two thousand people who applied, I’m the only student accepted into both programs. I’m ecstatic. I sell my moped and most of my belongings so I’ll have money to live on without taking an extra job to support myself.
For the next twelve months, I’m rarely apart from Tea Master Sun. In the first track, he teaches me how to buy raw tea, store it, and let nature do its job of aging. I learn to judge the minutes required for wilting, killing the green, kneading, the sunbath, and fermentation. (I’ve had a head start on some of these things, which gives me an advantage over the other students.) In the second track, I study the best qualities of tea so that one day I might become a tea master myself, like—and here’s my first French word—a wine sommelier.
“Taste requires a lifetime of dedication,” Tea Master Sun instills in me. “You have a simple palate shaped by your childhood, cultivated by mountain springs, and enriched by the soil. I like this about you, but you must learn subtlety and refinement. You’ll stumble and make mistakes, but as long as you’re humble and honest, you’ll learn. You love tea. I see it in your face. Always remember If you don’t love tea, you can’t make good tea.”
Nothing romantic grows between my tea master and me, but after months of being around him the last of the sadness and loneliness I’ve felt about the past dissipates like clouds after a storm. When I look back at my life—all twenty-six years of it—I see the many men who’ve helped me, but none of them will ever be as important as Tea Master Sun, who opens my eyes, heart, and soul. The things he teaches me range from the practical to the spiritual.
“Confucius taught his followers that tea could help people understand their inner dispositions,” he tells me, “while Buddhists grant tea the highest spiritual qualities, ranking it among the four ways to concentrate the mind, along with walking, feeding fish, and sitting quietly. They believe tea can link the realms of meditation. Just the physical process we experience when we drink tea—our search for huigan—causes us to turn inward and reflect as the liquor coats our tongues, shimmers down our throats, and then rises again as fragrance. The Daoists see tea as a way to regulate internal alchemy, be in harmony with the natural world, and serve as an ingredient in the elixir of immortality. Together, these three disciplines have taught us to look upward to see the state of the heavens and downward to observe the natural arrangement of the earth. But whatever you believe or however you view life, the quality and goodness of a tea are for the mouth to decide.”
My mouth does learn to find the best flavors, distinguish the body (light or heavy), discern texture (like water or velvet), as well as detect the most disagreeable notes—chalky, dusty, and rancid, or petroleum, disinfectant, and plastic. I become adept at identifying the differences between Pu’er, Iron Goddess of Mercy, Dragon Well, Silver Needle, and White Peony teas by taste alone. I study auction prices and have seen how values change and surge. In 2001, a special Iron Goddess of Mercy sold for 120,000 yuan, but just one year later a three-year-old Pu’er sold for 168,000 yuan. Two years ago, in 2004, when the yuan was at a historic high against the U.S. dollar, a mere three grams of a Pu’er once stored in the Palace Museum sold for 12,000 yuan—thirty-two times the price of gold! And now, just as I’m graduating, another 100 grams of Pu’er has sold for 220,000 yuan or about $28,000.
How can I not rejoice in my good fortune in living with this particular leaf, celebrate my knowledge of it, and show courage in revealing it to others? It’s time for me to start “plucking the hills and boiling the oceans” by entering the tea trade, and I have many options to choose from in Kunming alone. More than four thousand wholesale and retail tea dealers, as well as countless teahouses, have sprung up in the city like frogs after the monsoon. But before I can apply to any of those establishments, Tea Master Sun presents me with an offer from a business that wants to invest in the future of Pu’er by bankrolling a shop in the Fangcun Tea Market in Guangzhou, the largest wholesale tea market in China. “They’ll put up the capital—not much, but enough to rent a space and buy product—and you’ll produce the sweat and have all the worry,” Tea Master Sun explains. “You’ll make money on commission until you’ve paid back the initial investment. Then you’ll own the business fifty-fifty. I don’t think you’ll find an opportunity better than that.”
Who can question fate? Bad things happened to me; then my fortunes turned when I went to the trade school and Pu’er Tea College. Now another propitious moment blossoms before me. Perhaps what the Han majority say is true: Good luck comes in threes. I sign the contract with Green Jade, Ltd., on my tea master’s advice.
Before taking the train to Guangzhou, I write a note to Teacher Zhang:
Please ask Ci-teh, my family, and our neighbors to find me the best teas, and I will sell them.
Birthday letter to Constance from Haley, March 1, 2006
Dear Mom,
I am ten years old. Dad is sixty years old. And today you turned fifty years old. We all have zeroes in our ages. I think that’s cool. Zero is my favorite number.
I like skiing with you. I like riding horses with you. You drive me lots of places. You let me and my friends eat lots of ice cream! Jade and Jasmine like you a lot. You also take us to the movies. You let us talk in the backseat of the car and don’t tell us to be quiet like Jade’s mom. You help me with the computer. I like science just like you.
You are the best mom in the world. No other mom could have taken her daughter to the Observatory to look through the telescope, like you took me, when no one else was there. I love you as much as the whole universe.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
Haley
THE SWEETEST DEW OF HEAVEN