The Hunt for Jade Spring Tea - A Magazine
© September/ October 1995
By David Lee Hoffman

Times are changing in China. Each time I return, I'm astounded at the pace at which it occurs. Shopping has replaced the political rallies. Their hip pockets hold not the Little Red Book of Right Thoughts, but sport the latest digital telephone. Fashion and cosmetics are big. The country is on the move. A five-day work week now gives the people a taste of leisure, something unheard of this past half century. New construction is everywhere and proceeding at a frantic pace. But progress is always a double-edged sword and I'm appalled at the abuse to the environment which it leaves in its wake. Still, I'm glad to be back in China, doing what I love to do best - seeking out and acquiring exceptional teas. Is it my thirst for adventure or my foolish passion for the leaf that leads me through such extremes of pleasure and pain? Maybe it's a divine test of my endurance. Heaven and Hell. The former happens when you find great tea. The latter is what you go through to get it. Doing business in China, even in the best of situations, is always an adventure in itself. Working in areas where they have never seen foreigners adds to the challenge. Patience . . . from years of living and travel in Asia I learn patience, and diplomacy. Both are necessary if you want to survive and continue.

It's now springtime. I've returned to my two favorite areas for green teas, Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. The rains have been very heavy this year, making problems for some of the teas as well as difficulty in getting to them. I'm thankful for bringing along an extra-large green golfer's umbrella, which got used and coveted wherever I went. I'm after the first spring flush, my favorite for the greens. The plants have been sleeping all winter, their dormant period. Though the air is still chilly, the first new buds appear. I watch as agile fingers carefully pick bud after bud, lest they mar their appearance and quality. Some will be steamed. Others will be fried, baked, or simply air dried. They will be manipulated into every imaginable shape and configuration. Some will be turned into Yinzhen Silver Needle, the fabulous white teas typified by its white hairy appearance and delicate taste. They will be given fanciful and colorful names which will add to their charm and mystique. During the next couple of weeks as they leaf out, the plants will be continually picked for their Yi-Ya Yi-Yeh, the one-leaf and one-bud sets which make up the top grades of tea.

Being in the right place at the right time is crucial for finding good tea. Often there's only a window of a day or two for picking the higher grades. I learned how the taste is dependent on so many factors, and what makes teas distinct from one another. The exposure and orientation on the land are important. So are the rainfall and temperature. The high grown Yun-wu Cloud-and-Mist teas tend to have the more succulent leaves. I saw the garden that produced the tea that one top awards in last year's national tea competition (northern exposure, fresh land, and its own microclimate). The time of picking is important as well as the skill of the pickers' hands. But it's the area in hand-processing the leaf which probably puts the biggest feather in China's cap. The Chinese are absolute masters of the art, bar none. There is no comparison. Japan is definitely still on the list of countries making a decent green. But quality tea is hard to find, and often very pricey when you do. In China, there is not only the fine quality, but the variety is as diverse as only the mind can imagine. There's an old proverb which says "even if one lives to a ripe old age, one can never learn all the teas in China." Watching highly skilled hands of a master roll and manipulate the leaf during the processing is always a treat. Dragon Well, for example, requires ten distinct hand movements as the leaf is transformed into a finished product. The real test of any quality leaf is, after steeping, the leaf should appear just as it looked the moment it was picked. Perhaps the single most important factor in good tea is the soil in which it's grown, a point often overlooked with the large commercial farms. Modern petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides have replaced thousands of years of sustainable farming practiced, much to the detriment of good tea and healthy soil. I've witnessed farm after farm with burned-out soil. It's a major problem. I'm very excited to be working on a project with The Tea Research Institute and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Hangzhou, China. We'll work jointly to develop an experimental organic farm and observe the results from using heavy applications of vermin-compost (Nature's finest fertilizer, using earthworms). I have also been invited to be present at the National Tea Tasting, an honor, and an opportunity to taste 250 of the best green teas in China. I hope to single out ten or twelve exceptional teas, then visit those farms to obtain soil samples. These will be properly analyzed for organic content as well as macrobiological and microbial activity. I want to correlate the relationship between healthy soil and good tasting tea. Once documented, this information can be helpful in establishing guidelines for the organic growers.

As yet, there is no official organic certification in China. In fact, most of the organic growers were often poor and almost embarrassed that they couldn't afford modern chemicals! The closest to commercial organic farming is what they call San-wu: the three nos - 1) no chemical fertilizer, 2) no pesticides, 3) no pollution. The tea is grown chemical free but, with time, the soil becomes quite poor, depleted of its nutrients as very little organic matter gets returned to the earth. This is typical of many of the farms I visited. Organizing a communal composting program could provide a rich mulch for the fields. Intercropping rows of tea with legumes and other beneficial plants could also be done with good results. Traditional farming practices, though still popular amongst the remote peasants, are raw and crude, not to mention labor-intensive. But tea grown under these conditions can be some of the best I've ever tasted. Farms are typically small, with their entire harvest amounting to less than ten or fifteen pounds.

I'm so tired of being shown great-looking teas only to be disappointed after tasting them. SO much tea is bought and sold in China solely from its appearance. Seeing the soil and growing methods, it's no wonder most tea lacks vitality. I've had meeting after meeting with the farmers and local officials on the subject of organic growing methods, where I've been know to pound my fist on the table to make a point. The farmers love this. They know the situation. I get along well with them. Somehow we speak the same language. Maybe it's from my twenty years of working with earthworms and being so involved with soil fertility. The farmer's life is not an easy one. Still, they are a cheerful and generous lot and very straightforward. I've always preferred the comforts of a quiet, rustic farmhouse over the pretentiousness of the high-rise modern hotels. This partiality has gotten me into trouble more than once.

Since the Second World War and the Great Cultural Revolution, China's policy has been to re-establish China's position on the world tea market. They planted tea everywhere. Now so much tea is cultivated in China that it has created problems of its own. The surplus is making the farmer poorer. I've seen it sell for as little as $0.10 per pound. The farmer cannot survive on this. I've met farmers who've abandoned their tea gardens and were shining shoes on the streets in town. Now with China's "Free Market Economy" policy, the farmer is no longer obliged to turn over their entire harvest to a government collection agency. It's now possible for the small farmer to grow a little extra leaf to sell on the open market. This is a bittersweet situation. Currently, there is no established market to sell directly to the public or to other wholesalers.

Sometimes, I'll work my way into one of the collection depots, where I am able to intercept the tea directly from the farmer. After this point, the single-farm harvest gets mixed together with everything else, so any exceptional teas becomes lost as it is packed into bales and trucked off to the city. I've rescued a good many leaf in this manner. My timing was perfect. More than forty farmers were coming down from one of my favorite mountains I visited last year. They were all carrying fresh harvests of Jade Spring! Green gold! I struck it rich! This wonderful tea is one of my favorites. It is also the favorite of my eleven-year-old daughter when she's not drinking a pu-erh.

For the next three days I tasted and tasted. But I couldn't seem to find anything as good as what I found last year. Maybe I had just been lucky. This year nothing seemed to stand out. Was it me? Was I losing my taste? Then my Man pulled out a plastic sack: even before he opened it I knew this was it. I could smell it. Who grew this? I shouted. No one knew. This tea had already entered anonymity. I paid Mr. Jiang for all seventeen jin (about 18 pounds), which was all there was, and made arrangements to pick up the tea the following day. I've liked this honest and endearing man ever since the day his lush head got caught on a corner of a tea chest, pulling off a wig, catching everyone by surprise! Next day I was back there to pick up my tea, and he handed my a sack which was not the same tea. I protested. He pulled out another. Nope. And another. Finally he told me it may have gotten mixed in with something else.

Disappointments like this happen from time to time. Sometimes I'll lose a great tea from not moving fast enough on the purchase. Still, I came a long way for Jade Spring. Should I leave town without it? Then I was invited to visit another mountain where Jade Spring is grown. A day away by taxi, we were driven up a windy dirt road to the high mountains in a remote part of China which separated Fujian and Zhejian provinces. I liked this place from the start. Good soil. Good air. Good water. They told me I was the second foreigner they had ever seen. The first was an American pilot who, during WWII, ran out of fuel while trying to reach an airfield thirty minutes away. His plane crashed and the injured pilot was rescued and cared for by the villagers. Some years back, this American returned and treated six of the villagers who had helped him to a trip back to the states as his guest.

After I walked the tea fields, and met with farmers, tea pickers, the local mayor and other officials, and had many long talks, they offered me two mu of land for growing Jade Spring. If that wasn't enough to spark my attention, meeting a local who goes off in the rugged mountains to pick wild tea was. I have a passion for the wild teas (those growing naturally and indigenously in virgin forests), but they are few and far between. I have found them in only four areas in China. I feel they are superior in strength, personality, and character. I liked what he brought me, and have no reason to doubt what I tasted wasn't genuine. Sometimes in my search for wild teas, I am shown samples which I know to be otherwise. Once when a merchant tried to pass off a cultivated variety as wild, I won kudos from the villagers when I correctly identified the strain. These wild teas are the ones I plan to use to propagate for use on the farms which I'm involved with in China. They make an exceptional green tea. Jiukeng teas I now have were taken from wild strains of sinensis that have been under commercial production for more than 30 years.

It is always somewhat of a culture shock to return to town after being in the mountains with the farmers. I this case, it went beyond that. Partly from the excitement of my recent discoveries and new tea connections, and partly from the amusement of the young bus driver who I befriended, insisted on taking me directly back to the hotel through the narrow crowded streets, maneuvering this huge empty bus with just me sitting in back. I was feeling pretty good at all the prospects. The unexpected is always happening in China. Walking into my hotel, I had no idea that I would be greeted by the Secret Police, Foreign Affairs, the Military Officials, and a host of other important-looking characters who proceeded to put me under arrest. After several hours of questioning, with as many ash trays filled with cigarette butts, they finally concluded saying that they were only really concerned for my safety, and if I would kindly turn over all my tapes, film and writings, they'd be sure the matter would be quickly resolved. And so it was. At least for the night. Finally, the last of them left and I poured myself a nice cup of tea.

This article will be continued at a later date.