Chapter 8

Hey you! Before reading this, you should know that Turkish tea is the best tea in the world and Melon’s place is the best place to have some. 🙂 Now let’s read Le’s story. 

When I was a kid I would sometimes make tea for my dad, especially when he was too busy to do so himself. He had a teapot that was big enough for four cups. And four cups was about what he needed for a small conversation, or a few cigarettes when he was alone. Dad kept his tea in this small round metal container which started out life as a tin full of flower-shaped cookies. To the ten-year-old me, it was a disagreeable little thing. Its green paint had badly faded over the years. There were noticeable dents from the countless of scrapes and knocks. And it did not give up the tea easily. I often needed all my strength to pry the lid open before scooping out the tea. Coincidentally, the right amount for the teapot was precisely what I could comfortably hold in one hand. Some people measure out their lives with coffee spoons. I measured my dad’s quiet mornings, his ashtray, his books, and his guests with the little palm of mine.

           Anyway, it was the kind of black tea that didn’t get packaged into bags so each time I opened that metal container, I could actually see the individual tea leaves which of course looked nothing like leaves. That is because in becoming tea, they go through a transformation process which I have since learned isn’t all that kind and gentle. The leaves first get plucked, left to wither, then rolled, fermented, and, at the very end, dried by fire. It never occurred to me why tea had to be subjected to such cruelty. But I suppose that’s how tea comes to be, with all its bitterness and sweet.  

            All true teas start with the same plant, Camellia sinensis, not unlike the way different types of wine are made from the same grapes. What determines their flavor and shade, be it white, green, oolong, or black tea, lies in the intricacies of the tea making process. And among them, those of black tea are perhaps the most fascinating.

            Not all leaves are made into tea. Tea pickers pluck only the newest and most tender part which is always two leaves and a bud. The delicate shoots are grasped lightly between the tip of the thumb and middle finger and in a deft, downward movement, broken off from the plant. Though machines have been used for years, much of tea picking is still done manually today. There isn’t a substitute for the trained human eyes and hands when it comes to selecting and preserving the delicate tea leaves. Of course, there are tales from the ancient times telling of old horses being sent up to the mountains where they would eat certain tea leaves and drink from certain streams. Once the horses climbed back down, they were killed and the leaves were retrieved from their stomachs, prized for their aroma and taste. Now I don’t know whether these stories were true, but I suspect the old saying that desire is the root of suffering may apply to tea drinking as well. But that’s another matter.

            The tea plant was first domesticated some four thousand years ago in the temperate regions of the Far East. While the plant was eventually brought to other parts of the world, it remains partial to the climate of its origin. This is where tea grows best: on gently sloping hills, with misty days and cool nights. And if one should ever set eyes on such a hill, they will no doubt be drawn to the lush green of tea bushes and the pickers’ paths ever winding ever dividing into a fine dark maze. Here on these hills, the soils and air gradually shape the tea’s flavor. Thus, tea owes the layers of its sweetness not only to what it internally holds true but also to the sun, rain, and the many unsuspecting elements that chance upon its leaves. But tea plants can sometimes be found in the harsher conditions of colder climate and higher grounds. Up here, people have learned that the plants need a few more seasons to mature, that they are hardy beings which can grow as high as nine feet and live up to a hundred years. That they are capable of developing a poison when attacked by certain pests. That the additional time, the thin air, and the occasional frost somehow produce more complex flavor, and that the poison, harmless to humans, only makes tea that much deeper in its fragrance and note.

            So each region is said to leave in tea subtle traces which only give themselves up to the more discernable drinkers among us. I once heard a story about this wealthy man who loved tea so much that he devoted his life to the pursuit of its finest flavors. There were always rumors about another kind of tea, one more delightful and elusive than the last, and he set his mind to find them all. After years of indulgence, the man eventually saw his fortune squandered, his family broken, and himself reduced to a penniless beggar. Not convinced he had found the best tea there was, he spent his twilight days wandering from town to town, searching. One morning the old beggar came upon a teahouse. The teahouse owner, though repulsed by his dirty appearance, took pity once he noticed the beggar’s old age. He offered the poor man food but the latter politely declined and asked whether he could “join other patrons in enjoying the house’s finest tea” instead. The teahouse owner obliged and poured him a cup. To his surprise, the beggar again declined, and with a timid smile indicated he would rather brew the tea himself. After settling at a table, the beggar untied his sack, and brought out a small but strikingly beautiful tea set wrapped in several layers of clean cloth. Half amused and half curious what trick this beggar was up to, the teahouse owner gave him tea, a kettle, and a small coal burning stove. The old man brought water to a perfect boil, rinsed out his teapot, and set about brewing. Seeing the old man gracefully pouring the deep honey-color liquid into a handsome teacup, no one saw the same pitiful beggar that had walked through the door moments earlier. The old man drank his first cup then a second. At this point, he turned to the teahouse owner and thanked him for his kindness. After placing his tea set back in the sack, the old man said to the teahouse owner that while he did not wish to complain, he thought the tea was “somewhat sullied by hints of old grains”. Everyone thought the beggar was simply mad and paid him no mind after he left. That very afternoon, however, the teahouse owner was startled when he spotted several pieces of rice husk previously hidden within the clay of the tea container which his helper had carelessly knocked over and shattered.

            When I think of this story, I sometimes wonder what the old man must have thought in his dying moments when nothing was left to trade for his love of tea. And did he ever find what he was looking for? Was it all worth it? But I then remember there is another kind of tea found in the slum on the edge of my city. Here is the place for the poorest of the poor and tea is often of the lowest quality, brewed in the rain water trickling down the corrugated aluminum roofs. The tea carries in its taste the harshness of metal, of smoggy air, and of life on the fringe. Outside, the blinding rain for a brief moment interrupts all movements and sounds. Inside, the steam slowly rises from the humble tea cup and someone finds it just as sweet as any tea ever was.

            And so it is only appropriate that the one chapter of tea history filled with tall tales of kings and princesses is also one of untold hardship. That is the story of the tea porters who traveled the tea trade routes between China and Tibet for over a thousand years. Tea porters were not the first to introduce tea to Tibet, however. It was the Tang dynasty princess Wen Cheng, who brought tea with her when she married the Tibet king Songtsen Gampo in A.D. 641. Until then, the common beverages in the cold Tibet had only been snow melt, yak milk, and barley alcohol. Tea quickly became a staple drink among the common Tibetans. As the demand for tea grew, so did the tea trade route connecting Tibet with the tea-growing provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan of China. The route, later known as the Southern Silk Road, was an ancient trail that once stretched almost 1,400 miles. It was the highest and harshest trail in Asia, one that, in Mark Jenkins’ beautiful words, “marched up out of China’s verdant valleys, traversed the wind-stripped, snow-scoured Tibetan Plateau, forded the freezing Yangtze and Salween Rivers, sliced into the mysterious Nyainqen Tanglha Mountains, ascended four deadly 17,000-foot passes, and finally dropped into Lhasa, the holy Tibetan city”. On one end, tea was abundant. On the other there were hides, silver, medicines, and Nancheng, the inexhaustible and sure-footed Tibetan horse. They were bred for snowy oxygen-starved passes and coveted by the Chinese. For the next 1,300 years, men and women traversed this trail to bring tea to Tibet and came back with horses. They were the tea porters.

            Although Tibetan tea began as a foreign import, it soon adopted a local flavor. According to tradition, tea leaves which have been packed into bricks prior to their travels from China, are crumbled then boiled in water for up to half day until the liquid assumes a dark brown color. This tea concentrate is strained through a horse-hair colander. To serve, the tea is heated and transferred to a mixer to which great deal of salt and fresh yak butter is added. The tea is then churned until a thick, creamy, almost soup-like consistency is achieved. Nomadic Tibetans drink tea daily. Mixed with toasted barley flour and milk curds, the tea is packed with fat and calories which keep the drinkers warm and alert in the highest region on earth known for its thin air and brutally cold winter. Tea became a symbol of enlightenment, too. After Songtsen Gambo introduced Buddhism to his empire, Tibetans monks made tea drinking a daily and sacred ritual. At its height during the 15th century, the Drepung monastery in Lhasa had almost 8,000 monks. Each day, a hundred monks would work in the tea kitchen where they made tea in seven iron cauldrons from six to ten feet in diameter imbedded in giant wood-fired stone hearth. The cauldrons, a relic from a distant past, remain there today.

           The tea bound for Tibet was, and still is, made from the plant’s large tough leaves, twigs and stems. It is the most bitter and least smooth of all teas. After several cycles of steaming and drying, the tea is mixed with gluey rice water, pressed into molds, and dried. Bricks of tea which weighed up to six pounds, were sewn into waterproof yak-skin cases ahead of the porters’ long journey through the inhospitable Southern Silk Road. Tea porters traveled on foot, carrying these bricks with a wooden frame on their back. The frame was connected to a long vertical metal-tipped crutch. The tea porters used the crutch for balance while walking. And by staking it to the ground, they could also rest and lean back without having to lay down the frame. Where they once stopped, the cobblestone paths still bear the evidence of hundreds of thousands of tea porters who trod this trail: the water-filled divots left by these metal crutches.

            Each porter carried a load that was regularly approached their own body weight. A typical porter had about 120 pounds of tea atop of their frame while a particularly strong person could sometimes bear as much as 200 pounds which they would barter for two horses. Poor Chinese laborers who could not afford to own land and grow rice often ended up as tea porters. They endured the harsh weather, the bandits, and the backbreaking work of bringing tea to Tibet. Tea porters were also the connectors of two clashing cultures and two peoples who have harbored hatred towards each other for as long as their own history. The tea porters witnessed the Tibet-China border war that began soon after king Songtsen Gampo’s marriage and lasted for the next 200 years. They witnessed Tibet gaining autonomy during the Yuan dynasty and losing it some 600 years later when the Qing Emperor invaded the country. When the Qing dynasty fell in early 20th century, Tibet briefly found independence until the Chinese occupation four decades later. China’s Great Leap Forward campaign in 1960 ended the agrarian Tibetan economy, bringing famine and the destruction of the remaining tea trade. The porters used the trail for the final time in 1966, closing a chapter of tea history that spans over a thousand years during which empires stood and fell, and wars were declared and fought.

             To produce black tea, several distinct steps are required. First, the freshly harvested leaves are left to wither in direct sunlight. Traditionally, leaves are spread across large bamboo trays in open areas so they can react with the moving air around them. Withering marks the beginning of a transformation process in which the tea leaves gradually lose their bright green color, along with their sharp and coppery taste. As this process is long, patience is needed. Depending on the air temperature, withering can take anywhere from 8 to 18 hours. During this time, leaves are gently fluffed and turned. Withering, as unpleasant as the word may sound, reduces the water content, thus softening the fragile leaves and making them pliable. Without it, they would shatter and crumble later. Once the leaves have been sufficiently softened, tea makers roll, press, and twist them across hessian mats. Rolling gives the leaves a new shape. This is why the ten-year-old me could never understand why tea looked the way it did: dried, dark, twisty, and not unlike the small earth worms that occasionally strayed onto our concrete yard and died in the summer sun. Another reason for rolling is that it breaks down the cell walls of the leaf, exposing the enzymes and oils. Next, the leaves are left in a warm and moist environment to begin the fermentation process. Fermentation breaks down chlorophyll and releases tannin, which causes the leaves to appear deep brown. Only during this stage does black tea finally reveal the warmth and depth of its flavor and aroma. To stop the fermentation, tea is fired. This is the last step of tea production which can be achieved by either sun drying, pan-firing, or baking. Depending on the type of heat applied, firing can also lend additional flavor characteristics. In firing, the leaves are subjected to high temperatures until they turn black and there isn’t much moisture left. The original color and shape are not completely lost, however. Once the tea is brewed, the twists and knots gently unwind. Some of the green hue comes back, reminding us what was once so lush and full on those hills.

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Sep, 2020