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| Monday, 19 July 2004 |
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Brewing a revolution by Erling Hoh,Beijing, Mingyuewan and Huangshan Prices for China's top teas have never been higher as the new rich embrace the country's oldest brew. But is talk of a tea renaissance just a case of hype and slick marketing? "At a table of spirits, the more you talk, the more muddled things become," says Kong Di, Manager of the Bi Shui Dan Shan Teahouse in Beijing. "At a table of tea, the more you talk, the more clear things become."
Kong may be crusading in her own cause, but in the past couple of years, upmarket teahouses such as the Bi Shui Dan Shan have indeed been sprouting up all over Beijing and across the rest of China. "The renaissance of Chinese tea culture is just beginning," says Li Su Qin, general manager of the Yi Qing Quan Tea-house, another trendy place in Beijing where you can shares $ 200 pot of 30-year-old aged Pu Er tea while soaking up the mellow notes of the guzheng - a Chinese table harp - skilfully played by one of the waitresses. "Many businessmen like the atmosphere. Nobody speaks loudly here," says Li. Down on Malian Street in southwestern Beijing, Northern China's main tea market. Hong Zhi, General Manager of the Durdas tea company, is piloting his operation through the shoals of a cutthroat environment - some 800 tea shops lining one single street, all vying for the cups of Northern China's tea drinkers. "Three to five years ago, you heard a lot of people talk about the power of the Japanese tea ceremony. You don't hear that anymore," says Hong, pointing to this as another sign that Chinese tea culture is coming into its own. "Everything is more refined. We don't use tap water anymore, for example. We use mineral water." For all the talk of the Starbucks generation, China, the home of tea, is embracing its favourite brew as never before. Between 1980 and 2003, total tea production in China grew from 300 million tonnes to 760 million tonnes. China is the world's third-largest producer of tea, after India and Sri Lanka, and the third-largest exporter after Sri Lanka and Kenya. At the same time, the price of tea sold domestically has risen considerably Since. 1990, the average price of Wulong tea, a half-fermented tea produced in Southern Fujian province, has tripled. And at showcase tea auctions, nouveaux riches eager to display their wealth have been digging deep into their pockets: At a tea auction in Guangzhou in 2002, 100 grams of Pu Er tea sold for $20,000. The latest tea trend in Bijing? Since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis last year, the capital's dwellers are abandoning flower-scented teas, such as Jasmine, for green tea, traditionally associated with good health. Last year, the average price for flowers-scented teas on Malian Street dropped by 30%, to less than $19 per kilogram. That's good news for people like Cai Guoping, production manager for the San Wan Chang Tea Company, and his team of some 500 tea-pickers in the village of Mingyuewan, which is located on Xishan Island in Taihu Lake not far from Suzhou. The tea produced here is known as Biluochun, and is the most dedicate of all green teas. Originally cultivated by the monks of the Shuiyue monastery, the tea bushes are grown among orchards of peach, apple, Chinese Chestnut, gingko and red dayberry, which lend the tea a subtle, fruity aroma. Biluochun is picked in early March, one bud and leaf at a time, before they reach the size of one centimetre. "Eighty thousand people work on the Biluochun harvest here in Xishan and Dongshan every March and April," says Cai Guoping. In a day's work, a tea-picker can harvest no more than a kilo of fresh leaves, which explains why the price for one kilo of top-grade Biluochun, containing some 150,000 leaves is about $750. Behind such high prices, though, some critics argue that China's tea renaissance has more to do with hype, slick marketing, elegant packaging and snobbery rather than any real improvement in the taste and quality of the tea. Indeed, in their race to riches, says Tseng Yu Hui, proprietor of the up market La Maison des Toris Thes teashop in Paris, some of China's tea growers and merchants have been sidelining a paramount concern: The safety of their produce and the health of their customers. In recent years, large shipments of Chinese tea containing excessive amounts of pesticide traces have been impounded by European Union customs officials. A chemical analysis of 60 teas conducted at the behest of the French consumer magazine Que Choisir showed that only 16 teas contained no or little traces of pesticides and lead. One green tea from Zhejiang province contained 1.17 milligrams of the pesticide fenvalerate per 1,000 grams, 23 times higher than the EU limit. Thus, while China's tea exports to advanced countries such as Japan and Germany have declined in recent years, exports to less-developed countries such as Morocco, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan have been growing at a swift pace, prompting concerns that China is dumping unsafe produce in places that don't have the capability and wherewithal to protect consumers. Morocco, China's biggest tea customer overall, purchased 49,000 tons of green tea for a total value of $ 75 million from China in 2003. In the same year, exports of green tea to Mauritania grew by 88 per cent and to Afghanistan by 77 per cent. Increasingly, Chinese consumers have also begun to worry about the injurious effects of pesticide residue and heavy metals in their food and drink. Spotting the emerging trend for 'green' foodstuffs, Hong Zhi of Durdas converted a tea plantation near Huangshan to organic cultivation a few years ago. Here, Durdas cultivates the popular green tea Huangshan Maofeng, which has a leaf that curls up to resemble a sparrow's tongue. Every spring, young, female tea pickers fan out over the hillsides, gathering up to 5,000 kilograms of organic tea. The leaves are carefully divided into 14 different grades of quality. For his top-grade leaf, Hong charges $90 per kilo. The lowest grade sells for $8. Hong is not alone. In tea-growing regions all over China, tea growers are expanding their tea farms, improving production techniques, and experimenting with improved varieties. In Hangzhou, for example, a new variety of the famous Longjing tea now allows the region's tea growers to harvest the spring tea one month earlier than before. And down in southern Yunan province, not far from the Burmese border, Zheng Yue, director of the Menghai Tea Factory, seems to enjoy the repose that comes with a full order book. Since 1939, the state-owned Menghai factory has been producing Pu Er tea, a smooth, dark, aged big-leaf tea popular in Tibet and southern Guangdong province. Prized for its mellow taste, and drunk both as an aperitif and a digestive, Pu Er has been enjoying a vogue of popularity and exorbitant prices in China, Taiwan and Japan in recent years. Wealthy connoisseurs and collectors can pay tens of thousands of dollars for rare, aged Pu Er. In the old days, the Menghai Tea Factory sent its best tea to the leaders in Beijing, but times have changed. "We don't send tea to Beijing any more," says Zheng. "They can come here and buy it." (Courtesy - Far Eastern Economic Review) |
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Produced by Lake House |
To hear Kong tell it, a renaissance in tea culture is changing the way
China's entrepreneurs do business. Out are boisterous, red-faced baijiu
banquets and boozy contract signings in the small hours of the morning. In
is cool Hainan huanghuali furniture, purple-clay yixing teapots, fragrant
dongding wulong tea, and the serene, composed ambience these accoutrements
combine to create.
