It has been twenty years since I first became obsessed with Chinese tea and it has not lost any of its magic pull for me throughout the years. In fact, I am probably even more obsessed today than I was twenty years ago. Although I have had other obsessions in my life, Chinese tea is the longest running one. It has to do with mystery. Mysteries are always rooted in questions and problems to solve. I love questions. Questions are what sets life in motion for me.
The first questions came when my close friend, Wang Weizi, gave me some green tea that his dad had sent him from China. Weizi was doing graduate work at the University of Arizona. He was from central Zhejiang Province and was a member of the first generation of students to go to college after Mao’s cultural revolution. When I drank Weizi’s tea, my first question was, “Is this really tea?” My second question quickly followed: “Why have I never tasted this before?”
It was not because I had never traveled to Asia before, and it was not that I had never had green tea before. I had certainly gone to enough sushi restaurants to have consumed plenty of Japanese green tea, and I was a San Francisco transplant who had spent plenty of time in the best-known Chinatown in the world. Before then, I had even been to Hong Kong. But this Chinese green tea was so different and compelling that I was shocked that it had somehow managed to elude me.
Of course, I wanted more, which very quickly led me to another shocking awareness. In the global market of the early 1990’s with China having been open to the West for almost twelve years, I was still not able to get tea this good anywhere in the U.S. How was that possible? I wasn’t thinking about this anomaly from a business point of view, or even from an economics frame of reference; it was more of a cultural shock. I had thought in America, if you had the money, there was practically nothing you could not buy.
So I started learning a little Chinese and traveling to China. In those days, the bicycle was still the dominant mode of transportation, and the roads out to the countryside were rough, if they existed in paved form at all. It took a long time to get out to the places where tea was produced, but I wanted to secure myself a stash of tea, without which, the quality of my life would have seemed greatly diminished. I had no interest in buying tea other than for my own selfish pleasure and to share with my friends and family. That gave me the advantage of naivety, because going out to meet the producers is not how business is done, not then or now.
I got to meet a lot of great producers, and because I was the only foreigner ever to make it out to the countryside, I got to meet a lot of other people as well, including the local government officials, some of whom have become very powerful over the years. It is not possible to be really competent doing business in China without having strong government relationships (guanxi) from the village level to the national level.
Two questions came up for me during this period:
- Why were there so many tea companies saying they were doing direct sourcing, yet whereever I went, according to the locals who had no reason to lie, no foreigners had been around at all?
- Why were tea producers everywhere – not just in China – not revealed, but rather kept as a trade secret?
I could not understand this at all. If it were fine wine, the producers would be marketed and would be famous and sought after.
I am glad that I didn’t know what I was doing back then, or Seven Cups would not exist today. Even though China has been open for trade for 35 years and has become the second largest global economy, if you want to get good Chinese tea in the U.S. or Europe you still have to search out small companies like Seven Cups. Why should it be so hard to get good Chinese tea?
We are not talking about a lost painting by a dead painter, or some rare violin. We are talking about tea, and tea that could be purchased by people in China. Astounding still, even as tea sales in the U.S. have skyrocketed over the last ten years, and the U.S. has become the biggest importer of tea in the world, fine Chinese tea remains elusive for American consumers. In fact, America has become obsessed with green tea for health reasons, and a lot of very bad green tea gets sold in America every year. So much so that most Americans see it as a medicine that has to be endured for better health, even though it is an awful experience for them. How crazy is that?
Here are some more questions that I find fascinating:
- If China is where tea originates and China has the most developed tea-making techniques and the largest variety of teas in the world, why does China play such an insignificant role in the international market?
- Why doesn’t the international market adhere to Chinese standards for judging the quality of tea?
- Why is tea education outside of China so limited when there are many universities in China that offer advanced degrees in tea science and culture?
- Why do foreign companies still follow the sourcing practices that haven’t changed much since the Qing Dynasty even though China is the #2 economy in the world?
Sure, I have my answers to these questions, and I’m sorry if you have read this expecting me to offer up my conclusions, but I’m not going to do that here. More to the point, there are still enough mysteries to keep my obsession alive. The questions are the important aspect of my obsession. I have a lot more than these few that I have presented here. What I would like to suggest to you is that you look for questions, and start asking them, and if you are getting answers that you are not satisfied with, then you have the basis for a healthy obsession. The Chinese say that you can study tea all of your life and not discover all of the names for all of the teas. Here is a question to start with: Why are people in the U.S. primarily buying blended and flavored commodity tea that represents such a tiny spectrum of experience possible with unflavored, unblended Chinese tea? All of these are Chinese tea mysteries waiting to be solved.
Austin Hodge is the founder of sevencups.com.
Excellent question Austin. I believe the popularity of blends is due to ignorance and laziness. Most people do not know how to brew green tea. Most people do not want to take the time to brew an excellent cup of whole leaf, orthodox green tea. It requires using good water, paying careful attention to temperature and time. Most people want to rush through their lives and prepare a tea that doesn’t require any effort. With highly flavored blends, the burned tea leaves, from using boiling water, is disguised by the fruity flavors, as well as the bitter taste from letting the tea bag remain too long in the cup.
I would love to try your favorite green tea which is available at your shop. Can you tell me which that would be so I can order it from Seven Cups? I remember when I was in China, a year before the olympics, the green tea I tasted was amazing. I was told at that time that the best green tea was reserved for officials and those who could afford it and was never available for export from China. Have you managed to crack the code and get some of that special tea?
I think that perhaps the issue with blended and flavored tea is more about the very narrow spectrum that exists with in the commodity tea offerings for variety of taste and aroma, coupled with the high margins that exist for selling that tea, and customer demand that asks for variety. Combined sales for Tazo and Teavana last year was 1.8 billion dollars.
We cracked the code for buying that level of quality Chinese tea quite a few years ago just around the time that China was joining the WTO, and the buyer monopoly for tea that had belonged to the Chinese Communist Party ended and the best tea became available if you knew how to get it, and Seven Cups became the only non-Chinese company to receive a Chinese export license in 2008. It still requires us to spend two or three months every year in China to make sure that the quality of the tea remains up to our standards. Sourcing tea in China requires a lot of work and isn’t easy even for the Chinese. Foreign companies still rely on Chinese wholesalers and independent agents that assures they will never get to the level of quality that we are talking about because of the exporting structure defined by the Chinese government and the nature of Chinese business culture.
My guess is the tea that you had was probably Longjing. http://bit.ly/YzVo6r Contrary to popular belief, the better the quality of the tea, the more forgiving it is in brewing, and green tea is probably the easiest. It is true that you don’t want to have the water to hot, or use too much tea, but remember green tea is the most consumed tea in China and most everyone is using water poured from a large thermous with a cork stopper. Zhuping just resently did a video to show how to make Longjing. http://youtu.be/fEkbyt-H_qI As for as the time to make it, it only takes as long it takes to pour water into a glass.
One thing I really loved about my time in both China and Japan is the availability of good tea in your average supermarket. Naturally, most of it is far from the best tea you can get, but even the cheaper ones are far better than you’ll generally find in the US or Europe at even the highest prices. I think that, as much as anything, really illustrates the point you make.
Great post and a great discussion. I think the reason that China is not playing a significant role in the international tea market is because, Chinese people are quiet conservative when it comes to enjoying tea. On the other hand, many American companies are really strong in commercializing tea for the mass.
I think you can compare this to Italians making the best pizza’s and pasta’s but it’s Pizza Hut, Domino’s, etc..who built an Italian food empire.
@Michelle, I like your comment about people wanting to rush to make a good cup of tea. Making my cup of tea is probably as enjoyable to me as drinking it.
By the way, I don’t think the “best” teas are reserved for the rich and the officials. It’s the “rare” teas that are reserved for them, because there is a shortage of supply. Also if the teas are better, they probably pay 200% more for the packaging, and 300% more for 3% better quantity. So you and me don’t have to feel bad about this ^^
Austin, your Sinophile side is showing ;) As a matter of history, the Chinese have shot themselves in the foot time and time again when it comes to sending their teas out into the world. As important as tea was and is as an economic and cultural force in China, their own internal dynasties and political challenges have worked against so many of the points you raise. Japan, Taiwan, and the Darjeeling region just to name a few, all owe their tea legacy to China. By hook, by crook, by wandering Buddhist monks and by deliberate relocation of segments of the Fujian tea industry, China created their own competitors.
Western consuming countries tastes in tea were not a result of a deliberate choice amongst all tea options. Between fits and starts of Chinese tea exports (many of which were self imposed) countries moved on to other types of teas or abandoned tea altogether in favor of coffee.
To quote James Cameron, as you rightly point out, China should have been the absolute tea “king of the world” but there were too many screw-ups over the past few centuries. The answers to the questions are not always to be found on the consuming side of the tea table; production, distribution and marketing/education by tea producing countries are all key factors as well. In that regard, not much has changed in the world of tea, has it?
Guy, you through me a bit quoting James Cameron, he is doing a lot of work in China with 3d technology, but I couldn’t find anything about tea.
Yes as you know I am a Sinophile, especially where tea is concerned. There is no question that China has been its own worse enemy when it comes to promoting its tea historically. In fact the Chinese could really care less about what tea we have, they would rather have the best experiences offered by Chinese tea culture to themselves. They are completely uninterested in our quality of life, and the domestic Chinese market is the best in the world. It always pains me that I am forced to sell tea for less than the retail price in China, either packaged or by the pot. People that have never been to China think I’m joking when I say that.
China’s promotion of its tea isn’t relevant though in my mind. Would we have a wine culture in America if it had been dependent on the French? There can not be any choice by consumers without exposure. The industry stresses education but education is abstract without exposure. The American and European markets have done a dismal job of providing exposure. I believe that it is about the tea, and where can you go to find tea that is unflavored and unblended and can provide such range and quality of experience. Only China has that tea. China really is as you say, the ‘king of the world’ when it comes to tea. I don’t see that changing. True it’s hard to do business there, but so what, that is where the tea is.
John Harney once told me that there would always be tea bags because people in jail and asylums have no choice. It has to be a choice that is based on experience, not abstraction.