Tale of Tea

The Most Venerated Tea in Yunnan: Lau Ban Zhang

Five mornings later, I awake to the smell of rain-soaked wood and a horde of heckling hens rifling through the air. Xiao Di and I have travelled west, through the mountains, in our now dirt-caked Jeep seeking yet another sacred forest. Though my room is small, my setting simple, I am waking up in the town that produces possibly the most venerated tea in all of Yunnan and, some say, in all the world. Lau Banzhang. To even say the words within earshot of the tea-informed is to gain an eerie kind of respect. Raw Puers (unfermented) from this mountain bastion outside of Menghai are rare (and thus pricey). “To know a Lau Ban Zhang is to love a Lau Ban Zhang,” say many in the know.

I exit my room to a morning sky of  soft peach hues. Subtropics and tropics alone boast these mornings: still, humid and fragrant. A forest dripping with last night’s rain surrounds the town and tea trees, some enormous, crane their necks while others seem to sit in a kind of deep meditation. Here, the Hani tribe swoon over their ancient tea trees. Much like the Pulang’s teas further west, the tea is bitter by most standards, but has floral hints, subtleties that catch the tongue and (in the words of one local expert) “transport one into the very soil.” My host, a headman of the town, is lean and eerily handsome in a way that many of the indigenous men are. Glowing, tawny eyes and a pair of monumental cheekbones sit above an almost vulpine mouth. His manner is neat and his movements spare, but in him I sense a huge strength and an unending understanding of his environment. No unnecessary motion, no unnecessary words. As the household around us quietly comes to life, his soft voice issues two commands in rapid succession. “Oo Sa Sa,” the melodic order to “eat” and then “laba dow,” “drink tea.” I immediately comply.

Living Tea

the author in an ancient Yunnan tea forest

Tea leaves in this part of the world often end up being pickled, chopped up with chili’s and eaten, added as garnishes on dishes, or used as compresses for fevers and skin ailments. Here, there are no adjectives beatifying the otherworldly properties of tea, no references promising eternal enlightenment. Tea here is something entirely tangible, alive, its longevity being the only necessary accolade.

My fine-boned host, known simply as Lin, and I ease through the Lau Ban Zhang forests as the day’s heat increases. Beneath the shadows of the tea trees, the mid-morning temperature is mounting and with it humidity inundates the air in a sunny fog. After almost an hour of silent travel, Lin looks back at me, his muscular arm pointing to a ridge of dark green off to our left. Climbing up we see a carnival of branches and exposed roots. Massive ancient tea trees, a thousand years old according to Lin. He carefully studies the leaves, the branches and the soil as he gently walks around the wide base, hands almost reverently clasped behind his back. This tea, Lin rasps, will be sold to a few select buyers and roughly an eighth of the take will be consumed by the village. In all, maybe a couple of dozen jin (1 jin = 0.5 kg) will be harvested in any one year.

We stand there in a kind of comfortable silence, looking up at this spectacle of vegetal longevity. Lin, for all of his knowledge and experience, has the face of a newly converted subject. His eyes shine in what can only be described as rapture and his mood seems to rub off on me. Eventually, he looks at me with those tremendous eyes and hisses that order I have been longing to hear: “Laba dow.”

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