Streets of tea

In Zhāngzhōu, as in most Fujǐan cities, you are never far from a tea shop. Walk 100 meters down any residential or downtown street and you will pass one if not several shops selling a selection of teas and usually a range of beautiful tea wares and accessories.

Within a few months of arriving in Zhāngzhōu we found ourselves both fascinated and perplexed by the number and of tea shops. In discussing this with our Chinese friend Dr Tony, who is a mine of local information, a figure of more than 1000 tea shops within the city of Zhāngzhōu is revealed. This is a quite startling figure given that the city has only 600,000 residents. And, of course, large quantities of tea is also sold in supermarkets and small convenience stores.

Tea shops of Zhāngzhōu range from small, simple, owner-operated spaces to very large magnificently decorated shops staffed by teams of immaculately attired young women. As well as shelves and fridges stocked with teas and tea wares, all will have one or more table settings where tea can be prepared and customers can sit, sample and enjoy before they buy. Indeed, tasting is expected and invariably we receive enthusiastic invitations from staff to sit and try their teas. Larger elaborate shops will even have private tasting rooms for their well-to-do clients, but we prefer the open spaces where we can appreciate the full atmosphere and activity of the shop. Indeed we spent many enjoyable Sunday afternoons in this way.

We enjoyed frequenting tea shops and tasting endless ‘infusions’, however we rarely showed real solidarity with the local tea shopaholics – we didn’t need to. Numerous local friends gave us excellent quality local teas, not just once, but repeatedly. Soon, we had a cupboard full of tea and our inventory grew faster than we could drink it or give it away to friends and family back home in Australia.

Being Fujǐan the tea most commonly found in the shops and drunk by locals is tiěguānyīn (a variety of oolong tea). They almost always prepare this as gōngfu chá – ‘gōngfu’ means ‘to do things well’ (like the martial art kungfu from which it gets its name) and of course ‘chá’ is Chinese for tea. Preparing gōngfu chá involves using a number of implements: a pot or kettle for boiling the water; a small tea pot either from unglazed clay or a glazed handless, spoutless ‘pot’, a small jug, small tea cups (small so that the tea can be finished with a couple of sips), and a drip tray for spilled water, as boiling water is used in abundance to prepare gōngfu chá.












But given all these tea shops, what do the locals do with all this tea they must be buying? Well, gōngfu chá sets, with the characteristic drip tray and small pot and cups, can be seen everywhere. The locals drink tea at home, in the office, in shops and businesses, and in the parks and gardens. Often, when browsing in small shops, whether for computer accessories, garden items or some mysterious Chinese wares, we are invited to sit and enjoy gōngfu chá by the staff. In business, meetings were often conducted around a gōngfu chá sets on a low table rather than around a more formal meeting table. Just as big business is done on the golf course in some western countries, in Fujǐan it is done at the tea table.

A popular local pastime, especially on warmer evenings, is to sit and enjoy gōngfu chá with friends in one of the local open-air tea houses. Quickly, our favourite tea drinking venue became one under graceful old trees that fringed a small circular ‘fishing pond’ in a peaceful and historic part of town. We spent many a pleasant evening weekend afternoon there watching a few locals sitting and fishing, but rarely catching. Of course, it was not just about drinking tea – it was a very social place and often we would meet friends there, sometimes to imbibe on beverages somewhat more intoxicating than oolong tea. On a particularly memorable evening the gōngfu chá was just an aperitif – a friend turned up wielding a ‘Jeroboam’ sized bottle of fine red wine (4.5 litre). To compliment the drinking of tea, or other beverages, snacks were readily available and delivered kerbside. At regular intervals a variety of vendors would pedal slowly past on tricycles bearing an inviting range of packaged and fresh snacks. Or, later in the evening, we could stroll over to a BBQ stand with a range of skewed grilled ‘dead things’. Also proffered at the table-side were a range of services such shoe shine, fishing rod rental and more.

But even despite all these opportunities to drink tea, after more than 2 years living in Zhāngzhōu we were still perplexed at how the 1000 or so tea shops can all make enough money to stay in business. So I recently put this question to another of my Chinese friends, Hesheng, who seems to be particularly fond of tea and knowledgeable about all things Fujǐanese – with a smile he replied “Ah, I think there is very good profit in tea …”

Roger Arnold

Mountains of tea

It is truly remarkable that Marco Polo wrote of travels through Fujǐan, but never mentioned tea in any form. Tea is a prominent feature of the life and landscapes in Fujǐan Province and has long been so with a local history of over 1,600 years. Indeed, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Fujǐan and particularly its port of Xiàmén (known then as Amoy) was one of China’s leading tea exporters; in the mid-1880’s the Province was exporting over 50,000 tonnes of tea annually (mostly to the UK and Australia). Nowadays, any traveller sauntering through Fujǐan would actually have to try very hard to avoid being struck by the prominence of tea in everyday life; the Province is both one of leading producers and consumers of tea in China. In villages, towns and cities Fujǐanese love drinking tea, and its production, trade and consumption figures highly in their economy, culture and daily life. Fujǐan is home of the finest oolong teas in mainland China and the leading variety of this is known as Tiěguānyīn. Other Fujǐan specialities include Lapsang Souchong tea (though we’ve had incredible trouble tracking down local sources of this black tea) and white tea. These and other premium teas are increasingly revered in both Fujǐan and elsewhere in China. Rapid growth in the country’s economy and personal prosperity has driven rapid increases in demand and hence rising prices for such premium quality teas.

Just a few hours drive from downtown Zhāngzhōu is mountainous Ānxī County – widely acknowledged as the leading region, or area with the best ‘terrior’, for production of high quality Tiěguānyīn. We have been fortunate to travel regularly through this beautiful County – both with colleagues for field work as part of my job and on occasional weekends to enjoy the UNESCO World Heritage listed Tǔlóu (Hakka Roundhouses or Earth Buildings) located in Ānxī. With each visit, I am repeatedly amazed at the visible impact of the surging ‘tea prosperity’ – prosperity which is shared widely in the rural community thanks to the ‘small producer’ nature of Fujǐan’s tea industry. Whilst black tea production in countries such as Sri Lanka and India is generally undertaken in large industrial scale, corporate ‘tea factories’ that produce several hundred or even thousands of tonnes per year, oolong tea production in Ānxī is overwhelmingly dominated by small growers and small processors. The average Ānxī ‘tea factory’ would fit in a standard Australian suburban garage, typically including just three small machines – a roller or tumbler; withering and fermenting racks and a drying oven.

Over the past 10 years Ānxī has seen steadily increasing prices for the best fresh and processed tea leaves, improving the incomes of both growers and the small processors. Of course, many new tea fields have also been developed, with most rice fields in Ānxī having given way to tea – farmers there are now able to make far more profit from tea production than rice cultivation. Consequently, production has increased in recent years, but not enough to stem the steady increase in prices. Interestingly, it is widely rumoured that there is far more Ānxī Tiěguānyīn in the market than could possibly be produced in the County; the price premium creates a marked incentive for dilution, substitutions and even deliberate mislabelling.

Throughout Ānxī County signs of newly found ‘tea prosperity’ are manyfold; roads have been upgraded, almost every third house seems to be either new or undergoing significant extension, new motorbikes are parked at most houses, new shops are springing up in villages and small towns and most of the local shops are brimming with new stock and many with ‘luxuries’ such as big TVs, upmarket mobile phones and brand name clothes. In the local markets the prosperity is also obvious – there are fantastic ranges of so much more than just the basic necessities, including fancy liquors, packaged snack foods, imported rice and fruits from distant lands. But perhaps one of the most significant markers of prosperity is that many local Ānxī tea growers no longer work their own fields. Nowadays, they often pay ‘outsiders’ to work their tea fields and pick the leaves. These ‘outsiders’ are typical migrant workers who come from faraway provinces, where employment opportunities are limited, to take advantage of the high demand and relatively good pay for unskilled or semi-skilled labour in Fujǐan.

Fortunately, increasing prosperity has not detracted from the friendliness and hospitality of the local people. Often when walking along paths to access field sites high in the mountains of Ānxī we find ourselves invited into farmers homes to share their local tea and sometimes even a meal – an experience we always cherish dearly.

Roger Arnold

Letter from Hóng Kēng Village, Fujǐan Province

On returning to China after Christmas in Australia, we set off travelling with my brother and Roger’s sister’s family of five. It’ll be an interesting trip as this number of lǎowài are bound to cause a few locals to stare, but the red and blond hair of Roger’s family, and the presence of an 11 year old nephew, guarantee we’ll catch peoples’ attention.

We spend a few days introducing our home, Zhāngzhōu, to everyone and then squeeze into a mini bus (our luggage takes three seats) and head inland to show our family the impressive earth buildings. We pass the outskirts of town with its ramshackle markets and road-side restaurants. We pass workers on bicycles, scooters and motorbikes. We pass farmland and banana plantations, and the fertile land that is being bulldozed for factories and massive new roads. As we climb higher into the mountains, we see pomelo plantations, now out of season, orange trees thick with fruit, tea terraces and vegetable plots, and a cement plant so critical for China’s construction boom

We pull into a dusty car park, part complete, and see the beginnings of sophisticated and extensive tourism infrastructure with; new roads, visitors’ centres, tickets with barcodes and electronic turnstiles, plus numerous ticket collectors, accredited tour guides and ‘shopping opportunities’ at every stop. When we first visited the tǔlóu 18 months ago, it was a relatively simple affair; a man at the door with a cap and a book of tickets, and the odd resident selling tea or touting to act as a guide.













Lunch at the tǔlóu cluster in Snail Valley is prepared to order. A yellow skinned chicken is yanked from its pen to be killed, plucked and cooked in soup just for us. With it is served dishes of fresh bamboo and bracken shoots, plus snow peas we had seen growing in the surrounding fields. The television, as usual, plays in the background.







We move on to Tǎxià village with buildings packed densely beside a river. Up on a hill, just behind the thin strip of houses is an ancestral hall with a half circle pond and 22 tall stone posts marking the significant achievements of members of the community. Some posts are decorated with spiralling dragons, some plain, and together they make a powerful landmark indicating the strength of the community. Yet now these villages are largely inhabited by the old and the young, as many of those of working age have moved to urban areas to make money in factories.






We clamber back into the mini bus, wedging ourselves in around the bags, and head to Hóng Kēng village. We wind our way up past round and square tǔlóu strung out along a small river and are met by a young man. He leads us down a rough stone-paved footpath, a stone and earth wall on one side and a three metre drop to the river on the other. We pass through a gateway and the thick earth external walls, the timber internal structure, blackened with age, and the grey curved tiles of Fúyù Lóu our guesthouse, greet us. One family has been living in the ‘5 Phoenix’ style tǔlóu for many generations, and our guide is the current owner’s son. He, with high school English that has been supplemented with his own study, warmly welcomes us to his home and thrusts photo albums into our hands to confirm the delightfulness of the guesthouse and the local environment.

Later, walking along the river looking at the ancient buildings and being charmed by a man taking his ducks for a swim, we’re stopped dead by the sight of a small film crew, all dressed in black, shooting a fight scene between a ‘villain’ and Mickey Mouse. Returning to the guesthouse we check our email on the internet wired into each bedroom. Rugged up against the cold, and ‘test driving’ our new thermal underwear, we eat dinner, cooked by ‘Mum’, in the open courtyard. As we go to bed we find small red buckets in the external corridors to our rooms. These are our chamber pots for the night as the toilets are several flights of stairs down and outside the building.

Our trip highlights the speed of China’s development but also its unevenness, leading to some of the incongruities we have seen. While aging farmers work the land much as they have for centuries, they have cars and motorbikes, mobile phones and the internet, and commercial fertiliser and pesticides to assist them. As the commercialisation of China brings money to rural communities through tourism and factory worker salaries, it makes their homes ghost towns and museums. Is this part of the price of the current leap forward?