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Red Revolution: China’s Ever-Changing Tea Type

Known as black tea in the US and Europe, red tea is probably the first tea most people in those parts of the world tried — and in many cases probably still the only tea that they’ve tried. It’s no surprise then that often when I talk to Western tea drinkers the topic of red tea often comes up. Luckily, this is an extremely interesting topic.

The world of red tea is becoming more complex as times goes on and new types of red tea are popping up everywhere. It is hard to explain everything about red tea, or to predict exactly where it is going, but I do want to take the time to share with you my observations from my travels around China.

Red Alert

I recently spent some time in the famous Tie Guan Yin oolong town of Gande, a place known for selling the most expensive Tie Guan Yin in the country. I had been living with a farmer there for a week, and just as I was leaving he smiled and handed me a bag — and all I could do for a minute was stare at him blankly.

The bag contained scoops of Tie Guan Yin red tea to try. I was baffled as to why a farmer who is from a world famous oolong producing area would try to make red tea.

Not long after, I stopped by my friend’s house in Dongting – home to the green tea Bi Luo Chun – to find that his family also makes red tea. “We do it with the leftover leaves,” he explained. “Unless specially asked for, Bi Luo Chun always get the best leaves and the most time. With what we have left, we make red tea”.

A red tea factory where workers curcle the leaves in the fashion of Bi Luo Chun green tea

All across China, farmers of different tea types are experimenting with red tea, with varying levels of success. I hypothesize that the farmers can do this for red tea and not a more renowned tea, such as green, because Chinese tea drinkers haven’t quite figured out red teas yet.

For a long time red teas were used for export. In recent times though they have gained in popularity, partly due to the rise of Jin Ju Mei. Jin Ju Mei is a red tea from the Fujian region that is famous for its bud only picking and that has found favor among health-conscious individuals thanks to a belief that it has “heat”, and is therefore good for the stomach. Jin Ju Mei’s recent fame has brought more attention in China tea circles to red tea as a whole, and producers have been introducing a series of rapid changes to red teas in an attempt to figure out exactly what the market wants.

Cha Changes

There are two changes in particular that stand out.

The first change was to Qimen red tea. Traditionally Qimen red tea was broken into very small bits after the tea leaf was finished. This gave the tea a bold flavor that when paired with its natural sweetness produced one of my favorite tastes. The problem was, conventional Chinese tea wisdom dictates that broken up leaves are a sign of bad quality. In response to this, Qimen started to produce whole leaf red teas, such has Qimen Mao Feng, that may look nicer, but produced a softer flavor that does not impress this author.

Two men examining a red to see if it is ready

A second change to red tea actually happened in the last few years and I didnt see it until someone pointed it out — now I see it everywhere. A common misconception is that red tea is 100% fermented. This is a very simple way to explain red tea making and is almost true. Tea categories are based off their making and not the fermentation level; the fermentation level is a result of the making. So while most of the the time red teas are left in piles to ferment until they are fully fermented, this is not always the case.

Recently, tea makers have been playing with fermenting the teas less and less. The result is a lighter and sweeter flavor. You can tell which teas have been fermented less by the color of the liquid. A dark red color means it’s the traditional full fermentation. If the color comes out a golden yellow, this means the fermentation time was cut short. Level of fermentation aside, both of these teas are still considered as types of red tea.

Red Eyes – Red Teas are Ones to Watch

The topic of red tea is hard to talk about in full factuality. For a tea that seems to be so solid in the West, in China it is actually in a much more fluid state of change and growth. Even the famous Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong (lapsang souchong) is becoming more popular in unsmoked form, in contrast to how its traditionally been consumed.

The constant changes and market influences keep pushing red teas in new directions and it always feels like we are one tea season away from having someone do something completely different that totally changes red tea for ever. Maybe this tea season will be the one.

Photos: Caleb Miller.

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Photo of the Day: China’s Walking Dead

This week’s photo theme is, well, it’s death. Not because we’re trying to be overly morbid, but because Thursday 5 April was Qingming Festival in China, a day where families traditionally tend to the graves of their ancestors and an occasion often referred to as “Tomb Sweeping Day”.

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A monster of folklore that causes drought, believed to come from hundred-day-old corpses that don’t decompose, and rise from the earth as Jiangshi (literally “stiff corpse,” or Chinese zombies). Digging up, beating and burning Jiangshi were popular folk customs during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) eras, usually from moist graves in drought areas. This custom continued in areas of Shandong up til the 1960s and features in the Shi Jing, China’s first anthology of poetry compiled by Confucius in the 6^th to 5^th centuries BCE. In Han mythology, Han Ba is believed to be Pa, the drought fury, the daughter that Huang Di summoned to help him defeat his archenemy Chi You. Pa refused to return to her caves in the mountains and instead wanders the earth.

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This week’s photo theme is, well, it’s death. Not because we’re trying to be overly morbid, but because today, Thursday 5 April, is Qingming Festival in China, a day where families traditionally tend to the graves of their ancestors and an occasion often referred to as “Tomb Sweeping Day”.

See? A photo theme about death doesn’t have to be all weird and depressing. Here’s a pleasingly upbeat shot of some bright green glutinous rice cakes, which are as much a constant of Qingming as tailbacks on the roads and people talking about how it’ll definitely rain.

Known as qingtuan 青团, these little green balls are so popular – especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai – that every year certain brands attain “wanghong 网红” (internet famous) status and have hundreds of eager customers queuing outside their stores for hours on end.

Here’s some background on qingtuan and their unusual color, courtesy of Time Out:

Legend has it that the tradition of eating qingtuan began 2,000 years ago during the Qing Dynasty Taiping civil war. A farmer was smuggling food to an imprisoned general, and after discovering the green colouring of Chinese mugwort, he used it to make qingtuan, which he could camouflage in the grass near where the general was being kept. Smart. The farmer’s offerings kept the general alive and, following his escape, he made it a rule that everyone in the army must learn how to make qingtuan. And since Chinese mugwort only grows during the beginning of spring, qingtuan is a speciality eaten during Qingming Festival.

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Zhibo: Guns, Hitler, and Gay Diets

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Zhibo is a weekly column in which Beijing-based American Taylor Hartwell documents his journey down the rabbit hole of Chinese livestreaming app YingKe (Inke). If you know nothing about the livestreaming (直播; “zhibo”) phenomenon in China, start here.

Survey of the Week Is it crazy to let everyone buy guns?

As an American, there are certain things that I always knew – you know, with my brain ‘n‘ stuff – but didn’t really fully get before really looking at the US from the outside. Stuff like how nuts we are to refuse to use the metric system; or how unique and lucky we are to be raised speaking the language nearly everyone else spends their whole lives trying to learn. And, god help me, how irredeemably dumb it is to refuse to just call the world’s most popular and simply-named sport by its incredibly self-explanatory name.

Less hilariously, it’s also made it clear to me just how strange it is for the supposed “shining city on the hill” to have to keep explaining why someone shot up another roomful of kids.

In response to a LOT of questions about recent American news, I asked the audience a simple question: Do you think it’s a good idea to let people own guns? The results were around 75% yes, 25% no. Honestly, more balanced than I expected.

A reasonably representative sample (1 is against, 2 is for)

I’m not trying to start a gun debate, but look, here are the only two options I see: either America somehow defies the very notion of averages and produces a shockingly high number of kill-crazy people unlike any other nation on earth (kind of at odds with the whole aforementioned *shining city on a hill* thing) or our mass shooting problem has something to do with all the weapons of war we have lying around.

(And to the people who bristle at the term “weapons of war” being applied to guns, I’d ask that you have a little moment where you consider what, literally, guns were invented for and why a dictionary definition angers you.)

Anyway, China is obviously an interesting contrast to America. Despite inventing guns (sort of), you can probably imagine how common private firearm ownership is in the PRC – that is to say, it’s not at all. Of course, plenty of gun “enthusiasts” will cite China as the perfect example of what happens when citizens aren’t armed, but setting aside how much sense that may or may not make, it’s worth pointing out that personal safety is a BIG pro in every foreigner’s pro/con list for sticking around. You know what I think when I’m wandering down a dark Beijing alley in the middle of the night with a phone in one hand and a beer in the other and see a group of young men approaching? Basically, something like: “oh hey 哥们s (bros), what’s up?”

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Strange Occurrence of the Week A kindly fellow who might want to pick up a history book

A few days ago, this perfectly pleasant gentleman came into my streaming room for the first time and started asking me very thoughtful and good-natured questions about America, learning English, and the like. One problem:

Let’s put this as delicately and tactfully as possible: when you’ve got 5,000* years of your own history to learn about, it’s only natural that a few minor details about what was going on in the rest of the world would slip through the cracks.

Let’s put this a bit less delicately: in Western academia, we’re constantly self-flagellating – not without reason – over our tendency to focus on only the whitest bits of history. I myself have many times gotten up on that high horse when it comes to not-quite-acknowledging the full scope of horrors that was the Japanese occupation of China during WWII. Meanwhile, in Chinese schools, they’re still calling it the “Chinese-Japanese War,” (in which Americans were neutral at best) and the whole “Nazi” thing barely gets a footnote.

But alright, whatever. World history isn’t China’s strongest suit. Hell, it isn’t America’s either. Hitler has a weird kind of cult status in lots of places where the Holocaust simply isn’t really taught or understood, and this guy probably just saw the name somewhere and thought it was cool. Plus, it’s spelt slightly differently, so at least there’s that. So, let’s accept his friend request and see what’s on his WeChat profile, shall we?

We have now arrived at “thoroughly disconcerting.”

Well, now I had to ask. He had already reached out to see if he could join my English practice group on WeChat (seriously, the guy has been nothing but polite), so I simply asked him what was up with the name. Rather than attempting to narrate the conversation, you can just see it for yourself:

I still haven’t figured out how to respond to that, by the way. Where does one go from here?

Seriously, I’m asking.

Less-Strange-But-Still-Strange Occurrence of the Week Me turning blue for no explainable reason

Did I push something? Did I somehow hit a setting that inverts the color scheme? Did I anger some kind of trickster god? Are my many Michigan ancestors sending me a maize-and-blue message that I should be paying attention to March Madness? No idea, but it didn’t go back to normal till I quit and restarted the app.

Confusing Stereotype of the Week You guys are gay with your food

This one really puzzles me. People assuming I’m gay on Inke is nothing new – they ask if I have a girlfriend, I say no, and that apparently leaves only one option – but I don’t have the slightest clue what “gay with your food” could possibly mean. I’ve never once eaten while streaming – setting aside the inherent sadness of streaming one’s dinner, watching hosts eat seems to be a whole separate weird obsession in the world of zhibo. I’m not looking to go down that rabbit hole.

So, discounting the possibility (perhaps unfairly?) that this person literally meant that foreigners are somehow merrier and more joyful when it comes to their culinary experiences, I kinda have to assume he means that I’m only into boy dumplings.

This app is weird.