Via Tiempo's recent tea letter featured
Mengding Ganlu and Clouds and Mist. You can imagine receiving these two teas, and opening up the scroll. Or you can order them and read while you steep. This tea-letter is from the Seasonal Tea Journey that I send out each season, 8 times per year.
Dear Friends,
Today is the first day of the Coming of Summer on the traditional twenty-four season farming calendar of Northern China. As I write this, the transition is just underway. I’ve been drinking a bevy of greens with much delight for over a week—and have chosen two stand-outs for this shift into the brightest season. While some of the greens are yet too cleansing and cooling—more appropriate for the solstice and later summer—these two are deep, rich, and ready to go right now. They are Mengding Ganlu and Clouds and Mist.
You might recognize your first travel companion, Mengding Ganlu, from last year. A “new” fave, but not at all new, Ganlu is from Sichuan where they’ve been making this style of tea for centuries. Clouds and Mist is not a traditional tea from its region, and so we’re watching its continual refinement. These Fujianese oolong folk are figuring out how to make a stellar green—just a score of centuries behind their Sichuanese counterparts.
If you want to steep along with me, boil some water, and please note the temperature. For Mengding Ganlu we’re brewing at 185 degrees. For Clouds and Mist, let’s make it 195.
Mengding Ganlu (Tails)
Mengding Ganlu is remarkably full and savory for a green tea with a generous sweet aroma. When I brewed some for Trinley, she tasted anko, the adzuki bean paste used to make treats in Japan. I always loved grabbing a soft mochi ball filled with anko from a snack stand outside of the Asakusa shrine, back when a different me lived in Tokyo so many seasons ago. Just as some people always hanker for popcorn at a movie theater, I needed that anko treat—daifuku mochi with sesame seeds to be exact—whenever I visited the shrine. I remember savoring my treat as I passed through the “thunder gate,” a vibrant red-orange structure housing a giant lantern in the middle and four larger-than-life bronze figures in its alcoves: on one side Fujin and Raijin, the Shinto gods of Wind and Thunder; on the other, two Buddhist dragons, Tenryu and Kinryu, who would blend in as humans if it weren’t for their tails.
Claws
Mengding Ganlu’s leaves look like little dragon claws. You can see the two-leaves and a bud picking standard in most of the leaves, but the leaves are so small and delicate it can require a close look to distinguish which of the three is in fact the bud. The leaves are baked three times, and gently kneaded—giving them this slightly curly shape. I wonder if this tea were to become ultra-popular, if people in other regions would pick up the practice of baking three times and lightly kneading in order to make their own dragon claws.
For the most part, with the famous greens, each region not only has its own varietal and terroir, but a matching method of production. Fujian and Taiwan have traded methods for oolong, but they are separated by water rather than land. Coastal regions always seem ready to trade ideas. Sichuan is inland. As far as I can tell, their tea is their own. I honestly haven’t tasted anything like Mengding Ganlu.
Snouts
Traditionally this tea is associated with chestnut aroma—another smell I associate with Japan, even though my nose encountered it more in the Japanese market in Seattle. But who's to say that Uwajimaya is not Japan? The water that separates Seattle from Fukuoka is vast, but passable enough. Two-hundred years ago roasted chestnut aroma was pervasive all across Appalachia, until a blight left the American chestnut trees to vanish into Christmas songs.
Of course, foods come and go from cultural prominence and even geographical existence all the time. This season, many of the teas I ordered simply didn’t make it out of the port of Hong Kong. In an alternate speculative present you’d be reading about a Shuixian White, Silver Needles, or Old Tree Lapsang—had that box arrived instead of this one. Truthfully, there isn’t anything inspiring confidence that next year will be more predictable. I wonder what kind of letters I could write you if not tea-letters.
Centuries ago in Fujian, the sweet potato became a major staple after they found their way there from the Andes. In Japan, yaki-imo, roasted sweet potato, comes with a whole song and dance—like the ice cream truck here—“Yaaaaakkkiiiii iiiiiimooooo” blaring from a megaphone. I just hope our tea experiment isn’t too interrupted, because I’d like to keep exploring at least long enough to come up with the right jingle for my cart.
Speculative Fiction
I just finished reading Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, a speculative fiction where Japan seemingly had disappeared, slid right into the ocean due to some reckless mountain flattening. It makes me wonder what would become of U.S. based Chinese-tea drinkers if imports cease for a time. Perhaps we’d be drinking all of the aged teas in storage, developing a taste for sencha and darjeeling, turning to the greens of the Pacific Northwest and black teas from the South—or getting into Yaupon, a holly that’s native to the southeastern states. Or maybe it wouldn’t be about caffeine—perhaps we’d scurry into another culinary corner. I could start a dashi diary. Like in Tawada’s novel, I accept that there likely would not be an obvious thread, and many tea-drinkers might lose touch with one another.
Buzzed
In the end, this tea is deeply relaxing, while also energizing. Trinley said she felt “buzzed,” drinking it. That combo of enlivening and loosening is what we call “tea drunk,” which we can attribute at least in part to the vibrant chlorophyll of first-harvest, or “pre-ming,” leaves and their heavy dose of the antioxidant l-theanine. Javan said he felt like his 40 watt bulb was replaced with a 60 watt. I am feeling drifty, dreamy—undoubtedly apparent in the discursions and diversions of this letter. I’m feeling kinship with the sideways scurries of the crab on the label, inhabiting the emergent tide pools of Mengding Ganlu.
Clouds and Mist
Clouds and Mist is not from Fujian din the same way that Mengding Ganlu is from Sichuan. Maybe in two-thousand years it will be, but not yet. They are still developing what will later be called tradition. Later, looking back, it may become a tea that could not have been from anywhere else.
Today the name Clouds and Mist comes from its high altitude origin, up there with the clouds and cool mist. In time, the name may need to be elevated further. It could be named after the Bodhisattva of refreshment or the Sky Dragon himself, who walked the mountains and left this crisp and revitalizing green growing from his footprints and the slithering path of his tail.
Instead of the thunder gate, we’ll sell this summer treat at the sun gate. Brewed hot or cold, it’ll haunt the memories of those who drink it for decades, well after they’ve departed for other lands.
Buttered Asparagus
This year’s harvest time was sunny and bright, making for perfect picking conditions. As a result, you’ll encounter its exuberant aroma right when you first open the bag. When you brew it, you’ll find that it doesn’t take much coaxing at all. It opens right up and shares all it has without restraint. In addition to the crisp vegetal notes I’ve come to expect, you can look forward to a surprisingly buttery smoothness.
Honestly the buttery notes come and go for me, like the way that colors look different in the light and shade—or depending who's looking at them, and how many cones they’ve allocated to each color. Javan tastes butter in abundance, and I trust him. Do you taste it? Actually, the other day, I did a long mind-body practice, clearing my head and coming to my senses. After that, I tasted the butter clearly. It reminded me of the Bön Dzogchen teacher, whose retreat I coordinated many years ago, saying that he could actually taste his tea—and more than implying that we could not. I guess there is some truth to that—the way that a clear awareness makes way for a fuller, more direct and accurate perception.
I am particularly fond of our aroma note “buttered asparagus” for this Clouds and Mist. One, because it contextualizes the butter as an accent, and helps me locate it; and two, because the tea’s energetics also remind me of asparagus shoots. Shooting up from the ground, it gives a quick lift. The energy is direct: clear refresh, ctrl+R, zip zap zoop, focusing, ready-set-go.
The very first sip gives a little boost of energy up to my head—good for acuity—not so much for poetry. Even writing now, brevity reigns. Simple and direct, the bright sun of summer dissipates the haze. I don’t feel the same draw to follow quite as many tangents of memory and kaleidoscoping speculations as I did with the Ganlu. No, this is a tea for clear-minded activity. It begins without hesitation and concludes decisively, even at risk of being abrupt. It’s a perfect tea for stepping out to meet the day.
Cheers to the fates
Wherever your summer adventures take you, please enjoy catching the asparagus elevator into clarity and focus with Clouds and Mist, and getting lost meandering in the marshes with a pot of Mengding Ganlu. I’m glad that the fates of the port allowed these teas to pass through and grace our cups.
Dashi diaries,
Michael Busby
Tea Peddler
