MULAN JOURNAL / 06 CONVERSATIONS
A Record of Questions: Fire Is Not Negotiable
He has made tea for 31 years. The most complete sentence in the whole conversation was this: tea does not lie. The work you skip, it remembers.
Editor's note: this piece gathers notes from Mulan Tea Story's tea-asking visits over the years. At the interviewee's request he is called by his role, "the tea maker," Wuyi Mountains, thirty-one years in the craft.
On Fire
Q: What is the hardest part of roasting over fire?
A: Knowing when to stop. The fire is not negotiable, because tea will not negotiate with you. Today it is a little damp, tomorrow a little dry; roast the same batch of leaves across two days and the fire has to be adjusted. The temperature written in the books is only a starting point.
Q: Then how do you judge it?
A: By smell. Late in the roast the aroma turns from green to ripe, then to sweet. When it reaches sweet you must pull it at once; ten minutes more and it scorches. This sweetness is not a sweetness you taste, but one in the air.
Q: Have you ever ruined a batch?
A: Yes. One year, rushing an order, we cut six hours off the slow firing, and the whole batch was lost. I kept a jin in a jar and take it out to drink once a year. Not to commemorate, but to remind.
On the Mountain Plot
Q: Which matters more, the mountain plot or the craft?
A: The fresh leaf sets the ceiling; the craft decides how much of it you can reach. On a poor plot my best work still only goes so far; on a good plot, cut a corner and it drops. Neither can replace the other.
Q: How do you tell zhengyan, true rock?
A: By the soil. Take a handful of the gravelly scree soil and it is loose, grainy, not sticky. Red earth clumps. You do not need an instrument for this.
Q: Is the cong character of old bush tea really there?
A: It is. But it is not an aroma, it is a weight. Between the third steep and the fifth the liquor suddenly grows heavy. That is it. Many people feel nothing the first time, and then feel it on the second, because the body has remembered.
Tea does not lie.
The work you skip, it remembers.
On Time
Q: Why will you not sell tea roasted in the same year?
A: Because it is half-finished. Freshly roasted, the fire is still sealed inside; it drinks dry and the throat tightens. A customer tastes that first cup and thinks my tea is no good. I would rather hold it a year and then sell.
Q: Holding it a year ties up your money, does it not?
A: It does. But I have done the other sum: sell early, and the customer drinks once and does not come back; hold it a year, and he can drink for three. Which is the better bargain does not take long to work out.
Q: What do you think is the biggest problem in this trade?
A: Speed. Everyone wants to ship this year, sell this year, get the money back this year. Tea grows by the year; force it onto a daily reckoning and the only way left is to fake it.
On Advice for Ordinary Drinkers
Q: For someone who does not know tea, how should they buy so as not to lose out?
A: Buy what has settled. Buy rock tea of medium fire and above, buy pu'er with some years on it, buy tea with a clear mountain plot. Even if you cannot read them, these will not drink badly.
Q: How do you train your palate?
A: Buy three steeps at a time, the same variety from different plots or different years, and brew them side by side. The difference shows at the first sip. Three months of this beats three years of reading.
Q: One last sentence. What would you say?
A: Tea does not lie. The work you skip, it remembers. And the work you put in, it remembers that too.
Afterword
Putting this Q&A together, we noticed one thing: in thirty-one years he has almost never used an adjective. For fire he says smell; for the mountain plot, take a handful in your hand; for cong character, it grows heavy.
This is perhaps what is most worth learning from a tea maker: no description, only verification.
TO TASTE · A CUP FROM THE SAME SOURCE
Full-Fired Old Bush Shuixian · Three Years Aged
Rested for more than two years. Still full at the seventh steep, the tail of the cup sweet: exactly that moment described above, when the liquor suddenly grows heavy.
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