Tea Soup

In this episode, we leave the tombs of the Wang Family and wander through their wild gardens of tea trees on the Kua mountain. We talk about the skinny chickens, the knock off Adibas shoes, the connection between the land and the teas. We finally get out to Xiao Hu Sai, home of the largest garden of ancient tea trees in Mengku and we talk about why we love these teas and how we designed the new tea cake wrappers. As always, if you’re enjoying the podcast, consider checking out what teas Derek has sourced on www.onerivertea.com

In this episode, Derek talks about the Qingming Festival, he maps out some of the spring tea harvest times in China, but really focuses on late March and early April. He talks about the modern rituals undertaken for the Tomb Sweeping Festival from East to West in mainland China, and frames all of this within his most recent Spring 2024 tea trip. There is a brief review on how to make Fuding White Tea, as well as a lot of behind the scenes for the makers of the Kuashan raw puer and Lincang white teas. As always, all the teas sourced here in Tea Soup are featured on the onerivertea.com website. Brew Happy!

In this episode of Tea Soup, Derek is joined by another One River Tea Worker/Owner, Alex Witherspoon. Together we recount our recent travels into Sichuan searching for jasmine tea. We talk a lot about Alex’s project in Hefeng, where One River Tea hosts WWOOFers, farming volunteers from all over the world. We talk about the incredibly bloody history of the 19th and 20th century Sichuan, and of course we get around to talking about sourcing the Jasmine Tea which should appear in one the onerivertea.com website later this month. This podcast is part of a video which will be available on the One River Tea Youtube Channel as well.

Welcome! Today, Derek and Alex talk about their journey to the top of Golden Chicken Mountain, one of the cheeriest tea prodcuers east of Luan (Liuan?), and the holisitic state of the yellow tea market in China. Is it fermented or oxidized? What is dry and wet yellowing? What even is yellow tea? We share our journey to answer these questions and grow from skeptics to yellow-pilled enjoyers. Come hear more about what goes into that mellow corny aroma you can brew up from nothing else. If you’re interested in yellow tea, please check out our very own onerivertea.com website.

In this episode, we talk about West Lake Dragonwell, we just got back from Hangzhou a few days ago with some incredible insights into the making of longjing. We share tips on how to buy the right longjing on the mountain; talk about the risks of drinking same-day tea, get into the TCM of green teas both freshly made and moderately aged. We bring back some old favorite characters Tang Xiaojun and Tang Hejun. We introduce our new source for this fantastic tea, Little Wang with her garden of Longjing Cultivar 108. Finally we talk about meeting Jürgen from Tea Addicts (https://www.tea-addicts.de). We have a lovely moment sharing tea between friends, and we consider the idiom 可遇不可求 (Ke Yu Bu Ke Qiu), “Things that can be found only by chance, not by seeking”. As always, most the teas mentioned can be found on our website (https://onerivertea.com) and the Chaozhou teapots we mentioned can befound on our teaware website (https://taoteaware.com). Thanks for your interest in our tea adventures!

2024 Spring Tea has just started being picked, and the prospects are looking good! We spend the first part of this episode talking about green tea and what it’s like living through the Mingqian hype here in China. We get onto the topic of this episode, sourcing Puer in Menghai, and we say goodbye to the cast of characters we met in Lincang and we share a new set of faces we meet down in Menghai. We talk about the mysterious Paul, the man behind White2Tea, we talk about sketchy border teas, over-talkative taxi drivers, and of course farmer Tan and his remarkable Huazhu Liangzi Gushu. As always, almost all the teas talked about in this episode are available on the OneRiverTea.com website, and any tangentally talked about teaware can be found at TaoTeaware.com. As always, thanks for supporting our podcast and your interest in Modern Tea in Modern China!

In this episode of Tea Soup, Derek talks about the 10 million train trips per day during China’s Spring Festival, the curious mythology surrounding the Dai Minority Water Splashing Festival, and his pilgrimage to the world’s oldest tea tree (2,700 years old!). He mentions Joseph Campbell’s book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces: The Cosmogonic Cycle”, Mercia Eliade’s Book “The Sacred and the Profane”, Laozi’s “Dao De Jing”, and Zhuangzi’s “Zhuangzi”. It is a surprisingly philosophical introspective episode that takes place between sourcing Lincang Puer and his trip down south to Xishuang Banna. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free to show your support by buying tea at onerivertea.com or teaware at taoteaware.com. Thanks so much for your listening support!

In this episode Derek talks about pressed tea. Why is compressed tea so popular these days, what unique virtues does it possess, and what does it take to press tea into these 100, 200, or 375 gram disks that are so common to see in teashops all around the mainland. We muse on the creative process of running a business and circle back to the existential dilemma of sourcing ‘good tea’. We also talk about the pressing process for these teas in Lincang, Yunnan. As always, the best way to support tea soup is to subscribe to our podcast, our YouTube channel, our instagram and of course browse any of the teas we source at onerivertea.com thanks for all the support!

Still on the tea trail, Derek recounts and ranks all the most difficult to access teas, as he travels through Yunnan in the grip of a deep drought. He makes his way to the Bangdong Village, drinks the raw tea just made yesterday and compares old bush, with gushu, and single tree productions with Puer blends. Eating tea with the pickers, he makes his way out to Mengjie’s ancestral home in the mountains. We reflect a bit on pastoral routines and they affect our concept of time and explain why the Puer from Bangdong has been called Yancha, or rock tea. As always, the teas mentioned in this podcast are all available on the onerivertea.com website, so please browse and support our project if you can! See you next time!