Tea Soup

What do you know about tea? What is there left for you to learn? In this episode we talk about how we can share information and learn from each other. The tea community in the western world is largely virtual for many reasons (tea lovers seem few and far between, Covid imposed isolation, etc), thus a lot of conversations happen virtually. We want to look at how we talk about tea online, how we address truth, untruth, misinformation, and outright lies in the tea world. We share a personal experience that has resulted in our growth, and encourage everyone to maintain a growth-oriented mindset.

In this episode, we talk about the Chinese idiom 盲人摸象，blind men feeling an elephant, and delve into the neuroscience of brainwaves and information processing. We mention the podcast Collective Insights (particularly the episode on Nerofeedback) and Ian McGilchrist (his book The Master and His Emissary).

Next week we will get back into white tea, so enjoy this impromptu in-betweenisode!

In this long-anticipated episode Derek unpacks the 2022 Fuding government regulations regarding the growing, making, and selling of Fuding White Tea. We cover regulated harvest dates, annual yield maximums, the freezing of agricultural tea farming land, and much more. A few fun tangents are the power of official seals in China, the one social media app to rule them all in mainland China, and the burning of the gongmei bushes. For a closer glance at this circular, check out the One River Tea blog post we wrote last spring

https://onerivertea.com/blogs/one-river-tea/fuding-white-tea-state-of-the-industry-spring-2022

Also, check out what Fuding white teas we offer on the site https://onerivertea.com/collections/white-tea?page=1

In this episode, Derek, Alex, and Xiaoyan of the One River Tea Cooperative stumble upon a huge conspiracy regarding aged white tea in Fuding’s wholesale market. We hike through a mountainous village turned yellow with ripe rice to a producer’s dilapidated childhood home. We talk about the nature of truth and value and wonder if a podcast like this can survive in the post-truth world we are ever marching into. And of course, we talk about the black-sheep of the Fuding tea villages: Guangyang.

Here are a few links to blogs and videos mentioned (or not) in the show!

All white teas mentioned in this and the last few episodes are available on the One River Tea website below

https://onerivertea.com/collections/white-tea

Below is the Oolong Drunk’s blog post about the Brown Shoumei Conspiracy.

https://www.theoolongdrunk.com/single-post/the-inconceivable-lie-we-ve-all-been-told-about-white-tea

Below is our initial blog post on the green vs brown shoumei discovery.

https://onerivertea.com/blogs/one-river-tea/the-browning-of-white-tea

Below is an impromptu YouTube video we made after our second day in Diantou in 2020 (one I totally forgot we had made, and don’t mention in the show, but serves as an interesting video diary of the tea haul)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4IvSx8L6IY

In this episode of tea soup, we talk about Bailin and Taimushan through the lens of a tea trip we led in 2021. Enjoy the extra stories about our tea makers Zhang and Jinzhi as well as Derek’s introduction to the story behind the Chinese zodiac.

In this episode, we begin our three-part deep dive into the major production villages around Fuding responsible for growing most of Fuding White Tea. In this episode, we visit Diantou and Panxi. Join Derek as he recounts his initial impressions of Fuding, talks about his methods for sourcing good teas, confesses a few embarrassing moments, visits a white tea factory, stares the stories of the incredible people he has met, and muses philosophic on the nature of Luck.

In this episode, we take a look back at the origin myths of White tea, as well as the historical precedent of Fuding being the birthplace of all Chinese White Tea. Join Derek as he talk about his time on Taimushan, the farmers burning their bushes, the taste of a brew made from dry tea leaves harvested from a single branch of gushu tea tree in Menghai, and much more!

In this Episode, Derek from One River Tea talks about tea from its prehistoric roots in China all the way to the dry loose leaf tea we know of today. Did you know tea used to be powdered, mixed with salt and onion and drunk as a thick soup? Did you know that many people in Medieval China thought tea was unhealthy? What do you know about the true origin of tea (what does anyone know really)? Join Derek as he takes us all the way through the three main eras of tea: Prehistoric, Medieval, and Premodern/Modern. During each of these eras, we see tea change from a medicinal herb, to a sacred beverage, to a hot commodity, and finally to the de-enzymated leaf we know of today. We learn all about ancient Chinese dating systems, the beginning of high-brow tea snobbery, the first faked teas, and much much more!