A Tea Reader (18 page)

Ballad of the Tea Picker

BY
L
E
Y
IH

Translation from
The Middle Kingdom
by Samuel Wells Williams, 1897.
¹

Where thousand hills the vale enclose, our little hut is there,
And on the sloping sides around the tea grows everywhere;
And I must rise at early dawn, as busy as can be,
To get my daily labor done, and pluck the leafy tea.

At early dawn I seize my crate, and sighing, Oh, for rest!
Thro' the thick mist I pass the door, with sloven hair half dressed;
The dames and maidens call to me, as hand in hand they go,
“What steep do you, miss, climb today—what steep of high Sunglo?”

Dark is the sky, the twilight dim still on the hills is set;
The dewy leaves and cloudy buds may not be gathered yet:
Oh, who are they, the thirsty ones, for whom this work we do,
For whom we spend our daily toil in bands of two and two?...

...My face is dirty; out of trim my hair is, and awry;
Oh, tell me, where's the little girl so ugly now as I?
‘Tis all because whole weary hours I'm forced to pick the tea,
And driving winds and soaking showers have made me what you see!

With morn again come wind and rain, and though so fierce and strong,
With basket big, and little hat, I wend my way along;
At home again, when all is picked, and everybody sees
How muddy all our dresses are, and drabbled to the knees....

...Oh, weary is our picking, yet do I my toil withhold?
My maiden locks are all askew, my pearly fingers cold;
I only wish our tea to be superior over all,
O'er this one's “sparrow-tongue,” and o'er the other's “dragon-ball.”...

Oh, for a month I weary strive to find a leisure day;
I go to pick at early dawn, and until dusk I stay.
Till midnight at the firing pan I hold my irksome place;
But will not labor hard as this impair my pretty face?...

...But though my bosom rise and fall, like buckets in a well,
Patient and toiling as I am, ‘gainst work I'll ne'er rebel.
My care shall be to have my tea fired to a tender brown,
And let the
flag
and
awl
²
well rolled display the whitish down.

Ho for my toil! Ho! for my steps! Aweary though I be,
In our poor house, for working folk, there's lots of work, I see;
When the firing and the drying's done, off at the call I go,
And once again this very morn, I'll climb the high Sunglo.

My wicker basket slung on arm, and hair entwined with flowers,
To the slopes I go of high Sunglo, and pick the tea for hours;
How laugh we, sisters, on the road; what a merry turn we've got;
I giggle and say, as I point down the way, There, look, there lies our cot!...

...Today the tint of the western hills is looking bright and fair,
And I bear my crate to the stile, and wait my fellow toiler there;
A little lass is she—she leans upon the rail
And sleeps, and though I hail her she answers not my hail.

And when at length to my loudest call she murmurs a reply,
‘Tis as if had to conquer sleep, and with half-opened eye;
Up starts she, and with straggling steps along the path she's gone;
She brings her basket, but forgets to put the cover on!...

...Our time is up, and yet not full our baskets to the mouth—
The twigs anorth are fully searched, let's seek them in the south;
Just then by chance I snapped a twig whose leaves were all apair;
See, with my taper fingers now I fix it in my hair.

Of all the various kinds of tea, the bitter beats the sweet,
But for whomever either seeks, for him I'll find a treat;
Though who it is shall drink them, as bitter or sweet they be,
I know not, my friend—but the pearly end of my finger only see!

Ye tittering swallows, rise and fall, in your flight around the hill;
But when next I go to high Sunglo, I'll change my gown, I will.
I'll roll up the cuff to show arm enough, for my arm is fair to see:
Oh, if ever there were a fair round arm, that arm belongs to me.

This ballad was intended to be sung by girls and women as they picked tea leaves. It was written by Le Yih in the early Ch'ing dynasty (mid-1600s).

1
[Certain British spellings have been amended. Ed.]

2
The “flag” and “awl” are developmental stages of young tea leaves when they are just beginning to open.

Starting In Pursuit of Tea

BY
S
EBASTIAN
B
ECKWITH

“Tea is said to be a way. This is because it is something one learns to appreciate through feeling, not through verbal instruction. If a person maintains a state of quietness, only then will one appreciate the quietness inherent in tea.”

—
Lu Yu

Taoist philosophy teaches a path, or a way, to life. Weaving work together with life makes one more centered and balanced—combining skills to make a living while allowing one to enjoy life and nature. Being aware of and living in rhythm with the natural world leads to a richer sense of fulfillment.

In Pursuit of Tea was founded at a time of personal change, it was the pursuit of a new path. It grew out of my former livelihood, which involved leading treks and spending time in Bhutan—a small, mountainous country in the Himalayas. The journeys from there to visit friends in the Kingdom of Sikkim took me through the incredible scenery of West Bengal and the hills of Darjeeling on a regular basis. My interest in tea and immersion in the region helped to solidify the direction of that change.

I'm a proponent of one inventing one's own job—combining the skills you have with work that's fulfilling. It's often not easy, as creativity and hard work are required. I began the company based on my values which I hoped would lead to such fulfillment.

For example, diversity has always been important for me, I've often held several part time jobs instead of one full time job. The interaction with different people in different environments is more stimulating than just plugging away at the same thing day after day. I was able to find the diversity I craved by putting all these interests together.

It was also important for me to choose a livelihood that contributed to the health of the planet and the people living on it, and wasn't just a means to make money. Education would be a large part of what I wanted to do, teaching people about cultural issues, culinary traditions, and how to expand their enjoyment of tea.

Today, I'm fortunate to be able to spend time in tea fields with farmers and producers; though the travel is arduous, it balances the time that I spend at home in New York City. The farmers are folks who make tea using techniques learned from their families and communities through generations, as well as through the important and continual process of trial and error. Dialog with producers is always interesting, as we're both trying to learn and grow through our exchanges. For example, they would want to know what people in the United States think of the tea and how they drink it. They're curious about what kind of water is used to brew the tea and what the trends of tea drinking are. Learning the nuances these farmers look for when making as well as drinking the tea helps me understand more about the tea plant itself on a first-hand basis. This knowledge is invaluable to tastemakers and connoisseurs in the culinary world, as many of the most amazing teas never leave Asia. Being a bridge from people of ancient cultures living close to the earth to culinary experts in modern cities is quite an interesting and challenging process and one that I find particularly rewarding.

It's equally inspiring to share with people who simply became interested in tea through tastings and discussions. Just spending time, drinking tea with people who enjoy it most, can be the best reward of all. Through In Pursuit of Tea, I've created an occupation that satisfies many aspects of my core values, as well as supporting the infinite pathways of learning, teaching, and sharing something healthy and spiritually uplifting.

Around the World with a Cup of Tea

BY
J
ANE
P
ETTIGREW

When I decided, one weekend in April 1983, to give up my job as a language and communications trainer and open a tea shop with friends in London, I had absolutely no inkling of how that one decision would totally change my life. My life up to that date had been quite ordered, quite typically middle class English, teaching by profession, traveling on holiday once or twice a year to nearby European locations, and in my spare time, baking and cooking to entertain friends at home and going out to concerts, movies and theater.

Later that year, once Tea-Time—our little shop in Clapham Common—was ready for the first rush of eager local tea drinkers, my days (starting at 4:00
A.M.
) became a whirlwind routine of rolling out scone mix, whisking bowlfuls of lemon drizzle and carrot cake, ironing table cloths, drawing up staff rotas,
¹
cleaning carpets and vacuuming up crumbs, chatting with customers, organizing the cake counter, and working out costs. For the first ten months of our new venture, I slept four hours a night, lost weight, learned all sorts of new skills, and had the most enormous (if exhausting) fun! Famous faces started to appear regularly at the door, and actors, rock singers, TV personalities, musicians, writers and film stars mingled happily with our local regulars—moms with toddlers, elegant elderly ladies, chefs and waiters on split shifts, and our friends. Shared tables helped forge new friendships and the atmosphere was one of relaxed and chatty enjoyment.

Then, one afternoon, a group of American ladies called me over to their table—where they were digging into smoked salmon sandwiches, scones with Dorset clotted cream and our special sherry trifle—and asked me if I would go and speak to their group about the history of tea drinking in Britain. Of course I said, “Yes, I'd love to!” realizing as I spoke that I knew absolutely nothing about the history of tea drinking in Britain. We agreed on a date and I took a couple of hours off the next day to dash down to the local reference library to see what I could find out. To my utter surprise (and relief), I found a wealth of books that told me of London's first coffee houses where tea was offered both wet and dry, how tea had first been sold at great expense to the upper classes as a medicinal tonic, how various grades of both green and black tea had been shipped in from China, and how we eventually started growing our own tea in India in the nineteenth century to meet a growing demand.

At school I had loathed history with its boring lists of battles and faceless kings and queens, but those two hours in the Brixton Tate Library were a turning point. What I read forced open a great fortified, nail-studded door and shone a floodlight on our past, showing me that history can be exciting, illuminating, and very, very real. I simply had to find out more. I knew that if I found this fascinating, then so too would the American ladies. So, I joined the British Library (in those days hidden in the gloomiest depths of the British Museum in Bloomsbury) and spent any spare moment away from the mixing bowls and chopping boards to discover more details of the tea story. I scribbled, I photocopied, I found images that added color and helped explain the facts. I had some of those turned into little slides ready for projection during presentations, and I bought the first of many box files that would keep these new treasures safe.

The talks and presentations became a regular part of my tea routine and, as I read and researched, I found that there were more strands to the story than I could ever have known when I started out. I discovered Chinese teapots and bowls, tea gowns and tea dances, the reason for locks on tea caddies, the fascinating facts behind the social history of familiar parts of London, the link between opium and tea, and the part that tea played in the design of tables, trays, trolleys and Gothic temples in the grounds of stately homes. I kept adding new elements to my talks and people, it seemed, were as amazed as I was.

As well as giving these talks to groups of Japanese, Americans, Canadians and Europeans, I started to write and found I could draw on the same material to add background and interest to my first recipe book, then to my little
Book of Days
,
and a few years later I found that I had gathered enough facts, figures, images and stories to suggest to the National Trust that we should create a book called
A Social History of Tea
.
My tea travels took me all over Britain, to libraries, record offices, museums, tea company archives, and private homes. I pored over old invoices and inventories, packaging designs, entries in diaries, extracts from novels, pages in books of etiquette, and company records. I still thrill at the memory, in a record office in Kent, of coming across a rolled parchment document that listed all the porcelain tea wares owned by Frances Cranfield, Dowager Duchess of Dorset, in 1682. The fragile paper revealed that she had purchased “two tea potts,” “twelve Blew tee dishes,” “eighteene white tee dishes,” and that the word “china” (which had previously only referred to the country and now also meant all these fine tablewares) was spelled “cheyny” or “cheyney” in the seventeenth century. It took my breath away! The hours during which I found nothing of interest, the endless piles of yellowing documents and dusty old books that yielded nothing were so totally worthwhile when I came across gems like this.

By now I had been invited to Paris to speak to the French tea club,
Le Club des Buveurs de Thé
,
to Japan to take part in the annual British fair in Hankyu's Osaka store and to give lectures in different parts of the country, to Brazil to give a series of lectures to students and teachers of the Cultura Inglesa, a teaching organization that had been set up by the British Council 60 or so years earlier, and to the U.S. to participate in Harney & Sons' first Tea Conference in Connecticut. My life was beginning to change beyond all recognition! I was accommodated in five-star hotels and treated like visiting royalty, flowers and champagne were set ready in my room, cars and drivers were provided to take me wherever I had to go, and I was invited to important cocktail parties to meet ambassadors and local dignitaries. I was overawed! I found that I loved hot climates! I learned that the British way is not the only way. I discovered how people in warm countries smile so much more than we do in the northern hemisphere. I danced samba in clubs in Copacabana and I felt more relaxed and happy with my life than ever before.

Pulled in too many different directions, I sold my share in the shop in 1989 to write, lecture, research, and eventually to edit
Tea International
(published by The UK Tea Council). And there was so much more to come, more doors to push open, more tea trails to follow. I knew now that I should not wait to be invited to some of the world's most important tea countries but that I should go and see for myself how tea is produced in India, Sri Lanka, China, and Taiwan. My list of contacts was beginning to grow, and I had written about or been involved in public relations work for various Indian companies, so it was not difficult to organize a first visit to Darjeeling. How I loved the misty peaks and valleys at Goomtee, Okayti, and Ambootia. How satisfying and relaxing to take breakfast on the lawn in a garden surrounded by soaring pine trees and clambering morning glory with its intensely blue trumpet flowers. What fun we had delving inside little antique shops in Darjeeling town to buy Buddhist prayer bowls and beautiful rings and pendants. How we smiled as we rode the little steam train down from Kurseong, past the waving schoolchildren in their blue and white uniforms and the chattering monkeys that skittered about on rocks and scampered up nearby trees. In Sri Lanka, while gathering material for my biography of Merrill Fernando's very successful tea company—Dilmah, the family took me from noisy bustling Colombo up through rubber plantations and spice groves to the higher tea country where we stayed in the stunningly beautiful Tea Trail bungalows that once were estate homes for managers and their assistants but have now been refurbished as luxury holiday homes. We dined like princes, slept in four-poster beds and sipped cocktails on terraces that overlooked carefully tended rose gardens, huge bamboo stands, and, in the background, a vast lake with its curving shore and a scattering of small islands.

For my first visit to China's tea regions, I joined a group led by Dan Robertson of Chicago's Tea House and adventured to Tibet, Sichuan, Zheijiang, and Fujian provinces, and via Hong Kong to Taiwan. Less luxurious and cosseted but a real adventure, we found the old tea lands, watched smoky
lapsangs
and rich, woody
oolongs
being made in the small factories of the Wuyi Mountain. We sipped tea in traditional tea houses while watching Beijing opera, we rode chair lifts over ancient tea gardens to reach Buddhist temples at the top of craggy mountains. We rode a bus, a steam boat and a rickety tractor to see how the famous green tea is made in the small family manufacturing units of Taiping Village where the locals were surprised to find a bunch of pale-faced “big noses” watching their every move.

Today, my passport bears the stamp of many of the most important tea-growing and consuming countries of the world—India, Sri Lanka, China, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, the US, and Canada. But there too are the marks of less well-known tea lands—Malaysia, Guatemala, Georgia, South Korea, Brazil, Thailand, Tibet, and Italy. And there are more still to collect. Soon I shall be drinking several cups of tea in South Africa and Hawaii and then, who knows, perhaps also in Bolivia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Eastern Europe. I have been so lucky! How could I have known 27 years ago in an ordinary suburb of southwest London that my working life would one day take me all over the world, or that I would sip tea served in so many different ways in so many countries? And the wonder for me is that it's not just about the tea—it's about all the wonderful people I have met along the way who have shared their passion and their knowledge with me and helped me to pass it on.

1
A “rota” is a roster or staffing schedule.