West China Tea Company: The First Six Months

My recent birthday coincided with the 6-month anniversary of when West China Tea Company began doing business in earnest.  To celebrate, we're holding a big white tea and pu er preorder sale.  I also finally forced myself to sit down and write a retrospective of sorts, summing up the last half year.
I started West China Tea Company in August 2012 in Austin, Texas, after returning from two and a half years in China.  Initially it was just a way for me to ensure a steady supply of high quality tea for myself and my tea-loving friends.  After a 3-month sourcing trip the following spring and more than a year of grappling with the intricacies of international trade regulations, West China Tea finally began doing business in earnest in December 2013.  Its first official action was bringing a large, direct shipment of Mt. Nannuo pu er and black tea from the Li family in Southern Yunnan to Austin, Texas.  

Since then, the business has taken on a life of its own, growing at a rapid pace in directions I never could have anticipated.  What started simply as a side project has become a cultural force of which I'm merely a part, carried along by its momentum.  

I'm taking this opportunity just past the 6-month mark to look back on all we've done in our first two quarters of business.  The events, markets, projects, and interactions we've participated in have ranged from predictable to utterly bizarre, and the support we've gotten from the community has been immense.  Without the openness, enthusiasm and patronage of the people and businesses of Austin, none of this would have been possible.  Rather than expand on every item here, I've given each its own blog post which is hyperlinked. And so I present:

West China Tea Company: The First Six Months

• Acquired more than a dozen wholesale accounts
• Participated in advancing medical science by conducting a Pu Er Tea Blood Sugar Study with Mr. Natural
• Partnered with Austin institution Juiceland 
• Presented a Discussion of Fair-Trade Tea with Slow Food Austin at In.gredients
• Partnered with Austin's ephemeral and mysterious Woven Tea House for multiple events
• Established a tea room and built a charming outdoor tea pavilion at the Birdhouse in east Austin
• Joined forces with local chocolate maker Chocosutra to hold multiple tea + chocolate events
• Held a tea-inspired prix-fixe Valentine's meal with Loveballs Japanese street food trailer
• Began vending at HOPE Farmers Market and made tea for kids with HOPE play
• Cooperated with local Austin artists Mary Cotterman and Chris Long to make gong fu teaware
• Helped to design tea + liquor cocktail recipes with Cha Jiu and served them at Dandy's Menswear
• Teamed up with local performer Ciara Blossom to create SensualiTEA, a wholly unique experience
• Served and sold tea every Fourth Friday at Tiny Taiga
• Held a tea tasting and seminar for the Chinese language class at Texas State University in San Marcos
• Did a tea tasting for the staff at Apple Computers Austin
• Sold some of our finest tea to Dobra Tea in North Carolina
• Sold the same tea to Austin's nationally-acclaimed fine dining restaurant Qui
• Were invited to contribute to established tea blog TChing.com
• Had our teas reviewed on Steepster and Steep Stories (of the Lazy Literatus)
• Had our events covered by local media Eater Austin and Culture Map
• Served tea at the first annual Texas Wild Rice Festival in San Marcos with Woven Tea House
• Served tea at Spring Convergence and the first annual Archaic Revival Festival with Chocosutra
• Made tea at numerous private parties ranging from children's birthdays to elegant rooftoop soirees
• Participated in a Bitcoin Outdoor Market (yes we accept Bitcoin)
• Served tea at a Party Plants concert
• Started holding bi-weekly tea tasting + open mics at the various Juiceland locations
• Served tea to San Francisco's Long Now Foundation

If you'd handed me the above list, in the imperative rather than the past tense, and told me I had 6 months to complete it, I would have said it was impossible.  It is thanks to our friends, partners, collaborators, volunteers, customers, and Head of Sales Lacy Quin that we've come as far as we have.  

And still we persist, growing faster than ever.  There are many exciting projects and developments in the coming months, including:

• The opening of a retail space and art gallery in the Wunderpilz Tea Gallery with Clementine & Co. Jewelry, Chocosutra, Chris Long Ceramics, and other friends above Uncommon Objects
• The opening of a full-service teahouse in the courtyard of Austin landmark Spiderhouse
• The launch of a line of tea-leaf jewelry by Clementine & Co.
• A pu er bing wrapper design competition where the winner will receive a tong of Mt. Nannuo pu er cakes
• The launch of our new, redesigned website that resembles a weapons shop in a role-playing video game

And other exciting things that are too top secret to divulge at the moment.  And of course, we plan on returning to China in the spring to source more exciting farm-direct teas and exquisite Chinese teaware.  Our gratitude goes to everyone who has helped us on our mission to make Chinese tea culture a part of Austin and America.

Sincerely,

So-Han Fan

Owner, West China Tea Company

Let Them Drink Cakes Sale!

Coinciding with my recent birthday, the company's first half-birthday, and the impending opening of our new spaces at Spider House and on South Congress, we're doing a little fund-raising the old-fashioned way:  By importing mass quantities of tea and selling it at a discount to those who are willing to wait 3 weeks to get it.  All of our pressed Fuding White and Nannuo Pu Er tea cakes improve with age, so now's your chance to get a stockpile laid away!  Everything is discounted 20-30%, and the sale ends August 6th, so act now! You can buy through our Facebook Store or at this Shopify site that I made specifically for the occasion.
CLICK HERE TO BUY TEA CAKES!!!!

Poo Where? A Brief Treatise on Pu Er, Yunnan's Enigmatic Tea

Pu er tea has achieved widespread popularity in the West in recent years, partly because of its purported health benefits, which include weight loss, its rich, earthy flavor, and its ability to improve with age.  As such, it has found itself, like goji berries and Himalayan salt, at the center of a galaxy of dubious facts and outright myths about its history, benefits, and cultural context.  I myself labored under a host of fanciful misconceptions, acquired over the years from hippy folklore and the black hole of the Internet, that were only set right by going to Yunnan and discussing the topic with the people who have been growing, selling, and drinking pu er tea for generations.  My intention is merely to lay out, as plainly as possible, my own understanding of pu er tea based on my experiences in Yunnan and my own research into this somewhat opaque and confusing topic.

So, what is pu er tea, exactly?  It is something very simple, but explaining it is inconceivably complicated.

In short, it’s a variety of tea from Yunnan, in the southwestern corner of China, picked from large-leafed tea trees and aged.  The varietal is Camellia sinensis x assamica, meaning that it is the same species as green tea, black tea, oolong, white, and yellow tea, but is a distinct varietal.

People often use pu er as a category to refer to aged tea in general, probably because by and large the only aged tea you’ll come into contact with in America is pu er – some fancy places also carry other aged teas like liu bao and Tibetan brick tea, which, together with pu er and a few others, comprise a class known in China as heicha - teas that mature over time as a result of microbial processes.  Heicha translates to “black tea,” while what we call “black tea” in English is known in China as “red tea “ (hongcha).  To make matters worse, many sources will refer to hongcha, as well as oolongs, as being “fermented’ when they are in fact “oxidized”.  

Pu er, and other hei cha, can more properly be called “fermented” because fermentation does occur during the aging process, but more precisely the leaves are subject to a host of aerobic and anaerobic metabolic processes by various fungi and bacteria in a delicate microbial ballet that is more similar to, say, composting than making wine.  Or aging cigars – let’s go with that. 

Trying to describe the tea itself is no easier; because of its dynamic aging process pu er does not have a single consistent color, smell, taste, or even shape.  Broadly, there are two kinds - sheng and shu - and they can both be loose-leaf or pressed into cakes of various forms.  Sheng means “fresh” and that’s what it is – fresh leaves are picked, roasted, dried, possibly pressed, and then allowed to age naturally.  That fascinating process described above happens slowly, such that, over the course of a decade or two, the leaves darken from green to black (hence the name heicha), and the flavor mellows from a bright, fragrant fresh taste to a mild tobacco/oak/dried fruit sort of neighborhood, finally settling into a deep, rich, earthy flavor, which grows more profound and nuanced with age. 

The other variety is called “shu” pu er.  Shu means “ripe”, and it’s made through a modern process (invented in the seventies) called “wo dui” whereby the leaves are piled and repeatedly moistened so that they mature more quickly.  The result is that you can drink it straight off the line and it will already have that earthy, velvety profile like old sheng – and that’s why it was invented in the first place.  

I once asked a tea farmer what the difference between fresh sheng pu er and green tea was.  Both are fragrant, grassy, and sweet.  He said “You can also call it green tea”.  So, apparently, if you’re drinking fresh tea leaves from the ancient trees of Yunnan, it’s green tea, but as soon as you start considering its age as a positive factor in the quality of the tea, it’s raw pu er.  This demonstrates that tea is quantum in nature, and will change states depending on the  observer.

It also demonstrates that categories and nomenclature are artificial designations invented to classify a dazzling array of teas that arose organically.  Not everything fits neatly and unambiguously into one box or another.  Scholarship is noble but don’t let it ruin your day – the farmers who grow it certainly don’t waste their time classifying their tea.  In Yunnan, the predominant philosophy is, and I quote: "good tea is good tea; if you like it, drink it.  Very simple."  

Cha Jiu 茶jiu

East Side Tearoom and Crystal Pavilion

Juiceland

Wholesales

Fourth Fridays at Tiny Taiga

Visit Tiny Taiga Mon-Fri, 11-6, at: 

• 1200 E 11th St. Suite 106
• Austin, Texas 78702

• 
  

And on Facebook

Texas Wild Rice Festival

Loveballs Bus Cuisine Tea Pairing

Woven Tea House

Woven's Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/WovenTeahouse

Wunder-Pilz website:  http://wunder-pilz.com/

Slow Food Austin at In.gredients

Slow Food Austin:  http://slowfoodaustin.org/

In.gredients: http://in.gredients.com/

SensualiTEA

Local Teaware

Mr. Natural Diabetes Study

Mr. Natural's website:  

http://www.mrnatural-austin.com/

Dobra Tea

Please visit Dobra at their website:  http://www.dobrateanc.com/

Chocosutra

Spring Equinox Convergence

This past spring equinox I participated in a Convergence gathering, where the community came together to share their knowledge, skills, art, music, and to celebrate the equinox.  West China Tea was asked to serve tea in a tipi, and we also supplied some pu er tea to friend Chocosutra proprietor Richard Kreuzburg to use in his cacao elixir for a cacao ceremony.

HOPE Farmers Market

Beginning in May, West China Tea has been a vendor every Sunday at HOPE Farmer’s Market on the east side.  I was also invited to give a presentation about tea with HOPE Play hosted by Ray Ray Mitrano,where I got to serve tea to kids who then drew pictures representing their tea experience.  

Lulu's Birthday

Here are some pictures from Lucian's birthday party, the son of a friend.  He comes over to the tea pavilion with his mom and rides our toy horse and plays with water guns, and he also really enjoys drinking tea (kids almost always enjoy drinking tea) and occasionally making tea - once he picked, processed, and steeped a huge amount of clovers that were growing in Emily's yard. For his birthday he wanted tea, a lion cake, and a lion pinata.  I wore a jester hat and had a flower painted on my face. I really enjoy doing events like these because those kids are always going to remember having fun drinking tea - to them, it won't be something boring that comes from a bag that you drink when you're sick - it will be something magical and exciting, as it should be.