The socioeconomic impacts of Tea on the Yunnan provincal economy Pt. 1
As a Chinese national, my life has always been connected to tea in some way. Whether it be from my grandpa’s daily drinking of it, my dad’s constant mention of it or their friends use of it as a social tool, I am constantly exposed to the world of Tea. Which explains the reason I got into Tea, I found it to be an intruiging and often overlooked part of Chinese culture, and as I learned from a recent trip — a fierce driver of the economy and the lifting of poverty in the Yunnan region.
Before I dive into the intracacies of Tea on a national scale however, I will first talk about how the Chinese drink tea, and have drunk tea for millenia.
The concept of a dried piece of leaf, stored in either cake form or just loosely in a bag, and then steeped into a drink is a concept that is slightly lost to time in most of the western world. The western idea of tea, as proven to me by most everyone I’ve talked to in the US, is the humble teabag of which contains grinded up crumbs of tea leaves and is used as an alternative to Coffee to consume caffeine or for some health benefit.
I can attest that the vast majority of Chinese do not view tea as such, and are accustomed to the use of Tea as a tool to socialize over and a drink to savor. The extensive use of Tea ‘Cakes’ (Invented as a way to transport vast amounts of tea more economically compared to loose leaf) and plain loose leaf tea dominates the Chinese market for tea and is what most tea drinkers prefer. As such, the internal consumerism surrounding tea is vast and complex being not at all standardized as with the western Tea bag but spread out across differing regions and age. With the most valuable and volatile tea type being Raw Puerh, prized for its abillity to not only slowly age/ferment on its own but also be heavily affected by its region of harvest. This creates substantial differentiation for just a single tea type, with some going to extremes to get their hands onto certain mountains or villages productions.
Some examples of these famous tea villages are:
Lao Ban Zhang (And its little brother, Xin Ban Zhang, literally translating New Ban Zhang with Lao in LBZ meaning old)
Yiwu
Bing Dao
Man Song (The emperors tea!)
The most notable, and extreme of which would be the village of Lao Ban Zhang (which I will write as its abbreviation, LBZ). Unlike other mountains/villages, LBZ’s yearly production numbers are huge, so it isnt necessarily rarity that makes it special, but the hype driven insane prices it carries even at these production numbers that catches peoples eyes. The per-kilogram leaf prices from LBZ have reached the 12k-18k CNY (1660–2490 USD at time of writing) range, making LBZ an extremely well off village.
The effects of this influx of wealth into the village is evident even before you enter its gates. Although it is situated as one of Chinas more southern villages and on top of a mountain, the amount of tourists (read: Tea conneseiurs) who visit just for Tea is astonishing. Its recently renovated village gate as an example, draws many for selfies. Including my dad!
Also situated in this small village is a regional bank, whos opening here is at least slightly legendary towards Tea enthusiasts and Economic analysts. It is purported that LBZ alone generates upwards of 300 million RMB per year from Tea, around 41 million USD converted. Divided among its 111 households, that is a substantial amount of yearly income. No wonder theres a whole bank in the village!
The purely visual elements of its wealth doesnt stop there either, the perplexingly large mansions of each household is a breathtaking view. Whats also breathtaking is the traffic in the village during picking season, as much of the land has been taken up by mansion building, little is left for the roads connecting the village.
One of the earliest questions I was asked about by people around me in the US was the worry for ‘gentrification’ in such areas. However, when I visited this was hardly ever the case, in fact quite the opposite. The vast majority of households in the Tea mountains are of Hani tribe descendence, with a mix of Dai and Hani people who are hired for Tea picking. I found this very interesting as well, but I assume there are a couple of factors that allowed the anchoring of these historical ethnic groups to these lands:
- Terrain: Its a mountain! Vast majority of migrant workers will be turned away by this, the mountainous terrain and higher elevation are not suited for them.
- Rapid Growth: With LBZ especially, considering their 2008 contract with Chen Sheng Hao as its exclusive, price setting trading partner, the economic growth of this village only skyrocketed within the past decade, leaving very little time for migration.
- Lack of Land: This is quite a simple problem really, you cannot create more land. In smaller villages or regions here, the combination of this and general terrain make a vast majority of land unlivable, unfarmable and generally uncomfortable. Livable and stable land in this area has long been claimed by local families and tribes, leaving almost no room for migration.
The combination of these factors, and I would assume many more, the migration of mainland Chinese to this area is lackluster at best. This has allowed the local ethnic minorities, of which Yunnan hosts a large amount of, to thrive on their own with their historical traditions and culture. Tea farms are often passed along in the Family and historical knowledge of seasonal effects on Tea taste are too. This leads to each Tea plantation owning family to have their own perspective on the ‘best’ Tea, often creating substantial variation even from plantation to plantation.
The more recent (Read: Past decade) hype train surrounding ‘Gu Shu 古树’ or ‘Ancient Tree’ leaves have also fueled the maintenance and continued preservation of 300+ year old Tea trees and the documentation of various suspected extreme age trees as well in the form of ‘茶王树’ or the ‘Tea King Tree’. These Trees are often 500–800 years old, impressive ages of tree that demands a ever increasing price tag.
As seen through the above picture, these older, often wild Tea trees are not grown in the usual rows and rows. Instead, they are randomly scattered over a certain area, with tree age usually increasing the further inward one goes toward a Tea King.
Above picture shows a Dayi Tea plantation, which uses standardized rows of tea plants instead of the more random and wild tree type of LBZ and other villages like it. This speaks volumes towards the type of Tea larger corporations chase and what smaller batch village producers chase too. Dayi, famous for being the Serial Number №2 Tea Factory in the centralized ZhongCha days as ‘Menghai Tea Factory’, is a producer more of different tea cake ‘recipes’ rather than by specific mountains or villages. This gives them more freedom to pick and choose leaf types and tastes which best suit a recipes known flavor notes. They are most famous for the 7542 recipe, made in 1975 as signified by the ‘75’ using grade 4 leaves noted by the ‘4’ and produced by Dayi, with their factory serial number of ‘2’ at the end. The same recipe can be produced by the №3 factory, Xiaguan, too, albeit under the name of 7543.
The difference in production style and sales plan is stark between factory tea and mountain by mountain tea, where the distribution of factory tea is very standardized, same with tea storage and recipe flavors. There may be incremental changes throughout the years with a recipe tea either forced by seasonal conditions or by choice. These changes play out most famously with the 2009 7542 901 (first batch) and 902 (second batch), where the first batch is widely preferred from the second batch, driving its price up.
The main driver of price for single origin, or often blended to include certain region productions, tea is a bit different. When you’re buying a cake of ‘Bing Dao’ or ‘LBZ’ you are either buying single origin (Not blended with material of other trees) or a blend. Single origin is the most prized for the consistency of its taste, but also for the subtle flex that you can point to which tea tree the cake came from. Single origin Puerh in general is priced much higher than a blended cake, especially so when buying from a famous tea village/mountain. Blended cakes are a different story, and much harder to pin point and trace down material origin. If you are reading this article and go on a Chinese e-commerce site then search up Bing Dao cake or LBZ cake, you will find a wide spectrum of prices. It goes from just a few dollars to maybe 200 then up into the thousands. A saying my dad repeats after this tea trip is ‘I’m never trusting 99RMB Taobao free shipping LBZ again’. Blended cakes can vary a lot in taste too, so blind buying them based on name alone isn’t going to yield much.
I think it’s at least worth mentioning the genuine influence of tea on families in this area, above pictured is from Nan Nuo mountain Duo Yi village which is situated at the top of the mountain. I am very glad I was able to visit this family and take a look at their processing facilities and storage. These villages, on hard to reach mountains, situated in a far away region of China, were some of the most impoverished regions of China not so long ago. And yet, through tea, they’re not only no longer impoverished they’re also being heavily recognized as a prized treasure in the vast cultural heritage of China which I have learned to value deeply.
I often ask myself why is it that the kids around me don’t look into this aspect of Chinese culture or why they choose to indulge in the bubble tea’s of today. But I now choose to ignore those concerns, as all that truly matters is my own acknowledgement of the pains endured by those before me and those around me and my abillity to appreciate their hard work and heritage in the form of drinking Tea.
I simply wish Tea, in its physical and metaphorical forms, would be more valued by my own generation. Life can be appreciated in many many forms, but I choose to witness what those before me created, and as the great Mark Twain once said:
History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.
As such, this concludes a lengthy Part 1, named as the first part in a series because I do not wish to limit myself to a singular article on the subject!
I commend you, reader, if you got this far. May we see each other again sometime soon.
