Experiencing Tea around 1,000-Isle Lake

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I thought of nothing but tea at night before I would set out next day on a journey to the 1,000-isle lake in Chun’an, a county of lake and mountains in western suburb of Hangzhou, the capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang Province. It was just two days past the Qingming Festival in April, marking the traditional beginning of the tea-picking season. The lake is actually a man-made reservoir built in 1959. It submerged quite a large piece of land and mountains under water and created 1,078 isles. By chance it was also at this night that I received an email from Ye Yi, a scholarly friend who knows quite a lot about tea history and local tea produced in Chun’an and who now lives in Japan. The email was almost a scholastic paper on tea. That night, I was nearly sleepless, excited by the upcoming visit, tea and the people I know there.

We reach the lake late next afternoon when dusk begins to descend and check into the Writers’ Home, a special hotel built by the local writers’ association to provide fellow writers with a quiet space to enjoy leisure and write. Shortly after the dinner, we go out eagerly to the town to check out this season’s new tea.

At a tea boutique we are introduced to a brand called “1,000-Isle Silver Needles”. Every 500 gram this brand contains more than 30,000 tiny pointed tea leaves that look like pine needles in the color of a kind of young green. It is amazing to watch these tiny slender needles when they are steeped in boiled water in a crystal glass. A fragrance wafts as the needles form into a tight array, with all the tiny leaf tips pointing upward and tiny twigs pointing downward. Then these standing needles begin to sink vertically toward the bottom of the cup and then jump upward in slow motion again, looking as if they were dancing. The first sip of the tea thrills me, the aroma and flavor giving my soul a quiet and yet exhilarating relaxation. The quiet spell is suddenly broken by a voice I know. Two of my friends arrive and one of them says loudly that the same tea can be bought at a local wholesale market the next day. But I buy some silver needles at the boutique.

The next day we visit the tea market after a day of boating on the lake. I am a little bit tired but excited by the large market. Each shop is a big allure. Each shows new tea leaves spreading on large flat bamboo baskets to be processed in a nearby large caldron. I cannot bring myself not to bend and sniff at these emerald temptations. For a while, I am busy discussing prices with shop owners and watching dexterous hands scrambling tea leaves in the large caldrons. After many rounds of haggling and sampling, I finally decided upon a tea called “Mingqian Flattened Leaves” (Mingqian means that the precious tea leaves were handpicked before the Qingming Festival). We buy a few kilos for ourselves and an appropriate amount for my friend in Japan. While paying for the tea, I ask the shop owner to give me some more tea leaves instead of giving me the change.

Back at the balcony of my room at the writers’ hotel, I look out toward the lake. The panorama reveals a verdant forest spreading across hills and valleys, equally verdant isles, cotton-like clouds rising and floating above streams. Remarks in ancient books about tea plantations come back to me, emphasizing the important part that mist, streams and mountains play in the making of quality tea. The building is more than a place where writers can hang out and write. More than ten years before, where the hotel now stands was a place of quiet greens. Now I see neon lights flashing from the arrays of houses which had not existed previously in the place between the hotel and the lake. Would tea in future be as good as before? I worry and say a silent prayer.

Before we leave the lake, I sample another brand of tea at the Nine Roaring Waterfalls, a scenic spot in the northern part of the lake area. The name gives away what natural charms the spot offers. We take a car journey to the waterfalls. As we travel upward into mountains, a large vista of fields of rape in furious and gorgeous bloom unfolded. We cheer. Then a village looms ahead on the top of a mountain. As the mountain blocks the madding urbanization in the outside world, the small village maintains a time-honored rural look and shape and charisma. It is a small-scaled Shangri-La that supports itself on a small-scaled farming economy. Yews tower at the entrance to the village. We hike to the waterfalls. The meandering path is flanked by tea groves on one side and blooming azaleas on the other. Every now and then we spot one or two villagers picking tea leaves. The small bamboo baskets they carry produce a sharp contrast with the green tea groves. The baskets, much used over years, radiate a quiet darkish sheen. I pick a few tea leaves and chew them slowly, enjoying a tasty pleasure.

I spent three days in Chun’an and sampled four kinds of tea there. But unfortunately I was not able to write a poem about my experience, just as many an ancient poet did. And regretfully the trip did not give me a chance to sample the best tea Chun’an produces. The regret is now my motive to revisit the lake in another spring.