We had just 1 hour minutes to fill four baskets. Any less, we were told, and the local tea master would reject the batch as a waste of effort.
So off we went to work on a hillside overlooking a road on the edge of Qiandaohu [千岛湖] in neighbouring Zhejiang Province. With baskets attached to our bellies, our job was to pick those leaves from the bushes which were big enough to be called leaves but small enough to retain the desired pale green shade and moist texture.
It didn’t take long for the baby to lose interest. Barely walking at that moment, 1 year ago, she wasn’t even into tearing bushes apart. So she climbed into my wife’s basket, and they went off somewhere to bounce and dance.
That left just Lao Lao (maternal grandmother), Lao Da (my big daughter) and me. And we got our heads down. We hadn’t expected to be given this chance. It was just something discussed over breakfast. The hotel owner happened to own a small plot of tea-growing land. Her 90-something grandfather was too old to run it as a cash-crop, and guests like us were allowed to go and play.
This wasn’t even a tea holiday. But we were pretty determined to fill those bags.
Turns out, this is back-breaking work. Tea bushes are too low for anyone’s comfort, never mind a man’s. The whole body needs to maintain a stooped structure while peering and picking. There is a rhythm to it, but one I had to keep it in check. For, as soon as I felt something like flow, I also saw a larger proportion of the harder, thicker leaves falling in the basket. Concentrate.
On that spring morning, the sun was already a discomfort. And to my surprise, the wind sometimes threatened to blow everything out of the basket, moving branches I was trying to pick from. My most lasting injury was to the tip of my middle finger, where my thumb nail had nipped it throughout that hour. No blood, but that browning chlorophyll stained the finger for days.
Lao Lao’s efforts matched mine, as did my elder daughter’s, though we were nowhere near the requisite four baskets’ full. The baby wasn’t for hanging around, and we took the bread-van back to the hotel, hoping for mercy.
The owner poured all the baskets’ leaves onto the tiled floor and shook her head. “Not worth waking the tea master for”, she said. And there was no equipment in the kitchen to perform the withering or firing necessary to make tea.
For the others, that was enough. They were happy to leave the leaves behind as we moved to our next hotel. But I collected as many as I could in my bag.
It became a proper Labour Day holiday, long enough for me to break a rib in a karting crash, long enough to discover that no one eats Thousand Island Dressing in Thousand Island Lake; their delicious freshwater fish don’t need it.
But all the while I knew that, there on the table of the hotel room, my leaves were trying to wither. And, each day, I introduced them to hot water, monitoring the changes in taste. Unable to offer these poor leaves sunlight or dryness, they started turning purplish. And that made them more interesting too.
One of the things I learned is that I basically like the taste of tea. Even in its rawest form it has a banana-skin aspect which I like. This is partly why I’m enjoying white teas so much these days.
One day I may be brave enough to tell you about my attempts, back home, to fire my aged leaves in a wok. But, dear Strainer reader, right now, I’m just too ashamed to share with you the many, many mistakes I made.
One day, I will be the local tea master. But I’ll need a thousand more of those hours.
