Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Posted by 醉茶生 at 11:01 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea

It is a trope repeated throughout East Asia that sages live on mountain tops, accessible only via an arduous climb. The arid conditions and simple living are said to cleanse the body and focus the mind on higher things. The English will ironically describe any arduous experience as “character building”. If the making of a man is through adversity and challenge, then tea is not really different.

According to Lu Yu, the best tea grows on gravel, while tea that grows on rich loam produces inferior tea. While wine thrives on sunny, well-drained soils with moderate rainful, tea is at its best when grown under difficult conditions. Wild tea trees grow in warm, wet, lowland areas in Yunan and neighboring provinces, but some of the best tea in the world is High Mountain tea (as previously discussed by Miss Neddy), where the bushes are grown on gravel and are stunted by the cold and the elevation. The darker, heavier flavours of tea grown in lowland areas become light and clear in the mountainous regions of Taiwan and Fujian. The differences achieved by the change in terrain are startling. Because the conditions are so difficult, only a limited amount of high mountain tea can be harvested each season without killing the plant, making this tea yet more precious than it already is.

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