Roasting tea in Ruili

Although my house is a wreck (so many things in boxes intended for America, Baihe, or the trash) and all our schedules have been thrown by the holiday season, I have found some sanity in the carefulness of brewing tea. Now it is impossible, for the reasons I have just mentioned to do a full, deliberate tea brewing at home--what with a baby who can now with one swipe clear most of whats on the coffee table onto the floor--so it is no wonder that my most recent experience with tea took place away from home in the mountains of the Alishan region in a small tea farming town called Ruili, where I went to find a particular homestead after getting their name card at an event the weekend before. Luckily when I arrived not only was the family there but also they were in the midst of a day-long roasting and taste-testing of their oolong, which was to be entered into a national competition.

   

Many farms participate in national competitions, sending tea selections in quantities of 22 kilos. One of those kilos is a gift gratis to the organization that runs the testing, while another kilo is used for the actual taste testing. The remaining 20 kilos, if they make the cut, will receive a special grading and will be given a fixed price. A tea master will taste hundreds of teas every day, while at each pass the number of teas dwindle until there is just a handful left. The single top tea from an entry pool of over a thousand will received the highest honor and will be able to be sold at a premium price.

The tea rankings for Oolong look something like this:

特等將 - the top honor - only one tea selected

頭等將 - second highest grade - only the top 4% make this cut (only 30 teas)

頭等將二 - third highest grade - only about 50 teas make this cut
頭等將三 - ...

There are more grading levels but why worry about them (besides, I can't say this list is too accurate!). The teas in the top four percent can be sold for about 230 US dollars per kilo while the one entry that wins top slot is sold for multiple times that rate. Most tea roasters will say that there's a lot of luck involved, not only that you get a good crop of tea, but also that the judge specifically enjoys your tea. That said, everything about the brewing method contrives to make the process as precise as possible, trying as it were to counteract so much uncertainty.

Following is a video of Mr. Lin and his father as they compare two oolongs they are roasting side by side in different machines with their entry from last year, a tea that took the 頭等將 grade.  As you can tell every slight aspect of the tea soup's color, initial scent, and taste is important.  The brewing method is rigid: three grams of tea in 150ml of boiling water brewed for six minutes in a competition "cup" made of porcelain.  Six minutes after the tea has been poured, when the leaves have cooled off, they also smell the leaves as well.  Everything counts.  The most of what I noticed under discussion (half was in Taiwanese) concerned the tea soup's, it's clarity and color.  One looked greener and one looked more yellow they told me, but I could not for the life of me discern such slight differences.  When they asked me which one I liked the best, I chose (unwittingly) the tea they had submitted from the previous year! 

Around their rather large living room, that opened up onto a rather plain and concrete porch (surrounded though by flowers, and looking out over the gray and misty mountains) they had huge recognition placques from previous entries.  15 or 20 were hung showing that they had earned the 頭等將 status, and only one, placed prominently over the cheif brewing table, showed 特等將, which means one year at least they grew the golden egg! 

I asked them how this competition tea was different than what I ended up buying--their common oolong.  As far as I could tell, for the competition they sorted the tea to get the rolled leaves more uniform, and also plucked extraneous stems which apparently confuse the taste during roasting and then brewing, but I don't imagine that it's grown in a seperate field or under different conditions.  I was also surprised that there was no initial "wash" for the tea leaves during the taste-testing.  When you use a tea pot in the Chinese tradition of brewing, for those who don't know, one always washes the tea and dispenses with the water almost immediate.  People usually emphasis the fact that it washes dirt or impurities from the leaves or that it wakes up the tea leaves and heats the tea ware to make the initial brew more pure.
So I might be under a false assumption that you can apply the "tea-tasting method" to any tea, that is brew 3 grams in a competition "cup" made of porcelain with 150ml of boiling water, but I've had a lot of fun doing that with all of my teas--what a delight!  The usual method that I use, which requires you to brew the tea for breifer periods 6-7 times is like a fine dissection of the taste, a pagent of the teas flavor that evolves and is lived and is relished.  Using the 6 minute method, however, really gives you a full taste of the tea.  I've even used it for some tea packs of oolong someone gave me that I've otherwise been brewing red rose style in an open mug.  Much better to drink directly from the competition cup after brewing it--rather more like drinking espresso out of a demitase.  A quite different tea experience!

Climbing Yu Shan

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Here. Some 44 photos with extensive commentary.

Traveling Around the Island

Today is the second day back in the routine of waking up and teaching. Last Sunday I was in Taipei, and the three or four days preceding that I was wondering around the island with Hun Lye and Kevin Lane (who both now are in Tibet). The trip was significant for me on many accounts. One, which seems only symbolic, that we traveled around (encompassed) the whole island, in fact had many opportunities to show me my digestion of my experience here as a whole. Managing driving and arrangements, for instance, and being the designated "ben di ren" (local person) I probably spoke more Chinese those four days than I normally do in several weeks otherwise. That was both a great opportunity and a revelation, proving to me in more concrete terms, what exactly I have learned, and not.

To go into detail what we did, without a worked narrative, might be tedious. Suffice it to say that it was a splendid trip for me. Encompassing the island was a significant enterprise. For it also allowed us to immerse ourselves in all sides of the island.

Beginning with Chiayi, the first day and night, the lesson was in the culture that dominates most of the island. We saw swing dancing and entertainment in a park on a Tuesday night, as well as tons of food stalls, tea stalls, and exercise parks. Wednesday, we traveled to the mountains and saw tea production first hand, from the very picking (migrant Vietnamese workers getting paid 60NT per kilo of raw tea leaves), to the roasting and rolling, and to the drinking of the tea itself (as expensive as 6600NT per kilo). Here were guys smoking cigarettes, chewing betel nut, and drinking Heineken all the while bending over mounds of fresh tea, sending out the most delirious aroma that stuck to our clothes and imaginations long afterward.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning, we spent at Foguangshan, the largest and probably most significant monastery in Taiwan, where I stayed four years ago as part of a school program, and where Hun also has connections. Here was Taiwan in its strangest manifestation, where massive buildings were being constructed over night and where nuns with beaming diligence performed all significant labors, from pouring concrete, to amassing and compiling volumes of Buddhist art. An island of incense and activity.

Thursday evening brought us to Taidung on the east coast, quiet and filled with indigenous and Hakka groups. Friday brought us up the coast, seeing some of Taiwan's most beautiful coastlines and laid back towns, and we spent the evening and night in Rueishui, where, besides carbonated hot springs settled into the mountains, we enjoyed some of the best Hakka cuisine in the area. Friday brought us through Haulien (we stopped for their famous dumplings, bought the delectable moji treats and traditional millet wine) and all the way up to Taipei, where I dropped Hun and Kevin at their hotel, and journeyed on to where I was staying, at a friend of Fiona's new apartment in the north part of the city, where she and all her friends were absorbed in playing Mahjong.

The video below follows the same progression as above.

Camping III

During Chinese New Year (days after April arrived in Taiwan), all of us went camping in the inner mountainous region of Taiwan. The views should have been fantastic but sadly the trip was overcast with mist and rain and we couldn't see anything. This made a strange and often times eerie back drop for our adventures. Visiting a farm, for example, we found ourselves standing in the rain, with literally hundreds of other people holding umbrellas, standing on a grassy hill, looking at a stage that could not be seen, listening to a man and woman chattering on microphones and, apparently, shearing sheep(their words of course we could not understand), and all and all feeling slightly jilted (and the frequent thought of--"is this real?") In this and two other blogs, I have or I will post some video that I took at that time and just now put together. (I've already posted photos of the trip a while back.)

Camping II

During Chinese New Year (days after April arrived in Taiwan), all of us went camping in the inner mountainous region of Taiwan. The views should have been fantastic but sadly the trip was overcast with mist and rain and we couldn't see anything. This made a strange and often times eerie back drop for our adventures. Visiting a farm, for example, we found ourselves standing in the rain, with literally hundreds of other people holding umbrellas, standing on a grassy hill, looking at a stage that could not be seen, listening to a man and woman chattering on microphones and, apparently, shearing sheep(their words of course we could not understand), and all and all feeling slightly jilted (and the frequent thought of--"is this real?") In this and two other blogs, I have or I will post some video that I took at that time and just now put together. (I've already posted photos of the trip a while back.)

Camping I

During Chinese New Year (days after April arrived in Taiwan), all of us went camping in the inner mountainous region of Taiwan. The views should have been fantastic but sadly the trip was overcast with mist and rain and we couldn't see anything. This made a strange and often times eerie back drop for our adventures. Visiting a farm, for example, we found ourselves standing in the rain, with literally hundreds of other people holding umbrellas, standing on a grassy hill, looking at a stage that could not be seen, listening to a man and woman chattering on microphones and, apparently, shearing sheep(their words of course we could not understand), and all and all feeling slightly jilted (and the frequent thought of--"is this real?") In this and two other blogs, I have or I will post some video that I took at that time and just now put together. (I've already posted photos of the trip a while back.)

Kenting

We spent a day in Kenting National Park, which is the southern most tip of Taiwan. Upon high hills, or peculiar jutting shelves of coral rock, you can see the ocean (in fact a convergence of three oceans) on all three sides. Or you can swim at one of the many beaches where you may find the most particular and peculiar shade of teal waters, very clear, and just the right degree of warmth.



Also look at my brother's footage here:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/posetopose/sets/72157623522853716/

Visiting Taiwan, Part III: Sunrise

Here: a video sequence of the sun rising and a random shot of some clouds later on that day.



The transcript is NOT available. Photos, however, are available by clicking here.

Visiting Taiwan: Part II, Yu Shan Sacred Tree

My friend Jane Shuput visited over the Christmas/New Year holidays. Together with Fiona we spent our time exploring some of Taiwan’s most impressive, scenic retreats from Yu Shan National Park to Taroko Gorge. Besides mountains and geological wonder, we ate plenty of Taiwan’s varied cuisine, explored the streets, spoke bad Chinese, and welcomed in the New Year on a stranger’s roof in Taibei. The following adventure happened on Jane's eighth day in Taiwan, in Yu Shan National Park.

“After all,” he said, “life and death must look pretty much the same after you’ve been around for twenty-seven hundred years.” They walked down the timbered path. The tree stood tall, ancient with one tender white branch pointing directly toward the sky. As they walked about the elevated railing—that is he, his girl friend, and his friend visiting from Paris—the obvious, though not insignificant, correlations to history and time came to them. This tree tendered carbon from the air in a world where the Greeks hadn’t yet flaunted a pillar. More—when it rose from the earth, unaware of its endless journey, those men were still scrambling for an alphabet. Consequently, their two heroic songs that have meant so much to western culture and thought were still only echoed in the hills. The Great Wall was constructed when this tree was a stately peer, respectably some 500 years old. Even the woods about it must have flickered and passed away like flames that did not do more than tease its sides. Were seeds made the same back then? When it was young could it grasped a fate stretching out before it—tedious—and unremarkable—old before it was matured? What had led this tree to grow this big, this long? Was there some joke he did not get?

To one of these, his friend responded, “how had the mountain allowed it to grow this big, this long?” This was stirring for another reason. On the drive to the site, the road was here and there destroyed where God might have taken his finger and clawed it a length down the mountain, here where rockslides had upturned the earth and rock and everything in their path. This tree, for example, was evidence that no such rockslides had touched this hill for almost three thousand years.

Some Taiwanese tourists came down and took the pictures of themselves at the base, no doubt they were photos of faces each with a similar gray background. No one seemed in any hurry. I stayed in the shade of some other trees and looked at the giant from another angle. The giant made me think of other giants: whales, rhinoceroses, and Roman Galleys. My girlfriend approached and said, “Do you like this side of the tree?” This was an appropriate enough question. The top hill side of the tree was covered in thick mosses, ferns, even various other saplings of other species that had decided to take resident there on that ground, as reliable as the mountain itself, and on the bottom side it was bare and dead. Huge grooves ran up the length of truck, light gray, like no other substance imaginable, neither something fibrous or mineral. “Yes,” I said. “From here I can see every aspect of the tree.”

The more I thought about it, the more the tree seemed like a freak of nature, and I suddenly realized my analogy that had been hidden in my mind but all the time active and latent—I saw the thing as a freak creature, sole of its kind, mis-matched to the world: a Frankenstein. And what weird passion is that—what weird meaning to stand so alone against time, until time itself becomes irrelevant and identity disappears?

Slide show: click here.

Visiting Taiwan: Part I, New Years in Taibei

My friend Jane Shuput visited over the Christmas/New Year holidays. Together with Fiona we spent our time exploring some of Taiwan’s most impressive, scenic retreats from Yu Shan National Park to Taroko Gorge. Besides mountains and geological wonder, we ate plenty of Taiwan’s varied cuisine, explored the streets, spoke bad Chinese, and welcomed in the New Year on a stranger’s roof in Taibei. Here is a medley of footage I took New Year’s Eve. Jane and I met up with Fiona in Taibei to celebrate the New Year. Climbing from rooftop to rooftop we finally found a suitable place to see Taibei 101 burst into flames.



One can also view some photos I took by clicking on "All Photos" to the right.

Feng Huang Shan Video Series

Hiking 鳳凰山

So far as I can tell the Chinese word for both "climb" and "crawl" is the same. When Fiona and I went hiking a mountain last weekend, the distinction made little difference, for half the time it seemed we were crawling up slippery rock, or wobbling cross rotting bamboo-and-nail bridges, or pulling ourselves up difficult paths by knotted ropes.

It began simply enough, passing through campgrounds on paved roads, then for a short time on a logging trail. But then, turning abruptly into the weird mixture of tropical forest, bamboo, and black rock we began a more direct and rocky ascent. Our group consisted of a very fine mixture of folks--some authentic, experienced hikers (you could easily see it in their careless grins) a family with a teenage girl, a very unhappy looking twenty-something girl, Fiona and I, and a 75-year-old man, who looked like it might be his first mountain hike (yet maybe not his last). I was too excited taking photos at every turn (the only person so inclined) and since we were in no hurry, we were mostly at the back of the pack with the unhappy twenty-something, the man, and a guy with very serious knee supports who every once in a while stopped stock-still as if listening, his front leg perched upon a rock, heroically. At first I thought he might be listening intently, or simply consuming nature with his senses, but I think it was just that he was taking breaks, every now and then.

A bamboo forest is odd. Like a pine forest, it admits only its own kind and its own ecosystem, completely contained and in an equilibrium of silence so deep that it extends and permeates. I've heard before that bamboo may be thought of us a reminder to prudence, or diligence, as it never extends so far without first putting another support. And yet, as I gazed high above, these crazy reeds have grown so tall that their very weight pulls themselves back into lovely curves that are easily, freely tossed by the winds. And then again, should we not reflect on the human result of prudence?

As we climbed higher, mountain mist began moving past us, sending a chill not dissimilar to that winter fragrance of snow, a sensation of cleanness and spiritual cold. When we finally reached the ridge of the mountain, we were already surrounded by a mist so thick it just as easily could be called fog. And as we walked I could not help feeling troubled and lost, as if this were a mythical land. Sounds just around the bend were lost, yet those sounds from the town below could, at times, be distinctly heard. Also distance and perspective collapsed and were confused. It was hard to tell how far we had gone, whether we were still had to go up or go down. And when I looked off either side of the trail, the most troubling thing yet (especially on these wet rocks) was an interminable near-drop. When the fogs parted sometimes you could see for a long distance straight down and yet not see the bottom. On the other side a misty bamboo forest that also receded almost vertically away. It seemed we were walking upon a series of rock platforms unsupported by earth of this world, and it continued on, and on, and on, until the ennui of the situation completely overshadowed its complete mystery.

We met finally, all together at the top, drank some cheap oolong tea, and descended again, a journey that seemed twice as long as the original.

Look at my photo album for photos of the trip.

Ali San

Finally, I went to the mountains. I followed along a group of three others in a car that left early Saturday morning, that drove up the long ascent to the Ali San park, where it was clear, refreshing, and brilliant. We spent a little time walking around eating before heading to the train station to pre-buy tickets to a further destination, 2oo meters higher to watch the sunrise Sunday morning. As we waited for the tickets one of us noticed something and we all turned around to find this huge wall of mist coming towards us, and soon, the blue sky, the sunlight, all was exchanged for an eerie, deathless, impenetrable mist.

Often when people go to see the Ali San sunrise, they never get to see it because the mists are too intense. But most Taiwanese and Chinese tourists don't seem to mind because half of the journey is being there for the "qi," the rejuvenating natural energy that can be found in the space where the clouds meet the mountains.

That first day we took a little trip to see some very old trees. We saw ruins first of a tree, struck by lightening twice in the fifties and sixties, and that then toppled in the nineties, and which will probably still be rotting peacefully, with little of its petrified shell altered, long after any of our names are spoken. The report of the age of the monster was a cool 3000.

After paying respects and seeing some other natural phenomenon, like a tree growing from a tree growing from a tree, we returned to the lodge and hotel area for dinner and rest (I myself was sick all weekend, unfortunately, so there was a lot of sleeping). 2:30 the next morning we all got up and boarded a train to viewing area at 2500 meters, where we could see the moon's sliver and all the stars beaming neatly in the sky. We waited, alternatively standing or crouching in the mountain nighttime cold, in a crowd of hundreds of people. At about 5 o'clock a man in gruff Taiwanese came on a bullhorn and talked nonstop until the stars disappeared and the sun arose.

We were lucky I guess. The sun came up as clean and clear as could be, while in the valley below bathed a lake of clouds.

Halfway around the World to Find the Picturesque

“Youzihhu-- “Youzihhu sits within a natural basin on the eastern side of the mountain beside a deserted aboriginal village. Ruins of early stone dwellings with their vacant fields bring about a sense of vicissitude and uncertainty. Looking down at it from the high point of the entrance road, you can see randomly scattered stone houses with mottled brick walls nestling close to the mountains, which is a picturesque addition to this site.”

I descended the road into the “natural basin” halfway realizing that I simply would have to push my bicycle back up and dumped it into some weeds. I had to believe that it was such an undesirable product that no one would ever steal it, for I did not want to walk back to the guest house. On my first test ride, “around the block,” I broke the peddle clean off the arm. This was the first bike of two, provided for free from the guesthouse. Neither bike was very good and as I have not found a way to rent motorcycles without an international driver’s license, they were my only means of transportation.

On this island, which really is a piece of jagged volcanic rock, and as far as I could see, eternally beaten by the light gray waves, the roads (or, rather, road), fluctuated from steep, twisting climbs unto the higher plain, and the slow, peaceful undulations of the waving, long grass hills where nymph like deer hung about and roamed in packs at night. For the latter terrain, having a bicycle was rather nice, but concerning the former, the bicycle was not built for such strain, especially with my leg length. The bikes' seats were built so low that even at the very lowest point of the leg thrust, my knee was barely below my waist.

So like I said, I threw it into the weeds. When I reached the beach, the basin with the ruined houses, and the waves that fell stumbling in over the scattered volcanic rock, I went sort of distracted for several hours. I think I lost track of the time. Volcanic rock is very easy to climb, and so I took advantage of this—following waterfalls up the mountain. Roaming out as far as I could on the rock formations that extended out into the sea. After a while the continuous high wind and threshing of the sea seized to seem terrible any more. Now I felt the perspective of the rock, or of the sea from a greater distance—a sense of calm and almost claustrophobic peace. Here I was with a bike, an entire island, and an entire day—what to do!

The first night I arrived, I, along with the six other guests, and the uncle of the family who ran the guesthouse, went out driving on scooters, even though it was a constant chill factor. It was not cold necessarily when looking at a thermometer, but the wind was so strong and constant that any body warmth produced was immediately striped away, so that after awhile, the fire inside slowed considerably and without eating—fuel—it turned an inescapable cold. We rode about on the highlands with a huge flashlight and went looking for deer, just like people would do back in Pennsylvania for shits and giggles, but here the scene was slightly different—slightly eerie. A bunch of silent people in the mid-twenties, driving around on scooters, neither excited nor bored, stopping every once in a while because something like eyes flashed back in the night.

We stopped by some other places. Though we were on the highlands, we somehow found ourselves in a cave with candles lit, and a large bowl of fruit set out on an alter. A pear was lying on the floor so the uncle, when he entered, replaced it respectfully. This was Quanyin’s cave. In a guidebook before I came, I had read something like that a man had been washed ashore and woke up in this cave and saw a cave formation that looked to him to be an emanation of the deity—thus the shrine to this day. There was a similar story like this I remember when I was on the coast of Thailand, but it wasn’t Quanyin—it was a giant penis. The cave in Thailand was filled with giant penises offered by the local fishermen.

The cave was rather odd. Water running about under us, and above us you could hear the wind and the laurel like shrubs dancing in the wind. Through much of the tunnel and cave, the rock simply was overhanging us, and there was space that you could see up into the vegetation above and, occasionally, the stars. The roots were growing where our heads were. As I said, it was rather strange.

I was accompanied by six other people in their twenties, two couples who all knew each other, and two girls who didn’t know anyone else. All of them were from Taipei and had come to Ludao for one night. I thought this strange for two reasons. The first is because the travel expense is higher than the expense it is to stay on Green Island (Ludao) and the other is the ferry ride over—basically, the most miserable fifty minutes of your life. Plastic bags are stuffed into the seat pouch in front of EVERYBODY by several attendants with un-humored features. The most vivid image I walked away with was seeing the attendants, walking hither and thither, making trips to the public, central trashcan, with sloshing plastic bags of various muddy mixture. I did not look forward to leaving Ludao.

In the caves, the uncle was explaining various other formations that over time have been identified as resembling over things. I was a little bored and more interesting in the wind above me and feeling strange, but every once in a while I asked one of the girls what he was talking about because she knew English very well. She would give thoughtful one word responses, so I was a little put off, and maybe she wasn’t really listening as well. I let my eyes look at the rock and make my own impressions. I was never a big one in looking at clouds and saying what I saw. I have very often let my fancy play with clouds, but to say, “that looks like an old man sleeping,” never really seems like a good idea.

I thought that at any moment I would find something—see the rock move, or to see something so horrific, frozen into the rock, something someone had never seen before but that was undeniably there, that I would scream and frighten the entire party, but soon after we left, and I never experienced that possibility.

On my bike, back up from the basin, I made my way around the island, past the various outlooks, and then past the beaches where many people go snorkeling. At this time of year, and especially with the cold weather, no one was doing anything more than stopping and looking. I made my way past the hot springs—my central driving force for coming here—where Teacher Minnie told me she would get up at 3 in the morning to go soak in the waters and wait to watch the sunrise. It’s one of only three hot springs in the world where the water is salted. I actually didn’t get a chance to go. 3 am was a little early for anyone at the guesthouse to take me halfway around the island, and though we tried to go another time, a misunderstanding and a rather perplexing situation denied me the opportunity to fulfill that chance to sit in those waters. Until another time. Here is a photo of a road sign.