Editorial Conversation: AMA #6

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Sixth AMA with the editorial team! You can listen to the episode here, on YouTube, or on Spotify. Listen to the Tea Technique team as they gear up for their highly anticipated upcoming Yiwu Pu'er research trip. The team shares lighthearted pre-trip jitters on poisonous snakes and questionable food to in-depth discussions on the rich history and culture of Yunnan’s tea villages. Tune in to hear about how the team is preparing for the trip, what they hope to achieve, and their insights into the nuances of Yiwu tea including common misconceptions about pu’er.

A full transcript is included on the episode page and below:

[00:00:05] Jason Cohen: All right. We are gonna start off with our new tradition.

[00:00:10] Pat Penny: I'm so, so worried about this.

[00:00:13] Jason Cohen: Aren't you always worried about this? Just as

[00:00:15] Pat Penny: I am.

[00:00:16] Jason Cohen: people come in,

[00:00:18] Pat Penny: I have a feeling I know what's gonna happen.

[00:00:21] Jason Cohen: That's right. Okay.

Let's see.

This is a good one. (AI Music Playing)  

Alright.

[00:02:33] Pat Penny: So that's our new tradition. I think, what this is the third or fourth AMA where you've had some music for us to open up?

[00:02:39] Jason Cohen: I have. And with that, we can start. We're so excited that people have joined us, and we're so excited for all the questions that we got. And most of all, I think we're excited for this trip. It's less than a week away now.

[00:02:52] Pat Penny: Yeah, I think Zongjun, before you had joined, before we started, I was just telling Jason, I went out and got all my vaccines updated, did all my shopping. I'm at the point where I'm just like, just put me in the airplane. I just want to go, let's get to Yunnan.

[00:03:05] Zongjun Li: Ooh, let's go.

[00:03:07] Pat Penny: In the tradition of our AMAs, we always ask what everyone's drinking to start. And Jason I already see, you took a big swig. So you wanna let us know what you're drinking?  

[00:03:15] Jason Cohen: I am drinking a really nice Hui Yuan Keng Qi Dan. There's a little bit of sparkle to it. So it doesn't make an age claim, so I'm gonna guess that it's not quite Wuyi gushu. So maybe, 20, 30-year-old tree. It's very good, very caramelly, leaves are like a bit of clove oil essence on your tongue. And I thought, what better to pair that with at 9:00 PM on a Wednesday than some Glenfarclas Japanese export, 21 year cast strength.

[00:03:47] Pat Penny: Casual, very casual.

That a Hui Yuan Keng Qi Dan, is that from our friend whose bar we all went to or is this a different source?

[00:03:55] Jason Cohen: Yes. Testing out a range of our new friend's teas.  

[00:03:59] Pat Penny: Nice. Okay. Excited to hear more. Zongjun, you have something at hand that you're drinking tonight?  

[00:04:05] Zongjun Li: There's a big bottle of Nong Fu Shan.

[00:04:08] Pat Penny: Just enjoying the taste of Nong Fu Shan which we'll be drinking nonstop in the next few weeks.

[00:04:13] Jason Cohen: Was that just the 9:00 AM special Zongjun, or did

[00:04:16] Zongjun Li: No alcohol, nothing. Just priming my palate to absolute neutral. Ready for this trip.

[00:04:25] Pat Penny: Nothing else will go in your body.

[00:04:27] Zongjun Li: Yep. Just shui.

[00:04:29] Pat Penny: It's a little fast Zongjun, we're not gonna be there for another week.

Okay. Well, I have a little mug here of some chen pi (dried tangerine peel) and some shou pu'er because as I mentioned, I got my vaccines updated a little bit earlier today. Just feel like I got my butt kicked a little bit by them. So, I needed something to comfort me and hold me tight and let me know everything's gonna be okay after all of my shots.

I think with that we're gonna jump into the questions that were pre-submitted. Just let everyone know who's joining online as well, feel free to drop questions in the chat and we'll answer them live.

So we did get a question from a friend of the podcast and I'm gonna read it now. Jason, I think this one is specifically to you. This comes from our friend Anthony C.

Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck- sized horses?

[00:05:16] Jason Cohen: One horse-sized duck. I think the hundred could come at me from multiple angles. But having just a single opponent, I think I stand a better chance. 

[00:05:26] Pat Penny: Mallards are pretty vicious. I don't know, a mallard the size of a horse. I'm kind of scared of that. Zongjun, do you have a different take.

[00:05:33] Zongjun Li: Kind of a Yunnan mushroom fevered dreamer.

[00:05:36] Pat Penny: This is a very serious question submitted by a listener.

[00:05:39] Zongjun Li: I'll take whatever is coming to us for ge men. Anything.

[00:05:42] Jason Cohen: Zongjun thinks as a team.

Earth, wind, water, fire. We can take the hundred ducks.

[00:05:49] Pat Penny: Alright, we're missing Emily. So, one of the elements is down, so I'm not sure that we're gonna be able to like, power up, Captain Planet this and take out the ducks.

[00:05:57] Jason Cohen: I will say I was shocked by how big a goose was. I was walking around some market in Taiwan and there was a goose, full-size goose at a cage. Goose was like as tall as I was. That goose was huge.

[00:06:10] Pat Penny: That's like gushu goose.

[00:06:11] Jason Cohen: That stopped me in my tracks. I had to do a double take. And then of course, the nice gentleman with the goose stall was just like, e a!, like I needed an explanation of what this goose was.

[00:06:22] Pat Penny: I don't know. Foreigners have never seen a goose before. A special Taiwanese goose. They don't have this in other places.

[00:06:28] Jason Cohen: I've never seen a goose that big before. That was a really big goose.

[00:06:32] Pat Penny: Almost horse size, would you say?

[00:06:35] Jason Cohen: I don't think I could've fought it. I think I didn't, I would've lost.

[00:06:38] Pat Penny: Well, it sounds like you picked a losing battle then.

I do think I'm on the same team as you though. I think I go for the one giant duck.

[00:06:44] Jason Cohen: I just wanna be clear. The horse size duck picked a fight with me.

[00:06:48] Pat Penny: I mean this, Anthony asking this question is picking a fight with all of us. He did submit that question. That was a real question that we got.

So another question submitted by a reader. This is actually a two-parter. So the question was, what are the endemic brewing practices of Yunnan? They had a follow-up question. What are the historic brewing practices of Yunnan? So these may be the same thing, or maybe there's a slightly different answer. 

[00:07:10] Jason Cohen: I would say the endemic brewing practices and the historic brewing practices are both best described as splashy fun time. There's a lot of big plate brewing. There's a lot of tree stump tea table brewing. That said the brewing is quite skillful.

It might be splashy fun time, and it might not be particularly overbearingly elegant as you would see in, at tea houses in Shanghai or Taipei, but they're using medium sized updose in tea to water ratio, anywhere 5, 6, 7 grams of tea. And packing that into 120 mil, 150 mil gaiwan and doing relatively rapid brews.

One thing that we do see a lot of is mixed dao bei brewing, where they're not particularly concerned with adding multiple brews into the same gong dao bei. And that's a very tea taster farmer merchant thing that you'll see in Yunnan. The idea is that good tea, the tea, the flavor profile will be pretty stable across those multiple brews. And they're doing a little bit higher of an updose, a little bit longer of a standard brew time than you see in more type of refined multi-brew sessions.

But the important thing to know is that before 19, late nineties, really, before late nineties it would've been all lao ren cha. It would've been Thermos brewing, large cup brewing. And it wasn't until the Taiwanese came back to Yunnan in the nineties that they began to brew in a way that was more presentable for individuals actually visiting. I don't know if you wanna expound on that or talk more about that Zongjun.

[00:08:48] Zongjun Li: Yeah. And just to expand from the points that Jason made. They didn't drink pu'er. They were historically been drinking green tea and sometimes red tea. All of the pu'er teas that they made historically being exported to other provinces, end up staying in those provinces and they never drank their own produce.

Until very recently, of course.

[00:09:09] Jason Cohen: Until very recently. And rare productions, occasional productions of things like dian hongs, certain red teas, white teas. But really, when they say white tea in Yunnan, they mean like unprocessed sun dried maocha. Very low intervention type production. So, this idea of individuals drinking pu'er tea in Yunnan, it was predominantly an export product.

And we should also make a strong differentiation between the indigenous ethnicities of Yunnan versus the historical Han migration. There's been Han for 3, 400 plus years at this point. But the practices of the Han were much more sinified than some of the Bai and Dai various minority groups that continue to have their own practice of boiled tea. And other types of tea that they make.  

[00:09:58] Pat Penny: Awesome. Okay, I think we answered that one. Great question. Thank you to our reader. And hopefully they feel like you answered it. I think you did a nice job.

[00:10:05] Jason Cohen: Well, Pat, before you jump into that next question, maybe you should give a little bit of background. 'Cause all three of us have different levels of experience in Yunnan.

[00:10:12] Pat Penny: Yeah. Well, I think that's probably gonna be touched upon in some of our other questions here. We do have a couple questions that kind of touch on the same theme. So a lot of the themes are around like, for you and Zongjun, you've both been to Yunnan before.

So there's this theme in the questions of what are your expectations? So what are you guys expecting to see that maybe you've already seen before. What do you think is gonna be different about this trip? And then I'll add my own color here. I've never been to Yunnan before.

I've only heard about it secondhand, seen pictures, seen videos, and so for me, my expectations are set like super high. I think it's good that we had Wuyi last year to to like, I don't know, temper me a little bit. Because if we like exceeded Chaozhou and then I was just like continuing this upward trajectory of amazing tea trips, I don't know if I could like actually fathom what Yunnan was gonna be like because my excitement would be way too high. 

So I think I got tempered by last year's experience a little bit. Still a good time, but it was more type two fun. I think this year will be a little bit more type one fun and type two fun. But you know, it's expecting that we're gonna spend a lot of time with farmers. Of course expecting we're gonna drink a ton of tea.

I do think that my preconceived notions of some of the flavor profiles particularly in this area 'cause we're gonna be pretty heavily in Yiwu and in some small, I'm thinking we're gonna be going to some small villages and small mountain areas. I think a lot of what I believe this tea tastes like is gonna be challenged and I hope it is.

And then I'll be excited to see where maybe my previous knowledge holds true. I do think this trip is gonna be more difficult than the previous trips that we've had. Yunnan just feels like a little more back country. I was just telling Jason before we started recording how much shopping I've been doing, and Jason gets a text from me every three or four days when I'm like thinking about going to REI and I'm like, Hey, do we have clean drinking water in Yunnan? Hey do I need bug spray?

I think, expectations are high. Slowly getting myself mentally and physically prepared for the trip. I think whatever I expect I hope that this trip will exceed it. So I'll pass it back to you and Zongjun, Jason with your part two or part three or part four Yunnan experience.

[00:12:18] Jason Cohen: Well, I'll let Zongjun go first, but I will say I wish they had snake spray.

[00:12:22] Pat Penny: Oh, great. Great. Cool.  

[00:12:25] Zongjun Li: It's going back to Yunnan again, Jason. I don't know. This time is going to be very different from Wuyi. I would say it would be probably more similar to Chaozhou because we're going back closer to the tea harvest and tea processing season.

So expecting the whole mountain smelled like tea and really wanted to see those people carrying giant basket of fresh tea leaves, walking along the mountain routes into the villages. That was quite a scene from a lot of the national photography competitions. And really wanted to see that because Yiwu was famous historically for being a tea trading center in the region.

Dunno if that's still a practice, but I would be very happy to see that.

[00:13:09] Jason Cohen: And Zongjun, just for listeners to have context, this will be your second time in Yiwu in the tea mountains, right?

[00:13:15] Zongjun Li: Yeah. Second.

[00:13:17] Jason Cohen: What surprised you most the first time? I've been a couple of times going all the way back to 2007.

So, what surprised you since your first time was just two years ago on an extension of the 2023 research trip?

[00:13:31] Zongjun Li: What surprised me, how developed Yunnan is right now. Because before the trip Jason was really priming me how we need to be ready into venturing into the jungles.

And we didn't get to venture into the jungles until probably like 10 miles away from Yiwu town. And we're still on this like four-lane highway and it's, we are pretty close to civilization, but once we are in Yiwu, it's quite a different world. You are surrounded by nature.

You are surrounded by flying mountain chickens and all kinds of vegetations and tea in all of the hidden places. So, very harmonical between nature and it's like very different from all the other tea gardens that we have visited. Like, it's not a tea garden, it's a forest.

[00:14:19] Jason Cohen: A tea forest, yeah. I will, in my defense, Zongjun, what year was that highway built?

[00:14:26] Zongjun Li: Good question. I don't know. It's like two years, three years ago maybe.

[00:14:31] Jason Cohen: It wasn't finished, Zongjun! We were on it in 2023. The highway wasn't finished. It finished this year.

[00:14:37] Zongjun Li: Oh yeah. It looks brand new. That was a new highway.

[00:14:40] Pat Penny: It is brand new.

[00:14:42] Jason Cohen: It is. Yeah. I mean, it's true. When I was in Yunnan the first time in 2007, it was not developed. It was truly, it was, it was going into another world. And now that other world is in many ways disappearing.

They finished the highway this year. I got a, I got some notes from a friend who said that, you were just here two years ago. When you show up this year, you're not gonna recognize the place. A welcome center's been built at the end of the highway. There's a big viewing pavilion to go out and look at a tea mountain.

It's developing and in some ways these things are good. It's good that there's running water and electricity and clean water and some infrastructure. It's good that it doesn't take more than a day's drive to get from the villages into an actual town with schools and hospitals.

But on the other hand, the highway destroyed lots of old grove tea. It destroyed lots of tea forest. A lot of the families used to harvest that aren't even harvesting the tea that was untouched next to the highway. They say it's no good. They say that it's too hot for electric cars.

So even though China's so rapidly electrifying, that the electric cars aren't used in that mountain because in the summertime, the flat top could be over a hundred degrees and the batteries would then be at like 120 something degrees. And yeah, it's a big deal that, that the highways there and, we saw it in Wudong.

Not even to talk about Wuyi, but right in Wudong people driving their Audis up into the Wudong Mountain. And then it's like, an hour and a half, two hours of just sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, your Audi next to someone's Bentley, to go bid against each other on the 300 year old...

[00:16:24] Pat Penny: So I don't know if anything will be as bad as Hangzhou though. I've never sat in more traffic next to tons of nice cars than I did in Hangzhou.

[00:16:33] Jason Cohen: Yeah. This is why we're not riding the

[00:16:34] Zongjun Li: We have heard rumors of Yiwu being a helicopter heavy town. So expecting to see some incoming choppers,

[00:16:43] Jason Cohen: But Zongjun so that's interesting that you talked about that development, but then culturally, Yunnan is still quite distinct, right? Despite the development the culture has not been degraded. The culture is still there, right? I would say this time I interacted a lot more. This was when we were on the Jingmai side. I interacted a lot more with the specific minority group that we were there. That was the Bulang minority group that I hadn't spent a whole lot of time with before. And I would say that culture is incredibly strong, and it's notably different in, in, in numerous ways. I don't know Zongjun that being your first time in Yunnan two years ago, did you find anything surprising on that side?

Living in China full time, mostly full time, right? What did you find surprising? I think that's a really interesting question.

[00:17:33] Zongjun Li: Yeah. My background is, my ethnicity background is Han and China is really a Han country. 90% of the people living here are like me.

And Yunnan is quite the opposite. Han is the minority in that province. And you see all these ethnicities, different people coming from all parts of China actually living there, staying with the locals, practicing their own culture, it's quite a interesting scene to watch. Almost reminds me a little bit of India. How different people with ethnical background not only having different culture maybe, but also speaking different languages and eating different food and doing the things differently. 

That's very interesting to see. You almost cannot believe you're still in China. And that part being well preserved, you still have all these people respecting each other and being very hospital to visitors and really wanted to show us their way of life and what they think are interesting and beautiful. So we had a really wonderful time in Jingmai and all the other tea producing regions in Yunnan that we end up visiting.  

[00:18:43] Pat Penny: Awesome. Do you both feel like you've touched upon the expectations question

[00:18:47] Zongjun Li: No.

[00:18:47] Pat Penny: that we were originally answering?

[00:18:49] Jason Cohen: I was gonna revert. I was gonna ask you, can you remind me what question I'm supposed be answering?

My expectations, this will be my fourth, fifth time in, in Yunnan, fourth, fifth time going to the tea mountains. But I really had to rebuild. When we went in 2023, the whole point was to start to rebuild these relationships so that we could go back because my relationships had atrophied since I was there in 2007, 2009. 

So we went back in 2023 to start building and rebuilding these relationships. And this was after we were in Chaozhou, in Wudong doing the 2023 research trip on Dancong tea. But Zongjun and I continued on and we went to Jingmai and we had a pretty amazing time in Jingmai. We did a bit of work in Menghai.

We saw some shou pu'er production, then we went to Yiwu to see the, really, the birthplace of not just pu'er tea but in some theories, all teas. And I think what's changed for me since I started, I, it was pu'er tea that got me into tea, right? It was pu'er tea that, that got me started in tea. And I always felt like I could purchase and taste and understand it. It was really the entryway for me.

But I think what's changed in my practice and my level of understanding is the nuance and the complexities and this idea of traditions and living traditions. And there's a little bit of this knee jerk reaction that a lot of people who are new to tea have about how old is pu'er.

When did, you know puer is this ancient tea? We taught in the institute back in Penn State that well, really, there is no what we think of as pu'er tea pre 1900 ish, right? Song Ping Hao and Tong Xing Hao and the antique era, all of this developed and redeveloped much later than a lot of people think despite these trees, the tea forests haven't been tended to since easily Tang dynasty,

a lot of historical information pointing back even further, and used as tea.

And so this idea of traditions and living arts and what is it that we're studying and what makes it meaningful has really changed for me in that time. I would say that my focus on terroir really at a different level, right? It's not just Yiwu, it's Yiwu as a range of mountains and each mountain tastes quite different. And being able to say, okay, well this tastes like Mahei, but actually this tastes like really good upslope Mahei, so it's Shui Yuan Keng and this tastes really sweet and honey and floral, so probably gaoshan and et cetera, et cetera.

So I, I would say that the thing that I'm looking forward to most is getting much further afield, is getting out of the villages where I spent most of the time and getting a day, two days, three days, maybe deep into the forest, covered in leeches, fighting off snakes, protecting Pat from spiders and seeing these ancient trees that are far more off the beaten path and just really getting an understanding of the forest and the forest maintenance and the practices and the variations and practices there.

Do they let the moss stay on the tree? Do they weed the garden? Do they leave the garden? How tightly dense are the tea groves? Are the tea groves equilateral spaced, which points to ancient arbor versus are they totally wild? Have they been pollarded? Who's doing the picking? Is it one of the itinerant minority groups or is it specific individuals who are allowed to tend and pick from specific trees and groves?

Anyway, that was a really long answer, but that's what I'm hoping to get into this time.

[00:22:26] Pat Penny: I don't think anyone who listens to our podcast expects short answers from you. But, I think you did start to touch upon a question that Alex, who's joining us here dropped in the chat. For all of you listening later on, joining the AMA live is the best way to have your questions answered. We have a backlog of questions from Instagram but you get to skip that if you're here and you drop it in the chat. So, thank you, Alex, for dropping your question in the chat.

So Jason, you were talking about where we're gonna be going, where you've gone before in Yunnan. So, why do we choose Yiwu this time versus anywhere else in Yunnan? And, how do you see our itinerary looking? I think you started to touch upon this based on the relationship building, right? And everything you said.

[00:23:01] Jason Cohen: Yeah.

[00:23:01] Pat Penny: But, go ahead and answer it deeper.

[00:23:04] Jason Cohen: All of these trips, we focus on a single area. And we try to make the area as tight as possible in order to learn as much as possible. And so Yunnan is huge. And, I think that there's a good question if you can even cover Yunnan, if you can cover all of pu'er tea in a single book. You could write your own book just about Yiwu but any research on pu'er probably has to start in Yiwu.

Yiwu was the historical trading center for the forest tea. It has one of the longest running traditions of continuous harvesting from the six famous tea mountains. It is where, fairly or unfairly, the majority of focus has been. And even to the point you could say that something that's outside of that traditional area like Lao Ban Zhang was almost in response to this over focus on Yiwu.

So, we're going to Yiwu again. Because that's definitely the place to start. And it's the best place to see the ancient tea trees, the processing and to really gain an understanding of what every other area measures itself against.

You go anywhere else. They'll say, this is as good as, or this replicates, or this is similar to always in reference to something in Yiwu.  

[00:24:23] Pat Penny: Maybe Zongjun, you can build as well. When you guys visited two years ago, you obviously built relationships in that area, and so that's kind of why we're going back.

What would it look like if we were gonna try to go to a different area, right? Like we, we can't just show up. Right? What does that look like in your mind?

[00:24:39] Zongjun Li: Really, really, I don't know. One of the very memorable moment from last trip was one of our tea friends took us into a slope behind Mahei.

It was Jason and I and him, and we were standing in the tea forest in Mahei, and he was pointing to all sides of the mountains surrounding Yiwu. 'Cause Yiwu was basically the trading center and everyone needs to come to Yiwu historically to sell their teas.

And he was like, okay. So behind that mountain ridge is Wan Gong, and over there is Bo He Tang, and you have Cha Wang Shu all the way up at the slope. And as he was pointing his finger into the distance, I see just like a sea of green forests. I no idea what's in there? Do people actually live in those places?

Had to question myself. But, it was super cool to actually put my feets into those unexplored area and actually be able to see what's going on on the ground. So, that's super excited.

[00:25:36] Pat Penny: I think, it's Yiwu for now and it could be that we love it so much and we learn so much that it's Yiwu again another time. 

But certainly, there, there will come a time where we try to set up more relationships, I think, outside of Yiwu and these trips that are always much more impactful when we have the relationships and we're able to meet with the right people, get the right access to things and really learn at a deeper level.

'Cause if we just show up in another tea village we're not gonna get a lot done. But luckily we have a couple people this time who are gonna host us and I'm really excited about what we're gonna see with them.

[00:26:08] Zongjun Li: Yeah.

[00:26:10] Pat Penny: Okay. Thank you for the question. All right, Jason, I know you got a couple questions that were submitted via email.

Did you wanna pop into those?

[00:26:17] Jason Cohen: Yeah, we could definitely do that. Let's see. Main goal for the trip. How do these trips enhance or add or allow for the research of the writing? You can take that one Pat, you've been hosting.

[00:26:32] Pat Penny: Sure. Yeah. The writing, well, main goals, I think outside of doing background research to continue writing and to eventually write a book which I think you kind of alluded to a little bit, Jason.

Maybe a pu'er book, maybe multiple pu'er books. Maybe a Yiwu book. Who knows? Outside of

[00:26:49] Jason Cohen: One book.

[00:26:50] Pat Penny: One book, sure.

[00:26:50] Jason Cohen: One book. Few thousand pages. That's all.

[00:26:52] Zongjun Li: 2000 pages.

[00:26:55] Pat Penny: Okay. So after we write the pu'er table reference text guide, textbook, outside of that, well, it's not really outside of that. Everything we do, I think is in service of what we hope to put into the books, right?

So I think it's all about gathering this firsthand experience, really seeing these practices in person. Beyond that, forming relationships. So I think, tea is this amazing hobby. It's this amazing culture. But you know, when it really boils down to it, it's really a, an avenue of connection.

And I feel like one of the things that we get out of this is that these trips provide us with lots of friendships, right? And often these friendships net other benefits for us in the future and for other trips. We've had some of our relationships help set us up with other people on different research trips or help connect us with people so that we can find out different answers to questions we have.

A lot of stuff that we're doing is not things that you can just go search on the internet and get an answer. And sometimes it's things that, you know, even in English or in Mandarin, with access to great books from amazing libraries, we still can't find the answer, right? We're gonna be getting a lot of, I think, amazing firsthand experience, and that's really what, I think, this is gonna be setting us up for.

And that's the goal of this trip in my mind. But man beyond that, a lot of fun. My, my goal is also just to have a great time with you guys. There's always tough parts, but for the most part, it's just a great time together.

[00:28:16] Jason Cohen: It's definitely type B fun. So it's not always fun immediately in the moment, particularly when you're, it's a hundred degrees, a hundred percent humidity. You've been walking for hours. There's a, there's certainly some pain and suffering that goes onto it.

But I, I would say and I've come back to this a few times, is that one of the most important things, and the reason that people trust us and make friends with us and are willing to reveal so much to us is because we're non-commercial, is because we are so intensely academic and we, we don't sell tea, we don't sell teaware. We're never gonna sell tea, we're never gonna sell teaware.

All we wanna do is write these books, make sure they're factually correct and publish great information in English. And I think that goes a long way. And, Zongjun you could talk about this, you easily have access to other tea circles in China.

But you know, there are very few groups. Maybe nearly no groups that have the type of relationship that we do. 'Cause there's so little of this general public knowledge publication that's not trying to promote or sell or do anything other than advance the pure knowledge of these topics.

[00:29:28] Zongjun Li: Yeah. Tea is always tied with money in China and pu'er especially so. I guess my first exposure to pu'er when I was a kid was the pu'er bubble back in the days. And that was I think still haunted a lot of people to these days that they, they don't want to touch pu'er because it feels too deep water that they might drown along with their wallet.

So it's something that's people do not really, be able to view it with a very pure lens. You kind of see that in some of the academic publications and some of the scholars that we have talked to take a similar approach to study tea.

But usually, in China when you are talking about tea, when you are trying to quote unquote educate people about tea, you're trying to sell them something usually with a higher price tag than normal. And, usually we call it intelligence tax that you have paid as a consumer. It's a slang in China.

But it's not very common to see people just showed up and just wanted to learn tea. I think we surprised a handful of farmers in Yunnan too. 'Cause sometimes at the end they were saying like, okay, so how much tea do you want? And we can start talking about the price tag or wholesale prices. And we're like, oh no, we don't intend to buy anything from you other than gain knowledge.

[00:30:47] Pat Penny: Sometimes we do have to buy things.

[00:30:48] Jason Cohen: Well, we'll take a little bit on the side, but we're not doing wholesale

[00:30:51] Pat Penny: Yeah.

[00:30:51] Zongjun Li: For our own consumption.

[00:30:53] Jason Cohen: Yeah. But that's one of the magic moments, right? 'Cause when we do that and they realize that we're serious. Right?

[00:30:59] Zongjun Li: Yeah.

[00:30:59] Jason Cohen: Then they start to go back and to revise and to add nuance and to

[00:31:04] Zongjun Li: Yeah. They really opened up after that.

[00:31:07] Jason Cohen: It really changes. It really changes a lot for us. And it's what gets us invited back and they say, come with me next time. Let me show you. Let me actually show you what I'm doing.

[00:31:19] Pat Penny: I feel like we touched on that then, the goal. Feel satisfied with that. We continue to just get down rabbit holes on every question that I think we answer.

This one I didn't expect. This one came to us on Instagram. What makes you nervous about this trip?

[00:31:35] Jason Cohen: What makes me nervous about this trip? 

[00:31:37] Zongjun Li: Laotian beer.

[00:31:38] Jason Cohen: Oh yeah. Laotian beer. Don't drink that stuff.

[00:31:41] Pat Penny: It's gotta be cleaner than the Yunnan water.

[00:31:44] Jason Cohen: No. It's full of propylene glycol to stabilize it, and it gives you a pounding headache.

[00:31:50] Pat Penny: So we'll be chugging a few of those every night. I think we're gonna have much better luck with tea on this trip than our last trip, but much worse luck with beer because we had some pretty decent beer in Wuyi.

[00:32:00] Jason Cohen: Yeah, I don't think so. I've never had worse food in China than in Yiwu Village.

[00:32:06] Pat Penny: Oh, thank you. I'm so excited for that.

[00:32:08] Jason Cohen: Maybe it's like the only place I've been in China and just been like, maybe I'll starve. I will say the local,

[00:32:13] Zongjun Li: The home cookings were nice.

[00:32:14] Jason Cohen: It's okay. We ask people even who live there, and we're like, where do you eat in this village? And they're like, home, stay home. Yeah, I will say the local moldy tofu is, just think of it like blue cheese. It's all right.

[00:32:32] Zongjun Li: Tastes like blue cheese tastes.

[00:32:33] Jason Cohen: It does actually taste like blue cheese.

It's very disconcerting to eat something that tastes like blue cheese in China, but the moldy tofu looks and tastes like blue cheese.

[00:32:42] Zongjun Li: Pretty good actually.

[00:32:43] Pat Penny: So ready for severe intestinal distress.

[00:32:46] Jason Cohen: That's a home thing actually. We felt fine on that. We felt worse with the unidentified shao kao.

[00:32:52] Pat Penny: In Wuyi?

[00:32:53] Jason Cohen: No in Yunnan as well.

[00:32:55] Pat Penny: Oh, you doubled down on that? Well, I guess this was the previous trip, but yeah.

[00:32:59] Jason Cohen: This was the previous trip. But yeah, it was probably like mountain shrew or something. It was, it wasn't,

[00:33:04] Pat Penny: What flavor profile compare against the field rat that we ate in Wuyi?

[00:33:09] Jason Cohen: Much more nutty.

[00:33:11] Pat Penny: Oh, okay. I wonder what its diet was.

[00:33:13] Jason Cohen: Acorns, pure acorn diet.

[00:33:15] Pat Penny: So Jason, is what you're nervous about the food in Yiwu then? Or what's, what are you nervous about?

[00:33:21] Jason Cohen: What am I nervous about? When Zongjun and I were there, we crossed paths with a very poisonous snake. That was just the one that we saw. I've previously had leeches on me in Yunnan. Ticks are indigenous. Malaria. One of you guys should probably grab like a malaria Malarone prescription or something.

[00:33:42] Pat Penny: I thought that China had eradicated malaria.

[00:33:44] Jason Cohen: Mostly, but I mean, it flies over from Laos from time to time.

[00:33:48] Pat Penny: Okay. I did go to a travel clinic today and they told me that I'll probably be fine on malaria.

[00:33:52] Jason Cohen: Yeah, I love that.

You'll probably be fine. Where are you going again?

[00:33:56] Pat Penny: Oh, China. And I was like, well, southwestern China. I was like, by the border of Laos, but okay.

[00:34:03] Jason Cohen: Yeah. If Japanese encephalitis can get you, malaria could definitely get you.

Yeah, I would say if anything, I'm most nervous of us being waylaid, less so by food poisoning. I think food, we're gonna be eating with families and stuff, and we're not gonna do the late night shao kao and Laotian beer. We've learned our lesson.

[00:34:21] Zongjun Li: Not even once.

[00:34:23] Jason Cohen: Not even once Zongjun! Not even once.

[00:34:26] Pat Penny: Are you sure?

[00:34:29] Zongjun Li: Come on Pat.

[00:34:30] Pat Penny: I know, Zongjun, let's go. Jason. Jason got destroyed on maocha. Let's go eat some questionable food.

[00:34:37] Jason Cohen: Yeah, I'm most worried about the, the wildlife.

[00:34:42] Pat Penny: Zongjun?

[00:34:43] Zongjun Li: Me most worried about...

[00:34:45] Pat Penny: What makes you nervous about this trip?

[00:34:47] Zongjun Li: Not seeing enough, I would say.

Yunnan people are not famous for being well planners and we frequently got invited to things like very last minute or even like in the middle of something, they grab us to a different place. 

That's both like hopes of serendipity and also hopes of missing something. I guess we're going back to Yunnan again in the future. But just the whole FOMO kind of sketch me out a little bit.

[00:35:15] Jason Cohen: I agree with that. I agree with that. I also hope that our presence isn't too disruptive during harvest, right? 

If we rocked up and attempted to buy top quality gushu maocha, the price would obviously like triple if they would even bother to sell it to us. So we're gonna be with some contacts who are likely gonna be trying to do that, and I hope they don't say, you wait here and then wander into the forest to go negotiate without us.

I hope that we are not disruptive in, in a negative way to the process and that we get to see it and that we're treated as, non-negative influences on operations.

[00:35:48] Pat Penny: Yeah, I think that's a really good call out. We're trying to see and learn as much as we can.

But obviously this is an extremely busy time of year for these farmers and all of our contacts, so definitely trying to get as much as we can without being in the way.

I think for me to touch on this question, it's kind of what you touched on in the beginning, Jason. I'm not really afraid of leeches, but spiders and snakes definitely doesn't sound so fun. Snakes themselves don't bother me. But knowing that there's highly poisonous snakes, yeah. Let's have our eyes out.

[00:36:19] Jason Cohen: I got one. What are misconceptions about Yunnan pu'er that we've encountered and on what do we hope to debunk while we're there? I have a mean one, but I'll let you guys go first.

[00:36:32] Pat Penny: I'm gonna let Zongjun take it.

[00:36:36] Zongjun Li: Misconception about pu'er. And what we hope to debunk on this trip.

It's a hard question.

[00:36:42] Jason Cohen: I got a mean one. Yeah. It's you ain't got gushu, that tree ain't 400 years old. You're not drinking a thousand year king of tree qiao mu.

[00:36:53] Pat Penny: So your whole goal is just we roll in and we just we pullard the trees, we take the rings, we do straight up tea tree aging.

We're like these trees are 50 years old. What are you talking about? This ain't gushu

[00:37:03] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. I'm half joking. Facetious, right. But a lot of things that get claimed as old gushu and sold particularly in less scrupulous Western facing tea merchants.

Not calling anyone out specifically, but there's a lot of wild claims there. And part of the problem is that some of the merchants themselves believe these claims. They're going out into the fields and they're talking to farmers or people who have access to the land, and they're saying, oh yeah. Right, gushu, gushu, gushu.

We heard this in Wudong. People say, the trees age at 10 years per year. So you come back three years, five years later. And the tea is 50 years older. The tree is 50 years older than it was. It went from 200 years to 250 years. 

But you're getting that at a much larger level, I think, in Yunnan. And people are doing a poor job of training themselves to know what gushu tastes like and that's something that I hope that we can help set the record straight.

[00:38:04] Zongjun Li: I guess for me it's to gain more experience and really be able to tell the difference between different regions. 'Cause Yiwu is almost a big basket. People can throw just whatever tea into this place and under this name and gets laundried and all of a sudden it's Yiwu tea.

You don't really be able to trace what, where exactly is these tea being grown and being produced from 'cause there are so many segmented terroir under this whole region. So, be able to really gain the experience and be able to tell exactly if this tea is in fact actually from Yiwu region, I think will be very helpful.

[00:38:41] Pat Penny: I think that pretty closely aligns with my thoughts. We've had great teachers who have given us good samples to try and train our palettes on what is the taste of a certain region, a certain village, a certain mountain. But I think being in a place and being able to actually see the tea being processed and then tasting like the maocha then and there, that's gonna be the thing that either debunks or affirms my knowledge on every specific area and mountain.

And I'm so excited for that. So I really wanna see like how much, how true a lot of the things that I believe about specific flavors or profiles of an area hold to be. So that, that's gonna be amazing.

[00:39:19] Jason Cohen: That touches on one of the in chat questions, one of the live questions we got, which is, do the regions you choose also align with regions that we tend to reach for in our drinking? Do we gravitate to Yiwu as a tea drinker?

And I think that's a really difficult question to answer 'cause as Zongjun said, Yiwu is not one mountains, right? People will make generalities and say, Jingmai is bitter and has the highest astringency and takes a long time to age. And Menghai is for shou pu'er. And Yi Bang and Ban Zhang are all camphor and woody and Yiwu is all lightened floral, right?

But like within Yiwu, if we talk to anyone within Yiwu, no one says Yiwu tea unless they're talking about Yiwu Village surrounding. They're talking about Gaoshan tea and Mahei tea and Wa Long tea. No, no one says, this is the flavor of Yiwu, the area is too big, right? The tea is too diverse. Gua Feng Zhai tastes nothing like Gaoshan.

So I think that this idea of, is there a flavor of Yiwu? It's like, I don't know, is there a flavor of Jura wine? Is there a flavor of Highland scotch? Yeah, kind of. But you know, each individual area has so much of its own profile.

And so I would say that even now, for 20 years of drinking pu'er, can I identify specific Yiwu sub regions? Only if I've had great references that I trust. I think at this point I can do Mahei 'cause one of our contacts specializes in Mahei and its sub regions including I think I can do Bo He Tang. I think I can do Wan Gong. I think I can do Gaoshan, but others, I don't know.

[00:41:03] Zongjun Li: Need more data points.

[00:41:05] Pat Penny: Yeah, there's a pretty amazing tea meme that's floating around Instagram, which is like, Superman walking into a room. And it's like that look or that feel that I have when I walk into work. And I know I'm the only one who can identify single mountain gushu pu'er tea.

I love those memes. There's a few of them that have been coming out and I'm just like, you know what? This might be true for me coming up pretty soon. Let's see.

[00:41:28] Jason Cohen: Can't believe you haven't sent those to me, Pat.  

[00:41:31] Pat Penny: I'll send 'em to you right after this. They're really good. They make me laugh so hard when I see them. There's a few.

Okay. I think we definitely touched on that, but I do wanna build a little bit. So, I do think to some degree yes, we end up going to places that have tea that we respect and enjoy. I think we're also kind of hitting the big ones to start.

These are the things that we knew we wanted to write about. These are the things we knew we wanted to learn more about. I don't think it's specifically that we're like just drinking a ton of Yiwu tea but as to what you addressed in the beginning, Jason's like, Yiwu is the place to begin if we want to continue learning about pu'er tea.

You know, it, it would be hard to go to some of these places and not be a drinker of that kind of tea. What are you doing? I don't know.

[00:42:11] Jason Cohen: Pat, we were talking about this identification. I have two questions on this. What have you done to prepare for this trip for tasting tea, for researching tea?

Have you reread things, that kind of thing. And where do you think that your identification skills are gonna be challenged on this trip?

[00:42:31] Pat Penny: So you don't mean preparing like all of my REI shopping. You don't want that.

[00:42:35] Jason Cohen: You can talk about that more, but I think everyone's more interested in the

[00:42:39] Pat Penny: Yeah.

[00:42:39] Jason Cohen: What brand of pants did you buy?

[00:42:42] Pat Penny: None of them fit me. Dude. My thighs are way too thick. I tried on so many things at REI.

On the preparing side, so the past two years that we've been going into these trips, I have been doing a lot of reading. I've been going back over my notes. I've been referencing some of, kind of the standard books that we all have read in the past. And this is the first one where actually I'm trying to really go in with a blank slate. So I haven't been doing too much research to prepare for the trip.

Tasting wise, I have been drinking a shit ton of pu'er, so, I have been going through a lot of my single origin samples and just trying to re solidify my flavor memory around some of them. I wouldn't say I have enough of any single village tea to say that, oh, I've got enough data points to know but at least trying to give myself a frame of reference before we go into the mountains. So that, that's been definitely an area where I've been focused on preparation.  

On the knowledge side, I'm just hoping to have it all dropped on me like bricks. And if I go, oh yeah, I remember that, then that's great. But I don't intend to come in super sharp, like, oh, this is what I read. I'd rather hear it directly from them.

[00:43:41] Jason Cohen: And when we get tested, day one of this trip, we arrive in Yiwu and they lay five teas down in front of us and they say, single garden, go.

[00:43:50] Pat Penny: Then they're gonna, they're gonna send me back to the airport. I think I could do some of it. We'll see. We'll see.

[00:43:56] Jason Cohen: Is there an area? Do you have some cakes from an area that you think like, all right, this has a specific flavor?

[00:44:01] Pat Penny: Well, the sample that you sent me, that Wan Gong from last year or two years ago that's one where I went back and I was just like, okay, I think I can do this. If we go to Wan Gong or if we're getting tea from that area, I think I can point this one out. 

[00:44:14] Jason Cohen: That was something that really impressed me. The Wan Gong cake, the Wan Gong area.

I've been doing the opposite of Pat. I've been rereading like crazy going over, of course, my old notes from 2023, but also rereading a bunch of historical documents, historical treatises. So looking at Tang Dynasty era tax policy for Yunnan tea. Yeah, that's a good one.

[00:44:40] Pat Penny: Well, top Tang Dynasty tea for horse trade. Not so bad. They were pretty okay. They went from like 5,000 horses to like, three quarters of a million. They did decent.

[00:44:49] Jason Cohen: Yeah, at like 5,000 tales of silver.

[00:44:52] Pat Penny: It gets worse in the Song.  

[00:44:55] Jason Cohen: But I was saying, I've been rereading tons of stuff including Tang Dynasty era tax policy. All of that work. And then also looking at early Han migration patterns into Yunnan for tin mining and the collectivization of whether or not things were considered to be part of core Central China and why the various bans on mining didn't apply to Yunnan mountain regions, which were seen as hinterlands.

So, doing that, but also I had some of our contacts put together tasting samples for me. So that I could be sure to beat both of you at a blind tasting. So I got a set of different single origin samples and some of these came in at single garden and one of them came in at a single tree.

I don't think I've ever previously knowingly, maybe one, is the Hani cake that two, at least two of us have, is that a single tree? I don't know if that's single tree.

[00:45:52] Zongjun Li: I don't think so. Was it a white package?

[00:45:55] Jason Cohen: Yeah, the pure white unlabeled package. Yeah.

[00:45:58] Zongjun Li: Okay. Maybe that was 'cause

[00:45:59] Jason Cohen: That's a Hani tribe tea, that is definitely gushu, a hundred percent gushu, but I don't know if that's single tree.

So this might be the only time I've ever tasted single tree pu'er.

[00:46:11] Zongjun Li: Interesting. When we were in Yiwu last time, people were telling us that's really rarely made 'cause they think that single tree being frequently a little bit one dimensional and they just use it as a really a reference for their own use. So,

[00:46:26] Jason Cohen: This isn't pressed into a cake. It's basically maocha.

[00:46:29] Zongjun Li: Oh.

[00:46:30] Pat Penny: So what Jason is telling us is that he got a bunch of awesome samples to do a bunch of preparation so he can kick our asses. And he did not even let us know that samples was like an option. Kind of rude, honestly.  

[00:46:42] Jason Cohen: So Zongjun, what have you done to prepare for this trip? Knowledge, reading, tasting.

[00:46:47] Zongjun Li: Yeah, really trying to figure out how we get there without drivers this time. And how I can get my ge men in and out of Yiwu safely.

[00:46:55] Pat Penny: And we appreciate you for that.

[00:46:58] Zongjun Li: Yeah. Knowledge wise,

[00:46:59] Jason Cohen: Don't, don't thank him till it's done Pat. You have no idea what we went to last time.

[00:47:04] Zongjun Li: Wait, what?

[00:47:06] Pat Penny: I'm just imagining, when we were in Yixing and we went to that random craft beer bar and there was no way for us to get home. I'm imagining that, but like much further in the middle of nowhere.

[00:47:16] Jason Cohen: That would've been like a three hour walk. This would be like a three day walk.

[00:47:19] Zongjun Li: The worst case scenario in Yixing last time, it's like a five star hotel right next to us. It's,

[00:47:27] Pat Penny: Yeah. Not too bad.

[00:47:28] Zongjun Li: Yeah, not too bad. Maybe not here in Yiwu. But yeah, really want to trick Jason and sell him across the border to Laos. And my dealer didn't show up. That was a bummer.

[00:47:38] Jason Cohen: I would've made a great pig butcher.

[00:47:40] Zongjun Li: Yeah. Referencing own notes. Trying to read some of the books that our scholar friends has written, one of them who have really made the effort to put us into some of our very important contacts in Yiwu. So, getting myself more mentally prepared for all of these knowledge dump that I'm about to receive and also need to do simultaneous translation.

[00:48:03] Pat Penny: Zongjun does do an amazing job. And I don't think we ever show enough appreciation during the trip, but I hope you know before how much we appreciate what you're doing.

[00:48:13] Zongjun Li: Yeah, it was Yixing teapot and this time I'm expecting gushu cakes.

[00:48:19] Pat Penny: There'll be something. There'll be something.

[00:48:21] Jason Cohen: Alright, I think we have time for one more question. Is there a good one from Instagram, Pat?

[00:48:26] Pat Penny: I've got a real chill one. Maybe we can do a real chill one and then we'll finish it off of a more serious one. So here we've got, getting to Yunnan must involve a few long trips. What will you be reading or watching in transit?

[00:48:37] Jason Cohen: I'm gonna take a book on the societal development of Yunnan. I have the book over there. It's called Between the Clouds, the Creation of Yunnan. So starts like pre Tang and goes into Qing Dynasty. Just some light reading for an 18 hour plane ride.  

[00:48:59] Pat Penny: The most Jason answer of all time.

Zongjun, you've got a shorter trip, but I'm sure you're gonna be watching or reading something. Any plans?

[00:49:06] Zongjun Li: I don't know. I'll be there in like two hours. So probably just listen to some musics. During the car ride, I think it's not really a good time to read anything. Carsick, a serious issue. But I'll make sure to take a lot of photos and really open the window, breathing the mountain breeze, hoping to smell some fragrance of tea miles away from Yiwu. I think that will be something really surreal.

[00:49:29] Pat Penny: Awesome. All right. Yeah, for me, I was looking at my Libby, my e-library. I've got a couple books of the Mistborn series lined up, so we'll see how much I plow through that. Very opposite to what you were saying, Jason. And then I do still have From Dawn to Decadence, so I plan to get through a little more of that.

But, otherwise I'm gonna be on a nice 10 hour Delta flight. I might watch a movie or two. I'm pretty partial to Fast and Furious movies when I'm on a plane. It's just that perfect plane movie where you don't really have to care what's happening and you can just kind of zone out and enjoy with your meal. And when you feel like focusing on something more serious, you can turn it off and read or whatever.

[00:50:04] Jason Cohen: So, that's funny. I could see why Fast and Furious is perfect plane movie. You could actually just watch it on mute. They only say one word repeatedly.

[00:50:11] Zongjun Li: Really a perfect movie before a car ride up to Yiwu.

[00:50:14] Jason Cohen: Return to snakes on a plane.

[00:50:17] Pat Penny: We'll be watching nothing with snakes. Nothing with snakes. I'm good. I'm sure we'll get enough on a plane.

[00:50:21] Jason Cohen: That'll really help you prepare you for Yunnan.

[00:50:24] Pat Penny: I'm sure we will get enough. I'm so sure of that.

Okay. Maybe our last one then.

[00:50:30] Jason Cohen: Yes.

[00:50:30] Pat Penny: Okay. So how do you expect this trip will benefit you and how will it benefit readers and listeners of Tea Technique?

[00:50:37] Jason Cohen: I think I have like a pretty short answer to this. It's just that these trips are a constant source of inspiration.

We've been writing this Yixing book for what, two years now? And I don't

[00:50:50] Pat Penny: forever.

[00:50:51] Jason Cohen: I mean, I have a lot of fortitude, I think. I don't know if I could keep doing this if these yearly trips weren't happening. I do this because I love it. It's a money losing enterprise by design, right?

Anything that we make, we're just plowing back into finding more information, running experiments, doing commissions, that kind of thing. And I don't know if I would have the constant source of energy and drive and inspiration if I didn't know that these trips, when they happen, they give a bunch of energy and as they come near, I start to get interested in other forms of research and thinking about other things. And I start reading these books about it. And it really is a very positive feedback loop and a spiral up. Yeah, and readers benefit 'cause I get to, to talk about it and relay these stories and stuff. So that's, yeah, very short answer.

[00:51:40] Pat Penny: For you, it was, yeah. I'll touch on the energy piece.

These experiences, while they can be very tiring and taxing at the moment, often looking back on them and especially, just right after getting back home, I think they, they definitely give me the boost to get through another year's worth of editing. And listening to podcasts and editing chapters, doing research through scientific journals. And even right now thinking about the trip coming up next week has helped me get about halfway through this week's article, sorry Jason, but about halfway through.

There's only so many things I think that you do in life that give you energy back. And this is one of those things that, continuously even thinking about like our trip from two years ago, can still give me the fire to get through a lot of other things. 

[00:52:23] Zongjun Li: Yeah, same here. And really the expectation of spend more time with you guys in person and doing something together that we are all interested in. I think this is something really magical and for the audience you can learn all about the bromance after our trip and with some sprinkles of knowledge, hopefully, in between.

[00:52:44] Pat Penny: The Chaozhou bros go to Yiwu. That's this chapter of the book and become Yiwu bros. Question mark?

[00:52:51] Jason Cohen: I hope so.

[00:52:52] Pat Penny: Okay. Well, any last words? Anyone wants to add?

[00:52:56] Jason Cohen: Gushu bros.

[00:52:57] Pat Penny: Gushu bros. Jason I'll pass it off to you then for the usual closing.

[00:53:03] Jason Cohen: Thank you everyone. This has been Tea Technique Editorial Conversations. We hope you join us again next time.

We're gonna finish up publishing the Yixing book hopefully this year, and we're gonna start working on this pu'er book. Thank you all so much.

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