Editorial Conversation: 2025 Trip Report - Yiwu

You can read the trip reports on Cult of Quality Blog:

• Jason's trip report: Where Heaven is Close and the Emperor is far Away: Tea Technique Research Trip 2025 – Yiwu, Yunnan
• Pat's trip report: Guest Post: Pat Penny – Yiwu - Tea Technique Research Trip 2025

The episode is also available on YouTube and Spotify.
A full transcript is included on the episode page and below:

​[00:00:05] Jason Cohen: Hello everyone. I'm Jason Cohen, the author of an Introduction to the Art and Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony. Here with me today is the Tea Technique Editorial team, Patrick Penny.

[00:00:14] Pat Penny: Hey, hey!

[00:00:15] Jason Cohen: Zongjun Li.

[00:00:17] Zongjun Li: Hello. Hello.

[00:00:18] Jason Cohen: And Emily Huang.

[00:00:20] Emily Huang: Hi.

[00:00:21] Jason Cohen: Today we're discussing our trip reports from the Tea Technique Research Trip 2025 to Yiwu (易武).

[00:00:27] Zongjun Li: Woo.

[00:00:28] Jason Cohen: This is going to be a casual conversation as casual as this editorial team ever manages to be. We're going to be moderated by Emily Huang, because Emily was not on the trip. For me, Pat and Zongjun, we were in Yiwu processing tea, preparing for a subsequent book. We're gonna write a puer book. It's expected to take a really long time. And this was my maybe fourth time in Yiwu. Zongjun, this was your

[00:00:59] Zongjun Li: Second time.

[00:01:00] Jason Cohen: And Pat, this was your

[00:01:02] Pat Penny: My first time ever.

[00:01:04] Jason Cohen: And Huang, you have never been to

[00:01:06] Emily Huang: Zero time.

[00:01:08] Jason Cohen: Emily, I'll turn it over to you.

[00:01:10] Emily Huang: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'm super excited to get to interview the three of you on your trip and your experience in Yunnan since I wasn't there. I did see lots of pictures going on Instagram, your group chats and stuff.

[00:01:26] Emily Huang: Like you mentioned, it's gonna be a casual conversation and I'm gonna start with Pat. This is your first time. Was there any difference in what you imagined?

[00:01:36] Pat Penny: I just love that we're like casual conversation. We literally, we can't just have a casual conversation. Tea technique stays driven. We stay on track. But yeah. Great, great question Emily.

[00:01:46] Pat Penny: Yunnan was a lot more casual I feel like than many of the other places that we have been, both in the way that we interact with people. But I feel like the way that I even saw the approach to some of the tea farming or tea picking. Casual maybe is not the right word for how it has showed up in the agriculture, but it's more about the spirit I think of like letting things be how they are. We saw that show up with the tea plants with really minimal intervention compared to a lot of the other places that we've been. Tea picking when we were in Yunnan didn't look like it started until like seven, eight o'clock in the morning, which is much later than where I've seen in a lot of other places.

[00:02:18] Pat Penny: In general, the schedule had a lot more breath to it. We were able to kind of take space, take stock, stop, and really enjoy some of the moments with these farmers and producers, which it was a nice change of pace 'cause on some of our other trips, it can be very go, go, go. It can be extremely scheduled. And it just felt like Yunnan does not run on a schedule. That's kind of what I got out of it. But interested in Zongjun and Jason's thoughts.

[00:02:40] Zongjun Li: No, it doesn't, it definitely feels more free. There's no pace or no set schedule.

[00:02:47] Zongjun Li: Just like how the teas are picked, and how the teas are processed. It's all in the flow.

[00:02:52] Jason Cohen: These trips are, you know, major time commitments. They're, they're budgetary commitments. They're research and focus commitments. So I, I have a, a serious drive to plan them, to make sure that it's going to be worthwhile, that this is the right thing to be doing this year. We only get to do this altogether once a year.

[00:03:11] Jason Cohen: And Yunnan is particularly difficult for that. You know, you message people months in advance and you're like, okay, we're thinking on these dates, and they're like, oh, it probably works. It sounds fine. Message us like a week beforehand. Message us when you're on your way. Message us when you get to town.

[00:03:26] Pat Penny: That's easy when you're scheduling flights internationally and visas, right?

[00:03:31] Jason Cohen: Yeah. So it, it does pose a real problem. Usually though, if they tell you they're gonna be there around that time, they're, they're there.

[00:03:40] Jason Cohen: I think for me, the thing that really stuck out this time that was different even than I remembered it. This time we consistently ate with a couple of families. We were having quite a bit of food with and you know in the past it had either cycled between places or something felt celebratory. And so I couldn't say what the everyday cuisine of Yiwu is. But this time having spent so much longer there and more consistently with the families and really just being part of the, the more day to day activities and, and we should talk more about how over the course of a little more than a week, it really felt like we got into a groove, like we were part of village life at some point. But I think the thing that really stuck out to me is that the farmers, the tea makers, the tea farmers, the tea processors got rich and they kept making all the farming food, but now they make all the farming food.

[00:04:35] Jason Cohen: So every single meal, there were three meats on the table. We had a pork, a chicken, and a beef, I think at every single meal. And it was so much more meat and so much more fat. All of this food was cooked in fat. And it all tasted great, but, you know, we come from a rich western diet. I love good French cooking. I, I'll use a stick of butter in my coq au vin.

[00:05:04] Pat Penny: Jason has a steak three times a day.

[00:05:06] Jason Cohen: This felt like a lot of fat. A lot.

[00:05:09] Pat Penny: This was a lot of fat. Yeah. There's not a trip we've had in the past where I gained weight. I always go to China and lose weight, whether for you know, questionable sanitary or eating condition issues or just I'm eating a healthier diet in some cases.

[00:05:23] Pat Penny: This was the first trip we've been on where I gained significant, like I gained four or five pounds when I got back, which is, yeah. Never happened before. And it's like all fat. It's all sodium and it's all fat. I lost muscle. I lost water weight. I gained fat and sodium.

[00:05:37] Zongjun Li: More fat and more tea. I hope the airline didn't charge you a extra on your weight gains.

[00:05:43] Zongjun Li: I would say it's absolutely true. I mean, we also come in a very different season in the past. It's right in the middle of tea harvest season. We come right at the window of the season was about to begin. So, there were a lot of laborious work. People are picking tea, people are processing tea. So, I feel like the diet was a little bit a supplement all of the hard works we've been putting in.

[00:06:08] Pat Penny: Yeah. We just weren't the ones doing the hard work. You know, except for our, our processing days and nights here and there. We weren't really the pickers. I think the pickers are the ones who really needed all that extra calories.

[00:06:19] Emily Huang: Yeah. I was gonna say, I saw some pictures of you guys doing hard work, like actual sweaty, you know,

[00:06:26] Pat Penny: There, there were a few hours, there were a few hours. So, we, we had a few different processing days, which I think it's probably worth talking about in depth.

[00:06:33] Emily Huang: Yeah.

[00:06:33] Pat Penny: So, yeah, we had a full day of processing in Gaoshan (高山) where we really went through everything up to the drying stage. We were there when the tea was picked the night before. We got to see some of the withering of this leaf. We did visit the garden where these leaves were picked from. And then, we were doing the shaqing (杀青) by ourselves, so we were given a little bit of guidance. But really it was, it was pretty hands off. And we were in front of the wok for, depending on who was firing, somewhere between probably 14 and 20 minutes, uh

[00:07:01] Emily Huang: mm-hmm.

[00:07:01] Pat Penny: And it was kind of, you know, we are giving pointers here and there, but if the tea is bad, it's our fault. If the tea is good, it's probably the teas. Thankfully the tea was pretty good.

[00:07:11] Pat Penny: But then from there, we were doing the rounian (揉捻), the rolling as well. And so we are actually all really interested to find out whose tea tastes best in the next couple months when we get it. 'Cause I, I rolled real hard and heavy. I was not, our host told us you can't over-roll the tea. And I took that to heart, so I really rolled the hell outta that tea. Whereas, you know, Zongjun was delicate and gentle with his tea. He was treating it like a good friend. And Jason, Jason did something in between. And we had a chance to taste that tea a few days later, and maybe we'll talk about this after we talk about processing.

[00:07:43] Pat Penny: But following that experience in Yiwu Village, we had a few nights in a row where we got to do both shaqing with a little bit more guidance as well as a good amount of rolling and spreading the leaves, checking on withered leaves. So we, we had quite a lot of different opportunities to touch leaf from different areas, in different parts of the processing stage, and get a better understanding of how the leaf particularly depending on what the weather was like, reacts to all these different stages of processing, which I feel like you just can't get without being there in person. So that was amazing.

[00:08:13] Jason Cohen: I'd also say there's some real stylistic differences between the various families, that certain families wanted the tea made in certain ways, and we get to the other family and they're like, oh no, it's not, this is not how we do it.

[00:08:25] Jason Cohen: I wouldn't not say that one is good or one is bad, but there's certainly, even within a family, one of the families does their own processing and they do contract processing. And the style is different between their own processing and the, the tea's that's produced on contract.

[00:08:39] Jason Cohen: And so, would I say, we developed our own style? Absolutely not. But trying to pick up and to follow these different pointers and then realizing that these pointers are actually conflicting and realizing that there's, that there's real decision making and different styles and different objectives throughout this processing I think was a pretty interesting learning. 'Cause you're, you're somewhat used to that across areas. Zongjun and I processed tea two years ago in Jingmai (景迈). And that was quite different as well.

[00:09:07] Zongjun Li: Oh, super different.

[00:09:08] Jason Cohen: Yeah. And the leaf responded really differently. And so this time processing everything from the families that we are with that don't do any taidi cha (台地茶) but processing their xiaoshu (小树) village tea versus processing, I think the nicest thing that we were allowed to touch was medium age gushu (古树).

[00:09:28] Pat Penny: Oh, dude. They were handing you Yibang (倚邦), you don't remember that?

[00:09:33] Jason Cohen: There's a video where they say that, but fear not. It was not.

[00:09:37] Zongjun Li: They were kidding.

[00:09:39] Pat Penny: You've done this once before. Here's, here's one of the most expensive teas we're gonna get this year.

[00:09:44] Emily Huang: Okay.

[00:09:45] Zongjun Li: I was just super surprised that, you know, we, we've done processing in other places too, outside of Yunnan. And we've seen how tea being treated in different ways and I was just surprised at how much steaming is actually going on in the pan frying process. So it's not really just frying the tea.

[00:10:06] Emily Huang: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:06] Zongjun Li: At some stage you have cadence of trying to compile the tea together to keep the moisture up in the pile so that it build up some sort of a steam inside. So it's really a mixture of frying and steaming, which I feel like that's what gives the Yiwu tea a very unique flavor as well. And also, people's decision making also takes account into how the tea will be aged in the future. So it's not only just, you know, thinking about how the tea is going to taste right now, but also thinking ahead in the future. So that's also something very unique.

[00:10:45] Emily Huang: Wow. It sounds like a really unforgettable experience. I wonder if any of your, your hands all 10 fingers are here?

[00:10:51] Pat Penny: Yo, it, it hurts so much. Like Jason, Jason was a boss. I'm not even gonna lie. Like, I'd, I'd like to not inflate his ego, but like his hands were just made of steel. And the first time we were processing like five minutes in, I'm okay. 10 minutes in, I'm like sweating and I'm feeling it in my hands. And when I'm really getting to the point where that leaf has a lot of moisture, that's like steaming in there. I just, you could only touch the leaf for a few seconds at a time. And I was taking my hands off for as long as I could, letting them cool, going back in.

[00:11:20] Pat Penny: I remember going into it, they were giving us kind of, not really giving us the option, but saying you could do it without gloves, but no one does. And I was like, well, yeah, we've, we've fired tea before. I could do it without gloves. Thank God I was wearing gloves. It was so hot. I was such a baby with it.

[00:11:35] Pat Penny: But yeah, Jason, you were a boss.

[00:11:37] Jason Cohen: It was a different level of heat. I would say that's all institute days going rock climbing in Hunters in central Pennsylvania. And coming back to the tea house and brewing tea with your oozing raw fingers. I think I've lost all feeling

[00:11:50] Pat Penny: Hot gaiwan. Yeah.

[00:11:51] Jason Cohen: Yeah. I think I've just lost all feeling my fingertips.

[00:11:56] Zongjun Li: You know, all of my fingers have the kind

[00:11:58] Emily Huang: I wanna know if Zongjun still has all his fingers.

[00:12:00] Zongjun Li: All of my fingers have the round of blister every time I touched the wok.

[00:12:05] Zongjun Li: But it disappeared, you know, after a few hours. But

[00:12:07] Pat Penny: I actually did get a gnarly burn from the wok too.

[00:12:11] Zongjun Li: Yeah.

[00:12:12] Jason Cohen: That wok was, it was like, it was 450, I think.

[00:12:15] Pat Penny: They said that it was dialed in at 280 to 300 C. So yeah, it was pretty hot.

[00:12:23] Emily Huang: Oh wow. 280. That is

[00:12:25] Zongjun Li: It's pretty hot in the area where you need to insert your finger all the way down to the bottom of the leaf pile and try to flip it.

[00:12:33] Zongjun Li: That is like the most challenging

[00:12:35] Jason Cohen: That, that's even hotter than I said. That's 536. Fahrenheit.

[00:12:39] Zongjun Li: Oh, well,

[00:12:41] Pat Penny: Felt like it when I, when my skin touched it, literally milliseconds. And you heard my skin sizzle and that wasn't even the hotspot. I was, I was bacon on that wok. It was crazy how fast it sizzled.

[00:12:52] Emily Huang: Oh my God.

[00:12:53] Pat Penny: It smelled good. It smelled like bacon.

[00:12:54] Zongjun Li: Medium rare.

[00:12:56] Emily Huang: Smelled like bacon!

[00:12:58] Pat Penny: Kosher bacon.

[00:13:01] Jason Cohen: If Zongjun was ever gonna have cannibalistic tendencies.

[00:13:06] Jason Cohen: Find out who the zombie candidate is.

[00:13:09] Emily Huang: Wow.

[00:13:09] Zongjun Li: We can,

[00:13:10] Emily Huang: That sounded, that sounded amazing. I, I don't think I would be able to withstand that heat and that wok and the steaming and wow.

[00:13:20] Pat Penny: You'll, you'll do it with us next time, Emily. It's okay.

[00:13:22] Emily Huang: Yes, yes.

[00:13:23] Jason Cohen: You'll come.

[00:13:24] Emily Huang: Yeah. And so, my next question, I know we went into a little bit of the processing, but I wonder if you guys can share with our listeners, why Yiwu? How is it important in the puer world? Or what specialty does it have? What role does it play? Why did we choose to go to Yiwu?

[00:13:43] Jason Cohen: I guess there's two answers for that. On the one side, you know, we prepare for this. It sometimes takes a few years. So Zongjun and I went two years ago to go establish these relationships to meet people, to say, here are the books that we've currently written. Here's what we're writing, here's our plans and what we want to do. Share with them the idea of this puer book. Explain the scope and the scale. Explain how we work. And generally we try to make a good impression. I think for the most part most of the tea world likes us. And then say, can we come back? Can we, are, are you willing to do this? And to work with us in this way? And so we got a yes from a couple different places in Yunnan.

[00:14:22] Jason Cohen: One of them was Yiwu and I thought that we would return to Yiwu, that we would start in Yiwu because both six famous tea mountains, some of the earliest puer processing, highest concentration of gushu, of old trees. And Yiwu was, in many ways, it was spared a lot of the more contemporary agriculture that started in Yunnan during the puer bubble. And so, the processing and some of the, these ideals have changed much less. I mean, in one of the villages that we were in, they didn't even have electricity, running water until 2010. Other villages were even later. Didn't have any electricity until after 2006 after 2010, 26, 2014 or about.

[00:15:12] Jason Cohen: So I think that in many ways, if you're gonna start somewhere trying to write a book about puer, you have to start in Yiwu but the eventual plan is to hit all the major production areas. Zongjun and I have been to Jingmai together. Next year maybe, we'll see how things go, we might do Menghai (勐海). We have plans for Lincang (临沧). Yeah, plans for a lot of places.

[00:15:38] Zongjun Li: Yeah, it's kind of serendipitous in a way that a lot of people were talking about, you know, you start from Yiwu, you end in Yiwu.

[00:15:46] Zongjun Li: And that's might be, you know, our way of learning tea and drink tea in Yunnan too. 'Cause, Yiwu is famous for all of its early production and exportation through the cha ma gudao (茶马古道), the tea horse trade route. And when you're thinking about puer, normally you would first go to Puer City, which is the actual place. It's used to be the trading center of all teas in Yunnan.

[00:16:08] Zongjun Li: But Yiwu is actually the original trading center of all of the surrounding area in that place in Xishuangbanna, and it's really the center of the universe out there in the corner of Yunnan. And it's a pretty, pretty interesting spot to see how all of the early teas got process, got famous, got sent to different places. And how it played as a major role in different tea cultures around the different corners of the world.

[00:16:37] Zongjun Li: So, I feel like we pick a very interesting spot to start and it would be a interesting comparison with other tea production regions in Yunnan starting from there.

[00:16:47] Emily Huang: Wow. Makes sense now. And one thing that really caught my eye when I was reading the trip report was the profile of gushu and how it's kind of different to what we were used to or what we've experienced so far about the flavor profile that it gives. Can you guys tell me a little bit more about that and why do you think that is?

[00:17:12] Jason Cohen: For me, I think the biggest thing is learning about the gradations even within gushu. I mean the difference between village tea, forest tea, deep forest tea, the difference between gushu that could be a hundred years old, or gushu that could be 300 years old, gushu that is gaogan (高竿) that comes from a taller, arbor tree, gushu that's hidden in a keng (坑). They use the same terms like they do in Wuyi (武夷) so it's hidden in a pit. It has less sunlight and so it grows smaller. The idea that gushu is always dashu (大树) that it's always big and in the forest, or it's always tall or it has these huge trunks isn't the case.

[00:17:57] Jason Cohen: And I think that a lot of what I had learned to identify, particularly from outside of Yiwu as gushu tea is actually the taste of dashu tree, of big tree, which may or may not be old, but it has a pretty specific flavor and flavor reference and it's one that I still prefer. But a lot of the highest end Yiwu trees are much more subtle and much lighter flavored than the standard dashu counterparts.

[00:18:36] Jason Cohen: And so there, there were things that I found that made sense and that there were things that were certainly new to me that are unique to Yiwu. And I think it's a matter, partially a matter of preference and also partially a matter of understanding that, you know, we're talking about, for the most part, with exceptions, we're talking about da ye (大叶) cultivar.

[00:18:57] Jason Cohen: But as ever in tea, fractal complexity, da ye is not truly a single cultivar. There are variations within da ye and there are certain families with certain opinions about which teas are true da ye and which are not.

[00:19:17] Zongjun Li: It's um, pretty chaotic and messy. Just like the terroir of Yunnan in a way.

[00:19:21] Zongjun Li: But I, I know what you're talking about Jason about the dashu flavor. It's the very gamey, like wild flavor that you are frequently end up tasting a lot of Yunnan tea. And it's really not the case for people's quality standard in Yiwu. They are really seeking the very ethereal, light body, floral, very elegant kind of a taste in the tea versus this very robust, very wild strong masculine kind of taste that we used to drink back in the days.

[00:19:56] Zongjun Li: Of which, you know, it's really a regional preference too. 'Cause if you venture into Menghai and people there, they love the robustness from the tea. They talk about baqi (霸气) in Menghai. That's something that the people in Yiwu doesn't necessarily agree with.

[00:20:12] Zongjun Li: And, that's very interesting. And also, tasting all of these, like these single trees or small batch picks versus the mixed picked, which was really the more traditional way of picking. People back in the days, they don't really do like single tree processing. Was very interesting, the whole experience.

[00:20:32] Zongjun Li: I can understand how people were saying that a single tree can taste very one dimensional. For us it was really analytical tasting. We are tasting a single element of a region or of one tree. And then we can really assess the difference between a gaogan versus a normal dashu or a even a xiaoshu.

[00:20:53] Zongjun Li: And then we can see how, you know, the terroir, the genetics played as a role, as a impact to the flavor profile which was very interesting.

[00:21:01] Jason Cohen: The only thing I would push back on though is, is, is, I agree with everything you said about the tasting, the danzhus (单株), but there were some families that did have a preference for that yesheng (野生), wild cultivar flavor in Yiwu. There were trees that have that flavor that are still considered high quality. They're still expensive trees. It was just some families that took a pretty militant stance and said, oh no, this is not, this is not what's good. This is not what Yiwu is known for. This is not what Yiwu is best at. And,

[00:21:35] Pat Penny: Or, or even to the extent that believing that those trees are not meant for consumption, that that certain flavor that denotes wild means that actually it was probably never really interacted with by humans in a way to make it more consumable or more in harmony with kind of, you know, our bodies in our nature.

[00:21:53] Jason Cohen: Yeah. And, and I don't know. I, I, I had a preference for it, and I think that I still have a non-exclusive preference for the yesheng flavor. But I certainly understand why those families want to preserve this idea of a Yiwu profile.

[00:22:13] Pat Penny: Yeah. I, I, I agree. And I, I think a lot of what you both talked about on the flavor touches a lot of maybe what Emily was curious about from the trip report that I was writing.

[00:22:22] Pat Penny: There was definitely when I came into this experience, there was a, a profile that I associated with gushu, which I agree with Jason, maybe was more of that dashu large tree profile. And actually it was probably more predominantly outside of Yiwu. I think I had more examples of younger maybe, or like large tree gushu from Menghai area and from Lincang and various other areas that really gave a very specific kind of mouthfeel and certain flavor profile. And so when we were drinking these teas in Yiwu that were, you know, verifiably from, directly from the source and we knew that they were gushu there was, there was times where I really had to kind of readjust what I thought of as my key indicators of gushu tea specific to Yiwu. So no longer this is what gushu tastes like, but this is what Yiwu gushu tastes like from this area, right? Maybe from, from this slope, or this is more forest versus village gushu. And trying to really break down those smaller and smaller pieces of distinction to build back up my idea of what gushu tastes like now.

[00:23:22] Pat Penny: I have kind of a framework of this is at least within Yiwu. What some of these different gradients of gushu could taste like. And now I have this whole other black box of this is what I think other gushu tastes like, and now we have to go and actually visit Menghai and visit some of these other areas. So I can once again break down into finer components as to the fractal nature of, of tea that Jason talked about.

[00:23:43] Emily Huang: That's so interesting. To, to have it. It's basically what, you know, what Jason wrote, it's very, a lot similar to the whole wine culture in the Western world. And it's really interesting 'cause somehow it got me thinking like how I built up my flavor profile. How did I instead of building it from, you know, this is what oolong tastes like in this region, oolong tastes like in this region, but somehow I have it the other way around. It's like, this is what oolong tastes like. But then there's all different ones. This is what puer tastes like, but then there's all different ones. But it probably shouldn't be this way. And the whole bottom, somehow I have it visually horizontally, but it should be bottom up from the region. And I think that's super interesting this matrix in my mind of, of it can go from different ways.

[00:24:33] Pat Penny: It's interesting hearing you talk about it and you know, this is a audio medium for our listeners, but like you're kind of gesticulating and I can see how you're trying to describe it. And I think it speaks to a little bit of what we talked about in Book One around pedagogy, right? So as you're learning, your framework changes.

[00:24:48] Pat Penny: And so I think this was an experience that really changed my framework at how I look at structuring in my mind, how I understand puer. And so now I have this really concrete and detailed structure, specifically around Yiwu and differentiating xiaoshu from dashu and gushu from non gushu teas and village and forest tea. But I don't, I still don't have that framework for other areas.

[00:25:10] Pat Penny: And so, for our listeners, as you're drinking samples that you're getting and as you're trying to learn what different teas taste like from different regions, I think maybe just trying to always keep an open mind. Don't lock in exactly what you believe to be the truth is at any given point, let other samples take you on a ride. 'Cause I think for me, I came in with some preconceived notions when we went into Yiwu and it took a day or two to get around a lot of them. Like, you know, I was drinking tea for 15 years. I've had a lot of examples of gushu. But you know, the truth was I hadn't had

[00:25:40] Emily Huang: Yiwu gushu

[00:25:41] Pat Penny: as many examples of young Yiwu gushu or Yiwu gushu from certain areas of forests, right? So I think allow yourself to continue building that framework. Don't, don't lock into any specific mindset.

[00:25:52] Zongjun Li: Yeah.

[00:25:53] Pat Penny: Ever.

[00:25:53] Jason Cohen: Don't, and don't over index on references and samples until you're in the place. You don't really have a clear indication of the quality level in which you're drinking at. There are things that I used to like that now I think are just okay.

[00:26:10] Jason Cohen: And there are things that I didn't have a conception of five years ago, 10 years ago, that's now it's like, all right, now we're really drinking at a different level. Now we're doing something else.

[00:26:22] Emily Huang: Mm.

[00:26:22] Pat Penny: There's something we love, Jason, just a year ago that we bought when we were in Taiwan. We loved it so much that you bought it again this year, and we both still like it, but I think our, our scales have been recalibrated. Oh, we don't feel like we bought a bad tea, but I think a year ago was a better tea in my mind than it is now.

[00:26:40] Jason Cohen: Yeah, the gradations of quality are in some ways endless. You know, when we were in Yiwu hearing people talk about other people's danzhu, it's like, why would you make a danzhu outta that tree?

[00:26:51] Pat Penny: What an idiot. They process that into a danzhu?! That tree is so mid.

[00:26:58] Zongjun Li: It's probably some rich Guangdong or Fujian lao ban (“boss”), you know, end up commissioning.

[00:27:04] Jason Cohen: They talk about it, the lao bans who come in who don't really know that much, who have enough money, and they're like, all right, pick me a tree. And there's. You know, they're not gonna know, or, or they're not talking to the right, or those people don't have access to the right.

[00:27:17] Zongjun Li: That one over there.

[00:27:20] Jason Cohen: Take your pick.

[00:27:22] Pat Penny: Hey, Zongjun's tea was a lao ban collab. So don't, don't talk bad about the lao bans.

[00:27:26] Jason Cohen: Yeah, but the Hubei man didn't buy enough.

[00:27:28] Pat Penny: Oh, that's right. That's right.

[00:27:29] Jason Cohen: Any, any danzhu.

[00:27:31] Zongjun Li: As I was frying my tea in Gaoshan, some like Dongbei lao ban, just like swoop in. And then was like, can I fry your tea too? And then just like start taking the gloves from my hands.

[00:27:44] Pat Penny: He must have thought it was just like a hands-on installation.

[00:27:47] Pat Penny: You can just walk in and just start doing it. Anyone can do it. Yeah.

[00:27:52] Zongjun Li: But he was being super nice about it. Like he did the whole cigarette exchange ceremony, like, give everyone a cigarette and then, patting our shoulder, asking questions and it just like started frying out.

[00:28:05] Jason Cohen: And then he took, and then he took over frying tea from Zongjun on Zongjun's personal batch.

[00:28:10] Zongjun Li: Like very anxiously waiting aside.

[00:28:14] Jason Cohen: He only got a few minutes in. Zongjun took back over. But it was,

[00:28:17] Pat Penny: We were told that Zongjun's heat management on his wok firing after we tasted all of our teas supposedly was the best. And so I think the Hebei gemen helped out a little bit.

[00:28:26] Jason Cohen: That man was used to being hands on. He did not shy away from the heat.

[00:28:31] Pat Penny: He was doing a little flippy fun time, though. He was not listening to the advice.

[00:28:36] Jason Cohen: He lost a few leaves.

[00:28:38] Jason Cohen: But, back to that major point. Don't over index.

[00:28:42] Jason Cohen: I entirely agree with what you were saying, Pat, but the other thing is people get a sample, particularly Western world, you're not in China, right? You have some various levels of access to these types of things.

[00:28:53] Jason Cohen: And so someone sees something. And they say, oh wow, I get to try this set of four gaogan trees, right? Four trees blended gaogan. And then they say, okay, now this is what gaogan tastes like, or this is what, you know, this area tastes like. Or this is a new step up. And it might be right, it might be true.

[00:29:12] Jason Cohen: But overindexing on that kind of thing. Overindexing on specific attributes when you haven't tasted across a range is very difficult to do. And I would say that even in Yiwu, there's not agreement. Even amongst the people making the tea there's not agreement on what it should taste like.

[00:29:30] Emily Huang: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:30] Jason Cohen: That type of side snipping, that type of commentary, tasting other people's tea and later, discussing what was good about this, what was bad about this?

[00:29:40] Jason Cohen: And, I think that was the most number of danzhus that I've ever tasted. They did not all taste alike, and there was definitely commentary back and forth between different groups and different families that this is good for this reason, this is bad for this reason. And maybe you agree with them and maybe you don't. The different families were producing different things and have different techniques. But, if there's no agreement amongst the makers, if there's no agreement amongst the people who have the best access that you can have, then how do you think that you're going to have agreement having tasted somewhere between zero, and I'm gonna guess less than 10 danzhus.

[00:30:13] Zongjun Li: Yeah. One thing that we really learned is listen to your body. How your body feels about it instead of trying to give a very deep assessment on the flavors and trying to make sense out of those flavor attributes I think is something that we found it actually quite useful.

[00:30:32] Emily Huang: Mm.

[00:30:33] Zongjun Li: It's a little bit, you know, kind of TCME. Like in the beginning, but you actually do end up feeling different effects on your body. And that's something very quite interesting.

[00:30:46] Zongjun Li: One thing that Yunnan really doesn't lack is diversity. You have diversity of opinions, you have diversity of tea, you have diversities of food, you have diversity of people and culture. You know, it's really one messy place. And follow your true heart. You know, you, you end up feeling the best with the xiaoshu. You know, great. Congratulations, that will save you a lot of money in the future.

[00:31:10] Jason Cohen: But to be clear, and to Pat's point, 'cause he wrote about this in his trip report, is that deep forest xiaoshu, deep forest trees that are 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old, that are grown in a natural environment, that are unintended or not overly pruned.

[00:31:26] Zongjun Li: Yeah, that taste great.

[00:31:27] Jason Cohen: Yeah. They're gonna be better than some gushu trees that are right in the village, right next to someone's AC

[00:31:34] Zongjun Li: the highways,

[00:31:35] Jason Cohen: You know, or the new highway that's been built right through it with the lorry trucks dumping diesel fumes on them. The, the environment counts for a lot. The environment counts for, I would say, the most. In aggregate, I'm agreeing with you Zongjun that yeah, the, it's not, for a lack of a better word, it's not woo.

[00:31:55] Jason Cohen: If you feel the constriction of your throat, if you feel the tightness in your jaw, if you feel like you want to drink more versus if you want to drink less. One of the amazing things was we were drinking so much tea, never once did it turn our stomach. In Yiwu drinking young Yiwu, Yiwu that was

[00:32:11] Zongjun Li: Oh yeah.

[00:32:12] Jason Cohen: two weeks ago, a week ago, yesterday, grabbing partially dried young Yiwu tea, even forest xiaoshu and brewing eight grams in an overflowing gaiwan. And just going 25 brews on it. It felt fine. It never turned our stomachs.

[00:32:31] Pat Penny: The one thing that I think made us all feel not great was actually a sample that we brought, right? It was an example of Yiwu and we're like three or four brews in and like, you know, the, our, our hosts are kind of pointing out to us some of the less positive features of the tea. And so there might have been some bias there, but you know, we were all starting to feel it and one of the hosts' fathers is kinda like, you know what, I'm gonna whip out a really good tea 'cause I can see you're all suffering now.

[00:32:56] Pat Penny: And so, this really nice, I think that was 2009 Guafengzhai (刮风寨) comes out and suddenly you're just like, oh, my stomach feels better now, I'm okay. But yeah, to, to your point, I think, you know, we had heard the advice many times, on all these trips and in the past, that to listen to your body, beyond just your palate. Let your body indicate to you the quality of the tea. But never so clearly as in Yiwu did I feel it particularly with young tea.

[00:33:18] Pat Penny: In many other spots, young tea definitely still turns your stomach. Maocha (毛茶) almost killed Zongjun last year.

[00:33:23] Pat Penny: But the young tea in Yiwu, like Jason hammered home, still felt so clean, clear, and like, honestly healthy on your body. Sometimes high doses of tea don't feel amazing. I was a little worried going into this trip how much young maocha we were gonna drink, what that was gonna do to our stomachs, but yeah, not a single issue related to drinking young maocha. Issues related to eating lots of spicy peppers, salty food, and lots of lard. But the maocha, never a problem.

[00:33:52] Emily Huang: After all this, it really just reminded me of how next time whatever tea I'm tasting, listen to my body, let my body and my palate, of course, we can still be analytical and stuff, but also, be aware of these, you know, biological responses as well.

[00:34:08] Emily Huang: And another thing is the diversity. So much that I'm looking forward to your next trip and and all the other discussions on the other parts of Yunnan and digging into the different flavor profiles.

[00:34:22] Emily Huang: Baqi. I really wanna know what baqi in tea means and I wanna try that.

[00:34:29] Emily Huang: Is there something that you wanna share, like a little preview to our listeners where they can expect in the puer tea, or would you, maybe that's a secret for now?

[00:34:40] Jason Cohen: It's less of a secret and more that we don't know how long, how long do we think this book is gonna take to write? I think it's gonna be at least another two, three years of research before we actually start writing.

[00:34:52] Pat Penny: We, we should probably finish the Yixing book too.

[00:34:55] Jason Cohen: We're working on it. We're gonna get back in a groove after, after this trip.

[00:35:00] Zongjun Li: I'll have a kid. Pat will have two kid by the time this book gets started.

[00:35:05] Jason Cohen: Something you need to tell us Zongjun?

[00:35:08] Pat Penny: When we were, so everyone you're hearing it now for the first time. When we were in Yiwu, Zongjun met a Yibang princess. He's about to inherit a ton of gushu. You really like, if you don't know Zongjun yet, start hitting him up on his dms 'cause you're gonna want to know this guy.

[00:35:24] Emily Huang: Wow. I wanna know more about that. We'll connect offline.

[00:35:27] Pat Penny: Emily was like, I wanna find a Yibang princess.

[00:35:31] Jason Cohen: It was interesting. So, so we always write our trip reports independently, separately. And I think for me, Pat, within your trip report, the thing that really stood out to me as maybe, I dunno if different is the right word, but where we took a difference in opinion, one was your ideas on brewing, going back to predominantly flash brewing. Usually our takeaways are pretty aligned and we debate everything pretty heavily. That didn't even occur to me until I read your trip report and yeah, if you want to talk about that, I, I thought that, that was a difference.

[00:36:08] Pat Penny: So this past weekend, Jason and I were just on a tea call together and we're casually drinking a Luoshuidong (落水洞) gaogan gushu danzhu as we do, you know, 2023. And we're brewing this tea and Jason had already read my trip report at this point, but both of us, you and I, were both flash brewing.

[00:36:25] Pat Penny: And I think for me, it was being in Yiwu and being in Yunnan and experiencing this flash brewing, particularly experiencing the specific characteristics that the processors and the farmers that we had studied and stayed with, pointed out. I think for me it just, those resonated as characteristics that I really enjoy in Yiwu tea.

[00:36:44] Pat Penny: And so, you know, I'm not going to exclusively flash brew Yiwu tea in the future. But I think I'm gonna start incorporating it again. Not like I've never flash brewed in my life, but definitely I did a lot of flash brewing in the first year or two studying tea. And then, we studied with a lot of Taiwanese teachers. I moved to a slightly different brewing methodology but particularly for puer and particularly for Yiwu puer in the future, at least when I'm evaluating a tea, I think that's where I'm gonna start. Because that's where processors are starting. That's kind of the gold standard for what these farmers and processor are looking for. And so I, I'll start there. And then I'll test tea just like you always should. I'll, I'll see different ratios and different methods to find out what I like the best.

[00:37:25] Pat Penny: But the sweetness, the aftertaste, a lot of the lighter, more ethereal floral flavors. All of these things come out in spades in Yiwu tea when you flash brew particularly when you're not in Yiwu and your water is actually 212 degrees boiling. Yeah. Fahrenheit. That helps a little bit too.

[00:37:41] Jason Cohen: Zongjun, what, was the most surprising thing that you read in Pat's trip report?

[00:37:46] Zongjun Li: Surprising thing that I read.

[00:37:49] Jason Cohen: What's something that Pat wrote about that you don't, you didn't, I don't, wouldn't say you disagree with, but for me, unless we're doing experimentation things, I don't really plan too much on changing my brewing. I didn't feel like I went to Yiwu and learned a whole lot about brewing.

[00:38:06] Zongjun Li: That, I would agree with you, Jason, but I would also agree with Pat that it's really how people brew tea over there. So, probably, maintaining at least a few brews of flash brewing just to have the reference. I think it's important in the future to set a reference for your own knowledge.

[00:38:24] Zongjun Li: But, it doesn't really changed the way of my brain like how the Chaozhou (潮州) grandpas changed tea consumption habit. I'm still more Chaozhou than Yiwu in terms of brewing method.

[00:38:38] Jason Cohen: I've just become such a Yixing bro hanging out with me and all these Yixing teapots. I'm not against flash brewing. It's just most of the time that I'm gonna pick up a tea, particularly great tea, probably no matter how good it is, I don't think I want to go 22 brews.

[00:38:54] Pat Penny: I understand that.

[00:38:55] Jason Cohen: Modify my dosage and get it a little bit stronger and a little more full flavored. And, go in 10 brew on a tea where each brew is a little bit stronger. Maintaining that balance, picking the right ware, picking the right dosage, but pure flash for the entire session just feels, no, tedious isn't the right word. It's just not the flavor profile that I want.

[00:39:16] Pat Penny: Yeah, and sometimes it's not the time that you have, right? I mean, you and I spent an hour and a half on Saturday drinking this Luoshuidong gaogan gushu danzhu and

[00:39:25] Zongjun Li: an hour and a half.

[00:39:27] Pat Penny: Hour and a half. And that, that, no, that barely cut into the tea. I mean,

[00:39:31] Zongjun Li: it was still going.

[00:39:31] Pat Penny: The tea was still going so strong. I threw it in a thermos. I had it in a thermos later that day. I refilled the thermos. It was still so strong. I boiled it the next day. And that tea, honestly, probably did not give out. I just decided I was done with it.

[00:39:45] Jason Cohen: Pat probably went further than me. I did laoren cha for three rounds on it and then boiled it the next day.

[00:39:51] Pat Penny: Yeah. So flash is not always the right choice, depending on time either. And, you know, we use six grams of that tea. That's a lot of tea of that caliber to be using. Zongjun wasn't surprised about anything in my trip report because I didn't write about the Wa bar that we went to.

[00:40:06] Jason Cohen: Yeah. Zongjun did not make friends with

[00:40:09] Zongjun Li: Oh, yeah. Tell, tell me more about that.

[00:40:11] Jason Cohen: We've made friends with the Wa Tribe. Pat and I are now honorary Wa tribe members. We can spitfire with the best of them.

[00:40:19] Pat Penny: We did meet some Wa princesses, but there was like two or three Hani there as well.

[00:40:23] Pat Penny: There was, well,

[00:40:23] Jason Cohen: The Hani tribe was visiting the Wa.

[00:40:26] Pat Penny: Yeah. And so it was Hani people, Wa people, and two Jews. Two, two blonde hair, blue eyed Jews.

[00:40:33] Jason Cohen: And, and so, so now opposite question from Pat.

[00:40:37] Jason Cohen: What, what did you disagree? Is there anything that either of you disagreed about in my trip report?

[00:40:44] Pat Penny: I just hated it. Just, it just fucking sucked.

[00:40:48] Jason Cohen: 40 pages in, Pat's, like, huh.

[00:40:52] Pat Penny: 40 pages in. That's when I was just like, you know what, no, I don't like this. No I can honestly say that as I, so I read yours after writing mine, right? And I was very happy. Even some of the linguistic choices that we both made, there was some alignment there. So it just, it was enjoyable reading your take after mine and seeing like, oh, you know, for the most part we, we, took away a lot of the same things.

[00:41:16] Pat Penny: We also didn't write about our shaokao experience. The shaokao was in Kunming, so, yeah, we didn't write about anything in Kunming. There was the one really great shaokao experience. Well, we actually did go to shaokao multiple times when we were in Yiwu.

[00:41:28] Pat Penny: But the one that really sticks in my mind, other than having it with our host family was when we were watching the girl heat the grill up with a hair dryer.

[00:41:35] Zongjun Li: Oh yeah.

[00:41:36] Pat Penny: That's the real flavor of Yiwu right there is like you've got a electric hair dryer just sitting on the grill.

[00:41:42] Jason Cohen: On the grill.

[00:41:42] Pat Penny: Sitting directly on the grill, turned on to blow air onto the charcoal to heat it up charcoal.

[00:41:47] Pat Penny: That was amazing. That meat was delicious.

[00:41:51] Jason Cohen: That was good, but nothing, nothing will ever be better than Kunming shaokao.

[00:41:55] Pat Penny: Yeah. That was next level. That was next level.

[00:41:58] Jason Cohen: Zongjun told me that Xian shaokao can compare and I was severely disappointed.

[00:42:03] Zongjun Li: Really?

[00:42:05] Jason Cohen: They banned charcoal within the walled city.

[00:42:08] Zongjun Li: Really? Wow. That's bad.

[00:42:10] Jason Cohen: No more charcoal.

[00:42:12] Zongjun Li: I haven't been back to Xian for years, but it used to be really good.

[00:42:17] Jason Cohen: Nah, nothing on Kunming. Not even in the same league.

[00:42:21] Zongjun Li: I was pretty surprised this time with all the shaokao in Yiwu. 'Cause last time it was pretty, pretty mid. But this time we got some recommendation of the spot that the locals like to go to. And that was pretty good.

[00:42:36] Jason Cohen: That was definitely passable. I would say the other big difference is, is that we realized that Lao beer gives us a pounding headache and we stopped drinking it.

[00:42:44] Pat Penny: Every time it gave me a headache.

[00:42:46] Jason Cohen: It's pretty awful. So that makes a big difference in your enjoyment level of shaokao and beer.

[00:42:53] Pat Penny: You've tuned into Shaokao and Beer Technique. Join us next week as we talk about Shaokao and Beer of Shanghai.

[00:43:01] Jason Cohen: Just to, just to, to bring it back around. We've been radio silent for a little while. Haven't sent out as, as probably as many updates and everything as we should. But coming out now is Pat's trip report, my trip report, of course this conversation which we'll post in its entirety. And then we'll get back to publishing Yixing.

[00:43:24] Jason Cohen: And then for those of you who are in New York I'll host a tasting on Yiwu teas and we'll also do an AMA.

[00:43:32] Pat Penny: And you've got some other trip reports because you just came back from another trip to China where you said you weren't gonna do much tea stuff and then you did a lot of tea stuff. So tell us about that.

[00:43:42] Jason Cohen: I did do a lot of tea stuff. I was all over the place. I was in Wuyi, not Yiwu, Wuyi. It's easy to do that in English. I was in Wuyi so I did a bunch of additional work on yancha and surrounding area. I was in Sichuan, about to have some great Sichuan green teas, and meet some people there. I was in, where else was I doing tea stuff? I was in Taipei.

[00:44:10] Pat Penny: You went to Jingdezhen, didn't you?

[00:44:12] Jason Cohen: I was in Jingdezhen. Jingdezhen was pretty interesting. Very different than Yixing. Totally different scale. Also totally different things going on.

[00:44:21] Pat Penny: While you were in Wuyi, you made a little trip to a, a certain village.

[00:44:26] Jason Cohen: Yep. Yep. The village that shall not be named, but there was quite a bit of interesting and remote areas in the surrounding of Wuyi, some of which are more or less famous than others. But, you know, the Wuyi park was carved out of a specific area, and it truly is a historical park.

[00:44:43] Jason Cohen: But, to the north and particularly to the north west is very pristine forest and mountain areas, growing some excellent teas. And, I'm gonna write a good amount about this very soon but the zhengyan is famous and sought after and desirable for a reason.

[00:45:05] Jason Cohen: But the exact boundaries and borders of the zhengyan were prescribed very late, quite a bit later than people realize. Only post, it was after the 1980s, somewhere in the eighties that the specific borders got turned into a park and everyone and everything was restricted.

[00:45:24] Jason Cohen: But the surrounding areas have been historically growing tea and processing tea in a very similar style for a long time. So, there's a lot to say about that. And then I was in Lushan as well. Another green tea production area. So yeah, it was a lot of travel.

[00:45:42] Zongjun Li: Very cool.

[00:45:44] Pat Penny: So basically more to come this next coming months from the Tea Technique team.

[00:45:49] Jason Cohen: More to come.

[00:45:50] Zongjun Li: Yep. Stay tuned. Don't cancel your subscription yet.

[00:45:55] Jason Cohen: Thank you everyone for joining us in this edition of Tea Technique Editorial Conversations. We're gonna be back onto a normal publication schedule, hopefully before this is even published in live. But as always, thank you all so much.

[00:46:10] Jason Cohen: This is of course a passion project. We all love what we're doing here and we love for you to be with us. And if you're ever around any of the places where we are, whether that's Seattle with Pat, New York with me, doing some gypsy vagabond thing across various cities in China, like Zongjun or in Taipei with Emily send a note to the Instagram, to the email.

[00:46:35] Jason Cohen: All of us would love to have tea with anyone who's reading and listening. So thank you all again. We're gonna get, as I said, I promise we're going to be back. We're gonna finish this Yixing book. We're gonna try to get back to a biweekly schedule, twice a month schedule. Cheers.

[00:46:50] Zongjun Li: Stay tuned.