Another Short Video on Wrapping a Puer Cake

I loaded a video on wrapping a puer cake from my previous blog post and I mentioned it was the sweet factory owner. My apologies. That was one of his employees who showed us how to wrap a puer cake.

Here it is. This one is from the Puer factory owner. Enjoy!

MoJiang, A Small Yet Adorable Place

We were in MoJiang, Yunnan for two days. I love this place! It's small and friendly. The biggest tribe here is the NaXi. People in this city haven't seen many outsiders. We were met with curious eyes, and the friendly locals coming and going all said "hello" to us.

There are plenty of cars in this city and at the same time, it's not unusual to see two oxen cross the busy street in the morning or people who still use a pole to carry goods to the market in the traditional way. It feels like the past and present meeting up at the same time and place.

I love walking through their morning market and their beautiful park. It gives me a sense of their lives and I enjoy the feeling of being there. I hope the photos can give you a glimpse of the beautiful people in this adorable place.

Spending time with Mr. Wang, who owns a tea factory, and his crew makes this place more special. Mr. Wang is funny and generous. I am very grateful to him for spending so much time showing us around, taking us to tea fields, showing us his tea factory, asking his crew to help us to make tea, brewing tons of tea for us, and talking to us about Puer tea. Everyone we met in this city were so very friendly and open!

And did I mention the food here is fantastic? They sure love their wild vegetables and super free-range chicken!

Pressing Puer Cakes

Here are some of the basic steps involved in pressing Puer. I will share more information and some videos with you after I return to Seattle.

1.  Prepare the Puer Mao Cha.

2.  Weigh the leaves.

3.  Steam the Puer tea.

4.   Place the steamed leaves into a cloth wrapper and then tie the bag into a specific size and shape.

5.  Press the cloth bag with the steamed leaves about 3 times.

6.  Lay pressed cakes, wrapped in cloth, on tea racks.

7.  After the pressed cakes cool enough, the cloth wrapper is removed and the cakes are laid on racks for further drying.

Making Puer Mao Cha

After we collected the freshly picked tea leaves from the XiLi tea field, we went back to Mr. Wang’s tea factory. He instructed one of his works to to help us make Puer Mao Cha.

Here are the steps:

1. Build the fire for firing the tea

2. Put freshly picked leaves on tea baskets for withering

3. Once in a while, shake the leaves to help the components in the leaves react with each other

4. Fry the leaves

5. Air dry the leaves after firing the leaves

We were grateful to Mr. Wang and his worker for showing us the traditional way to fire the tea with a wok. He said they now use machines to fire the tea in his factory. The withering leaves smell very fragrant. They reminded me of Oolong. I touched the leaves after they were fired and they felt kind of sticky. I loved watching the tea maker firing the tea in the wok. His hand movements were very beautiful.

We had to leave before the leaves were dry. Mr. Wang said he would send it to our hotel in Kunming. I can’t wait to taste this Mao Cha!

Picking Tea in the XiLi area of Yunnan

After we had a delicious lunch prepared by Naxi tribal people, Mr. Wang took us to his tea factory. We picked up some hats and tea baskets and headed out to a tea field to pick tea. Brian, one of our trip members, and I rode with a farmer and a tea factory assistant. I tried to ask the farmer several questions before I realized he didn’t speak Mandarin Chinese! The assistant could speak some Mandarin Chinese and helped with translation. It was so interesting to hear them speak their tribal language.

70 year old tea tree

When we reached a small tea hill, the farmer started to drive backwards up the hill. I wondered if we would have any way to turn around later. He suddenly stopped the car and repeatedly said something I didn’t really understand. Somehow after hearing it three times, I knew he was trying to tell us to hold on tight! Without thinking I told Brian to hold on. We didn’t know what would happen next, but he suddenly stepped on the gas really hard and took a sharp turn. We went quickly up the steep, dirt road on the side of the hill. I screamed! It took about 5 seconds to situate myself as I looked around. I held tight and became more relaxed as I realized the farmer had probably driven up this road many times. He is good at it and he knows what he is doing. I told myself everything is going to be just fine.

After we got out of the car, everything was worth it. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place with great people. Mr. Wang and the farmer showed us what to pick and we were ready to work. It was a wonderful experience of East meets West. The locals were very open to show us their culture and we were very grateful and eager to take in this new experience.

We had fun being in the tea fields picking tea. We gathered the leaves we picked and headed back to the factory. My next post will be about the “Stir Green” phase of tea production.

A Long - but Worthwhile - Trip to BiXi

We took a long bus ride, over 4-hours, from Kunming to MoJiang. Awoono’s friend, a tea factory owner named Mr. Wang, came to the bus station to meet us. He took us to another town outside of MoJiang called BiXi. It used to be quite an important city, but we could see that it has become rundown. However, it still felt very charming to us. We enjoyed walking through the narrow alleys and looking at the old buildings.

Mr. Wang led us through a nondescript doorway and a beautiful courtyard opened up - that’s where we were going to eat lunch. I could tell tea is part of life here. In a small room, there was tea that was in the withering phase of production. The restaurant owner came out and greeted us with a pot of “restaurant tea,” which was made from their mao cha (unfinished) Puer. Our lunch was a feast, consisting of a lot of delicious wild vegetables. We felt very relaxed, surrounded by friendly locals in this charming little town.

After lunch, Mr. Wang took us to a tea field to pick tea. We loved what we saw and how we felt. We knew the rest of the day was going to be fun and interesting. The tiring and long bus ride was totally worth it. In my next tea posts, I will have lots of Puer tea information to share!

Visiting Beautiful Kunming

We arrived in Kunming, and I was super excited...it's my first time here! Kunming is a lot more modern than I had imagined. People are quite nice, but they are crazy drivers on the road.

Overlooking Kunming

We started our day off by visiting a Taoist temple built at the end of Ming dynasty.

We were lucky. It turned out to be a very nice day. There are a lot of trees, so we had a great time walking around, enjoying the beautiful temple and space. It felt so nice to walk around after a long flight! Besides the beautiful temple, we enjoyed encountering people dancing in the park, practicing Taichi, or playing cards. They looked so relaxed and were having a good time.

After visiting the temple, we had a fantastic meal and felt very stuffed and satisfied.

But there is a great solution to the problem of being very full: time for some tea!

We went to visit Awoono’s friend, Ms Ja, who owns a tea shop in Kunming. She is a great host, very friendly and patient. She brewed us some Yunnan black tea and we tried one with huge golden needles and another that had wild purple tips. Both are sweet, have round bodies and last many infusions. We also tried some Puers. I liked one loose leaf Puer from the 80s. It’s very smooth and has a clear camphor taste. I will bring back some to share in with you in my shop!

2015 Yunnan Tour Itinerary

Here is our exciting, tentative itinerary for the April Yunnan Tea Tour!*

April 12th: Kunming. We will meet at the hotel at 10 in the morning. Awoono and I will take you to tour the city and have lunch. After lunch, we will hang out in a very cool local tea house (or two) to taste some special puers. It will be good to relax in a nice tea house after a long flight. We will learn about puer and talk more about the places we will visit during our trip.

April 13th: We will travel to Mo-Jiang, to my co-tour leader's hometown to visit her uncle, who is a tea farmer. At his farm, we will pick tea leaves and learn the basics of tea firing.

April 14th: We will visit another tea farmer in the Mo-Jiang area. This farmer is doing environmentally-responsible farming practices; he doesn't use chemical fertilizer or pesticides. I was lucky to taste his tea last year and it was very good. Besides visiting his farm, we will try to learn how to press puer cakes from him. We will also take you to a great restaurant to eat locally grown organic vegetables and meat.

old style tea farming

local vegetables

April 15th: We will leave early today and travel south to the Xishuangbanna area. We will be visiting one of the most well preserved tea forests, where there are around three thousand tea trees ranging from 200 years to 1000+ years old. It will feel magical to hike through an old tea tree forest.

a huge old Puer tree

April 16th: We will travel to Nannuo Mountain, one of the most famous puer tea mountains, known for its high quality puer maocha. We know some local tea producers and experts that will teach us more about this special tea and how to taste them.

Puer mao cha from Nannuo Mountain

April 17th: Today, we will be joining one of the biggest festivals in Xishuangbanna. This celebration is observed throughout Southeast Asia. This festival is celebrated by the Dai tribe, for "getting rid of the old and welcoming in the new." We will also be exploring some Dai cuisine while we are here.

April 18th: We are going to visit some local pottery places. We hope to be able to show you how the local pottery is made. If we don't catch any production in action, we will at least have a chance to get some unique jars to store your precious puer.

April 19th: We are going to travel to Lijiang today. After we check into our hotel, we will be touring the old town of LiJiang, which is an Unesco Heritage Site. This city is around 800 years old and has a well preserved old city structure that is breathtaking. The Naxi tribe is the biggest group of people who live here. We will explore their culture and cuisine, too.

April 20th: We are planning to visit a Tea Horse Old Route museum in LiJiang. LiJiang is also one of the ancient Silk Road's trade stops. This museum will offer us a glimpse into the city's history and also some puer tea knowledge. We plan to have some time in the afternoon for you to do some souvenir shopping!

April 21st: We will travel back to Kunming. Time to pick up your luggage and fly home. 


*This is a tentative itinerary. It's subject to change, hopefully for the better in case unique opportunities arise!

2015 April Yunnan Tour Logistics

Happy 2015! I am looking forward to having a good year and I hope you are too.

I am super excited with this upcoming Yunnan tea tour. I hope you can join me and we can explore this wonderful and fascinating tea region together.

Here are the logistics for this April tour:

Time April 12th to 21st ( 10 days in Yunnan).

Cost: $2900 includes lodgings, three meals a day, transportation in Yunnan, tickets and fees for activities and classes, and two tour leaders. $400 extra for single occupancy.

Deposit: $500 deposit by Feb. 15. After that, it will be non-refundable.

Highlights of this trip: Please see this blog post. The trip itinerary is coming up in my next post.

Benefits of this trip: I am planning to take 4 to 6 people. It will be a small group for those of you who prefer that. The original cost of this tour is $3500, but since it's my first tour to Yunnan, it's $2900 for this trip. It's around 15% off!

If you are interested or have any questions, please contact me at tea@floatingleaves.com