The Tea Sessions Latest Instalment – Masters Wear Flip Flops

Posted on June 9, 2021 by JeffFuchs

Few have had quite the leaf influence upon me, as has Mr. Gao (aka Dr. Gao, Master Gao, or just Master). From his understated approach to communicating to his intuitive understanding of the vital ‘fry’ his has been a calming and entirely unpretentious influence upon my experiences and own knowledge bank. Link to the full article here.

‘Mazz’, Master, and I with the beloved tea frying woks behind us.

Like all of the characters who’ve inspired this column, ‘The Tea Sessions’, it is as much about some sort of life-complicity as it is about a specific skill, though in the case of Master Gao, the skill set is as immense as he is understated. Many meals, silences, sips, and time has been spent with this steward of the leaves and his immaculate ancient tree forests. This particular journey, fellow devotee of the leaf, Marco Antonio Zamboni Zalamena (aka ‘Mazz’) was along for inspiration with his Yerba Mate in tow.

Some of those ancient trees that provide some of the most coveted big leaf raw material on the planet

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The Goddess and the Butter

Posted on June 9, 2021 by JeffFuchs
Her’s was the last tent in the windblown nomadic community of Ala Dhotok (Stone Roof), before we headed up the snow pass of Nup Gong La. It was another morning of cold along a portion of the Tea Horse Road and our team was already ’tea’d’ up from other hosts. We were headed on a slow upwards single file line along stone. She was a vision of visceral power and casually ordered our bedraggled team of four into her yak wool tent for what would be our last churned butter tea for days. Butter was a luxury for guests and she reminded us that it was her duty to ensure we left her community fortified and fed. She remains in my minds one of a handful of Goddesses that I’ve encountered in my days of mountains.
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Interview with Tea Biz – Tea’s Precious Informality

Posted on May 24, 2021 by JeffFuchs
A few thoughts shared in a recent interview with Tea Biz here. In the great rush of tea paraphernalia and in the increasingly creative marketing and usage of fantastical descriptions and flavour wheels; in a time when the ‘names’ of tea say nothing of source or origin points, there is a need (I think) to retain some of the informality and integrity of simple tea knowledge.

A few moments with a Newari elder in Kathmandu about the old tea trade. Photo: Andrew Gregg

Source, the hands, and those wonderful moments when the best tea moments don’t necessarily involve the best tea, shouldn’t be lost.
 
A trip to some of the simple sources of the leaf wouldn’t hurt the sipping community either, to gain some simple but vital insights as to what tea means at the origin, and what goes into creating an offering. It is often at source that simple clarity is gained that permeates through the descriptives and fancied wrappings.
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – A lusty bit of Leaf Tribute

Posted on May 3, 2021 by JeffFuchs

One of the most exquisite pieces of tea porn I’ve come ever across was this compressed mass of large leaf material, formed into seven gourds, sized in ever-descending size to form a large pyramid of vegetal fuel. It was also an homage to how tribute tea was often shaped in the days of trade. This bit of gorgeousness sat in a corner of a tea shop in Simao and I spent long hours debating trying to buy it and ship it home…all 70kg’s of it.

 

If ever there was a contrasting image of the Tea Horse Road’s daunting and physical Himalayan journey, this was it. And I never did acquire – any – of that statue of gorgeous leaves.

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A Snow Pass, The ‘Feel’, and Karma’s Chai

Posted on April 27, 2021 by JeffFuchs
The mind wanders back to a mountain pass, a blizzard, and that wonderful thing that exists still: instinct.
On a day of few words along a portion of a trade route in Ladakh as a blizzard piled in at 5000 metres, this moment reflects the question, “When do we know absolutely if we will continue?”.
Attempting to move over the snow pass of Lasermo, one of those very mountain mantras comes into clarity as well, “There is nothing that we dictate”, as elements, variables, and perception still guide most journeys. And so we adapted and followed our languid reader of the winds and snows, Tsewang (pictured here). Our mules and horses trusted him, and so too did we. Here, he looks back to us for the sign to continue…or to retreat.
He ‘felt’, he could still read the pathway, even though there was nothing but a blanket of white, beautiful froth before us. We would ‘just’ make it over the pass as the blizzard came in full force. Once we set up camp, Tsewang would politely demand a masala chai be made in his honour by our guru of delights and wisdom, Karma. He was obliged and the skies would clear.
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – He Was Late

Posted on April 20, 2021 by JeffFuchs

The horseman assured Sonam and our team that he would appear at 7am sharp the next morning. He promised over several cups of tea, and that was usually the sign of a deal that was done and agreed upon. The taking of tea together is considered something of an informal, unwritten agreement. We awoke and no horseman, no horses, and no guide along a particularly desolate stretch of the Tea Horse Road. We needed this man, however unreliable he might be and more than that we needed his horses and mules. Locals had fled into the high country in their annual pilgrimage to collect caterpillar fungus and we were desperate for his assistance.

Ever-patient Sonam, who rarely showed hostility to any living thing, went off like a beautiful thing of fury. He tracked down the horseman (who was still drunk and in bed) and berated him in front of the remaining community for not being a man of his word. Sheepishly, our man took it on the chin (over tea) and we were off with both him and his horses.

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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Walks and Words

Posted on April 10, 2021 by JeffFuchs
“When you walk through mountains, you appreciate any arrival. When you walk to a place, you can speak about a place”.
An interview about the Tea Horse Road which turned into a sumptuous afternoon with tea about far more than a simple trade route through the sky. Speaking with this monk of his memories of life and travel along the great trade route through the Himalayas, the chat became more of a discourse on life, reverence of the natural world, and the way in which we choose to live and treat one another – it became a series of brilliant moments of listening, near the grand circle of gathering, Boudanath.
Interview in Kathmandu - The Tea Horse Road
Much of the thoughts and words were hinged upon the idea that if one was to survive and thrive as a trader, a journeyer, or a migrant, one needed to remain open to the world and to people. This “openness” though had a caveat. “When you are certain of something in the bones, you must be decisive before you get too clever and make excuses. It must be done at the moment it is clear.”
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles –

Posted on April 3, 2021 by JeffFuchs
The final destination along the Tea Horse Road, both for our own expedition and for the great journeys of the past, was Kalimpong, in Western Bengal. It became for many muleteers and tea traders a kind of plush retirement community; close enough to the snow and spires while being accessible to the more temperate market centres.  Yeshi and I would spend days sipping sweet tea and eating lethally good baked goods from Auntie Penzon in her ʻSomdala Kotteeʻ (Orange Cottage). She was a goddess of warmth and wizened beauty. Deep, bubbling, and utter royalty along the length of the trade route, she had her own tales of the route and its characters. One of the great beauties of her time, her own origins went back to ‘Gyalthang’, now called ‘Shangrila’, and my home for a decade.
Portrait of girl in Kalimpong, which was one of the last points along the Tea Horse Road
 
She had competition though for attention in the form of a young relative who who would light up the green interior of the cottage with daily squeals of laughter and that rare thing: morning joy. She would in a moment make me forget my baked goods, my tea, our tales of the route as she took over time and space. Uniformed, with a small back pack, she would be hustled off to school and return later in the day, equally energized and alive. This was one morningʻs departure that lit up mine. One moment later she was gone.
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – The Tea That Never Came

Posted on March 26, 2021 by JeffFuchs
A simple tea room in Weishan, Yunnan, and one of the only tea rooms in my life that I failed to actually have tea in. Weishan was another of the understated hubs along the Tea Horse Road, and it marks another of the tea growing regions of Yunnan, north of Xishuangbanna. While so many of the Tea Horse Roadʻs spaces and faces were larger than life epic tapestries and living maps, there were an equal number of graceful, understated, and hidden elements. This was one of those.
Weishan on Yunnan's Tea Horse Road
 
From Weishan, many Muslim caravan teams (who were known as rugged and more vitally ‘on time’ with their shipments) were based. Trader hubs inevitably saw more opulence enter into their walls and cities than did many of the more remote destinations. Caravan teams were usually enlisted for only certain sections or routes, so it was in many cases only the tea that made the huge journeys from start to finish. Mules, humans, sheep, horses, and yak would all be transition as the route moved into different topographies and cultural hubs. One muleteer explained effective traders and muleteers dthis way, “A good muleteer is a linguist, a fighter, a negotiator, and someone who is smart enough to know when he doesn’t know enough”.
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The Tea Sessions – Part 2 – Gyokuro Trip, Umami Grip

Posted on March 17, 2021 by JeffFuchs

Continuing my tea-fuelled series for Outpost Magazine, The Tea Sessions, as it takes a (brief) break from Puerh and into Japan’s fabled world of umami as it plays out in a stunning Gyokuro serving session in Kyōtanabe.

Article here: Gyokuro Trip, Umami Grip

Gyokuro Trip, Umami Trip

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