IV.

Bangma Mountain is in Yunnan’s Shuangjiang (Twin Rivers) County, just west of Mengku Township. It is a southward offshoot of the Hengduan Mountain range, and its main peak stands at 3234 meters. The warm Indian Ocean air currents mix here with the currents of the Pacific Ocean, which creates unique climactic conditions, such as relatively high precipitation. The main peak which is covered in snow during the winter also maintains the necessary moisture for the vegetation covering the mountainside. There has been a change in the climate in the past few years, and the bamboo died off after a mass blooming, exposing a group of ancient tea trees. Among this cluster of tea trees, there are two with a trunk diameter exceeding one meter, roughly twenty meters tall, and many healthy, smaller ones. The newly discovered young tea trees are strong and full of life. These are also of the Dali family (Camellia Taliensis); these wild tea trees are clustered around an altitude of 2250-2720 meters covering an area of 373 hectares.

Many people know that the tea of Mengku is good, but few know that this place holds the ancestors of tea. A winding twenty kilometer road leads us to Dahuzhai Village Center. Halfway up the giant snow mountain at about 2600 meters, there has recently been an enormous wild tea tree discovered in a place called Tea Mountain River. It was discovered by a local Lagu boy named Zha Muyue. At first, we didn’t know he was the one who discovered the largest tea tree, and we chose him as our guide after being misled by many others. We were chatting casually when we heard about the story of discovering the tree. When there were no local government officials present, Zha Muyue quietly complained to us that he had not received a proper reward for his discovery. The last county leader had set a rule while in office that 5,000 RMB (USD 600) would be awarded to anyone who discovered a wild tea tree with a trunk exceeding one meter in diameter. It seems that the new county leader has not kept the former leader’s wishes. Under Zha Muyue’s guidance, we trekked across the primeval forest devoid of roads. We crossed hills and mountains, going from an altitude of 1700 meters to over 2500 in a space of about four hours and a distance of over ten kilometers. There are many obstacles to mobility in this primeval forest devoid of trails, and it requires much determination and resolve to negotiate the steep slopes. The refined associate professor of the tea department at the Agricultural University, Zhou Hongjie was telling us as we went how to determine whether a tea tree was wild. Our team’s biggest worry was Ms Ma Jia. Her legs had gone completely stiff a few days before as we hiked across the Wuliang Mountains. Everyone tauntingly called her ‘bowlegs’. She said she was going to collapse, and large blisters had already formed on her feet. Ma Jia is a good girl, in the city, she lives in the lap of luxury, and in the wild mountains she can grit her teeth and keep up with the team despite her blisters. Maybe it was when Mountain Ghost told her about her function for the trip, “big brother bear always goes for the pretty lady who falls behind the team”.

The slopes of Mabang Mountain are very steep, and a flat piece of land is hard to come by. At 2400 meters, we found a relatively flat depression under an enormous tree. This will be our campsite. Everyone hustled to scrounge up some grass to place beneath our tents. The head of the Rural Economic Affairs Committee Bao Weimin was setting up his spot under a large tree, and was totally engaged in arranging the area, pulling things here and moving stuff there in a series of useless activities almost running around in circles.  Mountain Ghost had another snappy comment, “the male has two methods for attracting the female: one is with his beautiful fur or feathers, the other method is by building a proper den”. Everyone was clutching their bellies in laughter. After several days, setting up the tents came as second nature, and camp was set in ten minutes.

We still had some time, so we went to see a tea tree that was over one meter in diameter. This tree is situated at an altitude of 2720 meters, stands 16.8 meters tall, tree formation, measured 3.25 meters around the base, 3.1 meters around the trunk, and had coverage of 13.7x10.6 meters. The branch density was average. I was looking at a leaf sample from the book, and listening to Professor Zhou and Yang Liuxia, director of the Simao Tea Breeding Ground, give a lecture. Comrade Huang Bingsheng was also paying close attention. The wild tea trees of the Pu’er region are characterized by: tree shaped trunks, relatively straight posture, tender branches lacking hair or little hair, big leaves, 10 to 20 cm in length, flat surface or slightly curled, with sparse, dull teeth; there were 3 to 5 scales on the flower buds, big flowers with crowns reaching 4-8 cm, and 8 to 15 thick, white petals; some of them containing hairs. The tea industry requires a healthy respect for science. In the seventies, I was assigned to the operations center at the Provincial Bureau of International Trade, working on the tea trade under the guidance of Comrade Li Kebang. We discovered that there was a problem with the pressed tea that was being sent to Tibet from the Xiaguan factory. The Tibetans were experiencing dizziness, abdominal pains and diarrhea after drinking it. The National People’s Committee sent people down to investigate, and Song Wengeng sealed off the warehouse. At the time, tea production was limited, and the Provincial Tea Company issued a directive authorizing the limited sale of wild tea (known as forest tea) for border trade. We didn’t know if there was a problem with the ratios, poor transportation, or sloppy harvesting, maybe they had harvested another plant that looked like tea. In the end, there was a massive recall of pressed Yunnan tea from the Tibetan market.

Cai Xin from the Yunnan University tea department told me that our ancestors were very smart, they accumulated a rich knowledge in the long process of domesticating wild tea, and they figured out which trees would be edible or not. Blindly assuming that any tea tree was edible could cause problems. The giant Bada tea tree of Menghai was from the Dali family, but did not produce edible leaves. When selecting tea leaves, overuse of Irrawady variety (a.k.a. Yunnan-Burma Variety) can also be harmful.

The primeval forest is beautiful in the rays of the setting sun. The pictures that come out are enchanting. I used the soft light and set my camera on high speed mode and just held the shutter button. The winds came strong in the night, making the tents howl. Though this was the highest altitude that we had camped in, it did not feel cold; we still had to open our sleeping bags and just use them to cover our bodies. We talked a while about Yunnan’s mountain terrain, and about the peculiarities of the Hengduan Mountain range, which provided a unique geographic environment and climate, nourishing communities of large leaf tea trees for mankind. Wild tea tree communities always develop on or near the tropic of cancer. Of course the tropic line runs right trough Bangma Mountain. In the seventies and eighties, the surrounding provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Hainan took large quantities of large leaf tea trees back to their provinces to cultivate. When they arrived in their new homes, they mutated into middle or small leaf tea trees. Darwin’s words show us that what is maintained is the hereditary aspect, and what changes is the adaptive aspect. I conjecture that tea had found its perfect home along the tropic line.

On the second day we arrived at Zha Muyue’s newly discovered tea tree. This was the climax of or journey, everyone was very excited. It took three of us together to wrap our arms around the trunk of this giant ancestor of tea trees. We took some measurements: the base circumference is 4 meters, 3.5 meters at the middle of the trunk, coverage of 15.8x15.3 meters, 20 meters tall. The tree has four main branches, the first is 2 meters in circumference, the second 1.25m the third 1.8 and the fourth 1.1. More detailed information, including this tree’s age, will have to await further analysis by our experts. Once the results are in, this tree might be the oldest wild tea tree in the world. The discovery of this giant tea tree is further evidence that Yunnan Province is the birthplace of tea. Something else was very interesting; there was a tea tree that stood over twenty meters tall in an A shape. It turned out that it was two tea trees, one of the Mengzi family and one of the Dali family, who had naturally grown together. This is also unique in the world.

We were all in much better spirits on the road back than when we first went up. Old Bao has been working in agriculture for years, and climbing around the mountains to visit villages was a daily affair. Though he is now fifty years old and has been hiking for several days, he still mustered the energy to clamber up to the top of a tree like a monkey, climbing up along a six or seven meter vine. Mountain Ghost was there shouting, “He’s joining his ancestors”. There was another round of laughter. Going down the mountain is always easier than going up. I often go hiking, and though I go up the mountain slowly, my legs are solid. I went down the mountain quickly, almost half running, and was at the head of the pack the entire time. Mountain Ghost was up to his old tricks, coaxing Ma Xi to run faster, and secretly overtake me. I understood in my heart that Ma Xi was going to have a rough time tomorrow and the next day, and she would definitely be aching all over. At the last hundred meters, she got a second wind. I slowed down to a normal pace to let her be the first to reach the village and get her laurels.

The former Shuangjiang County leader Feng Guoxing is an old Dai Cadre and an old friend of mine. When he was serving office, I attracted some international investment to get a CTC production line imported from India and installed at Mengku Township, bringing all kinds of revenues to Shuangjiang County. He has always been grateful to me. As we ate dinner that evening, the conversation returned to ancient tea trees. Everyone was saying that the set award for finding the tea tree must be paid. Old Feng said that he was now working in the regional government, and that there was nothing he could do. The county tea office said that they had already paid three thousand RMB. I offered that the Provincial Tea Association would provide for the five thousand RMB award for the next giant tea tree to be found. I jokingly said, “If you guys play around and one of the villagers throws his ethnic temper and chops a tree down, that would be a great loss”. Mountain Ghost put his two cents in, saying that he already saw two felled giant tea trees on the mountain today. Old Feng looked perplexed, “what if those trees…” I was still saying my piece, “I’ve been in the tea business for thirty years, and today I finally had the chance to pay my respects to the ancestors of tea”, and as I spoke, I handed two thousand RMB to old Feng so that he could hand it over to that Lagu kid, Zha Muyue (Zha Muyue is the first on the left in the above picture).

V.

Qianjia Village (trans- village of a thousand homes), Zhenyuan County was the last stop on our journey. All in all, the large leaf tea trees of the Pu’er production region, including wild, transitional and cultivated, are mainly focused in the triangular region west of the Ailao Mountains and east of the Bangma Mountains. It is 70 kilometers along county roads from the Zhenyuan County Seat to Liujia, and then another 20 to Qianjia Village. Our travels of the previous days had all been along the Lancang River Region, and arriving at Babian River meant that we had entered the Honghe River (Red River) Region. The Babian River separates the Ailao and Wuliang Mountain ranges. The Zhenyuan County Seat is on the Wuliang Mountains, while Qianjia lies on the Ailao Mountains. One must cross the Babian and Ahmo Rivers, tributaries of the Lixian River, in order to reach Qianjia Village. Overall, there are a few specific geographic characteristics of the places where large leaf ancient tea trees grow in the Pu’er production region: one is high altitude, between 1000 and 2800 meters above sea level; secondly, they are all along the Tropic of Cancer, where the sun’s strong rays strike directly; thirdly, they are all centered around the Lancang and Lixian River Regions.

Once in the Ailao Mountains, the marks of human life become few and far between. While I drove I was I was wondering how there could have been a village of nearly one thousand homes deep in the forest high on the mountains. The car was enveloped in dust from the dirt road, and the scenery was unspectacular. It wasn’t until we reached Little Falling Water that I realized the power of these mountains, and the intensity of the natural environment there. We parked at an altitude of 1700 meters, and Qianjia Village was situated above Big Falling Water at an altitude of 2100 meters. To reach the king of tea trees we would still have to cross the primeval forest to an altitude of 2450 meters. The waterfall that the locals call Big Falling Water hangs halfway up the mountain, where the water spits out from the peak above. Its overall descent is 100 meters, ranging between 10 and 20 meters in width. It is a three tier waterfall, with the largest step 80 meters high

The mountains were steepest here. I was going very slowly up the slope, chatting with a local guy the whole way. During the years of the Tongzhi Emperor (Qing Dynasty), the imperial envoy Lin Zexue gathered the Qing army to surround and attack the Dali regional rebel leader Du Wenxiu. The ethnic Yi cavalry leader rounded up 3600 troops as reinforcements, not knowing that the Qing troops had already captured nearby Nanjian. Li Wenxue was sold out by the traitor Li Mingxue, and he died a heroic death on Wugui Mountain at Nanjian. After the death of Li Wenxue, the rebel army took to the hills. The crippled army of just over 1000 people set off into the forest in the middle of the Ailao Mountains to camp, planning to take advantage of the perilous terrain to continue their resistance against the Qing. I had traveled through Xiangyun Shuimu Mountain during the Chinese New Year holiday, and had learned that Lin Zexu had carved a plaque there, but I never knew why he had come to Yunnan. On this journey, I came to know another side to Lin Zexu. The local buy pointed out to me that behind the trees on those peaks was the fire beacon; the right backside was the Xueguo Mountain natural barrier, the center was Big Falling Water, where the rebel army had set up cannon batteries on either side. I sighed under my breath as I climbed the mountain and observed this obstacle which, to take an old Chinese saying “when one man stands in the way, ten thousand cannot pass”. One hundred years ago, the boundless Ailao Mountains had hosted a tragic point in history; one hundred years later, thick Winter Melon trees are sprouting through the collapsed ruins of Qianjia Village. I asked the local guy if there were still any descendents of the rebel army. He replied with certainty, “no, legend has it that the Qing army poisoned the Dulu River, killing the entire army”. I don’t believe that, but the rebel army truly disappeared, and no one knows where they went.

We still had a few kilometers to go to reach the King of Tea Trees, across the Dulu River and through the wild yet tranquil primeval forest. This is a national forest preserve, and a living gallery of biodiversity. We found a lot of plants related to tea. The camellia flowers had already bloomed, but many days later than in Kunming, and we could still see a few wilted flowers clinging to the bushes. When the rebel army camped in this forest, they were short of medicine, and used tea leaves to stay healthy. The King of Tea Trees is 25.6 meters tall, 1.2 meters across the roots, and 2.82 meters around the trunk. The coverage was 22x20 meters. This was the biggest single trunk tea tree we had seen on our journey, but sadly, the branch facing us was already withered, and the tree was getting worse, as the coverage was certainly no longer the recorded 22x20 meters. Two stone embankments had been piled around the foot of the tree, with two stone plaques standing upright. Not far away, there was also a small pavilion erected. These activities have already heavily damaged the surrounding natural vegetation. On the road back, Professor Zhou was saying that the tree had been harmed by some Taiwanese businessmen. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t figure it out, and I pried him with questions throughout our hike. He said that the building of the embankment and the plaques had destroyed the original environment, and that they had also signed an agreement to receive ten kilograms of dried leaf from the King of Tea Trees every year for trade. It takes five kilograms of fresh leaves to produce one kilogram of dried leaves, so those ten kilograms mean that fifty kilograms of fresh leaves are taken every year. What does this mean for an ancient tree that has not been domesticated? In order to protect the resources of the ancient tea trees, the national government has made laws protecting the environment surrounding them and against picking, processing and selling tea leaves from ancient trees more than 40 centimeters in diameter. Professor Zhou has seen the pictures taken by the old Yunnan tea expert Ga Shun in the early nineties. The Tea King stood tall and healthy, but now it was looking old and decrepit. The preserve managers said that the little money that had been promised by the Taiwanese businessmen was still mostly left unpaid. It looked like the Tea King’s strength had been sucked away by those businessmen. I snapped to attention as if from a dream. In 1982 I accompanied four Americans to see the cultivated Menghai King of Tea Trees. At that time, no one had erected any plaques or embankments, and the then head of the Menghai Tea Factory had simply put up ropes to keep people from getting too close. The tree was strong and vibrant. Then a pavilion and plaques were raised, and an embankment made to wrap the roots. This Tea King who had lived well for hundreds of years hobbled into the “afterlife” after only ten years of labors. Back on August 3^rd, we were researching the Banwei giant tea tree in Langcang. The tree had an exposed root that was sticking out three meters. Miss Ma Xi has a good heart, and asked if we should bury to root. Professor Zhou said not to, because the best protection is to maintain the natural state. Not surprisingly, the Banwei giant tea tree is still lush and healthy to this day.