Tea villages. Mengku, Xiaohusai. Yunnan

Hello my friends. We've arrived in Menkou, one of the tea capitals of Yunnan province. This is a very famous place due to the large factory of Menkou Rongxi. There's not only this factory but also a large number of tea plantations and gardens of old tea trees. The most famous places are Bingdao and Zhaohusai. We were in Bingdao last year. We're now moving in the direction of Zhaohusai but may visit other tea rooms in the village. There's lots of orange plantations on the way. There's an incredible aroma here. At first I thought they were tea flowers used for herbal tea. From a distance the trees look like jasmine only taller. If you didn't know you'd think it was jasmine but actually it's orange. It smells incredible. Now we're going up the mountain. Zhaohusai is located on the foothills of Mount Dashuishan so we expect it will be beautiful. We'll look for farmers. We're interested in Shengpu wild-grown red tea which has started to be made here and may come across something else interesting. We're about to explore a new place and new contacts. The ascent to Zhaohusai is very steep and serpentine. Almost straight after leaving Mengkou there are a few fruit orchards and then the endless tea plantations begin. The first is Tai Di Cha then Zhaoshu that we can see here. It's the harvest season so there are a lot of pickers. Today's the 31st of March so it's already the high season. Above there are villages with old tea trees. Here we see only bushy trees. Perhaps you can notice that this is a kind of bush, a large leaf sort from Mengkou. It's different from the Menghai large leaf sort especially if you compare two leaves. The mountain offers an incredible view. In the distance there is Mengkou and closer there are smaller villages. Below there are large rice fields. They're usually made on terraces or in lowlands but there's no need to do it on terraces here because there's a lot of lowland and water. Only tea grows on the terraces. We'll go higher and see what lies ahead. We arrived in the village Zhaohusai. We stopped by one of the local farmers to taste the local tea. Seeing as everyone was a little tired of Sheng we started with the red tea. The red tea is made from Da Shu raw materials. This is an autumn tea so there's no tea this year yet. This is last year's. It has an interesting peach flavour. This is an interesting tea. I don't know if we'll take it or not. We'll see how much it costs. Next to this farm is an ancient tea garden with huge tea trees. There's a drying room directly above us so there's a nice shade. It's difficult for me to say anything about this tea yet. I think that the flavour is very good but the taste is not full enough. Familiarity always requires some average tea and then you need to get something better. The first one is always hard. In general there's a problem with the local tea but this is a problem for a particular farmer. I don't want to take this tea. The red tea has a pleasant taste and peach flavour but it's very expensive. According to my personal feelings it does not justify its price. Shen is objectively similar to Ban Dong but it's much more expensive. Such cool things are found in different houses. The first cool thing is a dry tea tree, a really big dry tea tree. The second cool thing is an old cabinet. I haven't met these cabinets in the village yet. It seems to be more than 300 years old. I'm not sure about that but at least he's over 150 years old. Most likely this is before the Kuomintang period of the Qing dynasty although judging by the hieroglyphs it seems to be later. This can also happen but it is well made and looks naturalistic. It's like a real antique cabinet. I asked if they were selling it or not. I wanted to buy and get it delivered but I was told that they do not want to sell it. It's their authentic thing and they don't want to give it away because it's too cool and they showed me two more cabinets inside the house. It's an old house but it's been reconstructed. Inside you can see that this was a long time ago because of the bricks. They look too old. They've added an extension to it and updated it a bit but I think the house is more than 100 years old. We didn't like the cabinets inside the house. I like this one but they don't want to give it away but now we know that there are such cabinets. As a rule they don't want to give it away because the price is a reflection of the owner's desire. The cabinet is nice. There are some kinds of stuff inside. Nails, parts from a car. Xiaohusai is mainly surrounded by ancient tea gardens. They are several hundred years old but the village itself also has a history. Tea is being actively collected. We didn't see any more pickers here. Either they've already collected today or maybe yesterday. The trees are mostly a little taller than a man but I didn't see any very big trees. Tea has been collected from them for several centuries so they're all sprawling. We tried the local tea but we haven't tasted anything we'd like yet. So now we'll take a little walk around the village and meet other farmers. The Lahu people live here and the Wa people live in the village down the road. We don't like the tea we tried from the Lahu people so we'll take a walk again. Our day ends on Dashuishan and Xiaohusai. It reminds me of Dongding in Taiwan. Frosty peak. It's the same here. Big snow mountain. But you can see how much snow there is. There is no snow and no cold. Although the height here is 1700 meters and all the rest of the village below. There's a large number of tea plantations but unfortunately local farmers are a little spoiled by the attention to Xiaohusai and its proximity. We've tried tea from several farmers. It seems to me that the price-quality ratio here is a little imperfect. Although we found one farmer who makes Baicha, white tea. Perhaps we will cooperate with him. White tea is something like a cross between xiaomei and baimudan but it's made of another sort. Actually a slightly different tea is obtained. Although there is a large leaf. It's interesting that there are a large number of farmers here but the price is quite high as I said because of the proximity of a very popular place and of course it's the season. Later tea will be more affordable but anyway we've already met it. It takes more time because I've never been to this place before. I was right there. Last year we were in Bindao then we went to other places. Now we've met Xiaohusai and talked with the local farmers. We took contacts and now we'll look for options that are convenient for us both for tea and for cooperation and we will order some tea. By the way I forgot to mention the red tea. It is quite interesting here and it's also made from this raw material. Here it's called junshu, medium trees. These medium-sized trees make an unusual red tea. It's a little peachy, fruity even but it seemed to me that we need to talk to other farmers and take a broader spectrum. We can't do all we need in one day so we've just updated our contacts for now. Now we'll go down and tomorrow we have a plan for Lingkang and Mount Bandung. There's a factory there that we work with. We've already ordered wild tea, siya, wild buds. By the way it's interesting that specifically here in Dashuishan the buds of a wild tree are more expensive in similar quality to Lingkang so it's very important to collect regional features in the overall picture. Then we can find interesting teas and we'll continue to do it. Enjoy your tea!