Götheborg – the vessel that capsized in 1745 with 370 tonnes of Chinese teas including Songluo green tea.

On the way back from her third journey to Canton on 12 September 1745, the Swedish East India Company vessel “Götheborg” capsized just 1 mile away from the harbour of the Swedish port of the same name. The ship was commissioned by the Company to purchase luxury goods and was carrying 2,388 parcels of porcelains, 370 tonnes of tea leaves and innumerable items like rattans and silks. Two thirds of her cargo sank straight to the bottom of the sea, but fortunately the rest of the cargo just sufficed to cover the cost of the voyage.

One of the teas that went down with the ship was 松萝 Songluo green tea from Anhui Province (amongst other teas like Dahongpao black tea and Oolong Wuyi Yan tea).

Two hundred and forty years later in 1985, the shipwreck was discovered and archaeologists recovered 2,000 wooden crates (mostly rotten) holding tin containers of tea. Amazingly, and thanks largely to the tins’ seals, the Songluo green tea though oxidised was still very aromatic and perfectly drinkable even after 240 years at the bottom of the sea!

Map showing Xiuning County – birthplace of Songluo green tea.

Songluo is a really gorgeous aromatic green tea packed full of umami sweetness. I was invited to Xiuning County where it’s produced on my tour of Anhui province last month. Unfortunately, I’d picked a rainy, muddy day to visit the area, so it would have been impractical to see the tea hills at very close quarters, but I did enjoy the privilege of viewing the locality’s brand new, state owned tea processing plant.

While the plant manager, Ling Yuejing 凌跃进, was showing me around, and kindly letting me take some video shots (which I hope to upload soon on to this site), it was fascinating for me to hear him refer to the traditional Songluo production process, which was historically based in monasteries.

Plant manager Mr. Ling giving me a warm welcome to his factory.

Senior monks would work through the night, hand-rolling and pan-frying the freshly picked tea leaves – using a large wok over a charcoal burner – in order to halt the natural oxidation process that would otherwise turn green tea to black. Meanwhile, younger monks busily fanned the tea leaves to remove any remaining moisture and to cool the leaves, lest they become roasted by the heat which would be just as undesirable as oxidation.

Songluo tea factory with machinery mimicking traditional tea processing techniques.

The modern version of these processes involves filtering dry heat from charcoal burners (operating at over 300°C), shaping the leaves through the use of shaking and rolling machines, then tumble-drying the leaves to bring their temperature down to 10°C, and finally, briefly microwaving them to bring any remaining moisture molecules to the surface of the leaves. The whole, basically mechanised process takes between 3 and 4 hours. So it is extraordinarily efficient, though less appealing to the romantic in me.

Nearly ready Songluo tea being dried on rattan mats feels a little moist on my hand.

When asked if Songluo tea is steeped in history, Ling relates with enthusiasm that under the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (known as Hongwu) (1328-1398), there was a 让福 ‘Rangfu’ temple on the summit of Songluo mountain. At the temple’s entrance stood a huge urn filled with mountain rainwater and duck weeds. A pilgrim one day expressed a desire to buy the urn, and the abbot instructed his monks to store the urn away until the pilgrim’s return, first emptying it of the rainwater and weeds that had collected in it.

The pilgrim duly reappeared and was horrified to find the urn ready for his collection, completely clean and empty. It had been the jade-green water that he really wanted rather than the urn itself!

The jade green and golden edges of the fine tender Songluo green.

Legend has it that, subsequently, little tea plants grew and indeed thrived at the spot where the urn’s contents had been poured out. The monks then learned how to process the leaves of the tea plants, and this is how Songluo tea was born.

Brewing Songluo green tea in a gaiwan (lidded cup).

From the outset Songluo was renowned for its medicinal properties. For example, the old abbot discerned in it an ability to cure dysentery and by distributing it among the local villagers he reckoned on saving many lives. Even today, practitioners of Chinese medicine recommend it to relieve bloatedness, phlegm, high cholesterol, indigestion and upset stomachs.

Songluo tea is cultivated on Songluo Mountain at more than 850 metres above sea level. The leaves grow wide and thick while the stems are thin. The dried leaves are fine and curly, which is indicative of their tenderness. They are mostly green in colour with a hint of golden yellow, and they are deeply fragrant.

Götheborg – a replica that started sailing in 2003.

It all depends on your personal taste, but I suggest using about 3 grams per 150 ml (preferably soft) water, boiling the water beforehand and letting it cool to about 80°C before brewing. Brewing time is around 30 seconds, adding 10 seconds for each re-brew. In a gaiwan (a lidded cup), the wonderfully sweet umami aroma is abundant and the umami is still present after 3 brews which is indicative of its high mountain terroir. The taste is very pleasant and soothing on the chest with a strong nose of steamed sweet tender corn.

Last year the Songluo tea salvaged from the Götheborg finally returned to Xiuning County. The local people call this ‘the married daughter coming back to visit her parents’, which I thought was a lovely and very appropriate expression. I was told by Ling that, with the return of this ‘daughter’, his people were able to verify that the Songluo tea they’re making now is in the same form and shape as that produced 264 years ago by the monks. What an amazing discovery!

As a rather sweet postscript, a replica of the Götheborg has been constructed and has been sailing regularly between Sweden and the Far East for the past few years, starting with a voyage to Guangzhou in 2003.

Warmly,

Pei
pei@teanamu.com
~~ sip a good brew, steal a slice of tranquility, glimpse a lingering fragrance, gladden the heart and refresh the mind ~~

Map of Tea Tour 2009 showing Shanghai, Hangzhou, Houkeng, Huangshan, Tangmo, Tunxi, Qimen and Hongcun.

I’m just back from a tea study tour of eastern China, where I had the privilege of visiting all sorts of tea farms and speaking to ‘tea heroes’ about their lovely teas and, along the way, I got to enjoy unforgettable sights, smells and tastes. I also got a chance to live as a Chinese person does, experiencing a simpler, more fulfilling lifestyle … washed down with gallons of fresh green tea!

I met so many wonderful, friendly ‘tea people’ during my month in China I cannot write about all of them, but in the next few blogs I shall share as many pictures, videos, experiences and thoughts or ideas about tea as I can.

Starting off in the incredibly scenic city of Hangzhou, we drove southwest into Anhui province, through fairytale hills full of plum, peach and guava orchards, tea bushes, and sandalwood and mulberry trees for feeding silkworms.

Mountainous region of Anhui. In the distance, is a mountain of round tea bushes.

This legendary region is famous for producing traders and adventurers over many centuries. Its landscape inspired numerous artists and also the myths of the Water Margin. I couldn’t help but think of the 108 heroes and rebels, like WuSong who saved a whole village and killed a man-eating tiger even though he was drunk. This beautiful area, with its bamboo-forested mountains, its green valleys and spectacular lakes and cliffs, has been the setting for many classic films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

You can find about thirty varieties of tea plant in Anhui, each subtly different from the next. Often, the higher a tea bush is up the hillside, the older the bush will be, benefiting from purer air and water and a more subtle light, producing the most nutritious tea leaves with particular high levels of amino acids. It is these amino acids that gives the premium green teas what the Chinese and Japanese call “sweetness”, better called “umami” which really is the fifth taste after sweet, sour, bitter and salty.

This is the remaining ruins of the Xu family ancestral hall following the destruction during the cultural revolution. It was very poignant for me since my mother has the same surname. As I walked through the ruins, I imagined what it would be like for a possibly prosperous ancestors of my mother coming here to pay their respects.

We chose to do this tea study tour in April/May to coincide with the spring harvesting season. Spring harvested tea is considered the best by all accounts because the first flush of tea leaves are the most nutritious since the tea bushes have had an entire winter to rest. Also, as the weather is still slightly cold, there is little need for tea farmers to use any pesticides since the worms and bugs are still hibernating.

Anhui is scattered with beautifully preserved, still inhabited, ancient villages. In one of these, I discovered what appears to be the ancestral home village of my mother’s family. This was a Huizhou village called Tangmo (唐模) which at its peak was given the honoured status of ‘model village’ by one of the Tang emperors. My mother has the surname Xu 许 and everyone in Tangmo bore this surname too, and their descendants then spread out over the world, in my mother’s case as far away as Singapore. The ancestral hall looks rather like a Roman villa, and it would (but for the devastation of the Cultural Revolution) contain the entire history and records of the Xu ‘tribe’. It was very moving for me to see the ruins of the compound and to imagine my ancestors being on the same spot paying homage to their ancestors.

The Tangmo village was given the royal status because of filial piety stories such as this one. A son turned some of his farm land into a miniature version of the famous West Lake of Hangzhou so that his ailing mother can fulfil her last wishes without leaving her deathbed.

At the entrance to the village stands a 1,400 year old ‘living fossil’ gingko tree or ‘maidenhair’. Gingko and cedar are both known for their ability to repel mosquitoes, and they were often used as building materials all over China. In the centre of Tangmo is a sandalwood tree, so ancient that it is believed to bring good health to those who are sick. Villagers had tied many silk strips to its branches, displaying the names of their sick and aged relations. A visiting film director once saw this tree’s resemblance to a mouth, so made a movie about a silk weaving fairy in which the tree comes alive and plays the role of a matchmaker.

We found this little tofu store making and selling hand-made tofu blocks and soy milk drinks. The is an overwhelmingly sweet aroma of the soy bean. We bought some very delicious soy milk from the tofu master but it was ashamed he only makes tofu in the morning so we did not get to see him make tofu that day.

I then was shown a miniaturised version of Hangzhou’s famous West Lake, dug by a Tangmo farmer so that his mother could step out of her house and enjoy some of the beauty of the actual lake which she was too infirm to ever travel to. Though much smaller than the original, it’s still pretty huge. It took him three years!

Walking through the ancient streets of Tangmo I passed a shop emitting a strong, sweet aroma of soya beans and I just had to enter to have a look. I bought some lovely, fresh home-made soya milk made there in the shop. And there were some intriguing and ingenious tools there too which were clearly for making tofu, although it was too late in the day for me to see them in action.

After Tangmo I visited the ancient walled city of She Xian, whose long shopping street has been a hub of commerce for two millennia. I then journeyed further south, to have encounters with 猴魁 Houkui (Monkey Pick) green tea in the area known as Houkeng (猴坑 Monkey Pit), 祁红 Qihong (Keemun) black tea in Qimen (祁门) county, 松萝 Songluo green tea in Huangshan (黄山) City and 毛峰 Maofeng green tea Xi (歙) county. At the end I returned to Hangzhou to sit my exams to become an accredited tea artisan and tea assessor. More about these tea adventures soon!

Warmly,

Pei
pei@teanamu.com
~~ sip a good brew, steal a slice of tranquility, glimpse a lingering fragrance, gladden the heart and refresh the mind ~~