Reading the Tea Leaves

It’s slim pickings during winter in general where teas are concerned, so it was lovely to receive a winter harvested Pi Lo Chun Green from Taiwan.  As noted elsewhere, this is a very different looking tea from the famed Pi Lo Chun from Jiangsu province, close enough to Shanghai so that this favorite is readily available each spring.

Here is the Pi Lo Chun Green from Taiwan.

As a reminder, the Pi Lo Chun from Jiangsi looks like this:

The original Pi Lo Chun from Jiangsi: curled leaves showing lots of silvery, downy tips.

This Taiwan version comes from gardens not too far from Sanhsia in northern Taiwan, and the area is special because I spent a year in a village there.  It was the first time I saw tea gardens, even though I was there for a project not related to tea, although tea turned out to have some tangential significance as I learned later.

When I was there, Sanhsia, with its magnificent temple – the focus of many ritual activities - was about an hour and a half’s bus ride away from Taipei, and from that county seat/township, I could walk or take a short bus ride to the village of Chinan.  This area had already had seen anthropologists who entered the villagers’ lives, and by dint of staying at least a year, these well-intentioned if nosy outsiders became less conspicuous as observers and occasional participants.

I went to Chinan to study the effects of factory work on the lives of young women, teenagers actually, as regular gainful employment transformed  daughters from being a drain on their families (after all, they married out and away) to a valuable source of additional income.  What was the transition like for these girls as they moved into the factory, and in many cases, moved from small farm villages to towns and factory dormitories away from parental eyes and supervision?  How did factory work affect their roles at home? How did factory work away from home alter the women’s views of their own lives?

I spent half a year in Chinan village and another six months sharing a factory dorm room with seven girls, in a company to whom I shall always remain grateful for allowing an anthropologist to peer into its workings and to socialize with its workers without interference (after hours).  As a graduate student, I was older than the subjects of my study but not by that many years.

Prior to the proliferation of assembly line work in light industry, there were few wage- earning (and respectable) opportunities for young women.  Little wonder that families on tight budgets were more willing to have their sons schooled than to pay tuition for girls who would marry and leave their natal families.   Earlier in the century, however, women did work picking tea leaves in the hills surrounding the village.  I learned about this sort of work from the grandmothers of the factory girls, and that the time spent among tea bushes afforded some getting-acquainted time with young men.  In hindsight, of course, I regret not having asked more questions about tea work.

And then this week I received this reminder of months spent in the Sanhsia area.

Infused leaves from the Taiwan Pi Lo Chun

I admit that it remains a little disconcerting to have the name “Pi Lo Chun” attached to a tea so dramatically different from the original Pi Lo Chun, and I do not know (yet) why this particular name was bestowed, other than it is one of those big-name teas that fetch high prices.  In my mind, Pi Lo Chun is so concretely identified with tiny, curled, spiraled, downy leaves (hence, its name, Green Spiral Spring) that there is always an initial disconnect when I see this same-name tea from Taiwan.

...and in the cup

In any case, taking it on its own terms, this Taiwan Pi Lo Chun tasted wonderfully sweet and fresh, full in flavor for a Green and leaving no astringency.  This was not a lean, restrained Green, and I was pleased to have this tea come before the real onset of spring teas still some months away.

Sweetly fragrant, this was one sample that was completely consumed.