Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - Chinese Tea History

Video Subtitles:

hey uh today is an interesting day
because i am streaming from my tea room
i've made this nice
studio space for making higher quality
content for you guys
and today i'll be speaking on
chinese history found an interesting
article i wanted to share with you all
and let's see as everybody
mic should be working everything should
be working
so i'm like working from a whole new
system now as well got my little laptop
here i don't have like you know a
control board that i usually have uh
from my desk but i am so much more
comfortable here
in my tea room able to um
spend some time with you guys
yeah so this article is about the oldest
tea set ever found in history uh it's on
display in a museum currently
and there was a really nice article
posted in
china daily about his artwork
which is you know old teapot all silver
teapot
all right so it looks like everything's
working
it's always interesting with you a new
setup
marco i'm streaming from my tea room
today
so it's a new experience
um it took a lot of work to set up the
studio in here
it's like separated from where my
my internet connection is and
it's dark in here as well so i have to
bring all the lighting in
but i'm grateful to be here it seems as
if everything is working oh you know
what's not working
is that my mic
here so now you should be able to hear
me better
i'm using my mic so the audio on
instagram may not be that good because
this room is pretty
um you know it's pretty closed in
but this is my tea room and this is
usually where i hold space
for people when they come in to have tea
with me here in vegas
the place i've been streaming from is
actually my my office
so yeah i'm going to be drinking
some um spring harvested
shangpure from yuwu mountain
from spring 2012. so that should be a
nice tea
and i'll need hot water to make nice
teeth
all right so
prime everything up so the reason why i
wanted to talk about chinese history in
relation to
drinking this tea is that i
personally had a lot of confusion about
china's tea history right so like very
early on into studying tea in china
i realized that
like the tea that we know now even the
tea that's being sold
as like the really high quality aged tea
times is um
not often times it is it's like a modern
thing you know and last time i was in
neon i was asking a lot of questions
about like
what was t like you know when it was
strictly
just the the ethnic minorities in the
mountains
producing and consuming their tea what
was it like how was it produced
what did it taste like um and the reason
why i was curious about that was because
when i was in india in 2017
and in pradesh
and saw the old wild tea there um
i was thinking that maybe this like
crude form of tea
is actually
is that a pot full of chili this right
here no this is my water
this is my water that's cool though i
would have a pot full of chili
i love chili's um but i probably
wouldn't keep them in my tea room
although i do have like a little
canister of dried chilies um
no this is just my water container
beautiful
water i got this for an event uh where
we needed to have some kind of
water receptacle and it was like all
sustainable um
we were supposed to be like talking
about giving solutions and ideas
especially to young people about how
they can be more sustainable and so i
was like oh the last thing i need to do
is bring like a plastic
five gallon for the water and then a
glass one
also was an issue too because it's like
how do you dispense it
um and so thank goodness right before
the event on craigslist someone had
listed these ceramic
water dispensers and there was two of
them and this is one of them
talking about things that you can't see
let's see there it is
see it over there yeah that's my water
dispenser it's nice i like it i'm very
happy with it
oh this tea smells so nice okay so yeah
we know puerti we know shang poerty we
know it to be very nice
it can be very artisanal it can be very
high quality
um and so i was wondering is that always
how it was or was it crude in the past
and actually the last time i was in
uh china um was told that it
it probably wasn't as artisanal and this
like new generation of young wealthy
people that has
you know kind of blown up the market
opportunity for these artisanal
producers and you none
it's a good thing because that's what
encouraged
higher quality production that makes
perfect sense
um so that he always wasn't so sweet it
wasn't always so
complex it probably always served its
purpose
medicinally or as food or as whatever
you know people were using it as
um
yeah so this article is uh
see seems that we're we're good
everywhere
i'm actually instagram i'm going to move
you guys
because i want to make sure you can hear
this article because i'm going to be
turned towards
i'm going to be turned towards my
computer uh reading this article
there we go awesome hey guys
um yeah i'll get this set up good here
this is just a start and actually this
is not typically how my tea room is
oriented
usually my table is running the opposite
way and
usually um i have the table fully wide
out so this table actually opens up to
be
12 feet long it's a really long table
and can hold a lot of people at the tea
table
uh but for this you know we're just
uh keeping it simple keeping it focused
in
and you know how to change because of
course
and angles and lighting and everything
so we're good we're here right now
all right so i'm going to start reading
this article this was published
on august 21st
we haven't even had oh no july 21st
time has just been going so fast lately
it's hard to keep track
of all the the months now
oh i didn't use my filter this time but
this stuff is still going to be dank
you know they say your your t should be
like super
clear you can see right through it
but now that'll that'll be dank that'll
be dank
you guys can see it here i don't know
the thing about using the dslrs is that
like you have different focus points so
like
the computers or the cameras built into
your computers or the camera built into
your
phone like i'm using here will adjust to
um you know focusing but not on you
so i'm gonna have to keep myself here
okay steeped in history is what the
article is called
published on july 21st in china daily
the earliest artifacts related to tea in
china revealed
reciprocal influence between the drink
and the civilizations
wang kai hao reports the earliest
artifacts related to tea in china
okay just repeated itself
history was rewritten in many respects
when the 1200 year old underground
palace was unearthed
in the famine buddhist temple in fufang
county
shanxin prophets in 1987.
though the bone remains of which some
are thought to be of buddha
are generally considered to rank among
the top archaeology
archaeological discoveries in china in
the 20th century other items found in
the 30 meters
30 square meter altar of a former tang
dynasty
royal buddhist temple are also unmatched
so the dates on this is 618-907 that's
the tang dynasty so this is kind of the
the window of history that we're talking
about which is
a long time ago over a thousand years
ago
so we're not talking about like the very
start of tea
you know i think it's gonna be a long
time until we make those discoveries of
understanding
what what tea was like how was it was
served how was it processed
you know way back when
okay so the exquisite silver tea set
guild with gold included k jeans a
container
with sieves a grinder spoons and other
instruments was the beloved possession
of emperor li schwann
who reigned from 873 to 888
and donated to the temple to show his
reverence for buddha
so yeah his set is from you know the mid
800
800 the mid 9th century
which is yeah 1100 years old which is
you know kind of around the same time
that he started spreading you know
specifically to japan
liang gillin a researcher with the
museum and a veteran scholar
specializing in tea related history says
the earliest known tea was pounded and
shaped into cakes after being steamed
and dried
these were stored in cages when taken to
the royal palace
when people prepared to enjoy tea they'd
break the cakes into small pieces and
grind them into powder
sieve tea powders were poured into
boiling water and people added salt
boiling times were methodically
controlled
to produce goldilocks conditions
not too fresh nor too old he says
the set includes a turquoise-shaped
container that's believed to be
an incense burner used to enhance the
experience
that's cool
so you know incense and you know
creating that whole
zen environment has you know been a part
of tea culture for a long time
even if that tea culture was a pretty
exclusive experience so like my do all
of these things that i'm saying right
now are not like
these weren't like the teapots and the
tea culture
that we know now is like mass
communities of people
you know practice in these cultures this
was a very exclusive thing that
these things left in this temple donated
by
um this gentleman i shouldn't call him a
gentleman
he is
an emperor yeah
so it was his things which was a very
excuse exclusive things really only
kind of reserved for the um
the aristocracy royalty
this tea sets discovery proves that tea
ceremonies are rooted in china and offer
a physical
specimen of what's recorded in the
classic of tea
the classic tea was compiled by writer
lou u and was first published in 780
it's the world's first known monograph
on tea
it offers comprehensive information
about how different varieties were grown
processed rated cooked and tasted as
well as how
tea sets should be designed and produced
it marks how the upper class then began
to value tea's ceremonial significance
china has about 3 000 years of tea
drinking history which began in today's
yunnan which is you know
what we're drinking here
and guesjo provinces and gradually
spread
north eastward that's separate from the
legendary account that says tribal
leader shannon
used tea to as herbal medicine
nearly five thousand years ago so yeah
just kind of
debunking that myth but you know there
could be truth to that myth as well
when the western joel dynasty
was founded people in today's sichuan
province offered to tea as tributes to
the king so that was 11th century
um
771
wow so that was
over 3000 years ago 11th century bc
so a long time ago the earliest specimen
of tea in china was found in a
mausoleum of western han dynasty
and that was in 206 bc so that's the
oldest t
all right so then it goes on to talk
about more about the history i wanted to
like
talk uh or like look more specifically
in this article about
the the art pieces the tea wear pieces
that are on display
even after drinking tea became a ritual
among aristocrats monks
and literati in the tang dynasty
it remained a way for commoners to feed
themselves
that probably explains why salty tea and
butter tea are common dishes in some
regions of today's south china
so in the song dynasty is when the
ceremony with the
bowl of tea powder came about so that
was 960-1279
this practice was introduced to japan
and remains how much is consumed
today tea competitions to designate top
level tea makers became popular
throughout china
emperor hudson from
1082 to 1135
who is noted for being a weak ruler but
an excellent artist
um
i was a die-hard fan of such
competitions he wrote
teresa's on t and thus left
precious historical documentation on the
tea industry during the period okay i've
got to check that one out
cool that is actually very
important
let me just grab this now before i
forget
maybe i'll read that and give you guys
like a little bit of a debrief on what
that is about but it's cool you know i'm
always like really interested
in um hi virginia
glad to see you here what's wrong with
instagram i'd like to know what
what's wrong with the instagram platform
the instagram platform has changed a lot
it has
like exponentially more content now on
it because it's
added on um
reels which is like their play on tick
tock
trying to add a tick tock like
feature so if you're an instagram user
go check it out
it's like you can use tik tok without
having the chinese government in your
phone
cool uh in the ming dynasty the way of
drinking tea became more casual by
pouring water on loose leaves as
practice
continues in the country today so that's
from 1368 to 1634
1644 so really that's only like
400 years ago until the practice of like
loose leaf tea
like what we have here um you know so
like
that still doesn't answer my question
you know when you go to you none and you
go to all the different team mountains
there is a lot of old tea trees there
which means you know tea was supporting
those families for a very long time
um you know i'm really curious to know
how hey mithelda
good to see you i'm really curious to
know um
what those old tea trees were being used
for were they all being used as a food
as this article said so this article
says that like if you weren't not
aristocrat or if you were not
receiving this tea as tribute then um
you were probably eating it as a soup or
something
so maybe they were because i never got
that answer that question answered i
asked i asked everybody i met um
you know what was tea like not even
artisanal tea not even tea that was like
highly demanded in the market just like
all these old tea trees you see here
like thousand years 800 years
what kind of tea were they making back
when those trees were still young
and were there even older trees uh from
before that
and um i never really got an answer
other than
the tea probably wasn't good that was
something enhanced here i got it
probably wasn't delicious it probably
wasn't artisanal
it probably wasn't crafted in the way
that we've
uh you know become accustomed to
enjoying tea from those old trees
now maybe it was still good
but yeah maybe it was just like strictly
consumed as food
you know i i still haven't found uh
written anywhere when that evolution
happened so
i'm hoping if i check out this new book
this uh
um it may have some insight into that
but you know the artisanal craft that we
get to enjoy
in our beautiful you know puertis now
really are results of china
um you know their modern history of
evolving from
um you know a state-controlled
truly communist system to this like you
know they they like
turned the wheel and went in opposite
direction as far as their international
relations
which you know pumped up their local
economy
um which developed this like really fast
growing upper middle class that
supported
artisanal products and tea you know
became one of those products that
you know they sought out and drove the
market price up
which then gave the opportunity for the
artisans to come out
and you know realize value from that
opportunity
with higher quality products which is
good for us because we get to enjoy the
good tea now
during the ming era tea was pan fried
and dehydrated during processing and
then rolled and dried
oxidation was avoided green tea's
original flavor was preserved this
technique was a big leap in the history
of tea making and is still the primary
method in china
if tea's development in china has led
him to believe the leaves are more than
a base for a beverage
tea bears witness to how different
cultures mix in china
and it is like an ambassador spreading
chinese civilization around the world
it also represents chinese people's
philosophy and aesthetics
emphasizing harmony and elegance
he considers an exquisite tea set to be
the father of good tea
in scalding water to be the mother
the best tea can only be made through
balancing
different elements as luyu has pointed
out tea drinking is not simply to quench
your thirst
it needs to quiet atmosphere and simple
lifestyle to fully appreciate the flavor
ancient literati came to understand
philosophy and even the wisdom to govern
nations from cups of tea
tea can continue to inspire us to look
for inner peace and respect nature when
pursuing our goals
and that is how you end a
newspaper article geez wow
so that's that was a good little story
you know
good little highlight of chinese tea
history
i mean i'm sure there's like better more
all right let's see i'm gonna look up
this guy's book
get it and read it another book that's
really great to kind of wrap your head
around these concepts of history
within you know or you know within the
the steps and the eras of t's history
is um uh t-girl on hummingbird lane
um it doesn't explain all of the history
like definitely not like this article
kind of broke down each of the different
eras but it explains kind of the
concept of of um
the thing about the economic development
so like going from communism to
uh you know going from a state of
control uh where
you know which was interesting is that
during that state of control
uh for the most part the ethnic
minorities in the mountains were left
alone
which was good because other places they
were not left alone
um you know there's places in fujian
there's a very small
really cool village like like waterport
village
near wuishan and fuji in china hi marti
good to see you
and uh this little village has a lot of
history it was like the main port of all
the tea of weshon leaving
uh to go into the tea market you know
there's a series of rivers that it
connected to that they could take the
boat the
the tv a boat um into the market
and so this little village exclusively
developed around
the t trade you know being the start of
that which eventually would hit you know
all the other international trade routes
um and uh has very old houses there
there was like just a few families that
lived in this small village
and did this business of tea trade for
for wuishan
um and uh so there's like
and it's now like a museum it's really
weird and the people still live there
and you pay
you know some money to like walk through
their house and like
they'll be like preparing their dinner
and just hanging out and
um you're able to walk through but like
that there's definitely some
revenue flow coming in for the village
which is great
and they don't seem to mind too much um
and the houses are really cool because
they're like old and you can see how old
they are they weren't completely
destroyed during the cultural revolution
but it's like there's parts where you
can see
uh there's like damage you know there's
like
mud damage and my friend was saying you
know that's from
when um that's from when
the cultural revolution came and in
order to preserve those bits of history
and
art the villagers like threw mud up
to cover it all up there's like you know
in carbines through you know the
gateways of the homes
um which were preserved thank goodness
but have been damaged you know by mud
but better you know mud damage than
complete
you know destruction which is what
happened
uh during the cultural revolution it's
really important to understand that
history
and understanding tea culture right now
it's pretty incredible how important
that story and that story is like really
hard to wrap your head around
because it's like one day you lose
everything
you lose
leaving your land people were losing
their land they were losing their
um intellect they were losing their
you know work definitely um to serve
this other purpose it just happened like
overnight and then
um
in the 90s just one of the rulers
decided hey this is our chance
to start developing wealth let's go hard
on the international market and so they
kind of exploited
that control that they created to become
very competitive
in the international market being able
to
cheaply produce products for the
consumer market that you know really
exploded
after the 1950s and um
[Music]
and then that turns around and
you know develops these really wealthy
people
like kind of unsustainable economic
growth within
china within the city specifically and
um that unsustainable economic growth
you know trickled through into the tea
villages which is cool of all places
because these places were very poor
um and so yeah read the tea girl in
hummingbird lane you'll totally
understand
all of this story it's like a very
beautifully you know painted picture
of what the t mountains and you don't
like
unfortunately um
the story of tea by heisen heights
all right i'll look at that one i
haven't looked at that one metheldo
i don't know i've kind of like i'll be
honest i kind of given up on like
reading t books and then people tell me
you should write a t book like that's
that's the thing you need to do and i'm
like ah
i would love to write a book i love
writing but i just feel like tea books
have become
a um they've become like
all kind of like retold reference books
um kind of sharing the same information
which if
i wrote a book i probably would be
sharing the same information that like
has already been published in other
books and
maybe communicating it in a different
voice which could be unique and
you know could be a value but i really
would like to contribute something
completely new to the knowledge base if
i was to
write a book um
but i have several t-books that's why i
liked the there was a tea artist a tea
shop
owner in shanghai that i met
he had an incredible tea shop he like he
had a wall full
of every single cultivar
of tea in china the leaves like pressed
and dried and all displayed in small
frames it was really great
and that was just his tea room i mean
that'd be like me having that like just
on the wall here
oh here's all the tea leaves you know
the cultivars
maybe i'll get to that point at some
some point
oh interesting so it seems that there's
uh i'll find a copy of this book it may
be harder to find a copy of this book
this
treatise on t but i found the story of
tea
i will check it out thanks befelda but
yeah he wrote a book this guy in
shanghai he wrote a book and
for some odd reason he published it in
english first before he published it in
chinese and he was like uh
do you want to sell this book for me and
i'm like yeah i can um
actually no he didn't tell me that
i went to shanghai with my buddy alfredo
alfredo lin you know our good friend
from
taiwan and
um
oh i see so virginia is saying that
instagram is just unstable you're right
you're right well you know i'm
broadcasting from my tea room where my
signal but i speed test before i went
and i should have had enough
download and upload to be clear
but yeah instagram is finicky it is
going to be much better from
you know the internet shot thank you
virginia for that
feedback
tonight you say tonight's broadcast i'm
so late
but i was working setting this up for
you guys like everything i had to like
move all the furniture
and uh everything's very heavy uh this
table is very heavy this table is very
heavy this like
my t-table here i don't know instagram
you guys want to see it
my tea table my tea tree it is a
pure solid stone
you see and it's got like all these like
cool mountain skate carvings in it
this thing weighs more than the table
itself so yeah moving this table is not
a fun job takes a lot of effort
but i'm here now
so i'm still confused because
when i went to india to arunachal and
they made this
like bamboo crude shang twere tea and
they said oh this is like our villages
tea this is like rt that we drink
um i was like oh that's interesting you
got the
um
i was finishing another story i'm gonna
finish one of the story about uh his
book
t nation so alfredo gifted me a signed
copy of the book from that tea artist i
read it and i was like whoa this is so
different like it's like
the history of tea told through like an
ethnobotany perspective
like and then the voice is like this
psychedelic
you know it's like hitchhiker's guide to
the galaxy type of thing
so um it was kind of a fun read and it
wasn't like an encyclopedia that was
like telling you this is how you do that
and that and that
it was like you know told in a very
poetic
way even starting from like the big bang
theory that like that's how uh life
started
and then the the seed started and then
human found the seed and it's really
cool and then he talks like his vision
of the future of the tea
of the tea plant and and man's
relationship with tea plant
so it's a fun book to read that one was
definitely unique and really
inspired me of like okay maybe there is
you know a voice or a subject or
you know a way that uh i i could
you know tell my perspective of the
story of tea
and do it in a very educational and
interesting way
similar to my friend from shanghai not
to say that i want to write the same
book he written i'm
not an ethnobotanist and uh definitely
not a poet but
i can be a storyteller and so that's
what i think i want to do is
you know tell a uh a story like a
historical fiction
i love all those uh james michener books
uh
he writes different books on like the
different states in america
very detailed uh with like kind of like
fictional characters false names
that are based on like the real life
historical figures
uh of the the histories of those states
the tea is still very good you might see
the leaf
okay so yeah i'll get back to the story
about why i'm so confused
now about what tea was like in in the
past
right so when i was in i went to charles
in 20 it was 2015 actually was when when
i first went there
and you know we went there to go look at
their commodity tea
you know like their uh their plantations
they had
kind of cleared out a lot of the
forested mountain areas
in that area and were planting assam
clones that you know these green leaf
was was eventually to go to the assam
tea industry which is very low value
very low opportunity
um but the state had sponsored it and
really kind of instigated this to happen
for the people there so
we uh rajan barua you know took us on a
little day trip to go check
check it out see their story check out
their tea industry see what's going on
there
and um during our lunch
they pull out this tea they give me a
cup of tea whoa this cup of tea is nice
what you know no it wasn't nice it was
interesting that's the better word for
me to use there interesting because
um you know it tasted like it definitely
tasted
mineralic you know like earthy like i
could tell
the tea plant was harvested it was
coming from seed
and had a pretty deep root system i
could taste that i could feel that in
the tea
and but it wasn't processed
very well and it was super smoky really
really smoky
uh and i said what is this what are you
serving me it was like nothing like i'd
ever tasted
in india before i've definitely tasted
similar teas from like burma
other places like that oh this is
interesting what is this oh this is our
team
you came here to teach us about this new
tea we're growing but this is our tea
i was like your tea
that's interesting how long have you
been making this tea and enjoying it and
i like it
since we can remember so that is what
confuses me
you know and i was like really asking
them a lot of questions like
what is the story where did the seeds
come and
um they don't have a whole lot of their
history
written it is you know oracle history
which oftentimes is the best
you know because there's a lot of pride
in the action of passing down
stories so everybody i spoke to told me
the same story
about how their ancestors had come to
that land
and when i asked them about the tea they
said the tea came with them when they
came
and i couldn't find or hear from them a
definitive time of when they knew when
they settled in those areas
where their ancestors came from prior to
and where those seeds might have come
from
but they all give you a guess and that
same guess that every single one of them
gave me
was from tibet um
and so i've gone on and like done some
research and it's definitely not
tea research this is more like
anthropological research about
the movements of the mongolian you know
migrant people
and uh there are a lot of stories you
know they may have all come from the
same origin but there was different
eras of time when different groups of
people left at different times and went
on different paths
but it's really interesting how tea kind
of intersected with all of their stories
at some point or another
and um you know because then
hey shiloh good to see you broadcasting
from my tea room today
i'll be doing a lot more i kept the
setup at my desk too because i want to
have that variety of being able to like
you know if i want to be more
professional i can be at my desk if i
want to be like more casual
inviting everybody to come to my tea
table
i can do it from here so we'll see how
it works out
i had to like uh you know rig up some
stuff i'm actually using the dslr now
on my webcam um so the footage is
looking really nice
i'm really excited
i'm gonna level it up i'm doing a big
webcast
uh with ray from grass people tree on
friday
and so i wanted to make sure this was
all ready and good so it tested a couple
days
um so that i can you know chat with her
from
in here uh because yeah she's like the
tea house education series so i figured
i got to be in a tea house environment
not like at my
you know white death my you know my desk
there
so yeah there's plenty of people
watching right now do you guys
know the answers to my confusion
anybody know good to see you shiloh
[Laughter]
anybody know nobody knows so i've got to
figure this out and so that's what i
realize is my book
i've gotta write and i wanna write that
story so juicy and awesome
um you know it's gonna take some time
and then i wanna write more stories you
know not just about the origin of the
seed
and like the story of that origin but
also like all these other little like
you know micro environments micro
communities that have been
formed throughout teas history
um in many different places um
yeah clear it all up
you know because people like right now
our education you know there are some
really great tea books but even some of
the best tea books are written by t
sales people nothing wrong with sea
sales person because i feel teeth
that's nothing wrong with that but you
have to keep that in mind
that like they're going to want to focus
on the stories that serve them
most so maybe telling the story of
tease significance or insignificance
you know may in some other context or in
some other frame that doesn't
serve the story of like oh this
this spring harvest shanghai is like the
most high quality and this is the only
one that you need to pay attention to
you know i think that's why a lot of tea
marketers avoid telling certain stories
i mean there are certain stories they
have flat out avoid because
telling that story would make them a
hypocrite
you know it's like oh that's slave tea
but here you want to buy some
like they so they're not going to tell
that story
um and so the same thing i think with
some of these
like kind of buried
stories of t's history of seeds history
um you know because after that time i
went to arunachal i actually we filmed
a really great video that
um shows them like i asked them i said
hey show me how you make this tea
like i'm fuck all that other tea we came
here to talk about like show me this one
i want to know and they're like okay
yeah they called some boys over and said
go
go get us some leave and so they came
back with a big sack of leaf like these
leaves were big
um and i was like yeah this is it and
they're like yeah we you know hiked and
we found a big tree we climbed up and
this is what we picked
and then they like uh they pan-fired it
and then they um they stuffed it into a
bamboo
and stuffed it really hard into the
bamboo while it was still like steaming
wet
and uh and then they put that over their
fire
and they said that they would age it
there for at least seven months before
they would like crack open that bamboo
and you know saw off little discs uh
to brew and they're like yeah this is
what we brew and so that's why it was so
smoky because
it's like receiving all the smoke i mean
they're smoking it right next to the
pork belly the bacon
you know so like that's like their
smoking area they have these big fire
areas um in the middle of their kitchen
and it has all these like racks above
where they can um where was it in
arunachala pradesh
which is um north of assam
in india and it's the only place it's
the only state of india that has a
direct border with
china so when we were there like i felt
like i was in united like the mountains
and even like the
the the the ethnic you know kind of
colors
and the language and the mannerisms
reminded me a lot more being in yunnan
definitely than being in india
um when it's just like 15 kilometers
away they're like oh yeah you know it's
just right there like oh
cool awesome that makes sense so yeah
i'm going to get back so you said from
what i read anthropologists
have found evidence of tea consumption
during the neolithic period
but what was the tea like
apparently they would chew on them as
they used to do in south america with
coca leaves to help them stay alert and
to give them more energy while gathering
food well that's pretty miserable
on you know super high energetic
tea leaves raw tea leaves
i mean there's there's definitely
something to be enjoyed in chewing tea
leaves
um but i don't know if i could do it
you know but if yeah they didn't know
how to process it to bring out the
sweetness
um then yeah so that's it there's the
answer the tea probably wasn't very good
uh it was probably you know just
something that they
i don't know i still want to find the
answers to that don't find it
you know i think it's going to require
this is something that's going to
require like
interviews serious interviews uh with
people that you know would probably be
the most unlikely for you to think to be
experts in this domain right because you
think oh let's go talk to the tea expert
again tea experts um
are typically coming more from the
marketing
side so like their focus is going to be
really on
you know learning the things and sharing
the knowledge around things that's going
to serve their
marketing purposes um so
you know it's kind of hard to find tea
experts but you know we may have to just
go to a village somewhere
that has maybe a more documented
history of their you know their
their ancestors migration patterns and
history is an interesting thing right i
have a friend
um that's running for president of the
united states right now
uh he just he announced his campaign the
same night that
kanye west fourth of july um
but he's a cool guy he's like a bitcoin
he's an early bitcoin influencer that's
how i know him is from the bitcoin world
and his campaign is like on transparency
and inclusion
uh it's a really incredible campaign i'm
really excited to see i don't know if
he'll win i don't think he'll win but
i think he's going to create a lot of
really cool technologies and shake up a
lot of people's perspectives about
how politics should work and about how
um
people should represent themselves like
not even in government but representing
themselves
as stakeholders in our community and how
the world works and
not just giving up that like it's not
there's no
use in us being typically engaged like
so yeah i'm really excited about that
but
another part of his campaign is that the
history
history is always written by the winners
and so that's what's caused
this problem of inclusion um
and so he's like we gotta rewrite the
history and he's a blockchain dude which
is like
information data data data so i'm really
looking forward to seeing how he
um you know how he addresses that
like how will history be made so
basically he hasn't launched it just
yet i'm keeping my eyes peeled as soon
as it is launched he's launching
a platform his campaign or his
campaign's platform
online and instead of it being just like
this document that you like scroll
through to read
it's gonna be an interactive platform
like a literal platform
uh that will have you know it will have
documentation in it it will have ideas
in it it will have
his platform but it's also going to have
the opportunity for community to
build to edit to comment on
to write amendments to um
you know and then i was telling him to
hey you should have like like a live
streaming
um you know community engagement element
to it too to like get people actively
talking like 24
7. you know like these kind of zoom
rooms that you can drop
in round table discussions you can drop
in to talk about certain subjects
to host constitution study groups um
so that could be fun and rewrite that
history you know ultimately what he
probably want to do is just like
kind of open source everything that's
created in that experience
you know be like hey here's what
everybody thinks actually
we had over a million people contribute
their certain platform
item oh man that'd be so incredible
so virginia says um oh sh
she like she knows she met michener
james mitchell so that he wrote like
hawaii was the first book i wrote by him
and i recommend it if you haven't
checked out
that one that one's freaking awesome he
wrote one on texas and then he wrote one
on the last gun i think he's written
several other ones too
in california but they're big they're
thick
they're like that big um they're really
cool because they have like
the family tree of all of the different
generations within the book
and so as you're reading it you can like
you don't have to flip back in the book
to like understand the connection
between different people you can just
look at that chart which is really cool
i love that
oh so you met him when he was working on
texas a novel
in brownsville yeah
yeah big books are tricky though you
know sometimes it can be so intimidating
for people
um to take on a big book little books
are
very easy
speaking of easy little books uh our
friend kevin alexander
um we know him since uh
or i know but we know come on everybody
knows him uh
all of our tea friends know him he wrote
an article for thrillist
about the emerging t culture in the
united states
and pretty much just interviewed
everybody within our network
to write this really detailed incredible
article
about uh america's current tea culture
he wrote a book
called burn the ice uh very short easy
read i wrote it i i read it
in uh two sitting so it was like very
easy
enjoyable read um it's about
the rise and fall of uh
america's culinary scene so you know
from 2006 up until i mean pretty much
now so he actually he just republished
the paperback version and he added uh
like an afterwards to it where uh he
interviews
the different people in the book um
about
you know how the pandemic is affecting
their business and affecting their
restaurants
because the book is about the you know
crashing market for the restaurant scene
so there was a crashing market even
before pandemic happened
because definitely just like fuck all
you guys um
and so there's like a colleen going on
and so he's actually offering that book
for free
for anybody i think in the united states
uh
that works in the hospitality industry
and he understands that majority of
these folks are on um
you know there are no unemployment or
you know working in very
you know high stress environments and so
he's offering that book for free
so if you are
a food and beverage professional and
interested in reading his book and his
book is like a
series of different profiles on all of
the
highest profile chefs that were a part
of that culinary revolution that
happened so
you know all those like hipster you know
tattooed
rugged you know party animals chefs that
you know we know from portland or
whatever
like he uh he did a lot of like really
well written
um profiles on those folks and kind of
followed along their story of their ups
and downs each one of them and
like drew a lot of parallels between all
the stories that this is actually
um something that the entire industry is
dealing with
is a um
over saturation in the markets and
kind of like this commodification of the
hospitality experience which in the end
you know devalues the experience and
creates a very difficult business
situation for these retro
restaurants
yeah mithels um the timeline so yeah
this article that i went over
you know is it was kind of part of that
timeline i know there's like much more
and i've looked at that before but even
that doesn't
so it's like okay so during the period
this article was talking about from it
was like 888
and that's when the first tea set was
like from that time the first tea set
which was
a tea set used in the like uh the tea
cake powdering tea cake
so all of that tea at that time was
coming from yunnan
i don't know like those types of
questions like those types of things
like what was the supply chain looking
like
those things aren't written in these
books or at least from what i've written
so far so
if you have a recommendation of any tea
history books i'm sure
there's some t history books written in
chinese
uh that have that kind of data um but
that's why i'm really curious about this
one
treesis on t it was written in
1107 during the song dynasty um
and this book supposedly i haven't
looked at it yet
but it's about uh tea competitions
uh which was kind of the development or
the first step
in how we started getting into like
artisanal loose leaf tea
so we all know like song dynasty is when
loose leaf tea became a thing
but um
when tea became like an artisanal craft
type of a thing
the competitions are always it
that's how i want to i want to
understand the history of all these
competitions because there are regions
that we're working with now
that don't have that and need that so
you know we know how competitions work
in taiwan
we know how they work in japan but you
know
by seeing all the different perspectives
we can kind of pull from
each um
what would be best for you know
producers in nepal
or producers in um in africa and kenya
you know as we start to see artisanal
craft develop
uh there
sweet i really like this this is cool
do you guys have any recommendations of
what else i need i think i like i wanted
to
put up some like uh christmas lights
like white twinkly
christmas lights behind there i think it
would look cool but
um just to start
to start
because we're going to be doing this for
a while you know
we're going to be stuck in our own
spaces uh
socializing from our cameras for a while
so i want to get comfortable with you
guys
and uh kind of up my game create
new styles of content um
yeah so i need to like have good
recordings good audio
good video