Full video

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[Music]

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tea is the most popular drink in the

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world

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and there are countless ways we make and

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consume it

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but if you want to drink tea in the

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oldest way we still know of you'll first

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need to hike deep into the remote tea

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mountains of southwest china and

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hand-pick leaves and buds from tea trees

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that are hundreds of years old

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it's a long way to go for authentic

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chinese tea but one person is doing it

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this great big story was made possible

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by

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[Music]

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my name is xinhan tang i'm the owner of

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tjunk which is a tea house in new york

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city

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we specialize in historic chinese tea

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historicities really represent the

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pinnacle of tea culture and these teas

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are usually not mass-produced and

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they're trying to be as authentic to the

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tea as possible it's almost like a

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masterpiece of music played versus a

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practice or a original piece of artwork

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versus the copies

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the masterpiece tea so to speak comes

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from ancient tea trees that grow in the

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wild the only bud for 15 days out of the

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year so sunan must race each spring to

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find the trees and harvest them in time

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with the help of local farmers the best

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tea trees are always on some of the

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hardest to get to places because they

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need to be on very steep slopes we

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usually motorcycle a little bit

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sometimes we tread water

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sometimes we climb

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in this region it's not uncommon for tea

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trees to grow for several hundred years

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these tea trees right now is at its

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prime and this is what he is meant to

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taste like

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tasty

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once we pick the tea we need to spread

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it out in a cool area where the water

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can travel out before we can walk fry

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the tea

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this step is to kill the enzymes so the

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tea fermentation can be stopped

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then we take the tea leaves out and then

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we roll the tea

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once the sun dry the tea you need to

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pick out any discoloration

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this sorting process usually takes

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months to finish because we do have to

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do them one by one with every single tea

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months will go by before this tea is

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ready to be poured out but the journey

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is well worth it to shannon

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those extreme fine points in taste that

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he offers us i think it provides us a

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level of joy that's beyond anything else

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and my job here is to preserve this art

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and hopefully even push it to a new

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height

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you