All the tea in China is at the mercy of its newly competitive economy - except for what still goes to the Communist Party elite, reports Lynne O'Donnell from Hangzhou
In early spring, a ritual as old as time begins in Hangzhou, on the southeast coast of China, as tea pluckers fan out to gather the annual tribute to the centre. Young women, preferred because their small hands and slender fingers will not damage the precious commodity, gather in giggling groups in the foggy dawn before donning conical straw hats and setting out to bring home Green Gold.
Of all the teas in China, the first sweet and tender tips of the camellia bushes snaking in regimented rows over the plantation hills around the misty West Lake of this storied city are treasured as the most choice.
Picked and roasted, the crop is sent away to the Communist leaders of modern China who, just like their imperial forerunners, expect and accept only the best.
The best by far, the experts say, is Xihu Longjing cha, West Lake Dragon Well tea. Just uttering the name triggers a frisson of excitement in every Chinese tea-lover, evoking a light, delicate and long-lasting flavour released when the pale green, spear-shaped leaves are steeped in boiling water.
The early spring harvest is spoken for long before the month-long plucking season begins, destined for the privileged palates of Zhongnanhai, the vermillion-walled compound that houses the elite leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
Although it commands prices of almost $300 a kilogram, first flush Xihu Longjing cha is rarely to be found locally, not even in the grandest tea houses of Hangzhou, China's home of tea.
Instead, it is sent to Beijing, and important provincial cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, as tribute, continuing a centuries-old tradition among the tea-growers of this picturesque south-eastern hamlet. A thousand years ago, the finest first flush was packed into elaborately decorated bricks for presentation to the emperor.
"You don't see the laobaixing [common folk\] drinking the likes of that. It's reserved for the centre, we don't even get to sniff it," says literary professor Xiao Xie, who like all natives of Hangzhou, it seems, considers himself an expert on tea.
For millenniums, tea has been central to Chinese life. There are more than 300 varieties, most of them green, some black, a few rare varieties are yellow or even white.
Some have beautiful names - such as chengtian xuelong, which means snow dragon holding up heaven. Others, Longjing among them, are named after the village where they were first grown. An ancient Chinese saying goes, "Chaye xue dao lao, cha ming jibuliao" - you can study tea all your life, but you will never remember all the names.
While its origins remain shrouded in myth and mystery, the leaf has been China's cultural and social muse. Tea has been revered and eulogised by emperors and scholars, painters and poets who elevated the consumption of tea to high art. Tea became the embodiment of sophistication, the focus of elaborate rituals that inspired artists to produce breathtakingly delicate vessels for its consumption.
Tea has been praised through the ages by Confucianists as the source of happiness; by Taoists as the embodiment of nature; by Buddhists as a link to the earthly world. Today, throughout China, it would be unthinkable to invite someone to cross the threshold of the family home without being offered a cup of tea.
As with many aspects of Chinese culture, the story of how tea was discovered is steeped in legend and varies according to the source.
The story preferred by the China Tea Museum at Dragon Spring village outside Hangzhou has it that Shennong lived during the Han Dynasty of 206 BC to 220 AD and authored an ancient tome called the Cao Jing on the health-giving properties of plants and herbs. In putting together his compendium, Shennong had to taste everything he could pull from the ground or pluck from a tree, and in the course of doing so was poisoned up to 72 times a day. But by chewing the leaves of the tea bush, Shennong purged the toxins from his body and was repeatedly saved.
Another story has it that the fastidious Emperor Shennung (whose name is suspiciously similar to that of the ancient herbalist), who ruled a tiny empire almost 5,000 years ago, sat down beneath a tree to rest and drink some water. A stickler for hygiene, the emperor insisted all his drinking water be boiled, and, while the water was bubbling in the pot, leaves from nearby trees blew in. As luck would have it, they were leaves of the camellia bush and the resulting brew so enchanted the emperor that tea was born.
The more scientific version of the origins of tea points to Yunnan, China's lush, tropical southwestern province bordering Laos, Burma and Vietnam that is one of the world's richest botanical regions. The two main varieties of tea, camellia sinensis and camellia assamica, are native to Yunnan. Indeed, some of the oldest tea bushes in the world can still be found in its jungle forests, some standing more than 10 metres tall.
The first recorded written reference to tea as a drink, rather than a herb, is to be found in a slave-buying contract dated 59 BC, which lists among the tasks of a "child servant" the boiling of tea for his master and the buying of tea at the famous tea market town of Wuyang in Sichuan province.
Tea became a popular beverage among high officials some 200 years later, during the Three Kingdoms period, when one benevolent king allowed a favoured minister who could not hold his liquor to drink tea instead.
Two hundred years on, when Buddhism took root in the Northern and Southern dynasties of 420-581, monks drank tea to refresh themselves while meditating and chanting.
By the Tang dynasty (618-907), scholars found in tea a stimulant so delightful they made it a theme of their poems and paintings. This golden period of Chinese culture, also produced Lu Yu, who wrote The Book of Tea, a comprehensive history and guide to all there was to know about tea. He subsequently became known as the Saint of Tea.
It was over the next 400 years that tea became central to Chinese social life. The poems and paintings of the Tang were now complemented by songs, dances, plays and operas. Tea houses sprang up all over the country and for the next 1,000 years became the nation's favourite watering holes.
"People from all walks of life came to the teahouses," said Lao She, one of China's most famous modern writers, in explaining why he set his 1957 play Cha Guan or Tea House in a tea house. "They were frequented by people of every possible character and persuasion. Thus the teahouses were a microcosm of society as a whole."
While tea-house culture mostly died out last century - tea houses were seen as hotbeds of political opposition - some cities in China have held tenaciously to the tradition. Modern tea houses are also starting to appear in sprawling urban centres such as Beijing, cashing in on a trend set by the likes of Starbucks, the US coffee chain that has successfully popularised the café concept. But the new tea houses are mostly over-decorated and over-priced.
Tea has not escaped the changes that have gripped China over the 20 years since economic reforms were introduced. And although tea's hold on the Chinese heart remains strong, the industry is facing enormous challenges. As young Chinese turn to soft drinks and coffee, the country's tea bureaucrats are desperately trying to bring the industry into the 21st century.
Much like what is taking place in the wine industry worldwide, the big names in Chinese tea are absorbing the crop from outside their own plantations, processing and branding it, and selling it on. The large tea companies are defying the traditional geographical restrictions of tea labelling in pursuit of mass marketing that is likely to lead to a dramatic fall in the diversity of the tea industry.
Ying Jianxin is the general manager of the Hangzhou Xinlong Tea Company, one of just five companies in Hangzhou permitted to process and market Longjing tea. Until not so long ago, there were 200 companies in the Longjing business, he says.
He believes this consolidation is the only way to ensure the industry's survival as it will create brand awareness and assure consumers that they are paying for a genuine, high-quality product.
The government is also encouraging Chinese to drink tea in the belief that it is healthy - a marketing tool also used by the country's tiny coffee industry. In an attempt to counter recent scandals of pesticide and lead residues far exceeding legal limits, officials are now quick to point out that tea is the secret to long life.
"Tea stimulates the central nervous system and makes people think fast and enhances working efficiency, speeds up the metabolism and blood circulation in the brain, making the brain more powerful and faster-working," says Wen Tang of the China Tea Museum.
"Tea polyphenol can kill viruses. Tea also can help in weight loss, prevent tooth decay and night blindness," he adds. "This miraculous substance also cuts cholesterol and lowers blood pressure, preventing heart attacks."
Indeed, Shi Yunqing of the China Tea Circulation Association says scientific research proves tea can prolong life, and more than 30 centenarians in Anhui province "love drinking tea".
"Medical research shows that tea is rich in selenium," he adds, "which helps prolong old age."