By Dan Bolton
Tea scholars publish reams of research that rarely find an audience beyond academic journals and small gatherings at symposiums. The great majority of this work is published in Mandarin and Nihongo and circulated in China and Japan, cultures that deeply explore and embrace every aspect of tea cultivation, social impact, and health and wellness.
The work is fascinating and relevant, and thanks to Prof. Katharine Burnett's Global Tea Initiative, four of the 50 curated presentations were readily accessible during a day-long digital event on Jan. 21.
“The Stories We Tell: Myths, Legends, and Anecdotes About Tea," hosted by the University of California at Davis, transported hundreds of online participants to Vietnam, Colombia, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and China. Presentations by experts on agriculture, medicine, and the science of tea were complimented by biocultural research and storytelling exploring spiritual beliefs. The day ended with a panel featuring Finlay's Head of Sourcing Helen Hume, Santiago Gonzalez at Bitaco Tea in Colombia, and Mighty Leaf VP Eliot Jordan, introduced by Manik Jayakumar, founder of QTrade Teas & Herbs.
Best-selling author Lisa See delivered the colloquium keynote from her home. She humbly acknowledged that she is not a tea expert and then described her fascinating journey of discovery to Yunnan with her friend Linda Louie. Louie, the founder of Bana Tea Company, talked about "traveling back in time" in south China's ancient tea forests where Pu'er tea is made.
A roll call via chat revealed attendees from the tea lands (where it was 4 a.m.) and consuming countries, including Europe and New Zealand. Memorable talks included a presentation by Nguyen Dinh Thien Y in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The journalist and filmmaker shared his documentary films of tribal rituals of tea practiced by the Hmong people. Sacrificial altars and chants are believed essential to please the tree gods, manifest in the trunks and branches of a tea forest near the China border.
In London, Aurora Prehn, an ethnobotanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, led a tour of the bio cultural artifacts of famed tea explorer Robert Fortune who in 1852, donated a few hand-tied whole leaf bundles of what he described as "fancy tea." Prehn displayed "Bootah" bricks of East Indian Tea from the Durrung Plantation in 1879 and a compressed tea collected in 1808, and Yunnan Pu'er in a tin from 1858.
Prof. Alexander “Sasha” Day, a historian at Occidental College in Los Angeles, described tea development under socialist rule in Meitan County, Guizhou, China. His fascinating tale of ups and downs over the past century suggests that industrialization and rigid standards of commodity tea give way to the tradition of small-batch, specialty tea but farm more efficiently produced.
Fifty years ago, UC Davis pioneered US research into wine and had since established craft beer and specialty coffee programs. Tea is the most recent addition to the University's curriculum in 2015. Burnett announced that GTI is developing a certificated program for tea professionals to begin this spring.
The next colloquium in January 2022 will focus on herbal teas.
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Cecilia more than 3 years ago