Fluid Cultures, Interwoven People: If Our Language Were Kombucha

II. The Re-fermentation of Chinese Tea

At the time, I was tinkering with my pickling jars. Although the oxygen requirements for fermentation differ, I felt an immediate intuitive connection. I couldn’t help but marvel: those ethereal aromas that vanish into the steam of a hot drink are amplified and preserved through microbial metabolism and transformation, evolving into a deeper bouquet of scent and complexity.

Shuyu first tasted kombucha at a vegetarian restaurant in the US; she remembered it as sweet, tart, and refreshing, leaving her feeling well and beneficial for gut health, with a wide variety of flavours to choose from. When she discovered that the original base for kombucha fermentation is tea, as a lover of Chinese tea, her instinct was: Chinese tea flavours are already so rich and varied; why add fruits or spices?

In the context of modern tea science, ‘tea’ is categorised by its degree of fermentation into six major types: green, yellow, white, oolong, red, and black. The flavour of tea arises from the organic fusion of cultivar, the age of the tree, altitude, terroir, garden management, processing techniques, and the skill of the brew. With so many variables and intersecting paths, tea contains an infinite universe of its own. Kombucha, by reintroducing fermentation into the drinking experience, allows these flavours to be extended and expanded once more.

Drawing on their own aesthetic tastes and their love for China, Shuyu and Kiwon’s kombucha fermentation experiments used only high-quality leaves. They tested various types and varieties of tea, with no intention of adding other aromatics to enhance the flavour. They were devoted to exploring the essence of tea, approaching it with a passion and rigour that bordered on the fundamentalist.

Today, kombucha has been co-opted by the food industry, with North America once again leading the way as food giants enter the market. No longer just a homemade fresh brew found in boutique restaurants, it now appears in a myriad of packaging styles across supermarket shelves and chillers.

Industrialised, standardised production has made the synthesis and processing of ‘flavour’ simpler and faster. While the choices available seem plentiful, they are in reality impoverished. Some ‘kombuchas’, in order to extend shelf life and ensure consistency of taste, undergo sterilisation, forcibly halting the fermentation process. Carbon dioxide is then pumped in to mimic the effervescence naturally produced during fermentation. Once the ‘kombucha’ has lost its vitality, it can no longer be used as a starter for home brewing. Like genetically modified seeds, it cannot be saved for the next crop; it can only be purchased again. For Shuyu and Kiwon, if they did not make it themselves, they would never again taste the flavours they loved. This was a choice and an act of reclaiming their ‘fermentation sovereignty’.

With a hint of excitement, Shuyu describes kombucha as their new ‘study’. She tells of how Kiwon tirelessly records the quantities, timing, and temperature of every batch, and how a single failed fermentation can leave him profoundly despondent. Her effortless spontaneity has met Kiwon’s relentless quest for answers: Shuyu accepts intuition and mystery, remaining open and honest toward the unknown, while Kiwon trusts in records and analysis, driven to question and resolve. The re-fermentation of the tea is also a re-fermentation of their relationship—this is, indeed, the new study.

A week later, I returned for another visit, bringing along the starter liquid for Sichuan pickles; Shuyu had already prepared the pickling jars and washed, dried ingredients. I taught her the art of Sichuan pickling, while she shared with me, by word of mouth, the ratios and precautions for brewing kombucha. It was an interaction and exchange of microorganisms; as I had hoped, I ‘adopted’ a jar of kombucha SCOBY, beginning a new journey of fermentation.

The tea, sugar, and water ratio they suggested was ‘1:10:100’. I had already encountered far too many ‘pinches’, ‘moderate amounts’, and ‘spoonfuls’ in various written and spoken recipes; ‘1:10:100’, by contrast, was an unambiguous parameter. Amidst a multitude of variables—the tea base, water quality, sugar source, temperature, time, humidity, air pressure, and the vessel—it served as a benchmark, allowing room for fluctuation and adjustment. It was not a dogmatic law, yet it became a golden ratio I came to trust implicitly, like a restaurant warmly recommended by a friend that eventually becomes a personal staple one never tires of.

I was eager to begin the kombucha fermentation, yet fermentation demands patience; humans are merely assistants to time and microbes. The adopted culture entered the micro-environment of my home, encountering ‘indigenous’ microorganisms and gradually forming a new ecosystem. Microbes and I, sharing the same time and space, adapted to one another in a process of mutual domestication.

In summer, the culture is lively and people are equally restless; harvesting becomes more frequent, and the chilled, tart-sweet liquid provides the ultimate solace against the oppressive heat. As winter arrives, fermentation slows and a certain lethargy sets in; I carried the fermentation jars into my bedroom, settling them on a bookshelf near the radiator, and moved my houseplants from the windowsill to the desk. Outside, the city’s traffic thrums incessantly day and night, but inside the room lingers a delicate, fresh scent of fermentation, bringing a hint of the moist, verdant atmosphere of a tea forest to the withered, dry winter of the North. In this ten-square-metre bedroom, human, plant, and microbe huddle together in intimate proximity, nourishing one another, sharing heat and oxygen. For home-brewed kombucha, our dwelling is the place of origin, and our lives are the source of its terroir. The flavour of the tea, the habits of the person, the climate of the space—all are transformed by microorganisms, fusing into a richer texture of life. Every jar of kombucha is unique to the individual; it can be propagated, but not replicated; it can be renewed, but not copied and pasted.

IV. Propagation and Sharing

Before long, my collection of fermentation jars grew from one to four. Kombucha is plural in nature; its fermentation process is not the work of a single strain. The so-called ‘SCOBY’ is known to be a symbiotic community comprising acetic acid bacteria, yeast, and lactic acid bacteria, among others. Each microbe plays its own part, working in a relay of mutual cooperation and fending off invasive strains to create a cohesive, balanced, and resilient colony ecosystem. The pellicle that forms and grows upon the surface of the liquid is the tangible manifestation of this microbial community.

Kombucha is open. Because it is an aerobic fermentation, it can be seen and smelled. Rather than saying the container holds the microorganisms, it is more that the microorganisms envelop the container. I am reminded of what Neale Donald Walsch wrote in *Conversations with God*: “The soul is the container of the body”. Scent drifts and diffuses, joy drifts and diffuses, and then comes the diffusion of the culture.

Just as I first acquired the culture, I began to share it with others. Production and reproduction, sharing and re-sharing.

An increasing number of friends have joined this kombucha “symbiotic culture”, and we have begun visiting one another, bringing along our homemade brews. In the beginning, we jokingly referred to Shuyu as the “Mother Culture” and Kiwon as the “Father Yeast”. After all, the kombucha we all brew originated from the strains they cultivated, creating a “family tree” we could trace back. Simultaneously, we shared our own strains, as the cultures proliferated, spread, and intertwined. Eventually, this evolved into an impromptu sort of sensory board game: a blind kombucha tasting party.

At these tastings, each bottle brought along is assigned a number to keep the maker anonymous. The kombucha is poured into a fairness cup and served in small portions; we record our impressions and scores on paper, ultimately selecting the top ten. The host, providing the venue, presents the “champion” with a small surprise gift.

Each gathering is a session of hearty drinking, allowing us to personally experience the diversity and richness that kombucha can express. Different fermentation substrates, durations, environments, and makers—all these elements and variables converge here in a free display of variety. We witnessed a surprise that was almost expected: on one occasion, three friends used the same Lapsang Souchong as their fermentation base, yet the results possessed entirely different qualities and characters. As Kiwon once noted, once the basic techniques are mastered, fermentation ultimately becomes a sensory expression of one’s own aesthetic inclinations.

“People never enjoy fermented drinks alone”; the brewing is solitary, but the drinking is collective. In tasting kombucha, we are also tasting the aesthetics and preferences of the maker; kombucha becomes a gustatory medium through which we reach another. By exchanging microbes, we open ourselves up, trading our respective terroirs, emotions, and histories. And the search for the origins of the fermentation experience eventually seems to become a search for the origins of the self. Time brews kombucha, just as it brews the person. Why does one bottle garner the broadest consensus of praise? Why is another a particular friend’s favourite? How is kombucha, as the object, crafted? And how is the ‘I’, as the subject, constructed? Between the public and the private, the subjective and the objective, we experience a sense of diffusion and convergence.

The ‘champion’ chosen is our final tacit agreement on ‘seeking common ground while reserving differences’—yes, we still believe in that phrase. In a world of increasing polarisation and conflict, we gather around a table to engage in an intellectual practice of ‘seeking common ground while reserving differences’ through kombucha. Within this sharing, exchanging, and dialogue, a microbial ‘blockchain’ is generated and proliferated, putting the ideal of ‘decentralisation’ into practice.

I brought the kombucha to the Foodthink office, where it became an occasional post-lunch treat. While there, my colleagues and I began brewing a kombucha-themed sharing session, officially inviting Shuyu and Kiwon to share their fermentation stories with the public.

While designing the event poster, Shuyu happened to point to a glass ornament on the table engraved with the word ‘Happiness’: ‘Let’s call it Happy Cultures’. It was simple, yet so apt; these cultures truly bring us sensory, emotional, and social joy. This logo was subsequently adopted and retained, becoming the official name of their fermentation studio.

That day, before the sharing session officially began, friends from ‘Happy Flora’ brought along an array of bottles and jars of their recent ferments for a private tasting. On this occasion, Xiao Chao, a colleague from Foodthink and a complete novice, managed to win the top prize. In the unpredictable world of fermentation, there is always the delight of a ‘wild strain’ rising to the top. As for the remaining starter liquid, it was adopted and carried home by members of the audience who had brought their own glass containers.

One memory stands out: an elderly lady at the scene calling it ‘Haibao’, a name from a distant past. In her childhood, the elders in her home had also cultivated and drunk it. Back then, in the hutongs of Beijing, the trend of cultivating these cultures drifted through the alleys and into the homes; for a time, it was a craze, with almost every courtyard housing a few ‘living’ glass jars. In the collective memory of the 1980s, ‘Red Tea Fungus’ was a folk-science myth—fueled by a manic energy—believed to be a cure-all, a feverish and superstitious pursuit of the body’s functional capabilities. Yet, nearly 40 years later, still in the Beijing hutongs, this relay of fermentation spreading among urban youth is closer to a non-utilitarian experiment in taste and aesthetics. It has become a more postmodern necessity: as isolated atoms, we long for connection, reaction, and aggregation; we seek re-enchantment, striving to find and balance our own micro-climates, micro-ecosystems, and micro-cosmos amidst a world of shifting ‘climates’.

V. Diaspora and Revitalisation

From 2020 onwards, friends began to leave Beijing one by one. At the end of 2021, I too bid a hurried farewell and returned to my small hometown. We, too, began to scatter. In this scattering, kombucha spread and endured: originating from the shores of the Bohai Gulf, it drifted to foreign lands amidst the turmoil of the early 20th century, becoming the secret to longevity in the Caucasian villages of the Soviet era. Later, it was carried to the island nation of Japan by a Russian teacher, and in recent years, it has diffused into Europe and America, becoming a subcultural health drink for ‘post-Pasteurians’.

During this time, kombucha returned to the mainland several times. During the fermentation craze of the eighties, a series of books were published: demystifying the principles of fermentation, detailing its benefits, and listing folk cases… within these fragments, there were also vague mentions of its presence during the early Republic of China era and after the War of Resistance.

How did the ‘Haibaos’ of the eighties, once so fashionable, eventually fade? Perhaps the accelerating winds of Reform and Opening-up brought about the proliferation of wealth and the fermentation of consumerism, leading us into new myths. Kombucha has surged, vanished, returned, and surged again in China; its losses and triumphs have all resided within the shifting climates of the era.

In the spring of 2022, once I had settled into life in the small town, I took out the SCOBY I had brought back from Beijing. After a long period of refrigeration, they had grown frail; the liquid was clear and still, the pellicle lying dormant at the bottom of the jar.

Together, we began a difficult process of adaptation; I confronted the conditions of their native environment, while they, with their flickering vitality, encountered a whole new place. Fermentation became hesitant and withdrawn; the liquid seemed stagnant, time almost froze, and my senses lost touch with the process. Two weeks later, flocculent strands finally emerged in the liquid, bubbles rose slowly, and the familiar sweet-and-sour aroma drifted back into the air. After round upon round of replenishing and nursing the tea and sugar water, the colony grew strong again, reuniting to form a dense pellicle.

The first bottle ready for drinking matured during the sudden ‘silence’ of April. This time, I shared the drink with my mother. She had gathered bitter wheat and pokeweed from the neighbourhood. Through gathering and fermenting, we weathered the chaos and panic of that spring.

Afterwards, I helped friends in Beijing ‘adopt’ cultures online, only for it to become a relay race of lockdowns—just as I was about to head out with the culture, barriers were suddenly erected around the estate; by the time I finally reached the handover point, the recipient had already been placed under home quarantine. Could the microorganisms in the jar sense the kind of tsunami and terror another microorganism was unleashing upon the outside world? Kombucha was ‘non-essential’, yet we struggled to keep the fermentation alive, never ceasing to share it. In those days of isolation and stillness, Kombucha became our way of connecting with others, and with the terroir of distant lands. Where the physical body could not reach, we let taste explore; we resisted the silence with the vitality of life, finding a fluid freedom within the fermentation. Had we finally run out of places to retreat? And so, this small fermentation jar became our final sanctuary; unable to participate in the grand narrative, we devoted ourselves to constructing the smallest possible unit.

VI. Reunion

In September 2022, I returned to Beijing and visited the Gulou cottage, now known as “Happy Lab”. Like the summer of 2020, this was another long-awaited reunion, yet it felt as ordinary and effortless as the first day I tasted kombucha; we shared good food and fine tea, chatting about the world and our lives. Around the Gulou hutongs, demolition work had begun, and the ruins were closing in. Within a courtyard surrounded by debris and “silence”, Happy Lab focused on its fermentation experiments, and Kiwon’s written records grew thick, layer upon layer, like a bacterial pellicle. They ventured into more public spaces to share their kombucha, redesigning their former “tasting board games” into flavour profile cards; they also began small-scale paid sharing, mailing kombucha across the country, drawing more friends into the interactive world of kombucha: waiting for it to ripen, tasting its nuances, and holding the power and possibility of preserving the starter to brew their own.

But there is no such thing as a quiet desk in this world, nor is there any fermentation in isolation. Successive lockdowns led to a loss of microbial control—at one point, due to delays in bottling materials, kombucha that could not be harvested in time ended up being poured down the sink.

The post-meal kombucha this time was a recently fermented Ancient Tree Ripe Pu-erh, its richness and velvety texture offering an entirely new experience and dimension. Kiwon once likened “tea” to a musical score; brewing or fermenting, then, is the “performance”, and everyone has their own way of playing. They are clearly becoming increasingly accomplished musicians. Those patient, meticulous records are the identity codes and taste memories of every bottle of kombucha, providing space for calibration and reflection in future fermentations. Just as they believed, the vast expanse of Chinese tea holds infinite possibilities; they have carved out their own style and path, and continue to delve deeper.

They are my genius friends who, amidst the various uncertainties inside and outside the jar—the macro and the micro—possess a steady, confident anchor as they forge ahead.

I always wish life could be like a perfectly fermented jar of kombucha: a balance of sweet and sour, a wonderful taste, dense bubbles, and a rich aftertaste. But how can fermentation be “perfect”? Life cannot be entirely controlled. I cannot provide these microorganisms with a stable environment for fermentation, just as I cannot provide one for myself. I have experienced many failed fermentations—bitter, cloyingly sweet, sour, or plagued by contaminant bacteria. At their root, these were ruptures in the colonies, ecological imbalances, where one strain dominated and the community collapsed. But in the end, it was simply a matter of starting the batch again. As long as the culture remains, there is possibility.

Within decay, turns and rebirth are brewing. Amidst the loss of control and confusion of life, we ferment our own quality and clues, continuously renewing and layering a new self through decay and entanglement. So-called growth is also a state of fermentation, with time as its vessel. Complexity and diversity become flavour; the pursuit of ideals and truth becomes nourishment.

The great teachers, dear friends, and close kin I have encountered in my life have preserved the culture for me. They taught me to constantly practise, to record, and to reflect. Only through practise can activity be maintained. Only through recording can we avoid forgetting. Only through reflection can we heal and move forward.

Enough of my rambling; this piece is the record and reflection on kombucha that I have brewed over these last three years. As for the stories of these microorganisms, they will continue to be updated, continue to ferment, and remain open for sharing.

Notes and References

*Neither Raw nor Cooked: A Civilisation History of Fermented Foods*, by Marie-Claire Ferredrick, translated by Leng Biying, Sanlian Bookstore (Life, Reading, Knowledge), 1st Edition, Beijing, June 2020

*Kombucha and Health & Longevity*, edited by Food Science and Technology Magazine, Gongshang Publishing House, 1st Edition, Beijing, July 1981

*Scientific Analysis of Kombucha*, research by Dr Masayoshi Sakamoto (PhD) and Dr Nakazo Watari (MD), Japan, edited by Bai Zhenhua

When a Stanford astronomer and a Normal University designer make kombucha together, Black Rice Chatroom https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episode/63b8273cda83c49d996a5dcd?s=eyJ1IjogIjYwZDVjMDk5ZTBmNWU3MjNiYmM1ODIyMSJ9

“Research Progress on the Sensory Quality and Related Chemical Components of Kombucha”, by Tian Wenxin, Shen Jingjing, Dang Hui, Bu Xianpan, Tang Dejian, Zhang Baoshan, Zhao Yu, *Food Industry Science and Technology*, Vol 43, Issue 24, December 2022

Foodthink Author

Zhang Xiaoshu

Artist, graduated from the Nanjing University of the Arts in 2016. Born in a small riverside village and raised in a suburban factory, they plan to move to the coast. Life is still fermenting in chaos.