Amid Extreme Weather, Are Spring Teas Holding Up?
Foodthink Says
This spring tea season, Guizhou’s spring tea suffered a noticeable drop in output owing to the climate, while farmers around Tianmu Mountain in Zhejiang endured prolonged cold spells followed by sudden warm spells, and the impact of the spring drought on tea production has become ever harder to ignore. This article’s author visited the Xinyang Maojian production areas in 2023 and recorded the effect of the drought on local tea gardens.
Thinking back to this time last year, I was based in Xinyang, Henan, working on a set of short films about “Xinyang tea” for the TBB Community Architecture and Culture Season. But a drought that had stretched from winter through spring delayed the spring growth, and at some tea gardens, seasonal tea workers from other regions had arrived on the mountains only to find the bushes not yet ready for the first pick. The farmers’ anxiety was as real as the tea leaves scorched and curled by the drought. My own work, too, was in limbo, waiting for that one shout of “picking begins” to call the first take, and I spent weeks living at the mercy of the weather, camera in hand.
Of the three people I filmed, Zhang Chao of Deyi Tea Garden in Shihe District was the first to give an unequivocal signal: picking could begin.
I. Finding a Wild Mountain
Xinyang tea can trace its origins back to the Eastern Zhou period, and historically it stood as the representative of the Huainan tea region. Lu Yu’s Classic of Tea records: “Of the teas of the Huainan region, those from Guangzhou are the finest” (in and around present-day Huangchuan County, Xinyang). In 1915, the Spring Maojian presented by Xinyang won a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and Xinyang tea has ranked among China’s celebrated teas ever since.
On 9 March 2023, I paid my first visit to Deyi Tea Garden, located in Dongjiahe Town, Shihe District, Xinyang.
We set off in the afternoon. Spring clothes felt thick, and even with the windows open a hot wind blasted in. Clear skies had held for days without a drop of rain; for five consecutive days the temperature had climbed above 25°C, and that day it actually reached 28°C (some records put it at 29°C)—the monthly peak for March that year.
The car turned onto a narrow mountain track, the gradient climbing gently. On the slopes either side, tea fields stood in neat rows, with the occasional farmhouse and ribbon-like reservoirs of collected water in between.
The navigation announced we were about to arrive, but the road simply ended. My driver and I exchanged uncertain glances. Resigned, I stepped out of the car. Once I had picked my bearings, I retraced our steps, climbed up the tree-lined mountain path we had just missed, and made my way through the gate of the tea garden. Bit by bit the stifling air gave way to something clear, a coolness rising, and I could feel the distinct microclimate of this small mountain site. I breathed out a long, deep sigh.
Zhang Chao came out to meet me. His skin was deeply tanned, his hair shaved extremely short, almost bald, the top of his head reflecting a bright glare of sunlight.
I thought to myself it must feel very cool, and before I could say a proper hello, I blurted out: how hot it is today! He laughed too, and invited me into the tea room to chat over a cup. A glass of green tea at that moment was the coolest, most thirst-quenching thing imaginable.
Deyi Tea Garden covers about 400 mu in total, with just over 300 mu under tea cultivation. It occupies a relatively self-contained valley, and before construction began in 2013 it was nothing but a wild, unexploited hillside. In search of this very stretch of mountain, Zhang Chao and his companions at the time had spent eight months going back and forth.
Zhang Chao is a native of Xinyang through and through. Years ago, work had led him to settle in Hainan. A decade ago, he shuttled back and forth between Henan and Hainan dozens of times, driving again and again around the main tea-producing areas of Xinyang. Finally, through a fortunate turn of events and a friend’s introduction, he found this abandoned valley near Nanwan Lake, untouched by industrial development.
Zhang Chao, a forty-year-old returning to his home region, wanted to build a tea garden managed through natural farming. While working in IT in Haikou, he and some friends had run a small family farm. Inspired by A Lang’s natural farming, and feeling the call of home at the age of no confusion, he began to plan his return.
As a child, his family had two tins made of galvanised sheet metal kept specifically for storing tea, and the fullness or emptiness of those tea caddies became his measure of the turning seasons. He had gone from watching his father drink tea to becoming a parent himself; from Henan to Hainan, the flavour of Xinyang Maojian still arrived each year with the season. So little by little an idea took shape: could he go back to his hometown and make Xinyang tea through natural farming? Back to nature, and back to his roots.
Zhang Chao’s one-line summary of natural farming is this: to carry out agriculture by following nature’s own way. It is also a continuation of traditional Chinese farming wisdom, built on five principles: no fertiliser, no pesticides, no weeding, continuous cropping*, and saving one’s own seed.
*Note: Unlike the more familiar practice of “crop rotation”, “continuous cropping” means growing the same crop on the same plot of land year after year. The advantage lies in deepening the plant’s affinity and compatibility with the soil, nurturing the soil’s microbial environment, and enabling the plant to thrive long-term in familiar soil conditions. Apart from the harvested fruit, the rest of the plant—stray branches, fallen leaves and so on—is cycled back into the soil.
II. Planting a Nest of Tea Seeds
The Spring Maojian that won the prize in 1915 came from Cheyun Mountain’s Hongji Tea Society (later renamed Cheyun Tea Society), and Cheyun Mountain is one of the “Five Clouds” in the core production area known as “Five Clouds, Two Pools and One Stockade”.
In modern times the tea stocks of Cheyun Mountain have come from two sources: earlier, during the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, monks from Xinglong Temple carried tea seeds back from Lu’an in Anhui and planted them; later, Cheyun Tea Society went to Anhui, Zhejiang, Hubei and other provinces to purchase tea seeds. Records show that several of the “Eight Great Tea Societies” of Xinyang in the late Qing and early Republic period bought seeds from other provinces and engaged tea masters from elsewhere.
What is called the “Xinyang population cultivar” is a blend of mixed varietal traits, making it difficult to trace exactly which “kind” it is. But Zhang Chao believes that these stocks and bushes, having survived and evolved in the Xinyang region over a long period, have fully adapted to the local climate and soil—they are already truly homegrown.
The dry-land tea seeds brought back from Cheyun Mountain were planted using the traditional “nursing-pit” method of direct sowing: a small hole is dug among the weedy undergrowth of the mountain forest, the tea seeds are dropped in, and one waits for them to germinate naturally.
This method of sexual propagation by seed follows the plant’s original way of life: first the root goes down, then the shoot breaks through. The tea bushes’ taproots anchor deep, lending resilience against barren soil and drought so that, as they grow, they can draw more readily on the moisture and nutrients held in the deeper layers of the earth.
The seeds were sown in 2013; five years later the first picking and tea-making began—ten years now in all. The garden is lush and verdant, each bush striking its own pose, the leaf flavours varying, but Zhang Chao calls it “Nature’s own blend”.
III. A Local Rebirth: Xinyang No. 10
Our conversation was interrupted by a phone call—the installer of the water pump had already arrived. This was the first time Deyi Tea Garden had installed irrigation equipment. The tea bushes in the garden had never been watered artificially; they relied on heaven and earth—on rainfall and moisture in the soil. The new equipment was needed for the newly cleared 50 mu on the back mountain, dedicated entirely to “Xinyang No. 10.” Before the 1970s, the Xinyang population cultivar was Xinyang’s main tea variety. From the mid-1970s, seed-propagated tea cultivars began to be introduced from Fujian and other provinces, and from the 1990s onwards, clonal tea cultivars from the south were adopted in earnest. At the same time, modern standardised garden-management practices were widely promoted, emphasising land-use efficiency and tea yields, supported by the construction of an external input system for soil-fertility maintenance, weed management, and pest and disease control. “Xinyang No. 10,” meanwhile, is a clonal tea cultivar bred between 1976 and 1994 by the Xinyang Tea Research Station from the Xinyang population cultivar—a variety described as a “high-quality, high-yielding, cold-hardy green tea with strong stress tolerance, suited to the Jiangbei tea regions” [3]—and it has long been the commercial variety that the Xinyang local government has prioritised for promotion and subsidy.
“Xinyang No. 10” is a clonal tea cultivar—early-sprouting, of fine quality, cold-hardy, and suitable for green tea manufacture—bred between 1976 and 1994 by the Xinyang Tea Research Station from the Xinyang population cultivar. For many years it has been the variety that the Xinyang local government has prioritised for promotion and subsidy.
Deyi Tea Garden too answered the government’s call: in 2022 it opened a new section to trial Xinyang No. 10, using natural farming methods to explore its adaptability.
Unlike the Old Dry-Land Tea in the garden, which is raised by seed and direct sowing through sexual propagation, “Xinyang No. 10” is a clonal variety propagated mainly through cuttings. Its advantageous traits can be passed down from generation to generation—or, one might say, “copied” across generations—while its buds and leaves grow in neat, uniform profusion with stable inner quality. Whether in garden management or in picking and processing, it lends itself to standardised and mechanised operations.
In contrast to the “taproot” that develops through the Old Dry-Land Tea’s sexual propagation, the cuttings of “Xinyang No. 10” produced by vegetative propagation lack a distinct taproot; instead they have lateral roots (also called fibrous roots or adventitious roots) that spread well horizontally but with limited vertical growth. Where a long-term dependence on external water and fertiliser inputs prevails, the roots have even less impetus to plunge deep, remaining shallowly suspended in the upper soil layer.
Because “Xinyang No. 10” has low resistance during its seedling stage and a high water requirement, the garden’s infrastructure was limited, and the 2022 drought compounded matters, so planting was repeatedly delayed. For the Old Dry-Land Tea in the garden, which thrives on the soil’s own resources, “Xinyang No. 10” was rather like a pampered city child visiting grandmother’s rural home. The garden was forced to “upgrade” in order to meet its growth needs.
Once the pump was installed, Zhang Chao trailed a long length of hose to test the flow and pressure, walked into a nearby tea plot, and gave the Dry-Land Tea—which had endured days of scorching heat—a cooling drink as well. This was the first time in ten years that Deyi Tea Garden had been watered by hand.
IV. Old Dry-Land Tea Endures Drought and Cold
The local farmers relied mainly on surface water for drinking. The forests and hillsides ought to have conserved water sources, but with the intensive development of tea gardens and agricultural pollution, that function had already been lost. Now the surface water sources were inadequate; after two consecutive months without rain, the wells ran dry. “We live beside Nanwan Lake, yet here we are with no water to drink.”
Faced with drought, tea companies of any real scale could build water towers and lay irrigation pipework, while small-scale farmers bore the financial strain of buying pumping equipment to water their tea gardens. But on one hand water was scarce, and on the other, the perennial problem of soil compaction went unresolved, so the soil’s absorption capacity remained limited. In severe cases, walking through a tea garden felt like walking on a concrete road. One worries about withering in dry spells and about erosion after heavy rain—people always say tea bushes prefer only a fine, gentle mist, but really they have been coddled into delicacy by human hands.
The previous more severe drought was in 2019, when even the daily drinking water of farmers down the mountain became a problem.
The local farmers relied mainly on surface water for drinking. The forests and hillsides ought to have conserved water sources, but with the intensive development of tea gardens and agricultural pollution, that function had already been lost. Now the surface water sources were inadequate; after two consecutive months without rain, the wells ran dry. “We live beside Nanwan Lake, yet here we are with no water to drink.”
Because of the drought, many conventional tea farmers bore the financial strain of buying pumping equipment to water their tea gardens. But the perennial problem of soil compaction went unresolved, the soil’s absorption capacity remained limited, and walking through a tea garden felt like walking on a concrete road.
As the effects of climate change grow ever more evident, the bushes wither without rain, while torrential downpours scour the topsoil. People always say tea bushes prefer only a fine, gentle mist—but really they have been coddled into delicacy by human hands.
Zhang Chao, however, felt that the droughts of recent years had been a test for Deyi Tea Garden and an opportunity for observation. The internal structures of the hillside—structures invisible to the naked eye—had been revealed through the way the tea bushes grew under drought conditions.
Some of the Dry-Land Tea in the garden was showing a slight decline, likely because the soil layer was thin with bedrock beneath, preventing the roots from penetrating deeper. Beside it, a clump stood vigorous and upright, indicating sufficient topsoil depth and underlying weathered rock. Recent road repairs and the cross-sections cut by the excavator confirmed his hypothesis. He even spotted a tea bush taproot stretching 1.5 to 1.6 metres long, which thrilled him.
The Old Dry-Land Tea, native to these very mountains, would say it has undergone generations of cultivation and adaptation. “Cold-hardiness” is its survival task, already written into its genes. Southern teas that have made their way north will, more or less, encounter frost damage every year.
●At the edge of the garden there is a corner once under conventional cultivation, which Zhang Chao has kept. By comparison, the difference in planting density between ecological and conventional methods is immediately apparent. For bushes under ecological management, each individual tea bush is able to draw on a greater share of resources.
The climate is warming overall, yet wild swings in temperature, ever more concentrated rainfall and frequent extreme weather events bring unavoidable risks of crop loss and a cascade of secondary disasters.
The slight advantage of an earlier picking season is hardly worth counting against climate change’s relentless combination of blows.
Rolling tea gardens are not necessarily beautiful—they may be nothing more than green dunes. Deprived of healthy soil structure and internal biodiversity, and heavily reliant on external fossil-fuel inputs, they are like a patient whose breathing is sustained only by drugs and medical equipment, the body’s own immune and regenerative capacities no longer able to function.
Zhang Chao, however, harboured no such anxiety. For one thing, mindful of the garden’s ecological carrying capacity and seeking to reduce household waste within the site, he had long hired only local pickers. For another, the hillside microclimate cultivated over years of natural farming meant the garden had not been greatly affected by the drought—the germination rate was encouraging, and the first pick was imminent.
V. Spring Tea Picking, Wild Greens at Their Freshest
The tea bushes were in fine condition, but my attention was drawn more to the other plants. Zhang Chao rattled off one after another like treasures from a collection: here is honeysuckle, there is wild grape; the Chinese wild cherry has already faded, almond and peach blossoms will soon be in full glory; one more shower, and the fern fiddleheads (bracken shoots) among the tea rows will all come shooting up.
Nameless trees and shrubs beyond counting. Some wild fruit trees in the hills have been grafted anew, and each year the fruit is more than they can eat. Add a few plots of kitchen garden, and vegetables and fruit are entirely self-sufficient. There is also a grove of Eucommia ulmoides, dense and leaning at odd angles—a living memory of the “work-points” earned during the old People’s Commune era.
In the lower part of the garden there are still a few mu of paddy. Rice was indeed grown there for a few years, but when the elderly farmer who had tended the paddies retired, no one took over, and so the water was simply banked, the paddies lying idle. Idle, yet far from unproductive: whether paddy or pond, as local wetlands they contribute to the microclimate. Shade-loving azaleas had even sent up a cluster of blooms in the tea plot on the adjacent sun-facing slope.
The reason we had brought a hoe up the mountain was to dig for bamboo shoots. The bamboo groves in the hills are kept as they were—”Anything we can leave untouched, we leave untouched.” But some shoots inevitably creep into the tea plots, and if left unchecked, they would hamper the tea bushes’ growth. So, “We control them by eating them!”
One stroll around the mountain settled the day’s ingredients. Bamboo shoots, Houttuynia cordata, fern fiddleheads, Houttuynia root and toon sprouts for lunch—all were gifts of the mountain and forest.
On 29 March the garden officially opened its first pick, just one day later than the year before. At 5 a.m. the sky was barely light, and pickers had already been setting off up the mountain one after another on electric scooters. The two-month spring tea season had formally begun.
Zhang Chao too entered the busiest stretch of his year: patrolling the mountain in the morning, receiving and checking fresh leaves at midday, and in the afternoon beginning the pan-firing and overseeing production. This cycle ran on for two months, and sometimes he slept no more than four hours a day, yet he felt it was the period when his spirits were highest all year.
Once the tea season ended, a succession of hosting duties, research visits and exchange programmes followed one after another. Another two months passed, and by then he would feel truly exhausted. “In fact, dealing with nature is the easiest thing of all.”
Zhang Chao says that through these years of practising natural farming, he has come to understand not only nature but also society. An “ecological chain” is by nature a series of interlocking links evolving in concert—a change in one link will disturb, or even transform, the whole system.
We settled back at the tea table and, through the four seasons in our cups, tasted the ten years on this tea mountain. We went on to discuss how one “tiny bud” might shake the “great tea industry”. But that is a tale for the next piece.
[2] Xinyang History and Culture Series: Tea Volume
[3] Journal of Tea 1994, 20(3): 8–11. Huang Daopei, Lü Lizhe, Wei Hui (Tea Experiment Station, Xinyang Prefecture, Henan Province, 464100). “Research Report on the Breeding of a New Tea Cultivar: Xinyang No. 10”
[4] Lu Yiyan. “Analysis of Changes in Climatic Resources in Xinyang and Their Impact on Xinyang Maojian tea Yields.” Xinyang Key Laboratory of Tea Meteorology, Xinyang Meteorological Bureau, Xinyang, Henan 464000, China Tea, January 2024, Vol. 46, No. 1
[5] Wang Qingzhi, Zhai Shumei, Kong Qian. “Characteristics of Disastrous Climates for Tea Production in Shihe District, Xinyang, and Countermeasures.” China Agricultural Technology Extension, 2020, Vol. 36, No. 1
Acknowledgements
Deyi Tea Garden, Zhang Chao
Working Group, Inaugural TBB Community Architecture and Culture Season
Zhao Min, Wang Hao, Yan Fangfang, Li Guanqi
Aerial photography
Xiaoshu, Zhang Xin
Unless otherwise noted, all other images were taken by the author
Editor: Ze’en