The Call from the Mountains: Three years of field visit in Jingmai Tea Mountain

The Call From the Mountains Three years of field visits in Jingmai Mountain, Yunnan, China

By Jingtong (Janis) Zhu Knowing Jingmai Mountain in 2017 by chance, I went there and filmed a documentary with my friends. I was amazed by the culture of the Bulang ethnic group in Jingmai and decided to return in the summer of 2018.

I thought my trip to Jingmai last year was only family vacation, unexpectedly, it turned out to be part of my field research about Jimgmai Mountain and the Bulang ethnic group.

Greographical Location

Economic Background Not everyone in China has heard about Jingmai, but everyone knows Pu’er tea. Jingmai is well known for its ancient Pu’er tea planting and manufacturing. People started growing and making tea for over 1300 years, growing, making, and selling tea are still the biggest source of income for local residents. There are 4,700 acres of tea plantation, and the annual production of tea is over 200 tons.

Jingmai Mountain is located in Lancang County, Pu’er, Yunnan, China, on the border of China and Myanmar. The distance between Jingmai Mountain and Xishuangbanna, a famous tourist destination, is 140 kilometers. It takes three and a half hours to drive from Jingmai Mountain to the airport in Xishuangbanna. Jingmai is difficult to get to, you need to fly to Xishuangbanna airport through connecting flights, and then you need to drive an exhausting fourhour-ride. It took me almost a day to get there from Beijing.

Jingmai ancient tea growing area situates in 3 administrative villages: Jingmai, Mangjing, and Mangyun. There are 15 traditional villages, 1454 families, and the population is 6025. The main ethnic groups are Bulang and Dai.

The gate of Jingmai Mountain

The Bulang ethnic group, one of the 55 minority groups in China, sustain their lives on the tea industry generations over generations. They say in the Bulang folklore that the first tea tree planted by their ancestor Pa’aileng embodies the beginning of prosperity in this isolated mountain.

Pa’aileng, the ancestor and tea god of Bulang, wrote the following as his teachings: if I leave you with mountains of gold and silver, you will run out one day; if I leave you with cattle and horses, they will also die because of natural disasters; so, I will leave you with a mountain of inexhaustible tea trees.

The special trait of the tea in Jingmai is that the trees are hundreds of years old, and some are even over a thousand years old. The ancient tea can be processed into raw tea, black tea, white tea, etc. I am not a tea person, but I can definitely tell the difference between the Jingmai tea and the commercial tea bags. No matter what kind of tea it is, the Jingmai tea has a stronger fragrance. In addition, Jingmai tea contains the after taste which turns bitterness into sweetness after drinking. I’ve never seen tea with such strong after tastes, the sweetness of tea lasts from morning to noon.

People in Jingmai Mountain The people in Jingmai is where I learned the most from.

In this isolated environment with well-preserved ethnic minority cultures, the people are unsophisticated. I was born and raised in one of the largest cities in the world, so I’ve seen so many people that are spoiled because of the urban livings. The characteristics of each person and humanity become more obvious in a small and distanced rural area. I saw what a lot of city people lost in the Bulang villages in Jingmai.

Outsiders went to Jingmai for different reasons. Some went there to make a living, some went there to expand their business, and some went to travel. It was also very inspiring to talk to different people from all over the world and find out why does Jingmai appeal to them.

Guowen Su: the prince of Bulang Mr. Guowen Su is the loved and respected head of Bulang in Jingmai. People call him the Prince.

In Jingmai, a lot of people never went to school. Some people did go to schools, but their highest level of education is elementary school. In Mangjing, the biggest village in Jingmai, there’s only grade one to grade four in

primay schools. If anyone wants to go to grade five, they need to travel a very long distance to other villages outside Jingmai. Mr. Su was one of those who chose better education. There were a small group of students who traveled every single day with Mr. Su, however, because of the long distance and treacherous roads, most of them dropped out. In the middle school entry test, only Mr. Su was admitted.

After graduating from middle school, Mr. Su was not able to continue to go to high school due to his family background as the son of the Bulang chief. China was experiencing the cultural revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wanted everyone in China to be controlled by its central force. The CCP pressured a lot of local organizations, especially the chief of ethnic minority groups. CCP saw them as threats to the central government as people in those groups might listen to their chiefs rather than the CCP. In this case, the CCP prevented the chiefs’ families from going to schools. Mr. Su became the first teacher in a village of Lahu ethnic minority and built the first primary school. In China, most minority ethnic groups in the south have their own spoken and written language. In those really rural and isolated places, almost nobody spoke standard Mandarin. Mr. Su spoke the Bulang language and standard Mandarin, but all the kids in the Lahu village spoke Lahu, and not even standard Mandarin. Under this circumstance, Mr. Su came up with a solution—he used small sticks to teach math and taught other subjects as he learned how to speak Lahu.

Mr. Su researched the education status in Lancang County thoroughly and discovered the reason why the locals were illiterate. Then, he spent 32 years on eliminating illiteracy.

At first, the local government didn’t support him as they thought to educate people who had traditions of being farmers was impossible. Mr. Su insisted on his plan, and his determination and sincerity made the local government support his literacy action. By 2004, 90,000 youngsters got rid of illiteracy under his help.

Liya Su, Mr. Suowen Su’s father, was the last hereditary chief of the Bulang in Jingmai. Before he passed away, he left three wishes to Mr. Guowen Su: build a school, continue to write A Brief History of Bulang in Mangjing Village, reestablish the Temple of Pa’aileng.

In 2004, finishing the literacy action, Mr. Su returned to Jingmai Mountain to work on his father’s three wishes.

Now, Mangjing village has a decent primary school. At the same time, a lot of parents began to pay attention to their children’s education. Mr. Su rebuilt the Temple of Pa'aileng

Teachings from Pai'aileng in traditional Dai characters, written

by Mr. Guowen Su. Bulang doesn't have its own written language, so they are using the old Dai characters for their language.

(Bottom left) Mr. Su holding the "Close the Door" celebration of Bulang. "Close the Door" is a festival in mid-July, meaning that by closing the door, everyone should start to work hard on farming, working, and trading tea. The festival represents the start of the busiest three months of a year. There are lots of restrictions on activities that can be done, for example, young couples cannot marry during this time. People's regular activities may be recovered after "Open the Door" festival in mid-October.

(Bottom right) Mr. Su talking to our film crew in his guest room. Picture taken in July 2017.

and the tea statue, where all the important local festivals and celebrations take place.

Now, Mr. Su holds regular lessons during summer vacations to teach children the Bulang culture and history.

He also teaches how to read the Bulang scriptures in Bulang writings. Many kids loved attending his lectures.

“We need to learn standard Mandarin, but we cannot lose our own culture, language, and writing.” Mr. Su said.

Mr. Su’s family doesn’t make tea, they only process tea.

Mid-April is the Festival of Cha-Zu (ancestor of tea), the biggest festival for the Bulang. At this time of the year, every family just have had their first batch of earlyspring tea ready, so Mr. Su collects the best tea from each family and process them into tea bricks for the festival.

Therefore, the tea bricks made for the Festival of Cha-Zu are “the Tea of Bulang”.

Yumu Su: The young and free tea-maker Yumu is the first Bulang I met.

Yumu is around her twenties. She is different from her peers since her childhood. Her mind is not confined by her relatively restrictive environment. Yumu preserves and appreciates the Bulang traditions passed on by her ancestors, and at the same time, she walked out of the mountains and embraced her freedom.

Finishing middle school, Yumu helped her family to pick and make tea just like everyone else did. Having the duty to inherit the art of tea-making, tea gradually became a part of Yumu’s life. All the children remained in the mountains to live the exact same life as all of their ancestors did, but Yumu was different.

Apart from her clothes, what makes her really different is she married Brian, an American Anthropologist. The marriage was controversial in Mangjing, even Yumu’s family didn’t accept their relationship. The villagers believed that Yumu never loved Brian, she only wanted his money.

Brian loved studying tea culture, so he went to Jingmai Mountain. He is a very nice man and had similar interests with Yumu. Growing up in the open-minded and multicultural American society, Brian gave Yumu the freedom that no one else has ever offered her.

Yumu is a tea maker, and at the same time, she is a photographer. At first, she was amazed when she saw tourists using keypad phone to take selfies. She got her first phone in middle school, and she took a lot of pictures of flowers and trees. Yumu had an innate affection for plants and animals. The only way to preserve their beauty was to take pictures. Yumu got her first digital camera from her parents and received her first DSLR camera from Brian after their marriage.

In such rural places like Jingmai Mountain, people’s thoughts were still very conservative. Nobody knew what Yumu was doing and concluded that she was showing off that her family was rich enough to buy a digital camera.

Although her parents bought her a camera, they did not support her. They thought Yumu wasted her time on her unnecessary interests, instead, she should have helped her family to make tea. Her family complimented her talent in photography only when guests were around.

“I would give up neither tea-making or photography,” said Yumu, “Making tea is part of my identity, and so does photography. At the same time, photography is my style.”

I spent my summer with her in 2017, she was the main character of my documentary. It was not difficult to tell her difference: black cardigan, punk-styled earrings, black backpack, leather booties. Everyone else in her village worn traditional Bulang clothing and plain canvas shoes.

Yumu lives her life without being affected by others. Now, Yumu and Brian lives in Xishuangbanna and manages their own tea “Theasophie”, a brand that combines Chinese and Western elements.

"The Tea of Bulang" brick

Mr. Su's father attended the National Day Celebration in Beijing, he brought the Jingmai tea to Chairman Mao as a gift from Bulang people.

Yumu, my filming teammate Grace, instructor Muffin, and me. We just finished an interview in Yumu's teahouse.

July, 2017.

Yumu showing her photography work to her grandmother. The first picture she took using her first DSLR camera was the portrait of her grandmother.

Waijiang’s Family: an ordinary Bulang family

ourselves.

Waijiang, her husband, her daughter, and her mother formed a sweet and ordinary family in Mangjing Upper Village. Their family grew tea but didn’t make tea. I visited their family because they sold honey.

Her family lives in a traditional Bulang chalet. Her husband did woodworking on the open first floor, and her family lives on the second. I’ve been to several chalets in the village. Although the cabins were not big or modern, the rooms were filled up with daily necessities. Those families had tea tables, small rooms, and decorations—their chalet looked warm and sweet. However, by the moment I entered Waijiang’s chalet, I understood what does “having nothing but four walls” mean. The space was so empty that there was literally nothing except a tea table and their

We only have contacted the hostess of this family, whenever we asked what is their address, the hostess always said hospitably: “Where are you, my husband will go and pick you up.” After rejecting her hospitality for a hundred times, she finally agreed to let us come by

their bedroom. The family of four was part of the “help the poor” program of Yunnan province, with an annual income of $17,000. I didn’t see any signs of anxiety and embarrassment on their face.

“The government helped us to build this house,” Waijiang said, “it’s messy now, but we will buy more furniture next year.”

In her free time, Waijiang loved lear ning Bulang needlework and she focused on knitting the Bulang mini totes—a white bag with pink and green decorations. She showed me the knitting process. She needed to count the thin threads one by one in order to find the right position for adding the colored threads. If she counted wrong, the figure would be wrong, so she needed to start everything over again. According to Waijiang, she could finish knitting a bag in three days, and it took two days for the experienced women to make one. The mini totes were really pretty and delicate, but they took so much time and effort from the Bulang women! Waijiang regretted that she only went to elementary school as he realized the importance of being proficient in reading and writing.

Now, she spent her free time practicing writing standard Chinese characters and encouraged her daughter to practice writing. Her 7-year-old daughter just finished her

Waijiang's chalet, with nothing inside but a tea table to welcome guests and their bedroom. The chalet was supported by the governments. As a member of "help the poor" program in Yunnan, the family's economy is also helped by a middle-class family. first year of school. During the young girl’s summer vacation, she got into trouble while playing with friends in the mountains, Waijiang punished her by forcing her to write characters at home.

Waijiang’s mother-in-law lived together with them. She neither spoke nor understand standard Mandarin. But while I was chatting with Waijiang and her husband, she silently brought a small chair and sit in the corner, looking at us with a big smile.

Waijiang’s husband was a few years younger than her, and he never went to schools. He liked smoking hookah, hunting, and fishing. He insisted on inviting my father to go fishing and hunting with him, although he didn’t even know who my father was. Waijiang’s family was matrilineal, with Waijiang being the main income source and her husband being the “logistics” of the family.

I saw the honesty, hospitality, and simplicity of Bulang people in Waijiang’s family. Living in the mountains without being disturbed by the outside world, the Bulang preser ved the nature of human beings. They were unsophisticated. They would not talk about business and buying products, they treat their guests as friends and invited them to have tea together.

Wen Shan: a Japanese businessman We visited a very furnished hotel “A Bai La” (which means ancient tea in Bulang language) and met Wen Shan, a Japanese Chinese who loved Jingmai Mountains.

When he first moved to Japan, Wen Shan worked in Toyota for seven years. As years and years passed by, Wen Shan realized the dilemma of Chinese people in Japan.

The humble, strict, and hard-working Japanese society made Chinese people hard to stand out. Leaving Toyota, Wen Shan opened a massage parlor. His hard work and good service helped him to gain a high reputation. Then, he became a businessman with a lot of chain stores.

“It was difficult.” He said, “At the hardest moment, I even kneeled down in front of my employee to apologize because I really couldn’t give out the salary.”

Wen Shan married a woman from Yunnan, and thus he got to know the southwestern region of Yunnan where tea was produced massively. He visited Jingmai Mountain for his business purposes, and he immediately fell in love with this place. He loved not only the commercial value but also the ethnic minorities culture. Jingmai Mountain was a place where things left behind by the sidewalk wouldn’t be taken and unbolt doors at night wouldn’t be broken into.

The charisma of Jingmai impelled Wen Shan to open a hotel and a company in Jingmai. The company was classified as a “Cultural Communication Co., Ltd”, as his investments in Jingmai were for the purpose of spreading the culture, instead of simply earning economic profits.

As a stockholder, Wen Shan devoted a lot of efforts into running the hotel business. He was not a demanding boss who pushes the employees every day. Instead, he was the one who would clean the bathrooms with his employees.

He loved the place, he knew exactly how things were positioned in each room, and in fact, he was more familiar with the circuit and water pipes than anyone else. If any emergencies happened, he would know how to solve the problems without waiting for other people to come. Wen Shan was a good leader. He knew that if he could not keep

Waijiang showed us traditional Buland sewing skills and her husband was smoking Hookah his employees, he would never run a hotel successfully. At the same time, if the employees were not passionate and delightful about their work, the resort would lose its soul, and as a result, guests would not like the place.

I see Wen Shan as a successful person. We sat in the A Bai La tea house for almost three hours although we were not hotel guests, Wen Shan did not mention a single word about business. He did not use money as a tool to communicate with people.

In his eyes, nothing is impossible.

Yupa Su: prestigious and innovative tea-maker In summer 2017, I stayed at the biggest and well-built hotel in Jingmai, Mrs. Yupa Su is the owner of that place.

Yupa was a kind granny who is always smiling. She looked like a normal village woman that I didn’t think she would be the boss of a very nice hotel.

“Before we had factories and machines,” Yupa said, “we picked tea by hand, used small pots to roast them, kneaded it by hand, dried it under the sun, and finally brought it to sell, in Menglian or Myanmar.”

In the past, the prices of tea weren’t high. Before sunrise, Yupa roasted her tea with fires. And smoke would collect on her tea, making it hard to sell.

In 1996, Yupa opened the first tea factory of Jingmai.

Her husband had 2,000 RMB and she had 400 RMB. She borrowed money from friends and families, some gave her 100 RMB, and some gave her 200. In the end, she got 40,000 RMB and bought machines. At that time, there were no road, no cars, and no electricity. She had to buy her own generator. She asked villagers to help carry the machines up to the mountains on their backs. She hoped that, if her factory was successful, there would be hope for everyone to run tea factories with her.

With machines now, making tea is better, more convenient, more efficient, and more hygienic. In the past, tea production at home was inconvenient and unhygienic.

Now, having smoke in tea-frying pans is no longer a problem, as the tea-making machines bear no smell.

After making money from tea, she opened a hotel. Yupa’s customers couldn’t sleep well when they came to Jingmai, and the hygienic conditions were not good. Henceforce, Yupa initiated the idea of opening a hotel, a clean, big, and comfortable place for guests to rest and eat.

Travelers from Beijing: a family who loves tea

I met a family of three from Beijing in a local restaurant.

The little boy was only three years old, his mother is a tea-lover who just finished studying in Canada, and his grandfather was a veteran who used to be a driver in the army. The family had been on a road trip in Yunnan province for two weeks. When I met them, they had just arrived at Jingmai from Bingdao, another place that is famous for tea.

The family heard of Jingmai Mountain because of the tea, and that was why they decided to visit the place. Since we were all from Beijing, we had a natural bond with each other. They only planned to stay in Jingmai for two days, and from our conversation, I could see that they really did not know anything about this place except the tea.

I asked why did they drive for seven hours to get to this completely unfamiliar place. “Indeed, we don’t know anything about Jingmai except the ancient tea garden,” said the boy’s mom, “We are just curious about this place.”

Although not many people have heard about the mountain itself, people from all over the world come to see Jingmai because of its tea.

View in A Bai La Hotel (upper left). Local singers performing in A Bai La (upeer right). Yupa Su frying and assorting tea (bottom left and right).

The Villages and Sites in Jingmai Mountain There are several villages on Jingmai Mountain: Jingmai, Nuogang, Manggeng, Mangjing, Manghong, Wengji, Wengwa, etc. As you enter the gate of Jingmai Mountain, the road changed from asphalt to stone roads. Driving on the stone road is very bumpy, but the regional government prohibited using asphalt, as it spreads chemicals that may pollute the ancient tea trees.

Wengji is an ethnic cultural village. This Bulang village has 89 households, 325 villagers. Wengji is the best preserved Bulang village in the world, where the villagers still live a very traditional lifestyle. The architecture in this village is unique due to the geographical location and its culture.

The roof of each house is quite sharp at the edge, as the Bulang believe that these protruding edges are good places for the tea god to rest. Wengji is located on the hillside.

Standing on the observation deck, Wengji is like a village upon the clouds.

Nuogang is a Dai village. Dai is another Chinese ethnic minority, which is closely related to Lao and Thai people.

In the Dai language, “Nuogang” means the place where deer drink water. The Theravada believers have the tradition of worshipping the Buddha once every seven days. When I went there, I happened to meet people going to the Burma temple to worship the Buddha. No matter who it was, everyone was so pious that each carried a tribute for the Buddha. Everyone had distinct wishes that they want the Buddha to hear.

“Tree of the Bee God” is a very tall old banyan, with more than 60 hives on its branches. In Bulang culture, bees are the angels of happiness and the incarnation of tea god Pa’aileng.

Da Ping Zhang Tea Garden is where the ancient tea trees were planted. In Chinese, “Da Ping Zhang” means a big palm. The tea garden got this name because the topography looks like a palm. The trees are all several hundred years old, and some are even over a thousand years old, although they don’t look different from the newplanted trees. I thought ancient tea trees would be so tall that almost reach the sky, but in fact, the 100-year-old trees looked so normal.

The natural scenery in Jingmai Mountain is breathtaking.

In summer, there are starry skies and a sea of clouds. If the weather is good and the sky is clear, we can see the milky way through naked eyes. In the morning and the evening, while the sun is rising and falling, the mountains

are surrounded by a sea of clouds. Jingmai is a wonderful place to take photos. Before I went there, I did not expect I may see such beautiful sceneries so I didn’t prepare any professional photography equipment. When I saw the stars and milky way in the sky, I knew I had to capture the sceneries. I learned how to take night shots as I was trying to take pictures of the starry night. I had neither tripods nor cable release, instead, I used a chair with a stack of books to be my tripod and the Bluetooth connection with my phone as the cable release.

Jingmai Mountain is also one of the origins of the Ancient Tea Horse Road, through which the Pu'er tea was spread to other places in China and countries like Nepal, Myanmar, India, Bhutan. There is still a section of the relic in Jingmai.

Impact of Applying to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Nowadays, Jingmai Mountain is recognized as one of the six most well-known tea mountains. The local government started the promotion of applying for the UNESCO world heritage site since Jingmai has a history of tea plantation, as well as the ethnic minority culture. In Jingmai, we can see the interaction between human, nature, spirit, and religion. Being a world heritage site would bring immense wealth to Jingmai. The increased fame of Jingmai tea has brought descent economic growth to this area. Currently, there are several stores in Beijing that sell Jingmai tea, and foreign tea-lovers exported Jingmai tea leaves as raw materials for their own productions. From 2012 to 2016, the average per capita income of Jingmai residents doubled. At the same time, more and more people began to choose Jingmai as their travel destination.

Apparently, becoming a UNESCO world heritage site would benefit the development of Jingmai Mountain.

However, we cannot undermine the importance of protecting traditional villages. Since 2012, the local government changed some houses into inns and built some “Traveling Toilets”. The problem is, what if the government spent too much money on building inns for guests and refuse to support local residents to build their houses? Also, the biggest challenge for developing tourism in any traditional villages is over-commercialization. If more travelers arrive, local residents would definitely open restaurants and stores to maximize their benefits. In this case, the local culture would be out of shape. Apart from ancient tea, the lifestyle in Jingmai is what makes the place unique. Jingmai needs to preserve their lifestyles, they cannot change.

Wengji Village

Nuogang Village

"Tree of the Bee God" (left).

Two tea trees in the Da Ping Zhang Tea Garden: the left one is 1200 years old, the right one is 1100 years old (right).

Natural Scenery in Jingmai