Tea Time in a Hmong Village

By Deng Yuedong

Translation by Wang Xiaoke

Tea Time in a Hmong Village

By Deng Yuedong

Translation by Wang Xiaoke

I had my first experience of “enjoying tea in a Hmong village” when I visited one such village in Suining County, Hunan Province. I had to work there for some days doing road work.In my downtime on a rainy day, a man invited me to have a cup of tea with him. If not for the rain, he would be working on the hillside. Beside that was his wooden barn, an empty building with a tiled roof and timber floor. We took it as both a teahouse and as a shelter. It was like meditating in a quiet log cabin, sitting inside and watching the rain drip from the eaves.

The man’s teapot was a thick bamboo tube with three joints. The tea in my bowl, instead of a cup, was warm, bitter, and without aroma. The bitterness soon turned a little sweet on the palate,and it had a soft and soothing finish in my throat.It was different from any kind of tea that I knew.“Well,” the man said. “They are leaves from a tree in these mountains that we call ‘Green Coin Willows.’” Later I found out it was Cyclocarya paliurus. “The flavor of these leaves is so subtle that you have to sit down and take your time to drink it slowly. If you drink it while walking, the flavor will just run away, and you will feel nothing.”

He was quite a tea taster, I thought, since he could notice such tiny differences in flavors.

Another time, in another Hmong village, my companions and I met a lady who was making youcha (oil tea), and we were invited to enjoy the tea together. The making of youcha was more complicated than I had thought. Fried rice crust and some corn kernels were boiled in brewed tea together with scallions and ginger. When youcha was finally made and served in bowls, it smelled really good. However, without chopsticks or spoons, we could not eat up what was left in the bowls. Our hostess easily did so, though.

The good lady told us to take our time. “See?”she said. “You really should sit down and have it slowly. Gently shake the bowl for a while, and then have a sip.” I tried to do as she said, and found that less stuff was left in the bottom of my bowl.Apparently I was not slow enough yet. Then we learned that instead of being a kind of tea as we might normally think of it, youcha was more like emergency food. For the people who had to work in remote mountain areas, it was more convenient to bring youcha. It could help you recover from both hunger and fatigue.

有一次，我到湘西南绥宁县一座苗寨里，帮山民硬化一条公路。有天下雨不能动工，一个汉子喊我喝杯茶。他在山腰上干活，旁边是他家一座木制的粮仓，上面盖着瓦，下面铺了木板，仓里是空的。人坐到里面，看着瓦檐上雨水流下来，就跟静坐木屋一样。

他从一根三节长、碗口粗的竹筒里倒出一碗温茶，递给我喝，味道先苦后甜。我问他这是什么茶，没有香气，但很润喉，喝了轻松。他说是山里的一种树叶，叫青钱柳，要坐下来，慢慢地喝，要是边走边喝就没得味道，细柔气味飘开了。

我觉得他喝茶有阅历，能够分别出坐下喝与走着喝的不同味道。

也是在绥宁的一座苗寨里，碰到一家女主人在打油茶，请我们喝了一次。看着简单，实际丰富。把油炸锅巴和玉米跟茶叶水、葱姜一起煮，盛到小碗里一起喝，不能用筷子，味道很香。可我们怎么都喝不干净，碗底全是饭粒玉米，他们却喝得精光。

女主人说，不要心急，坐下来慢慢喝，晃几下，喝一口。我就照她的说法，坐下来边晃边喝，一碗喝下，碗底干净很多，看来还要慢一些。油茶本不是茶，是一种应急食物，山民每天在深山干活，做饭不方便，就带着油茶，饿了就倒出来喝，坐着歇息一会儿，既充饥又解乏。

大家说，茶是要慢下来喝，节奏快了感觉不到味道。他们还要我说说山野间的茶事，我就说起小时候跟大人上山采茶的情景。

那时候，村里有一片茶山，后来分地到户，开春后就去采摘，四五角钱一斤，每次可以采摘十余斤，一年可采摘七八次，能添置好多日用品。那时生活紧张，好茶叶都卖给茶厂，留下的全是茶厂不愿收购的粗老叶子。老人们做活细心，把茶叶晒干，过了筛子，不需翻炒，翻炒的茶香味浓但不耐放，各家各户早起烧一锅水，倒进大瓦罐里，抓一把茶叶丢进去，从早喝到晚。大人们下地都带着一罐茶，活计再忙，也要聚到农田间的土屋里歇会儿。农闲时常常坐到屋檐下，三三两两喝着茶，谈着阳春、说着桑麻，一脸的欢快，还以为是茶叶好，其实是慢下来的日子心情好。

人应随遇而安，就地饮茶。我喝茶多年，开始没感受到山野屋檐下喝茶的散淡悠闲，后来悟出“茶”字寓意其实很简单，老祖先是叫我们坐到草屋下的木凳上呢。♦

（摘自《文汇报》）

The Hmong people all said that you should take time when having tea, for that you won’t feel the flavor of tea if you drank it in haste. They also asked to hear my own story about tea. So I told them how my parents brought me to a hill to pick tea leaves.

My village used to have a public-owned hill on which tea trees were planted. Later the right of land use was distributed to each family, and people started to pick leaves from their trees. Each family could pick more than five kilograms at one time,and the tea they picked could be sold at about one yuan per kilogram. In years of poverty, seven to eight cycles of picking tea leaves could equal a lot of our daily necessities in the market. While all good leaves were sold to tea factories, the rejected old leaves were not just thrown away. Elders would dry those leaves in the sun and then sift them.They would not stir-dry them in a wok as people usually did because the scent of tea made in such way would not last as long, though the smell might be stronger. People from each family would boil a pot of water early in the morning, pour the water into a big jar, and put a handful of tea leaves into it. That would be our drink for the day. Each adult would bring such a jar to the field. Even during the busy farming season, people would have tea parties in one of the mud cabins in the fields, and during the down season, the parties would be even larger.They would drink tea together under any roof,talking of cultivation or the weather that spring,with big smiles of joy lighting up their faces. The grade of tea was not important. Only leisure time mattered.

(From Wenhui Daily)

苗寨茶事

文/邓跃东 译/王小可