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，我到湘西南綏寧縣一座苗寨里，幫山民硬化一條公路。有天下雨不能動工，一個漢子喊我喝杯茶。他在山腰上干活，旁邊是他家一座木制的糧倉，上面蓋著瓦，下面鋪了木板，倉里是空的。人坐到里面，看著瓦檐上雨水流下來，就跟靜坐木屋一樣。

他從一根三節長、碗口粗的竹筒里倒出一碗溫茶，遞給我喝，味道先苦后甜。我問他這是什么茶，沒有香氣，但很潤喉，喝了輕松。他說是山里的一種樹葉，叫青錢柳，要坐下來，慢慢地喝，要是邊走邊喝就沒得味道，細柔氣味飄開了。

我覺得他喝茶有閱歷，能夠分別出坐下喝與走著喝的不同味道。

也是在綏寧的一座苗寨里，碰到一家女主人在打油茶，請我們喝了一次。看著簡單，實際豐富。把油炸鍋巴和玉米跟茶葉水、蔥姜一起煮，盛到小碗里一起喝，不能用筷子，味道很香。可我們怎么都喝不干凈，碗底全是飯粒玉米，他們卻喝得精光。

女主人說，不要心急，坐下來慢慢喝，晃幾下，喝一口。我就照她的說法，坐下來邊晃邊喝，一碗喝下，碗底干凈很多，看來還要慢一些。油茶本不是茶，是一種應急食物，山民每天在深山干活，做飯不方便，就帶著油茶，餓了就倒出來喝，坐著歇息一會兒，既充饑又解乏。

大家說，茶是要慢下來喝，節奏快了感覺不到味道。他們還要我說說山野間的茶事，我就說起小時候跟大人上山采茶的情景。

那時候，村里有一片茶山，后來分地到戶，開春后就去采摘，四五角錢一斤，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。那時生活緊張，好茶葉都賣給茶廠，留下的全是茶廠不愿收購的粗老葉子。老人們做活細心，把茶葉曬干，過了篩子，不需翻炒，翻炒的茶香味濃但不耐放，各家各戶早起燒一鍋水，倒進大瓦罐里，抓一把茶葉丟進去，從早喝到晚。大人們下地都帶著一罐茶，活計再忙，也要聚到農田間的土屋里歇會兒。農閑時常常坐到屋檐下，三三兩兩喝著茶，談著陽春、說著桑麻，一臉的歡快，還以為是茶葉好，其實是慢下來的日子心情好。

人應隨遇而安，就地飲茶。我喝茶多年，開始沒感受到山野屋檐下喝茶的散淡悠閑，后來悟出“茶”字寓意其實很簡單，老祖先是叫我們坐到草屋下的木凳上呢。?

（摘自《文匯報》）

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/鄧躍東 譯/王小可