Was it four months ago we helped them pick the last of their spring tea? At that time we also planted Italian perennial spices, carrots for Nainai’s ailing eyes, and we tried various experimental methods for arresting erosion where a road has just been cut through one of their tea fields. We’ll arrive exhausted but with an added plan this time for making dark tea with their fall tea leaves!
Monday, October 1, 2012
Fujian October Festival
All day we head east across Jiangxi, past its white buildings with their red roofs. As night falls a full autumn moon catapults into the sky above the highway before us. Fireworks strobe our journey throughout the night. The moon will not be larger than this at any other time of the year, the first day of the autumn festival, the night that the moon is closest to the earth. We are going to visit Nainai and Yeye, the old couple that makes some of the sweetest, brightest, white tea in China. Their bubbling voices give us the kind of emotion usually reserved for close family, but as Nainai says, we are family now because of the number of holidays we have spent together.
Was it four months ago we helped them pick the last of their spring tea? At that time we also planted Italian perennial spices, carrots for Nainai’s ailing eyes, and we tried various experimental methods for arresting erosion where a road has just been cut through one of their tea fields. We’ll arrive exhausted but with an added plan this time for making dark tea with their fall tea leaves!
Was it four months ago we helped them pick the last of their spring tea? At that time we also planted Italian perennial spices, carrots for Nainai’s ailing eyes, and we tried various experimental methods for arresting erosion where a road has just been cut through one of their tea fields. We’ll arrive exhausted but with an added plan this time for making dark tea with their fall tea leaves!
