Arriving in steamy, hot Jinghong late in the afternoon, the temperature still hangs around a pleasant 30°C. But the next day, the mercury shoots up to nearly 40°C, making it no fun to be outside for more than an hour. I’m already plotting a quick escape to the mountains to get out of this sauna-like heat. Menghai offers a bit of relief with cooler air, but it’s still far from comfortable when wandering around the local tea shops during the day.
Still, we had to take a walk around to see what new teas from the surrounding mountains were hitting the market and to taste some 2019 spring mao cha before heading up to the hills. Every year, Menghai’s layout upgrades—new shops, new apartment blocks, new buildings. Some restaurants close, others open. But this year, as the hotel boss told us, not many regular tea biz folks showed up. Yep, the dry season has hit hard.
This year has been rough for tea—too little supply and way too expensive. Our friend who runs a tea shop in Jinghong shared that instead of his usual haul of 100 kg here and 200 kg there, he could barely get 10 to 20 kg of some teas. In some cases, he even pre-ordered just 5 kg of Gu Shu for a regular customer. So, instead of buying a ton of tea, he could barely scrape together 100 kg—and at nearly the same price, as he sarcastically pointed out!
The bright side about Menghai these days is that many shop owners are actually the farmers or tea producers themselves—not just middlemen like in Kunming or elsewhere. Usually, their children or family members run the shops, which gives us direct access to this year’s Hua Zhu Liang Zi. Its intense bitterness and aggressive hui gan thrill those who crave powerful teas that make your jaw scream “ba qi”—but unfortunately, the price doesn’t exactly bring a smile!
Of course, shop rents come with a cost, and farmers aren’t investing in direct sourcing just to please tea drinkers with lower prices under the notion of “skip the middleman—get it cheaper.” But honestly, the price tags don’t always match what’s in the cup. After sampling many fresh shengs at random, we’re slowly getting a feel for this year’s mao cha price thresholds—at least in Menghai. The bottom line has definitely risen, even though the quality stays the same or, in some cases, has declined.
Because of the small harvest, the overall grade of mao cha has dropped as well. Most teas aren’t being carefully selected to exclude the “huang pian” (yellow leaves), yet they’re sold as higher grade with claims like, “Oh yes, there’s some huang pian, but not much.” Longer stems and a lower ratio of tips to leaves remind us of our last trip to Mang Fei .
The next day, we headed for the mountains with Bu Lang Shan as our destination. We met a young tea farmer who took us to his village and let us sample his 2019 Bulang sheng pu-erh, made from old tea trees growing just behind his house. We were impressed by the thick, bitter liquor—classic Bulang style—balanced by a sweet olive hui gan after a few cups. But, well… the story with the price was all too familiar.
He honestly admitted that even he doesn’t think this year’s tea is worth the prices being asked—gesturing toward the blue roofs of the houses in the village as if to say, “See what these prices are supporting?” We also learned about the prices Gu Shu tea has been sold for to Cantonese tea businessmen who apparently come all the way over because it tastes close to Lao Man E, then re-sell it in Guangzhou at the same jaw-dropping price. Whether this story is true or just a clever trick to impress customers with the aura of a higher-quality tea doesn’t bother us much—after all, the asking price is way beyond what our clientele is willing to pay.
Walking around the village, it’s clear that business is still going strong. Quite a few new houses are being built from the ground up, while others are being repaired or expanded. At first glance, it seems like a small, quiet village, but after wandering around a bit, you realize the local economy is actually doing fairly well—especially compared to other places we’ve visited. A new, more convenient road has been built to improve access, which has definitely boosted traffic for tea buyers.
The local mayor appears very active in the tea business, organizing various projects to support local farmers, including Yan’s family—our host. Unfortunately, as is common in many villages like this, dealing with plastic garbage seems to be the last thing on their minds. These environmental issues concern many small villages, but even those with stronger economies rarely feel responsible for addressing the problem.
Investing in waste management and hauling garbage to distant recycling centers is a real challenge—and often simply unaffordable for many villages. Yet, Yan has managed to buy himself a brand-new SUV, so things can’t be all that bad around here. It’s hard to judge whether people are truly in need based on their houses or clothes—no matter their bank balance, those outward appearances tend to stay the same.
Yan drives us down to the lower slopes of the mountain to visit his home, where he lives with his young wife and mother-in-law. This village feels more “real”—less developed, authentic, and with very little to offer the highly hyped tea tourism crowd. Small arbor and bush tea plantations cling to the west slope, impossible to harvest on a scale big enough for major tea business ambitions.
Of course, we tried their tea as well. Yan’s wife worked hard all day alongside the other women in the village, as is common in their culture. She fried several woks of fresh tea leaves, cooked dinner for us, gave their daughter a shower, and then carefully performed the “rou nian”—kneading the roasted tea leaves—all while Yan relaxed with his phone, casually calling up some friends who showed up later.
As is typical in places like this, we enjoyed a nice dinner, plenty of drinks, and music played on local instruments—setting the perfect backdrop. Later, we learned that not many locals are actually eager to find day jobs in Menghai. In other villages, some tea farmers hold regular year-round jobs and only return home for the harvest season—that’s the smart way to keep family income above the critical line and enjoy a little bonus in spring and autumn.
But many Bulang people prefer to bet everything on the tea business, which requires just a few months of actual work—hence why tea prices here are driven more by availability than quality. It’s the same game we saw in Yiwu, where farmers set prices only after the full harvest is processed, basing them on the income they hope to achieve over the next six months until the next harvest. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!
It’s hard to judge without living there year-round and knowing the full picture, and I can imagine work opportunities in places like Menghai are pretty limited. Yet, seeing dry soil on slopes covered with Gu Shu trees growing just behind the house—with water available from a nearby stream—and hearing farmers “crying” about the dry weather and the resulting rise in mao cha prices, you can’t help but wonder why they don’t just grab a few buckets of water or pull out a hose.
If your source of living—those precious tea trees—is slowly dying, you’d think you’d do something about it. Especially when those trees are so valuable. Yet this isn’t the first place where we’ve gotten the impression that locals just take it all for granted, expecting everything to magically sort itself out… or at least that’s what they seem to believe.
Heading back to Jinghong with a few bags of “leftovers” from the spring harvest—no disappointment, as we expected this outcome—but with a valuable lesson learned. We don’t position ourselves as a big tea business swooping in with huge purchases, nor are we just tea tourists blindly following the overpriced retail trail that some tea farmers seem to be carving out for profit.