ready to go!

I haven't posted for a while, I was busy with school and other stuff. But now, I am about to take a new trip to China. In the next ten weeks, I will work hard towards fullfilling several objectives:

-exploring new tea mountains:
In the past, I have focused mostly on Xishuangbanna, but the Lincang teas that I have tried make me want to discover this area further. It seems a more remote place than Banna, and I am very excited at the idea of looking for tea treasures in Yongde, Mengku, Fengqing and other places. The Pu-erh quest is far from over, there are still dozens, if not hundreds of small ancient tea gardens to be explored. I hope in the future, I can provide more teas from lesser known areas.

-undertaking agricultural projects in the tea mountains, I want to learn and experiment in the fields. Growing organic tea implies to know a lot about the local ecosystem and how to cope with it while getting a decent yield. I would like to test the impact of mulching (spreading a layer of hay on the ground) on tea yield and on the tea garden ecosystem. I will try different settings and monitor several parameters to see which solution fits best. Another objective is to understand why spiders can live in some of the tea gardens and not in others. It would be interesting to study their life cycle and their impact on pest reduction.

-improving my understanding of China, which includes learning more advanced mandarin, meeting new people, paying attention... China is a fast moving country, some things are ephemeral, but deserve to be seen. Each country is unique, but all of what we see is a depiction of the human being's capabilities, in China, one can find so many different people, "different" in their lifestyle, hopes, social conditions, culture... but still, they are all humans, and I want to understand this species more, China is of great help in this journey.

Finally, the most beautiful and obvious objective of this trip is to meet my friends and beloved ones again.  Meeting old friends brings a lot of happiness and is very enriching. I love to see how each of us take different paths, go through life, make choices and develop. If more Pu-erh tea gets in the game, then I will be delighted, it's always a pleasure to get to know a handful of leaves.

Today, I read a great piece of news: the Jingmai ancient tea gardens are on the candidate list to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can read more details in this article.

I wish you all an excellent summer!