Fuding By Express Rail

Not quite as fast a bullet train but the trip from Xiamen to Fuding only took a total of 2 hours by the new express rail. It’s like going from L.A. to SF in that amount of time. If only the U.S. had spent money on the train system…

Fuding is the home of white tea. Here is where people may stop me and argue that white tea is a process of airdrying some leaf buds and therefore, can be made anywhere. Place of origin doesn’t matter in this argument, nor varietal, nor terroir, nor even the tradition and skillset of those who have made this tea for centuries. White tea is designated as both a varietal type and also a processing type in China, and if place of origin doesn’t matter, then I guess that’s how we ended up with Kona coffee from Seattle and not….Kona. So the argument that White tea can be made anywhere is an interesting one, basically making up the rules to suit one’s interest.

Good tea can be made anywhere as long as the right conditions exist. More and more, in my own journeys to these farms of origin, I am learning that the human hand is of the utmost importance; without the skillset of the people who have been making these teas for centuries, just great soil and weather does not make ‘tea’. It makes pretty Camellia sinensis.