RIP, Lu Yun, father of modern puerh

Last week, a very important figure in puerh history, Lu Yun, passed away, at the age of 57. The name of Lu Yun is less mentioned in recent years, although he was one of the most recent and one of the youngest "godfather" of puerh.

To a lot of younger tea drinkers, Lu Yun may not sound a familiar name. However, many people are very familiar with his lifetime work, without even realizing it. He was the head of Menghai Factory, and then CEO of Dayi. He was the leader of the developing team of Dayi 7262. He was involved in research and development of some of Dayi's most popular products including 7542, 8582, 7572, etc. He was the founder of Dayi trademark. He was a co-author of Puerh Yunnan Province Standards, which were the bases of the current Puerh National Standards. He was respected as "father of puerh" by many puerh gurus. 

Unfortunately, in the last stage of his career, Lu Yun became a controversial figure. He was involved in some big financial scandal (mixed with personal life scandals) in 2008. Many of his friends see him as an "innocent offender", and many believe the incidence was a tragedy outcome of the 2007-2008 puerh crisis. He was also condemned by many people. He disappeared from the social scenes, and his name was rarely mentioned since then.

But at the end of his life, when the news of his death spread, it turned out he is still very well known and well remembered. With good wishes, many tea drinkers choose to remember the best part of his life and let go the dark side. Personally I feel a lot of sympathy towards him. His career was not perfect, and most of the rest of us aren't perfect either. Thinking of all the tea he created, I just can't get mad at him. Sometimes I say, we are in an era of too many masters. In today's tea world, there are many tea masters and tea celebrities. Most of them will be forgotten by history. This one will be remembered as part of puerh history, as he created a big chunk of puerh history.

Lan Cang Ancient Tea Honey Aroma 2006

This tea was produced in 2006 and released in 2011. At that time, it was rather uncommon for large tea factories to release teas that was produced years ago. Usually large factories sell new tea. But since then, there seem to be more and more young-aged-teas released by large factories. Why is that? I think the following factors play a role (and there might be more factors...):

1. Many factories have unsold teas during the chaos from late 2007 to 2008, and if they could (financially manage it,) they would rather hold the tea till market got better. And the market got better after 2009.

2. Sometimes a tea doesn't taste good at certain stage, and a savvy manufacture would wait till it taste better and then released it to market. This rarely happened a decade ago, when many puerh drinkers in mainland China drank new tea only. But now it makes more sense to both manufacture and tea drinker to have young-aged-tea released.

3. In the puerh world, people are telling each other, "the older, the better..." But a lot of young teas are not that palatable. Then sometimes when you buy a new tea, you would feel you are buying a promise, which may or may not be fulfilled. Therefore, selling young-aged-tea is one way for a manufacture to demonstrate its quality.

4. Somehow, with the rapid increase of tea prices for both raw materials and compressed products, in recent years, very often, young-aged-teas are not much more expensive than new teas (ironically...). So some manufactures would choose to use their storage more and buy less new harvest, and some tea drinkers would choose to buy some aged tea instead of new tea.

The tea overall looks quite young. Although I got it from a Guangzhou dealer, I would assume the tea was stored in Yunnan before its release.

It tastes quite young and you would need to be careful brewing it in order to get the aroma without too much bitterness and astringency. But the tea has started to taste interesting - by interesting, I mean, it's not as "straightforward" as new tea. Its aroma seems to change in your mouth and circulate in your mouth with twists and turns, and the aftertaste is quite long.

The tea was released at the same time with another 2006 shu cake which is called "sweet aroma". I had a sample of that one and thought it was pretty good - not stinky, tastes good, that's basically my modest standards for shu.

Finally, a little story about Madam Du (or, in Chinese, 杜老太太), the owner of Lan Cang Ancient Tea factory. She is a legendary figure in puerh world. She took over the previously state-owned Lan Cang Jing Mai Factory in 1998, when the factory was at the rim of bankruptcy. She made it one of the largest and most reputable puerh factory within 10 years. It is also one of the factories that own most ancient tea plantations and biggest aged tea collections. There are many big stories to tell about Madam Du, but here is a little story that I've found interesting. In a public interview, when asked how she would distinguish teas from different mountains, different villages and different manufactures. Her answer was short and simple, "...sometimes it's easy, but you can't expect me to be able to tell every single time." And as a 60-year-old tea guru who started her tea career at the age of 16, she said it naturally and confidently.


I particularly like this little story, because, ironically, this kind of honest yet confident answers are not commonly seen in puerh world. I have no problem saying "I can't" because I'm nobody in puerh world and I can't do most of the things that puerh professionals do anyway. Madam Du has no problem saying "I can't" because she is at the top of puerh world, and she could be confident that what she doesn't know, most people don't know either. But you can imagine, between my level and Madam Du's level, there are numerous tea professionals and tea experts who know fairly well about tea, yet don't want to admit what they don't know or what they are not sure of. Since I read Chinese tea books sometimes, and in recent years so many of them have been published, I have to say, some Chinese tea books (and especially puerh books...) are rather funny... funny in a way that makes me feel that not only the author doesn't know what he is talking about, but also he is somewhat very sure what he said is absolute truth. Fooling oneself is always worse than fooling others :-p There aren't many English language tea books yet, and the few I've read are pretty good and sincerely written. Let's not expect any "funny" type of tea books in English language in the years to come.

It's not hard to understand that tea, as a biological product, is extremely complex. It shouldn't be surprising that even the most knowledgeable people won't know everything, and not all the subtle differences between teas can be discerned by human organs. But in puerh world and in business world, a lot of people are reluctant to say "I can't" or "I don't know", and over-confident to give theories that are not necessarily well tested. In this sense, Madam Du is a role model, not as a "know-it-all", but as one who knows better than most people and knows what she doesn't know.

Hua Luogeng - a tea loving mathematician

Today is the 101st birthday of Hua Luogeng (华罗庚，1010-1985), one of the greatest contemporary Chinese mathematicians. He was an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and a foreign academician of United States National Academy of Sciences.

The picture above is today's Google logo on its Hong Kong website (google.hk). The 1+1 indicates Hua's significant contribution to solving Goldbach's Conjecture before its "1+1" stage. Up to now, Goldbach's Conjecture is not completely solved yet and deemed by many mathematicians as the most difficult mathematic problem ever.

In China, Hua Luogeng is best known for his innovative work on Integrated Approach, which was applied in many industries, as well as various other aspects of the society. In the google picture, the teapot and teacup indicate this achievement of Hua's. Hua was known to be a tea lover. His work of Integrated Approach germinated when he boiled water for tea and pondered what would be the most efficient plan to boil the water, rinse the tea ware and brew the tea.

Hua was not only a genius scientist, but also a very interesting person.

In 1930, at the age of 20, he was invited to work as an assistant professor in Tsinghua University, one of the best universities in China. By that time, he only had a middle school (equivalent to 10th grade in the States) diploma but was already one of the most promising young mathematicians in China.

Between 1936 and 1938, he was a visiting scholar in Cambridge University and published his influential work on Gaussian theories. At that time (and even today), a graduate degree in a world class university like Cambridge would guarantee one a tenured position in China. But Hua didn't apply for a degree diploma, because he didn't think it would make any difference for his life.  

In 1938, China was already dragged into war, and most provinces of the country were under Japanese military occupation. Some of the best universities and best scholars of China recessed to the Southwest. There, life was hard, people were short of everything, but they continued their academic lives, and drank tea every day! (I expressed my admiration of Kunming Era in this blog.) At that time, for many Chinese overseas, China was the home that they couldn't go back. But in the year of 1938, Hua left Cambridge for Kunming, joined his Tsinghua University colleagues in teaching and mathematics research.

In 1946, Hua was invited by Princeton University as a researcher. He worked there till 1948. In 1948, he was awarded a tenured position as a full professor in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But in 1950, he gave up his tenure and returned to China. In the next decades, throughout all the political storms in China, he wasn't treated fairly all the time. I am sure he and his family would have had a much more peaceful and comfortable life in the States. But by giving up that kind of life, Hua made significant contributions to mathematics research in China. In addition, a whole generation of Chinese mathematicians and computer scientists owed their enlightenment and mentorship to Hua Luogeng.

In 1985, Hua Luogeng died of heart attack in Tokyo, Japan, right after he finished an hour-long research lecture. He experienced a fast death at the podium. I think, this is one of the best and luckiest ways of dying.

So today we raise our cups to celebrate the life of Hua Luogeng.

gossip... gossip...

This is old news. But I've just found out about it, and think this is seriously juicy... :-p

Zhang Tianfu is like the Godfather of Fujian tea. He is one of the first generation biology professors of China, and has conducted tea research for more than 70 years.

Guess what! Zhang Tianfu got (re)married, last year, at the age of 100! In the wedding photo showed here, the bridegroom, Zhang Tianfu, was then 100 years old and now is 101 years old (actually 102 years old by Chinese way of counting). The bride was 58 years old by the time of the wedding.

I have to say, Zhang Tianfu looks very young for his age (his wife too!). I guess he has no problem to live above the age of "tea longevity" (108 years old). Those tea companies eager to sell tea by its health benefits, should just get him for their TV commercials :-D

By now, Zhang Tianfu has broken the record of Chinese celebrity wedding age set by C. N. Yang, the Chinese American Nobel-prize winner physicist who got (re) married at the age of 82 to a 28-year-old woman! When C. N. Yang got married, I was thinking, working on science and keeping the brain active must help a lot to retain one's youth and vitality! Now Zhang Tianfu must be a very convincing example how one can stay young with tea! Well, in fact, C. N. Yang is an enthusiastic tea drinker too. He spent a big chunk of his youth in Kunming during the war time, drinking tea and studying physics. (His story was mentioned in my earlier blog here.)

As gossipy as I am, I dig up a bit more... Zhang Tianfu's wife was an acrobat when she was younger. She was widow of a tea scholar who was son of Wu Juenong. And Wu Juenong (1897-1989, quite long-lived too!) was like the Godfather of Chinese tea. He was second to none in in the Chinese tea history of 20th Century, and was respected as the Contemporary Tea Saint by Chinese tea professionals of a few generations.

So much to gossip about tea romance and tea karma :-D