From a family grove in the heart of Mahei
I’ve been returning to Yiwu’s Mahei village each early spring for a decade, drawn by its old tea gardens tucked into a fold of hills where morning mist rolls in sideways. In March 2024, I arrived just as the first flush broke — budsets still tight, leaves supple and pale green. The family I work with here has tended these trees for four generations, never straying from the manual methods that suit this terrain.
We plucked only the earliest bud-and-two-leaf sets from trees averaging seventy to a hundred years old, some older. The máo chá was wok-fired in small batches over a wood fire that same evening, hand-rolled until the sap evenly coated the strips, then laid on bamboo trays under the intense spring sun of southern Yunnan. I tasted the loose leaf five days later: already showing the hallmark Yiwu softness — a honey-apricot sweetness resting on a quiet mineral floor.
Back in my cellar, I stone-pressed the máo chá into 357g bǐng, using only steam and gravity, never heat. This cake is a snapshot of a perfect spring in Mahei. I’ve set aside only a small number for worldtea.shop, intending them for drinkers who appreciate a young sheng’s energy and the long arc it will trace over years. Store it cool and dry; check in after three, seven, ten years — you’ll find it deepening, not fading.