Elephants in the Land of Tea

Written by Eduard Boguslavsky

Edited by Jackie McDougall & Wenting Zhang

Banyan Tree in the village and Li walked to his tea facility, photo @ moJoosh

After driving hours from Lincang, Yunnan, through a checkpoint, a mudslide, and windy one-lane dirt roads, we arrived at our destination: a village of Wa people (佤族, Wǎzú). Situated in a nature preserve in the tropical forest at the border with Myanmar, the village is known for its sights of the endangered Asian Elephants.

We were here thanks to a referral from Protected Area Friendliness (PAF), a Chinese NGO dedicated to the adoption of development methods that support nature conservation and effective management within and around protected areas. We met Li, a local Wa tea maker, who welcomed us warmly. His parents live in the village with other tribe members, while he lives with his wife and daughter in Lijiang, a city some 700km away, where he frequently travels back and forth for tea. He leads folks in the village to pluck, process, market, and sell tea. They hope tea will create opportunities for them to improve their life.

Coming here in July of 2023 feels like entering a place barely touched by modernity. There are corrugated roofs (part of a 2019 project that designated the area a natural preserve) and electricity, but if not for this, the modern clothing, and occasional Mandarin, you’d be hard pressed to figure where or when you are. The village consists mostly of elders and kids coming back during summer break. Others have left for cities where they could make more money. We are the only visitors in the village, and it feels as though we’re an uncommon sight in the surrounding areas.

As far as Li knows, his tribe has been making and consuming tea for at least 500 years. He was able to show us around since it was summer, and he wasn’t busy with a harvest like he would be in the spring. We saw tea growing wild around the village and distant cultivated fields in the valley. Li parked his car precariously on the side of the narrow road. We walked into a forest flush with life. Many of the wild tea trees, Li estimates, are about 100 years old. Tea is endemic here, and it’s obvious; it thrives easily in these conditions. Li showed us how he climbs into the trees to collect their leaves. The trees look slight, but they are strong and barely respond to his weight. 

I was eager to go deeper into the jungle, hike on a trail, and see the elephants. I quickly had to abandon this vision. For one thing, the preserve is meant to protect the elephants, who have been squeezed by past infrastructure development. For this reason, getting up close to the elephants can be dangerous. One villager recently died in an encounter with them. Secondly, hiking here in the jungle in the summer is too dangerous. This jungle at the border of Myanmar is notorious for toxic insects. In the early spring, Li will bushwhack with men and women from his village for hours to reach some places with wild tea trees, but they were raised in these mountains.

Tea forest walked from the road, photo @ moJoosh

Tasting teas in the village, photo @ moJoosh

After seeing various nearby places where Li harvests tea, we sat at his simple tea-processing bungalow on a hill overlooking a verdant valley for the rest of the four days’ time in four days, drinking his tea, listening to stories, watching the sky change as storms pass in the distance. We talk about his dreams of building a proper tea processing facility, his visits to relatives in Myanmar when he was young, his experiences hunting and gathering, and to getting his first pair of shoes at 16. We learn more about the language, and how modernity has touched their culture. Li feels fortunate that he is on the Chinese side of the border (the Wa people live in China and Myanmar). Across it, things are increasingly chaotic. When night falls and the clouds clear, we see flickers of light in the hills across the valley in Myanmar. I, too, feel very fortunate. 

Women Tea Pluckers in the field, photo @ Li Jian Gang

Sunrise in the village, photo @ moJoosh

During our stay, he suggested that we brew the tea ourselves. Most of Li’s teas are fully handmade. We taste a variety of his teas, including white, red, and raw pu’er. Much of the profile of the Mao Cha (raw pu’er) is similar to that of Bing dao (literally “Ice Island”, a famous tea region nearby). So much so that he has customers for his raw materials there since they can command a higher price. 

We were treated with great hospitality for our meals. Simple delicious food from the area: chicken raised by the family, wild boar sausages that the people of the village cured and smoked, beans and bamboo that we saw growing nearby, and delicate mushrooms from the forest. Li’s mom cooked everything over the fire. In these wet conditions, it’s easy to understand the central role of fire. Homes here are built around the fire: four logs feed it, the roofs are vented on two sides, and above the fire is a platform for smoking and drying things, like the boar sausage. Though they have a propane stove, we never see them use it. This centering of the fire is practical and symbolic–it is covered with ash at night and revived in the morning, a symbol of life and hope. As I spend time here, I gain an appreciation for how nature is not some external luxury to appreciate–it is the locus of life and what makes it bearable.

When we asked Li why he does not apply chemicals to boost tea production, he said without hesitating, “It is not good for the environment.” Locals learned that the biggest asset for them is the environment in a hard way, most recently in the 1980s and ’90s when outside businesses came to harvest lumber in the region. 

A teenage girl who was home for the summer is applying to college. She will be the first from the tribe to get a postsecondary education. She wants to study environmental protection because she loves the village and treasures the environment she grew up in. She intends to return to the village after her studies. In a nearby ethnography museum, we see traces of a recent animist past that included human sacrifice. Today, there are stereotypes of Wa people related to the cross-border drug trade (Myanmar is the world’s second largest opium poppy grower) and excessive alcohol consumption. There are big hurdles for the Wa people to make their tea recognizable in the vast market, but with villagers like Li and the young woman, there is much hope.

Group photo with Li and Li’s family, photo @ moJoosh

It is very refreshing to journey in this corner of the world, where little is taken for granted and caring for nature is not seen as some noble or controversial ideal, but a part of life. At the same time, the extent of my privilege and fortune becomes very palpable. It is my hope that we can procure some of their tea and support their work one day. Tea Arts and Culture intends to bring Li’s tea to brew at our gatherings and share it with our supporters. I also hope to return one day to harvest tea with Li deep in the jungle, then in the evening go home to home toasting homemade alcohol to our health. 

On our last night staying there, the moon peeked briefly from between the clouds, and we heard the distant rumbling of elephants echoing through the valley.

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