SHAN WAI SHAN
Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Joel Haas
Northern Taiwan, April, 2009
Northern Taiwan, April, 2009
His fields yield only a quarter the tea his neighbors' do. Why then, I
asked, does he farm strictly organic?
"I killed my brother," he says quietly.
He knows it is an odd answer. He pours me another cup of what is the best
tea I have ever had. Behind us in the ancient house in which he was born,
fresh mountain spring water threads a ceaseless stream through his wife's
kitchen, a constant source for our teapot, cooking, and even a small
spillway running along the floor for the family dog.
In his tea barn, the drying racks and massive tea tumblers stand
silent. The harvest is in for now.
In a corner, his 9 year old daughter does her homework, carefully tracing
out her Chinese characters for the day in a notebook lined into squares.
Each character has to be drawn precisely, in the right stroke order, much as
the swifts building a nest twig by twig behind ornate carved wooden awards
plaques lining the barn. His wife pads shyly back and forth bringing us
tea water and additional cups.
From the barn, we can see his tea fields and the mountains --shan wai
shan, mountains beyond mountains. As evening falls, successive ridges fade
into blue night. There is too much mist shrouding the peaks for us to see
stars, but fireflies are starting to rise and dance across the tea bushes.
It hardly appears to be the scene for murder, some Taiwanese Cain and Abel.
"What happened?" seems the most neutral question.
"We were the sixth generation of tea farmers."
A quick mental calculation tells me these fields before us must have been
cleared under the reign of the last Qing Emperor, shortly before the island
was ceded to Japan in 1895. Taiwan then was as wild and rugged as any
American frontier. A dozen or more tribes of headhunting aboriginals roamed
the island, while the coast was a haven for pirates. Chinese settlers from
the mainland province of Fujian only crossed the straits to settle here if
driven by famine or arrest warrants, hoping they could homestead rice farms
in the coastal plains or find work logging camphor in the jungle shrouded
mountains.
"It happened eighteen years ago," the farmer went on.
Again, I do a mental calculation. Martial law had been lifted only three
years before. People were still emerging into the process of democratic
thought and a free market after fifty years under the Japanese and another
42 under the iron hand of Chiang Kai Shek's party. The economy was taking
off like a rocket. Wealthy Japanese discovered Taiwanese tea much as wine
collectors discovered California's Napa and Sonoma valleys. I could imagine
the free-for-all as generations of tea cultivating tradition was swept away
into an era of high tech farm equipment, automatic watering and spraying
systems, and heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides. Tea yields
skyrocketed and so did many farmers' incomes. For the first time, new
methods promised a way out of grinding poverty. A man might dream of
building a new house, sending his children to university--even buying a car.
The pressure to use artificial fertilizers and insecticides must have been
immense.
Unfortunately for the farmer's brother, knowledge of how to use insecticides
did not match their potency.
"We were ignorant farmers," he went on. "We didn't really know how to use
these things." He looks away.
I can only speculate why he thought he had killed his brother. The farmer
is the oldest son; in Chinese society, the head of the family; responsible
for all. Maybe his brother didn't want to use as high a concentration of
chemicals; maybe the equipment leaked; maybe they should have used more
protective clothing; maybe it was something as simple as, "I need to walk
down the mountain to the village on an errand today, so why don't you finish
spraying the upper fields?"
Insecticides work by paralyzing bugs' nervous systems. High amounts do the
same things to people.
I don't know if he returned to find his brother dead in the fields, or lying
there, gasping for life as though stricken by a mysterious shaman's spell.
I can only think of my own brothers; how, for all our family foibles, how
much I love them and how devastated I would be to have been in the farmer's
place.
Since then, he has never used chemicals.
Weeds outpaced his ability to pull or hoe them. Wildlife moved in to nibble
the tender shoots of tea plants. His yields dropped along with his
income. While his neighbors built large barns and bought new cars, his
buildings fell into a collapse beyond repair. The family tomb overlooks the
tea fields. Who knows what reproach generations of family spirits offer as
they see fields wrenched from the mountain side by their own sweat and blood
fall into desuetude?
Still. He would not use chemicals.
He and his wife picked only the best shoots from the remaining tea plants.
Neighbors could be called on from time to time to help harvest tea and he
could repay their time with his own labor.
The wildlife which had plagued him, now evolved into an entire ecology from
which he extracted a small amount of exquisite tea. Instead of struggling
against Nature as his brother and he had, now Nature was his partner.
He bought a camera and began to photograph the face of his new partner. He
proudly brings out stacks of photos of wild life he has photographed in his
fields. Hundreds of species of butterflies, myriad beetles, spiders, were
followed by larger animals, birds, turtles, frogs, monkeys, even the rare
Formosa pangolin, found homes among the tea bushes and the natural spring
fed pond. He has documented it all.
Then, some funny things started to happen. People noticed how good his tea
tasted. Friends bought his tea and soon told their friends, who told their
friends. For some years he could eke out an income selling to a fairly
restricted circle of loyal friends who knew his tea to be spectacular.
Finally, the craze for "organic farming" and "organic teas" took hold not
only in the West, but in Taiwan and Japan as well. Instead of being the guy
who was late to the party to industrialize his production, he was one of the
first and best to raise organic tea. As other farmers set some of their
fields aside for organic production and certification, the government set up
a local "organic tea marketing co operative." He joined that and found he
could sell all the tea he could harvest now. The co operative got much
better prices for his tea and soon he was winning awards and his photo
appearing in the tea trade magazines (every bit as glossy and ritzy as wine
magazines, just written in Chinese and opening back to front).
Now, he remains loyal to his friends, selling his old customers the first
choice of his tea before turning over the rest of his crop to the co
operative. He has built modern rooms onto the back of the ancient family
home; there is a modern concrete warehouse/barn that will easily withstand
typhoons; his child does her homework in front of a new flat screen computer
and TV set up in the barn. A Toyota compact sits next to the barn.
I asked him what the best things and the worst things are about being a tea
farmer.
The worst he says, is the weather; a typhoon or heavy rains at harvest
time. Tea cannot be picked for a day or two after it has rained. There is
too much moisture in the leaves and they will rot, not dry and cure
properly, if picked then.
The best, he smiles and pours another cup of tea for us all, is to sit here
by the barn overlooking the fields and mountains and drink his tea with his
friends and his friends' friends.
I have my final cup of what I know will be one of the best cups of tea I
will ever drink in my life, listen to the creek run through his kitchen, and
watch the fireflies try to hold back night even as it drops a curtain across
the mountains.
The family tomb can still be seen in the twilight. It is in excellent repair and swept spotless.
From here, they--and we-- can all look out over the shan wai shan--the
mountains beyond mountains.
asked, does he farm strictly organic?
"I killed my brother," he says quietly.
He knows it is an odd answer. He pours me another cup of what is the best
tea I have ever had. Behind us in the ancient house in which he was born,
fresh mountain spring water threads a ceaseless stream through his wife's
kitchen, a constant source for our teapot, cooking, and even a small
spillway running along the floor for the family dog.
In his tea barn, the drying racks and massive tea tumblers stand
silent. The harvest is in for now.
In a corner, his 9 year old daughter does her homework, carefully tracing
out her Chinese characters for the day in a notebook lined into squares.
Each character has to be drawn precisely, in the right stroke order, much as
the swifts building a nest twig by twig behind ornate carved wooden awards
plaques lining the barn. His wife pads shyly back and forth bringing us
tea water and additional cups.
From the barn, we can see his tea fields and the mountains --shan wai
shan, mountains beyond mountains. As evening falls, successive ridges fade
into blue night. There is too much mist shrouding the peaks for us to see
stars, but fireflies are starting to rise and dance across the tea bushes.
It hardly appears to be the scene for murder, some Taiwanese Cain and Abel.
"What happened?" seems the most neutral question.
"We were the sixth generation of tea farmers."
A quick mental calculation tells me these fields before us must have been
cleared under the reign of the last Qing Emperor, shortly before the island
was ceded to Japan in 1895. Taiwan then was as wild and rugged as any
American frontier. A dozen or more tribes of headhunting aboriginals roamed
the island, while the coast was a haven for pirates. Chinese settlers from
the mainland province of Fujian only crossed the straits to settle here if
driven by famine or arrest warrants, hoping they could homestead rice farms
in the coastal plains or find work logging camphor in the jungle shrouded
mountains.
"It happened eighteen years ago," the farmer went on.
Again, I do a mental calculation. Martial law had been lifted only three
years before. People were still emerging into the process of democratic
thought and a free market after fifty years under the Japanese and another
42 under the iron hand of Chiang Kai Shek's party. The economy was taking
off like a rocket. Wealthy Japanese discovered Taiwanese tea much as wine
collectors discovered California's Napa and Sonoma valleys. I could imagine
the free-for-all as generations of tea cultivating tradition was swept away
into an era of high tech farm equipment, automatic watering and spraying
systems, and heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides. Tea yields
skyrocketed and so did many farmers' incomes. For the first time, new
methods promised a way out of grinding poverty. A man might dream of
building a new house, sending his children to university--even buying a car.
The pressure to use artificial fertilizers and insecticides must have been
immense.
Unfortunately for the farmer's brother, knowledge of how to use insecticides
did not match their potency.
"We were ignorant farmers," he went on. "We didn't really know how to use
these things." He looks away.
I can only speculate why he thought he had killed his brother. The farmer
is the oldest son; in Chinese society, the head of the family; responsible
for all. Maybe his brother didn't want to use as high a concentration of
chemicals; maybe the equipment leaked; maybe they should have used more
protective clothing; maybe it was something as simple as, "I need to walk
down the mountain to the village on an errand today, so why don't you finish
spraying the upper fields?"
Insecticides work by paralyzing bugs' nervous systems. High amounts do the
same things to people.
I don't know if he returned to find his brother dead in the fields, or lying
there, gasping for life as though stricken by a mysterious shaman's spell.
I can only think of my own brothers; how, for all our family foibles, how
much I love them and how devastated I would be to have been in the farmer's
place.
Since then, he has never used chemicals.
Weeds outpaced his ability to pull or hoe them. Wildlife moved in to nibble
the tender shoots of tea plants. His yields dropped along with his
income. While his neighbors built large barns and bought new cars, his
buildings fell into a collapse beyond repair. The family tomb overlooks the
tea fields. Who knows what reproach generations of family spirits offer as
they see fields wrenched from the mountain side by their own sweat and blood
fall into desuetude?
Still. He would not use chemicals.
He and his wife picked only the best shoots from the remaining tea plants.
Neighbors could be called on from time to time to help harvest tea and he
could repay their time with his own labor.
The wildlife which had plagued him, now evolved into an entire ecology from
which he extracted a small amount of exquisite tea. Instead of struggling
against Nature as his brother and he had, now Nature was his partner.
He bought a camera and began to photograph the face of his new partner. He
proudly brings out stacks of photos of wild life he has photographed in his
fields. Hundreds of species of butterflies, myriad beetles, spiders, were
followed by larger animals, birds, turtles, frogs, monkeys, even the rare
Formosa pangolin, found homes among the tea bushes and the natural spring
fed pond. He has documented it all.
Then, some funny things started to happen. People noticed how good his tea
tasted. Friends bought his tea and soon told their friends, who told their
friends. For some years he could eke out an income selling to a fairly
restricted circle of loyal friends who knew his tea to be spectacular.
Finally, the craze for "organic farming" and "organic teas" took hold not
only in the West, but in Taiwan and Japan as well. Instead of being the guy
who was late to the party to industrialize his production, he was one of the
first and best to raise organic tea. As other farmers set some of their
fields aside for organic production and certification, the government set up
a local "organic tea marketing co operative." He joined that and found he
could sell all the tea he could harvest now. The co operative got much
better prices for his tea and soon he was winning awards and his photo
appearing in the tea trade magazines (every bit as glossy and ritzy as wine
magazines, just written in Chinese and opening back to front).
Now, he remains loyal to his friends, selling his old customers the first
choice of his tea before turning over the rest of his crop to the co
operative. He has built modern rooms onto the back of the ancient family
home; there is a modern concrete warehouse/barn that will easily withstand
typhoons; his child does her homework in front of a new flat screen computer
and TV set up in the barn. A Toyota compact sits next to the barn.
I asked him what the best things and the worst things are about being a tea
farmer.
The worst he says, is the weather; a typhoon or heavy rains at harvest
time. Tea cannot be picked for a day or two after it has rained. There is
too much moisture in the leaves and they will rot, not dry and cure
properly, if picked then.
The best, he smiles and pours another cup of tea for us all, is to sit here
by the barn overlooking the fields and mountains and drink his tea with his
friends and his friends' friends.
I have my final cup of what I know will be one of the best cups of tea I
will ever drink in my life, listen to the creek run through his kitchen, and
watch the fireflies try to hold back night even as it drops a curtain across
the mountains.
The family tomb can still be seen in the twilight. It is in excellent repair and swept spotless.
From here, they--and we-- can all look out over the shan wai shan--the
mountains beyond mountains.
Unlike my earlier travel letters, I have placed the other illustrative
photos below the text. Scroll down to see more.
Feel free to write me about this story at joel@joelhaasstudio.com with any
comments or corrections.
In fact, you can see all the photos of the trip to the organic tea farmer's at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelhaas/sets/72157617395114763/_
photos below the text. Scroll down to see more.
Feel free to write me about this story at joel@joelhaasstudio.com with any
comments or corrections.
In fact, you can see all the photos of the trip to the organic tea farmer's at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelhaas/sets/72157617395114763/_
If you would like a copy of the mountain scenery to use as a screen saver or
wall paper click on the photo below.
The tender top and first few leaves are all that is picked from the tea
bush branches
Generations of tea farmers sat around these stone tables in the small lawn
before his house.
Our host, the tea farmer. He is about to brew us one last cup. The bricks
in the background
are part of the room in which he was born._
Ornate awards over the flat screen TV and some of the tea dryers. Note the
little swift
peaking out the top. They were undisturbed by our tea drinking and went
right on
building their nest behind the award.
The family shrine and altar. A very simple set up compared to many homes I
saw.
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