Korea — a fashionable country, a country where coffee and tea drinking are in fashion. Especially in recent years, as trade and cultural exchanges between China and Korea have grown ever more frequent, more and more Koreans drink Pu’er tea while studying Pu’er tea culture and collecting Pu’er tea.
According to Kang Yuk-bal, Dean of the Korea Chinese Pu’er Tea Research Institute and former Head and Professor of the Department of Tea Science and master’s supervisor at Hanseo University in Korea, the popularity of Pu’er tea in Korea can be compared to the popularity of Korean barbecue in China. It is understood that tea sales in Korea are concentrated in the two big cities of Seoul and Busan, and the Pu’er teas from Yunnan come in many varieties — Pu’er tuocha, qizi cakes, brick tea, and so on. In recent years, Koreans have also grown unsatisfied with merely reselling Pu’er tea at home and have come in person to the source of Pu’er tea — the tea mountains of Yunnan — to buy tea themselves. As a result, every spring tea season, foreigners led by Koreans flock to Pu’er tea’s famous mountain villages to buy tea, becoming a sight on the tea mountains.
Bound to Pu’er City by an inseparable fate, Professor Kang Yuk-bal met the elderly Mr. Xiao Shiying in Pu’er City as early as 1999. Mr. Xiao was already retired then, yet he continued to shine in the development and construction of Pu’er’s modern tea gardens; in particular, the new Pu’er tea varieties he bred and developed spread ten-thousand-mu tea gardens across Yunnan’s tea regions, and tea garden management increased Pu’er tea’s yield and efficiency — all of which moved him deeply.
In their exchanges that year, Mr. Xiao Shiying held that China, Japan, and Korea are the principal creators of world tea culture, and that Korea and China in particular share much in common culturally. At the same time, he placed great hopes on Professor Kang Yuk-bal’s future promotion of Pu’er tea culture in Korea.
Remembering Teacher Xiao Shiying, a Generation’s Pu’er Tea Artisan
Birth, aging, illness, and death are like spring, summer, autumn, and winter — a cycle of the seasons no one can reverse. This journey of life, this law of nature, everyone must experience. But the difference is that some people’s passing is silent and lighter than a goose feather, while others’ departure moves the world to mourning and is remembered for generations. Teacher Xiao’s passing was of the latter kind — he left us in the finest posture.
I still remember the first time I met him, in 1999, when I was teaching as a professor in the Department of Tea Science in Korea and led Korean students to Simao, Yunnan (today’s Pu’er City) to study Pu’er tea; through my dear local friend Teacher Huang Guishu, I came to know him.
Teacher Xiao accompanied our Korean students on a special trip to Yingpan Mountain to observe Pu’er tea. In the process he fully showed his sincerity toward others and his tireless spirit of teaching, giving the students warm guidance and precise learning.
At the time, our students very much wanted to hear Teacher Xiao’s teachings. He said: “To study and research Pu’er tea, you must first study tea thoroughly and research it thoroughly. Books are the ladder of human progress. A good book is a good teacher — it will teach a generation of good students. Yunnan has the ample material needed to produce a good book. Korean students from overseas should come to Yunnan more often to look and learn, and publish more books about Pu’er tea, so that these books become textbooks for the world and let Pu’er tea go out into the world as the closing full stop of the world’s teas.”
His words influenced the students of that time who now teach in the tea science departments of major Korean universities, pointing out the direction in which they should strive in studying tea science. At the same time, they are also what has driven me to publish eight monographs on Pu’er tea to this day.
My last gathering with Teacher Xiao was on May 28, 2019, at the Pu’er Municipal People’s Government Administrative Center. At that time, Xiao Shiying, Huang Guishu, Du Chunyi, and I — the four of us — were appointed by the Pu’er Municipal People’s Government as “Tea Industry Development Advisors to the Pu’er Municipal People’s Government.” Before the ceremony, the government arranged for the appointed advisors to meet in the VIP room so the old friends could exchange greetings. He kindly held my hand and urged me again and again: “China and the rest of the world must unite hearts and efforts to make Pu’er tea well — you must do the Korea part well.” As we parted, the words most often on every teacher’s lips were “Stay healthy; take good care of yourself.”
Little did I think that this parting would become a final farewell. Teacher Xiao has ridden the crane to the west, but his teachings are engraved in the hearts of us Korean tea science scholars. The poet Zang Kejia said: “Some people live, yet they are already dead; some people die, yet they still live.” Your junior, Yuk-bal, firmly believes: “The man has ended his song, but the melody lingers; Teacher Xiao’s tea fragrance drifts on and will surely abide with Pu’er forever.”
Kang Yuk-bal — Dean of the Korea Chinese Pu’er Tea Research Institute, one of the World’s Top Ten Outstanding Figures of Pu’er Tea, Tea Industry Development Advisor to the Pu’er Municipal People’s Government, and former Head and Professor of the Department of Tea Science and master’s supervisor at Hanseo University, Korea
Editorial comment: The mountains and rivers may differ, but fine trees share the same shade. Tea connects the six arts, bringing exchange and reaching integration; it is the world’s common language. Exchanges between nations are, in truth, exchanges between people. Making friends through tea, the land knows no north or south, and people no caste or kind. Though Mr. Xiao’s voice and countenance have passed, his fellowship with international friends lingers like the fragrance of orchids.
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Author: Lam Sam (LamSam), the Old Tea Head
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