Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / The Rise of Chinese Matcha

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The Rise of Chinese Matcha · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:09
My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Zhengjian who
0:11
also does by Sam. Hello, hello.
0:13
And with the cofounders of Psycho March Products.
0:16
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:18
Matcha show, startup stories, and interview experts.
0:22
And this is our first episode, I think, dedicated to Chinese
0:26
matcha or Chinese mocha specifically.
0:31
So we've been slowly gathering up context and we've talked
0:34
about it on a lot of episodes here and there, but this is our
0:38
first compilation of everything that we've learned about the
0:42
Chinese matcha scene now in 2026.
0:47
That's right. And we kind of see this as a
0:50
great occasion because right now we are sitting in the venue of
0:53
Chantal Fare, which is one of the largest and oldest
0:57
exportation fare Expo in China, which basically they sell
1:02
anything from robotics to ceramics to utensils to like
1:08
food stuff like oil, cereals and obviously tea.
1:12
So it's been a pretty interesting experience so far.
1:17
What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, well, the size is
1:19
enormous. Like the amount of trade that
1:21
must go on in the world here is just a little mind boggling.
1:25
I mean, this is like the epitome of made in China.
1:27
Indeed. And so, you know, we have been
1:31
talking with both Chinese tea and matcha like aggregators,
1:37
like third parties that are basically merchants that source
1:40
from different farmers. We've also talked to merchants
1:43
Sam's been on the ground in Hubei to meet people who are
1:47
doing matcha cultivation. And of course we've had all of
1:49
this matcha experience in Japan. So we thought this is a fine
1:53
occasion to this is by no means a comprehensive guide, but this
1:57
is about everything that we know when it comes to the matcha
2:01
scene here in China. Before we jump in, we are going
2:05
to take the least conservative definition of matcha.
2:09
So if you are on team Japan, team heritage and that you know,
2:14
you don't consider any other product that's matcha like even
2:18
if it comes from Japanese cultivars and has been shaded
2:21
and processed on traditional Japanese tension processing
2:25
equipment it But if you if you're the type of person that
2:28
believes it has to be grown in Japan to be considered matcha,
2:31
we totally respect that. For this conversation, we are
2:35
going to use the word matcha and refer to it as Chinese matcha
2:40
just for simplicity's sake. That is how it was sold and it
2:43
has the sensory and organoleptic characteristics of matcha.
2:50
A lot of these samples that we just tasted, they here to Canton
2:53
fare. If you tasted it, you would have
2:55
no idea it was a Chinese product.
2:57
And some of them you would immediately taste it and think,
3:00
OK, wow, actually this is a little different, which is, you
3:03
know, really worth getting into as well.
3:05
I mean, it's really for our convenience to carry on the
3:07
conversation because even by the definition we are trying to
3:11
advocate, this should really be called Chinese Mata instead of
3:16
Chinese Mata because very surprisingly, a lot of the
3:19
cultivars we end up seeing today are not Japanese.
3:22
They are all Chinese cultivars. Actually, a few Japanese
3:25
cultivars being we were being told that was used in all of in
3:29
all of these products we end up trying.
3:31
Now there's some selection bias. It is kind of unfair.
3:34
And there's been a lot of Japanese cultivars too as well,
3:38
from different people we've been talking to over the past two
3:40
years. Yeah.
3:41
But the landscape is pretty interesting I think to begin
3:45
with because I've been to a lot of these food conferences in
3:48
China and for all of the tea sessions, it's always Chinese
3:52
tea like leaf tea, loose leaf tea.
3:55
If these conferences are domestic focus.
3:58
And Canton Fair is one of the very interesting book
4:02
conferences that you have to be a foreign or foreign related
4:06
procure to participate as a visitor.
4:08
And here we basically we were seeing every booth in the tea
4:13
section selling matcha. They had nearly.
4:15
It was. Pretty amazing.
4:17
And we got to talk to everyone, actually, I think except there's
4:20
only one stand that we missed that was selling matcha here.
4:23
Before we jump in, jump into sort of the status quo.
4:26
Obviously, matcha has its origins in China to some extent.
4:30
When the Song dynasty, China was doing its Mocha ceremonies and
4:35
competitions, and then when it spread to Japan.
4:38
And then China went through what, 7 to 800 years of history
4:43
of no matcha and no Malta. A lot of the vendors here take a
4:46
very convenient stance that the China's been making Malta here
4:51
and has a very long heritage and it uses this as marketing and
4:55
selling a lot of this material, especially the stuff that comes
4:59
out of Jijiang and the areas in and around Hangzhou, which is
5:03
famous originally for Long Jing. But they definitely are
5:06
borrowing this very convenient legacy.
5:09
Now, of course, if you look at matcha as a product and its
5:13
sensory properties, its color, its taste, this was invented in
5:17
Japan. Everything that we all know of
5:19
as matcha comes from shady cultivation and Japanese
5:23
agricultural practices, which we are now seeing the great
5:26
pendulum swift shift back to China.
5:30
Because when you ask any of these vendors how long have you
5:32
been making matcha, including the people that are trying to
5:35
make this Song dynasty tie, they say all three years or nine
5:40
years. 2017. Very recent.
5:43
The oldest one that we met today was started in 2017, so let's
5:49
get that out of the way too. Is that all contemporary
5:52
production of Chinese matcha is new.
5:57
It is not a long culture. It has not been a continuous
6:01
practice. There's been 700 years of
6:03
emptiness and there's a lot of people that are trying to make
6:06
this link, but this link is replica at best.
6:10
And that it really is a Japanese product in terms of the
6:14
characteristics in which we can all consider matcha nowadays,
6:19
doesn't mean it won't always be the case.
6:22
I think China could have a very interesting volatile renaissance
6:26
where they into local cultivars, local production styles that
6:30
start producing things that taste very delicious, that are
6:32
not trying to replicate a Japanese prop.
6:35
So Zhongjin, you were here the last two years consecutively and
6:39
unfair meeting different vendors.
6:41
What were some of the biggest differences between the modest
6:44
seen here in China two years ago and now?
6:47
Quality, quality, quality. It's really the quality.
6:50
Quantity wise, definitely, I've been seeing the increase too,
6:54
but it's the sheer quality of like, because like 2 years ago
6:59
there was like no good matcha at all.
7:01
Like the stigma was very, very well deserved, I would say for
7:05
Chinese matcha. But this year, Oh my God, Ryan,
7:08
I don't know, Like some of these products are pretty good.
7:11
There was one that blew me away. We're recorded a YouTube video
7:16
which we're going to publish, and you can see us take the
7:19
first sip of an example. It costs 90 dollars a kilo.
7:24
It is the best Costa quality macho ratio I've ever had in my
7:30
life, and it tasted very much like a Japanese product.
7:34
Tasted very much like a good Japanese product.
7:37
Yeah, this would sell for three, $400.00 a kilo in Japan.
7:41
Easily. Easily.
7:42
I was shocked and apparently for that particular supplier, who is
7:46
Italian and a couple other Japanese companies are trying to
7:50
get that material. Yeah, they're trying.
7:52
Need to procure from them the course material too.
7:55
They were trying to buy pencha from these people.
7:59
And honestly, if they brought it into Japan, we'd make delicious
8:01
smartcha. Yes, and no one would honestly
8:04
be able to tell the difference. Is that good?
8:06
Yeah, very interesting. So and also like they don't
8:08
necessarily owned any gardens. They're from the Guangdong
8:13
province, which is, you know, predominantly a green tea honcha
8:18
to the black tea production region.
8:21
So what they're doing is that they're aggregating all of these
8:24
good materials that they source from different provinces inside
8:27
China. I think their main source is
8:30
from Zhejiang, and they also source some from Weijer.
8:33
But the really good one that we end up trying today was from
8:37
Zhejiang. That's right.
8:39
And a lot of these places are very open about who they supply
8:43
people like, Oh yeah, we're a Starbucks supplier.
8:46
We supply antiques, so 1 interesting artifact of sourcing
8:51
anything in China, I would not expect any degrees of
8:54
confidence. Yeah, but with that comes
8:58
actually pretty radical transparency.
9:00
Everyone is also like super transparent.
9:03
Yeah. You asked how many days shaded
9:05
cultivar what their practices are.
9:07
Processing. Methods when they set it up.
9:10
Mailing method. You know if they own the tea
9:13
garden or not. They were like being pretty
9:16
honest about all the information.
9:18
There was very low levels of caginess and when they didn't
9:20
know, they just said, yeah, I don't know, just very honest and
9:24
very helpful in answering all of these questions.
9:28
And the other thing that was talking about half the vendors
9:30
were also selling tension. So the ability is more and more
9:33
people have the get the hardware to know much afresh, the cost to
9:38
quality ratio and some of the Chinese 10 shot, it's much, much
9:42
easier than buying 10 shine in Japan.
9:43
Trying to buy 10 shine in Japan is like cooling teeth might even
9:47
be more painful. To be honest.
9:49
It's a weird request and it's very difficult to get.
9:53
It's difficult to buy macho, let alone 10 shop from a lot of
9:56
these places. So it's it's a bit crazy.
9:59
Yeah, it's, I will say, you know, this kind of landscape and
10:05
environment to do business, it's really a healthy soil for a
10:10
specialty product or specialty movement to take place.
10:14
It really kind of unleash a lot of freedom and remove a lot of
10:18
inertia to to to make innovations.
10:22
The pain that we all experienced in Japan kind of really
10:24
suffocated a lot of passion for a lot of people to try to do
10:28
something new. Yeah, like if you're trying to
10:31
source like interesting single cultivar, single origin tea
10:35
anywhere in like the Uji trademark region of Narashiga
10:40
MIE or Kyoto Prefecture, right? And like you just see Ujimacha,
10:45
Ujimacha, Ujimacha all falls under the name.
10:47
It's like ceremonial and then you try to learn anything about
10:50
the product and it's either proprietary or all they won't
10:54
tell you. But our tea master makes it
10:57
taste the same every year. And it's it's his domain, not
11:00
mine. And yes, it is almost always a
11:02
hit. And like they just don't tell
11:06
you anything about the product. It's very hard.
11:09
Very few farmers are willing to be that transparent.
11:12
And typically it's a lot of trust that you have to earn.
11:14
But here it's the default. It could be really rich soil for
11:18
a special team match up movement, finding really high
11:21
quality tensha, so high quality that the Japanese are interested
11:25
in. The large companies like Italan
11:28
are apparently very interested. Yeah.
11:30
And a lot of these vendors, they're really willing to work
11:33
with you to explore other potentials, like what kind of
11:36
culture bar you want to do or what kind of shading base you
11:39
want to do, what kind of fertilizers you want to, you
11:41
know, end up being applied to the teas.
11:43
The level of freedom is very high.
11:45
Ryan and I have done a batch of tea experiment in the place
11:50
called Shiman before. It's just so easy to work with
11:53
the farmers to to experiments, to tweak the parameters and you
11:58
know, to and also just to start it like you don't really need to
12:03
pitch or sell this idea very hard to people.
12:07
They're looking for opportunity, looking for opportunity.
12:09
The domestic tea consumption in China is actually falling like
12:13
they're looking for export markets.
12:15
Yeah. The other very interesting
12:16
phenomenon that we see that we saw here today is that all of
12:20
these Marsha producing area or new Marsha producing area in
12:23
Japan, in China has all been historically famous green tea
12:27
production. Green tea is not selling China.
12:31
Everyone's trying to switch 10s to tensha or macha.
12:35
There is this one vendor from from a specific county that we
12:38
visit today and they were telling me that the local
12:41
government invested 500 million RMB into turning into the entire
12:46
county, switching from green tea, from Visha to Mata.
12:50
That is almost 100 million U.S. dollars.
12:53
It's like 80 million U.S. dollars invested in tension.
12:57
Something like a million hectares of tea producing of new
13:01
tension fields. That's right from Xiangxi, like
13:05
a region most people have never heard of for much.
13:08
I typically heard Guizhou or Jijiang, but.
13:12
Well, Shanxi, it's the province for Xi'an, but that specific
13:15
area, I think it's called Ping Pingling.
13:18
I've never heard of Pingling, to be honest.
13:22
But yeah, apparently they're doing a lot of.
13:24
Tensor. The number of provinces making
13:27
tensor was out like enormous to me.
13:30
Can you go through the full list?
13:31
Oh my God. Well, we have Hubei, we have
13:34
Hunan, We have Zhejiang, We have Jiangsu, We have Guangdong, We
13:38
have Shanxi, We have Yunnan. What did I miss?
13:43
Fujian 8 That's already 8. Wow.
13:46
I believe there are more. And many different cultivars.
13:50
You've heard a lot of Japanese cultivars like Yabu Pita, Oku
13:53
Midori, and then a lot of Chinese ones, specifically Long
13:56
Jing 43. What were some of the other
13:58
ones? There was a Cha Cha Jiang Teen
14:01
Institute cultivar. There is this cha #10 which is a
14:05
Hubei Teen Institute cultivar and and Fooding fooding Dada
14:11
White white tea cultivar which is predominantly being used in
14:14
guicha for guicha. And that was very, we had some
14:18
fooding tension that we bought and are building fresh on our
14:21
machine and we bought, I don't know what we bought.
14:24
We're using it just for testing. It was $29.00 a kilo when we
14:27
bought it. Tastes terrible.
14:30
Fooding tension from the Guay Cha Guay Joe people was
14:34
excellent. Oh my goodness, excellent.
14:38
Almost no bitterness, super green, very tasty, had a slight
14:43
creaminess in umami. It was actually unlike any
14:46
Japanese matcha I have ever had. The tea here is more.
14:50
I would say more. Tea like, yeah, more, more body,
14:54
a little more tannic, but also more fragrance.
14:57
And then some of these samples too just are super creamy and
15:00
umami. And it's very interesting is
15:03
also the amount of cross cultural learnings.
15:07
One of the teams that was supplying some of the best
15:09
matcha that we had that was sourcing from Jijiang, the
15:13
entire team went to Uji and they learned how to whisk matcha.
15:17
They did some tea tours, right? Like there's a lot of cross
15:21
cultural context and learning going on in a pretty direct way.
15:26
I would say, and obviously there are Japanese here too, a lot of
15:31
these very large farms and gardens and some of the most
15:36
high quality, the highest quality ones are directly
15:40
Japanese controlled, which is also very interesting.
15:44
They are spending a lot of investment here into expanding
15:48
their productions. And I think we have no confirmed
15:52
evidence, but what we have heard is that lot of these tensha
15:55
eventually eventually gets funneled back to Japan and might
15:59
get end up labeled as Fuji match.
16:01
We don't know. We basically have confirmed
16:04
evidence. I mean all of these producers
16:07
love to brag that they export even to Japan.
16:10
Why? I mean the quality of a lot of
16:13
this material is just so good. And what was really crazy is the
16:16
price. So the most expensive much
16:18
Chinese much I've ever heard of wholesale price was about 300 or
16:22
maybe it was 330 U.S. dollars a kilo.
16:26
And here the most expensive one we saw today was 150 USA kilo.
16:31
There was some fantastic, just fantastic material that was at
16:35
about 100 USA kilo. And there's also a lot hovering
16:39
around 50 to 60 U.S. dollars a kilo.
16:43
I this is like where the future of Cafe Matcha is.
16:47
I honestly think Chinese matcha is getting so good that it would
16:51
be irresponsible as a business owner to your own bottom line
16:55
and to provide a tasty product. Consumers like to not
17:00
investigate Chinese matcha suppliers.
17:02
The price to quality ratio is probably about two X as good is
17:08
to what you can get in Japan right now at a similar price
17:11
point for the quality it's delivering in the cup.
17:13
And I'm only talking about flavor here, the organolactive,
17:17
the sensory differences are really about on par with each
17:21
other. They're they're the same.
17:22
There's almost no difference. Yeah.
17:24
For a lot, honestly, you're probably just buying.
17:27
You know the same thing in Japan.
17:29
That gets imported. That gets.
17:31
Imported. From China so if you're just
17:33
serving matcha lattes it's it's crazy the quality that we're
17:39
seeing here from all from all of these vendors if anyone
17:43
listening is interested we're we're happy to help do some
17:47
sourcing but for the value that you can get between 60 and 150
17:52
U.S. Dollars a kilo and much more
17:55
readily available supply from much more transparent companies
17:59
and not to mention companies that are really set up and
18:02
designed for exportation. There is domestic market for
18:06
Mata and China is very new. IT is growing.
18:09
And I'd like to talk about that a bit in this episode.
18:12
But these companies are set up for export.
18:15
They're optimizing for exportable quality matcha in a
18:18
way that, you know, the best Japanese matcha farms, you
18:22
cannot import it to the EU or you can barely import it into
18:26
the US because the pesticide residues are way too hot.
18:29
The best matcha in Japan like lives domestic in that market.
18:33
And it's very difficult to export.
18:36
Not until recently have they been starting to make pretty
18:38
major investments and having pesticide residue level tea
18:43
that, you know, can go to places outside that.
18:46
That's another, you know, China's kind of starting from a
18:48
blank slate. Yeah, it's because there's not a
18:51
huge demand. But even here actually in the
18:54
past two years, I think I've spent about eight or nine months
18:58
in and out of China the last two years and just seeing it
19:02
everywhere, even the local 711, it's quite visible.
19:05
Hard. It's quite visible.
19:07
Well, my guess is that they probably are experiencing A
19:10
oversupply issue because for a lot of companies, they only are
19:14
being allocated for a certain quota every year to explore tea
19:19
outside of China. So if they end up eating all of
19:23
the quota, they have to find other ways to sell their tea,
19:26
which I think that is the reason a lot of these factories and
19:30
brands are turning back to the domestic.
19:32
And this is like quite visible from a consumer's perspective
19:37
two or three years ago. There's really no matcha in
19:40
China. The local McDonald's has an
19:44
Afagada, A matcha afagada. That is a crazy sentence.
19:48
I remember learning about an afagado for the first time like
19:51
10 years ago with coffee and I thought, wow, like I feel so
19:55
sophisticated for knowing that this exists.
19:57
And now it's at the McDonald's in Guangzhou.
20:00
Yeah, that's pretty crazy. And you'll also see a lot of
20:03
like more boutique or specialty places being popped out.
20:07
And one of the best selling products in the past year in
20:10
China is this coconut water matcha made by Manor Cock.
20:14
It's. Very good, It is very good and
20:17
they have been advertising using Guizhou matcha.
20:20
So it's more. Entirely local, yeah.
20:24
So that that was pretty interesting.
20:26
Like the idea of like place of origin is growing in the
20:30
domestic market. So yeah, it's a pretty
20:33
interesting future we are seeing here.
20:35
We ask a lot of questions when we go up there, and one of the
20:37
more interesting things that we've been learning is just the
20:41
way the machos milk. So almost all of the product is
20:44
ball milk or jet milk is another common one.
20:48
There are a few factories that are doing Ishiusu, Some are even
20:53
importing Ishiyusu from Japan, especially some producers from
20:57
Hubei, which is the province of Wuhan.
20:59
And the other thing that's really different here that you
21:04
don't ever see Japanese talk about is the sieve level.
21:08
A lot of these manufacturers say, you know, it can pass
21:11
through a 100 or A1000 level sieve in the way that it is
21:18
marketed. So there's a lot of post milling
21:20
sifting going on, which until very recently we learned also
21:25
happens in Japan for a lot of Japanese manufacturers.
21:28
But there is a level of refinement after milling to
21:32
remove any of these larger, bolder particles, which was
21:36
definitely not on our radar until relatively recently.
21:39
Even for some of the higher quality matcha they do sift
21:44
apparently. Yeah, before they do any level
21:48
of packaging. So we learned something that was
21:50
we kept hearing and if you read online, so there's a, the
21:54
largest matcha company in the world is Chinese.
21:56
They're called Guay Cha Guay Tea from Guay Jou, specifically in a
22:00
town called Tong Ran. We just cut the matcha capital
22:04
of China and we have heard from some people that the total
22:08
production is about the same amount as what all of Japan
22:12
produces in one year, which is about 4000 tons.
22:16
Online, there's some mixed numbers.
22:17
I saw down to like 1000 tons. I've also seen 2000 tons
22:22
produced by Guay Cha. And now that we are here and we
22:25
were able to talk to them, they did indeed confirm 4000.
22:29
Yeah. Crazy number.
22:31
Which is the entire volume that is produced in the country of
22:35
Japan in one year. It's pretty wild.
22:38
Yeah. And you see a lot of these other
22:40
places are also investing heavily in expanding their
22:44
production. I cannot fathom how the
22:47
production will be in the next few years coming out from China.
22:51
Maybe it's good that they are turning back to the domestic
22:54
market because it's it will be a very interesting future that the
22:58
market gets flushed with decent quality matcha coming out of
23:03
China. Like how would that impact a lot
23:05
of the producers in Japan would be a big question mark.
23:08
Yeah, I think what the B to B side would get crushed to be
23:12
honest. Yeah, unless you're like
23:14
specifically and want to source a Japanese product for
23:18
everywhere else where you consumers just don't care and
23:21
they want matcha and the same health benefits.
23:23
Probably honestly lower pesticide residues than what you
23:26
can find in Japan. The Chinese product is way
23:29
cheaper and going to be way better and a way more stable
23:33
supply than what you can find in Japan.
23:35
And I think that Japan at the high end, I think there's going
23:37
to be a big polarization. I think if you're doing
23:40
interesting work like like hand picking interesting cultivars,
23:45
like here we we didn't see any Uji Ankari or Nurino or Asahi,
23:51
like, you know, you don't get any of these luxury cultivars.
23:53
I think those are just going to be worth even more.
23:56
But like the average Yabukita or the average like Oku Midori,
24:00
that's very industrially produced and Kagoshima, you
24:04
know, I don't know. Yeah, it's still very new even
24:07
for the Chinese, this whole wave of matcha balloon.
24:11
It's not that the Chinese do not have expensive cultivar, it's
24:15
just that they don't have expensive cultivar for matcha
24:18
yet. And all of these new places has
24:21
only been producing matcha for like 3 or five years.
24:25
So it's still super new for this entire country to pivot into
24:29
Mata. Like I would say that if this
24:31
market persists and broad in the future that China sees it as a
24:36
stable market to worth invest into.
24:40
I bet there will be more expensive and higher quality
24:43
cultivars emerge that are Chinese in China.
24:47
That are suitable for shaded cultivation.
24:50
Exactly. Right, like when you when you
24:52
shade a plant, there's a lot of biological processes that you're
24:55
disrupting and like, and that's one of the reasons actually why
24:58
matcha from Uji is so good. Are all of these cultivars are
25:02
specifically bred for shaded cultivation, but having really
25:06
high chlorophyll content, really high altheanine and amino acid
25:09
content where you're also not killing the plants.
25:11
And all of these Uji cultivars and Kyoto cultivars are
25:16
specifically bred for those exact climate conditions.
25:20
You know, we say terroir generally doesn't matter because
25:22
matcha is shaded #1 #2 it's heavily fertilized and #3 it's
25:28
processed an insane amount. So like, the terroir doesn't
25:31
impact the flavor that much, but it does impact what plants can
25:36
grow healthy, wear, right? Like it.
25:38
There are even in Uji with climate change, Asahi, which
25:43
came from Uji Zai Rai, suffers from a lot of heat damage
25:48
because the summers are just getting hotter and hotter.
25:51
So when it comes to climate, cultivars do thrive in certain
25:55
environments. The other factor is fertilizer
25:59
absorption rate, Yeah. So a lot of these cultivars in
26:03
China are just not that used to this height amount of fertilizer
26:08
being applied to them. So I've heard that there's some
26:12
local cultivars suffering from, they call it root burning.
26:17
Root burning the fact because too much fertilizer being
26:20
applied to the soil burns the root of the plants.
26:23
Interesting, this is what Suji San was talking about.
26:27
Yeah. The concept of over fertilizing,
26:29
that's a plant. Yeah, so there's, there's
26:32
actually a lot of art to be, you know, explored even just on
26:38
fertilizers. I mean, that is the really,
26:40
really crazy thing, right? These producers best have a
26:44
decade of experience, most of them three to five years of
26:48
experience. This is such a new industry in
26:52
China. It's really hard, which is such
26:55
an exciting opportunity and it's it's primarily for export and
27:00
will be so cool. And actually I think everyone
27:03
listening, this is the future market.
27:05
What could be really fertile soil for a specialty matcha
27:10
movement, specialty multi movement is showing them, yeah,
27:14
you know what, we are willing to pay $200 for a fantastic product
27:20
or $300.00 for a fantastic product.
27:23
It will create the incentive cycles for people to start, you
27:27
know, doing way more research on breeding, way more research on
27:31
or even just cultivar selection, cultivar arbitrage.
27:34
There's, you know, there's probably many dozens and dozens
27:37
of very suitable cultivars for shaded cultivation that already
27:40
exists in China because no one has made the investment yet,
27:44
because this industry is brand new.
27:47
Yeah. And the other great thing about,
27:50
you know, the Masha sin or the Masha landscape in China is that
27:53
there's no cultural baggage. You can literally do anything
27:57
here. And people are so flexible to
27:59
work with you to just show them the profit or a vision, like
28:03
they're willing to work with you to do like, whatever you want
28:06
and like, no one's going to come out and criticize you.
28:09
Yeah. One very interesting quote that
28:12
we from one of the vendors we end up visiting today at Canton
28:16
Fair is Wang Huziako Mall. Anything can be milk.
28:19
They were milling, you know, oolong Honcha black tea, even to
28:25
our we we end up touching some of the, you know, other non
28:29
tensha powder and one of them is Hoji Cha.
28:32
They roast their own Hoji Cha to ah, which had a very unique pale
28:36
color that's different from some other Hoji cha powder that we
28:39
saw in Japan. But yeah, like, no one's going
28:43
to criticize you of doing things, Mark.
28:47
That's you can literally create your new culture.
28:51
Yeah, really nice blank slate market.
28:54
It's the other thing. So there's a lot of foreign
28:56
buyers here. Actually most of this fair
28:58
foreign buyers from what probably every country in the
29:02
world are pretty close to it. Pretty interesting mix of people
29:05
and different cultures. And the number of times I heard
29:08
someone go up to one of these peaks, is this ceremony Neil
29:11
Grade? And they get the same answer
29:13
every time. Yes.
29:15
It's like, oh, this is an easy answer.
29:17
And then that, you know, just becomes other people's reality.
29:20
That's how flexible these definitions are.
29:22
It's completely made-up. It's being made-up here, it's
29:25
being made-up in Japan. It is this weird thing that
29:28
lives in people's minds. Being made-up on time, I think
29:31
we saw like 7 different grading systems.
29:34
Yeah, that was the other weird thing.
29:35
Everyone's using their own grading system.
29:37
We had A's 1A through 7A plus and there was an 8A bag in the
29:43
back. We saw EH and something else.
29:47
GUI Cha. People had a really weird
29:49
grading system that had some acronym I had never seen before.
29:54
Oh, they it's a code. It's a blind code.
29:59
OK, some blind code. Some blind code system and then
30:02
we saw like premium, premium plus, Premium Plus Plus.
30:06
We saw a lot of matcha #1. Matcha #2.
30:10
I mean, weirdly enough, Macho number 2 is typically the higher
30:13
quality one. I asked, can I get a sample of
30:16
macho #1? They're like, you know, this is
30:17
the lower quality one, right? I was like, no.
30:21
And a lot of stuff is labeled for EU export as well.
30:25
Yeah, I mean this fair is for exportation.
30:28
The other thing that's interesting is the MLQ.
30:31
The MLQ's actually range pretty enormously from one container
30:36
containing 10 metric tons all the way down through no MLQ.
30:41
Super easy for work with but for the MLQ constraint orders it's a
30:47
one stop solution. They help you get through the
30:50
customs, they provide all the paperworks, 0 headache and for
30:53
the no to no MLQ ones. Sometimes they are even just in
30:58
the process of applying for a exploitation license, so maybe
31:03
you need more brain power to try to figure out how to get the tea
31:06
into your country. Brain power and high pain
31:09
tolerance first figuring out those export requirements.
31:13
But that's the other interesting scene that we saw in Canton Fair
31:18
is that there's this array of vendors helping import and
31:22
export and logistics. So many any country you're
31:25
interested, Russia, Iran, it's and a lot of them like are very
31:31
heavily specialized. Pretty crazy.
31:35
What is your impression just as a Chinese person, you grew up
31:39
here in Guangzhou until the middle school and then went to
31:42
the States. But like, what's your
31:44
impression? And you're also a char and a tea
31:46
person. You know, we've both been really
31:48
into Kong Fu Cha and Chinese tea and Taiwanese tea and Korean tea
31:53
for such a long time. But this is a Chinese person
31:56
seeing this very, like, new thing kind of developed because,
32:00
you know, we've gotten so much context in Japan and are trying
32:03
to learn this context here in China.
32:06
And like, what's your take? Yeah, I would say that I guess
32:10
the largest difference between culture or tea culture that I've
32:14
experienced in China versus other places is how open minded
32:18
people are not just in terms of real willing to try a new
32:21
things, but also like adopting new practices and culture.
32:25
So there is this concept from Confucius that they were
32:31
basically saying that the so if you lose your manner, you go
32:37
seek from your neighbors. And this has been true for
32:41
generations across different dynasties because like the
32:44
Chinese culture really changed so much in the past few 1000
32:48
years from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty to Song dynasty to Ming
32:52
dynasty to Qing dynasty, every dynasty as it's actually very
32:56
unique culture. And there is this habit of
32:59
destroying the old culture. You know, it's cultural
33:02
revolution is not a new thing here.
33:03
Every dynasty has this tendency of kind of destroying some of
33:08
the old manners or old rituals to prove the legitimacy or re
33:13
establish a authority to kind of seize control and kind of
33:17
establish a new regime that really impact a lot of these
33:20
culture that are being practiced by the literati or through time.
33:24
And every time you know, you lose the weight of let's say
33:29
documenting a certain ritual or lose the documentation of a
33:34
certain genre of art. Frequently some of the Chinese
33:38
literatis or scholars from from the old time they will go seek
33:42
documentation from Korean or even Vietnamese.
33:45
Documenting their own, their, their culture, their culture.
33:49
Basically, and this is has been a thing for many, many years.
33:53
It's like they're reappropriating their own
33:55
culture through some discovery. Yeah, a renaissance, a
33:58
restoration, basically. So, you know, like seeing Masha
34:03
being rejuvenated in China once again.
34:06
I think this is just another cycle of history.
34:08
Yeah. And instead of looking to Korea
34:10
or to looking to Vietnam and looking to Japan and the
34:14
commercial success of Japanese matcha, Yeah, and then learning
34:17
getting more interest about their own former dead tea
34:21
culture, Song dynasty Mota. Or it's really not that.
34:25
There's this concept called the Sinosphere.
34:28
It's all of these cultures who has been received historical
34:32
influence from China that, you know, there's this part of China
34:37
that, you know, getting very well preserved by them, that the
34:41
Chinese are just rediscovering what has been lost through time,
34:46
which I think is a very beautiful thing.
34:48
Yeah. What do you think the Japanese
34:50
would think if they came to Canton Fair and saw this?
34:53
So what would the spectrum of reactions be?
34:56
Oh my God. I don't know.
34:57
I mean, it really depends on the region, right?
35:00
Right. So like, I would not necessarily
35:03
see someone from, let's say, Wuji being, you know, too
35:06
willing to work with people here, but you know, like places
35:10
from Izumo or from Yame or from Kagoshima.
35:15
I mean, we actually met surprisingly a lot of people in
35:18
Japan that has such an open minded mentality in, you know,
35:22
trying and seeing and praising new things.
35:25
Even in Wuji we met, you know this farmer from Baisa Nakamura
35:29
that they were just so eager to let us to try this fantastic new
35:35
Chinese masa that he discovered I.
35:37
Think he would be super interested to like, taste and
35:41
learn about all these Chinese I. Think so.
35:43
Being made into matcha like some of these cultures you had never
35:46
even heard of. You know, having so much
35:50
contacts with Chinese too. Yeah, I think that's really one
35:53
thing that the Japanese can learn from the Chinese is this,
35:56
I would say open mindedness and this optimism.
36:00
Yes, in in innovation instead of instead of instead of framing
36:06
everything in a very pessimistic or armchair or negative way.
36:12
Like a lot of these, you know, legacy brands like for example
36:17
Madoku Koyama and were framing this whole matcha shortage or
36:21
this matcha boom as a bad thing. Yeah, they really took a victim
36:26
stance, which would really surprise me considering there
36:31
had so much demand for their matcha that they couldn't
36:34
produce enough. I have trouble being
36:37
intellectually honest with myself about how they are the
36:41
victim in the situation. Yeah, yet everything is framed
36:45
in like a negative way, like almost like this boom is hurting
36:49
their business. Yeah, which is like the exactly
36:52
the opposite. Yeah, but it's also like very
36:57
regional, like we don't see this kind of complaint coming out
37:01
from like places like Fukuoka or Kagoshima, like they seized the.
37:05
Opportunity In Mauricio's defense, they were a victim and
37:08
they are continued to be victims a lot of fraud because.
37:13
That's so. Popular that there's a lot of
37:16
counterfeit. I'm sorry, I mean this I think
37:17
they have a total complaint and they are a victim of fraud
37:20
that's being committed mostly in China.
37:22
But you know, I agree there's a lot of negative frightening and
37:26
a lot of like not intellectually like honest arguments even on
37:29
Instagram. I hate the armchair Ness.
37:32
There was a macho producer in Wazooka that was commenting and
37:37
trying to correct someone on their real about about Japanese
37:42
matcha. And they're like, yeah, it's
37:43
like champagne, but but it's not like champagne is champagne has
37:48
to be grown in champagne and matcha has to be grown in Japan.
37:51
But we as Japanese did a bad job protecting that.
37:54
But like, what does that have to do with like anything?
37:59
It's not champagne. It's not protected.
38:03
Like you can say that you want it to be protected, but you
38:08
cannot say that matcha is like champagne because it's not like
38:14
like it's there's no argument making.
38:18
You're not making an argument that.
38:19
Well, I would say someone's, you know, vision of what matcha
38:24
should be. Yeah, but you can say that like,
38:27
yeah, OK, like, you know, this all DOP olive oil is protected
38:31
and this is, it's like that, but it's not OK.
38:34
It's not. But what does it have to do with
38:37
anything? It's just not an intellectually
38:39
honest complaint or. Intellectually constructed for
38:43
inspiring. Yeah, just like literally
38:46
someone just being very grumpy on the Internet.
38:49
I guess it's not unique to just Japan either.
38:53
But you know, I find these arguments is dumb, right?
38:56
What we just tasted was delicious, and a lot of it is
38:59
very Japanese inspired. Some of it was so good that
39:03
Japanese companies are trying to import it to Japan.
39:06
And we tasted it. It's in the cup.
39:08
The cup doesn't lie. Yeah.
39:09
I mean, what do you care about? Do you want it to be produced in
39:13
Japan to have be double the price and not taste as good?
39:17
Like, what are you putting first?
39:18
The flavor, the culture? Where are these incentive loops?
39:22
This is my experience. And it's different for everyone.
39:24
We care about the consumer and we care about the product.
39:27
We care about what we can learn about the product.
39:31
Like we are much more interested in broader tea culture and
39:34
contemporary tea culture and inclusive tea culture where
39:39
there is some level of like, yeah, let's try it or like, why
39:43
is it good? How is it?
39:45
Good, right? Like getting bogged down on all
39:47
of these details about, you know, the exact borders of where
39:51
something's grown? Yeah, that, that's great if you
39:54
know you're trying. To.
39:56
Well, yeah, I mean. Exclusive Culture.
39:58
Yeah, or cultural preservation, but we I would say we are more
40:04
interested in new culture creation or like seeing.
40:07
Culture as a living thing. Indeed, it's a living thing.
40:10
And it should be a living thing. Like preserving culture is
40:14
great. Like today, even today's new
40:16
culture will be the old culture for tomorrow.
40:18
And there will be people preserving us, probably.
40:21
Even this Wazuka tea farmer that's complaining there was no
40:24
tensha produced in Wazuka until the 20th century.
40:28
There is no history of that in Wazuka.
40:30
And honestly, like all of these tensha practices that we are
40:34
seeing today in Japan, it's pretty new, like all these
40:37
tensile ovens. Centricultivars, Cultivars.
40:41
Processing Methods. Synthetic Shading.
40:43
Synthetic fertilizers or like composites or fertilizers or the
40:48
idea of fertilizing with different ingredients.
40:52
Or the second harvest. A lot of Japanese matcha.
40:55
Second harvest. No one was doing second harvest
40:57
matcha until like the 80s. Awesome.
41:00
Very new. Actually.
41:01
You could argue that like a very large percentage of Japanese
41:04
matcha is not authentic at all what the tradition is of
41:09
producing matcha in Japan. Yeah, Yeah.
41:12
It's not really. It's not really that older than
41:17
a lot of other matcha producing areas.
41:20
Actually, we don't know a single producer in all of Japan that's
41:23
making matcha and tensha the way that they were 100 years ago,
41:27
which is not something you can say about China.
41:30
There are still a lot of producers and living artisanal
41:34
crafts of Japanese of Chinese tea production and Chinese tea
41:38
producing areas that have not modern so you can actually get a
41:42
truly handmade product in like Wishan for example.
41:46
Predominantly in Junnan, but I agree.
41:49
Yunnan a lot. I mean this is where the actual,
41:52
if you want to taste true heritage crafted tea, you don't
41:57
go to Japan for and look at matcha because there's not a
42:00
single one doing like honzu shaded hand processed zai Rai
42:05
tea. I don't know anyone doing that,
42:07
I don't think. They're not only just that you
42:09
have to steam it in a wood box and you have to fertilize it
42:14
with human manure. Human feces, yeah.
42:17
That would be the most authentic I would say.
42:19
And no one's doing. Everyone switched to cultivars.
42:22
Very few people are doing Hunsie shading and no one is doing hand
42:26
processing right. Literally does not exist in this
42:29
category. It is dead.
42:30
It is a dead art. No one's doing it.
42:32
It's probably totally fine, and honestly, I think the current
42:36
version probably tastes better. Yeah, tastes better.
42:38
So literally doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter.
42:41
And you know, it's also a adaptive culture that I will
42:45
argue that it's just not feasible anymore to do all those
42:49
practices nowaday in Japan, like the labor shortage and all of
42:52
these things. That's just making all these old
42:55
practices not reliable. Like if you were to restore this
42:59
old culture ever in Japan, it will just be a big show.
43:04
Like it will not be part of a sustainable culture anymore.
43:08
And you could argue the most authentic matcha comes from a
43:11
living culture. And that living culture adapts,
43:14
it changes, it improves, it embraces innovation, which it
43:18
has done. You know, I think honestly,
43:21
Japanese tea culture has done such a good job at culturally
43:24
appropriating itself and foiling in on itself, selling the the
43:30
old traditional ways, the old traditions, you know, all of
43:34
these practices of the past. But really it is one continuous
43:38
evolution and living culture constantly there's looking
43:42
backwards of just folding this history in on itself to sell
43:46
what is indeed a very modern product.
43:48
But it is the most most authentic version of the thing
43:51
when you can taste the 10th generation or 16 generations of
43:55
blending scale or farming where they have changed and are not
43:59
only doing methods that are honestly not commercially
44:03
viable. Or not good.
44:05
Or a lot of them probably just didn't taste any good.
44:08
Yeah, they're like one very inspiring thing that I keep
44:12
hearing. I first heard it from a United
44:14
Tea farmer, one of the actually oldest family in you that has
44:19
been continuously making poor tea.
44:21
And one Korean farmer and actually a handful handful of
44:25
Japanese farmer, is that my tea this year is better than my tea
44:29
last year, most likely because I'm more experienced too.
44:32
I'm making better teas and hopefully I'm making better teas
44:35
than my ancestors or my previous generations because we all learn
44:40
from each other because we keep learn from our past experience.
44:45
Percent. And I think Chinese matcha and
44:48
its current environment is only going to get better and better
44:51
and better. And the speed of change and the
44:54
open mindedness of new technologies is much more fluid
45:00
here in China. And I think it's very fertile
45:03
soil for a specialty matcha movement.
45:05
And it's just interesting. What's going on here is
45:09
interesting. And if you find it like to be
45:12
threatening to what's going on in Japan, they should innovate
45:17
like, you know, they should change.
45:18
Like I don't think this is definitely not a 0 sum game that
45:22
is going on. But if China can produce
45:24
something that is as fewer pesticides, more delicious and
45:29
more transparent and more innovative for, you know,
45:32
whether or not it's breeding on the cultivar side or different
45:36
fertilizer recipes or different types of just tension processing
45:40
will lead to a much more rich and dynamic future.
45:43
That's the future I want to live in.
45:44
Not, you know, what some 400 year old institution that's
45:48
barely changed in the generation thinks is good.
45:50
But that's stale. That's not what's fresh.
45:52
So, you know, all of these things will cohabitate.
45:55
But very exciting, very nice to have this new member enter the
46:00
party. Looking forward to it.
46:02
Yeah. Nice to see this kind of trend
46:05
being blossoming in other areas too.
46:07
I want to see this happening in Thailand.
46:09
I want to see this happening in Korea.
46:11
I want to see this happening in India in all of the tea
46:14
producing regions. Matcha cultivation can also be a
46:17
global movement too, not just consumption. 100% So let us know
46:21
what do you think, What are your opinions about Chinese Matcha?
46:24
Have you had a good one? Have you had an experience that
46:28
really reset your expectations? So do let us know and if you
46:33
enjoyed this, please consider sharing with the friend and
46:35
we'll see you on the next one. See you in the future.
46:37
Take care.