Guanxi Master

As I sat backstage discussing tea with two Chinese opera singers at the television studio yesterday, I thought about tea and its unique impact on Chinese culture and guanxi…

This is the season that all Chinese anticipate with rapture. The year’s best tea, in its “new” and “white” varieties, is coming out in the next few weeks, and the expectation has been a nagging thought in the minds of tea fanatics all over China. We have been looking forward to this moment since last year’s crop ran out in October, and cannot wait for the arrival of a new harvest of China’s finest beverage.

The reason for the excitement is because the best tea leaves are those harvested from the earliest spring growth. They must be picked by hand when only a day old, and then processed immediately the same day. Each tea plant will only give about five pickings of these delicate leaves, yet they yield the freshest and most fragrant tea known to man.

The markets won’t have this new tea until late May, or even not at all, as they continue to sell the last year’s less-fragrant leftovers. People who really love tea but don’t have the right connections can do little about it, however, because money cannot buy this rare treasure.

The demand for the first tea is so intense, for both its taste and social reasons, that even after the fifth picking, leaves are often sold as “white” and “new” despite being about as tender as a shredded plastic bag. This “liar’s tea” is still pulled out with much fanfare for guests, but it has as much quality as the “Jasmine tea,” its bitter flavor disguised by the essence of the Persian flowers.

For the Chinese to love tea with such reverence for the unadorned leaf of camellia sinesis, reveals much to be admired about the Chinese character. A simple fragrance holds an entire people with the same kind of undeniable attraction that only grips drug addicts in the West. Yet tea has no negative side effects, killing cancer and detoxifying the body, and provides a refreshingly mild caffeine stimulant. Tea culture shows all that is good about China, and illustrates the delight that these people have in the simple pleasures of life: holding a warm piece of ceramic; blowing away the sweet froth of the first pour; drinking in the fragrant steam of the “budding spring”.

The distribution of tea in China is yet another wonderful example of the process of guanxi, showing that there is a “connective overlay” over the world of business and distribution that has nothing to do with the regular system. If you wonder why the tea you buy from expensive outlets like “Ten Fu” and “China Tea” doesn’t taste as good as that sipped in financier’s offices and by old men in the humble back rooms of the local “Culture Hall”, this information may be enlightening.

You know how good a person’s guanxi is by the quality of their tea. Tea is the “green gold” of Chinese society, a status symbol that increases in quality with one’s position of esteem in society. You can measure how highly a person estimates the value of your friendship in the game of guanxi by the quality of the tea they give you. Because of this, tea plantations only start releasing their tea to merchants after they fill the orders from leaders, business people, and academics. The tea then passes, from hand to hand, to those in the highest positions of authority in the social circle. If someone gives you good tea, you give it to someone higher than you to affirm your guanxi. You only keep the tea that you think would not “fit the high position” of someone else higher than your own class. Tea, then, is a litmus test for the strength and esteem of a relationship.

I’ve personally experienced this principle with people who thought I would be able to offer them some kind of financial or relational advantage. One businessman gave me a rare Taiwanese tea that couldn’t be bought in China. He made a big deal about it, and I did sincerely enjoy the tea. This tea, however, was cut off when I didn’t “follow through” on my presumed “side of the bargain”, which happened to be opening up some imagined “back door” for his son to attend school in the US (something I neither promised nor was able to do). The gentleman made a point of talking about the fact that “the rare tea I gave you can’t be found by anyone else, and even I can’t get you any more.”

What’s left for those of us tea addicts without these connections is the “lawn mower” tea sold at markets across the nation. Expats in China can still thumb their noses at the West on one point, however, because this tea is still better than that sold to “tea bag” companies. A tea plantation owner told me that this is the tea harvested during the “bitter months” of June through August, before the plants get pruned back. “That’s the stuff with pieces of twigs, little bugs, and dirt, which is harvested mechanically”.

My love for tea is one of the many joys of living in China. I find that a good cup of tea is a philosophical experience, clearing the head and leading to good conversations (such as the one yesterday that led to this article). Learning the tea culture and its infinite applications to the Chinese society is one of the unique challenges that face a foreigner in this context. Yet for all the differences between East and West, there is one striking similarity – we all love tea!

Now I know I’m a true addict…