2026 Zhangjiawan Mao Cha

Sometime around the end of the Qing dynasty 100 years ago, Zhangjiawan’s most coveted tea groves were burned to the ground. Though scarred and coppiced, the ancient trees with deep roots pushed out new boughs, creating what is now known as the 火烧茶园 Fire Garden. Wild tasting, enduring, supremely soft. Mossy, bready, milky, pliable mouthfeel. An elegant example of greater Yiwu area ancient tree raw pu'er: throughout the session the tea consistently stays mellow and soft, yet not collapsed; the structure stays intact, playfully buoyant, pliable and responsive to intensity of brewing technique. For many of us, Zhangjiawan has earned its way into the Yunnan Collection as a must-have annual recurrence. #gallery-8 { margin: auto; } #gallery-8 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-8 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-8 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */ 张家湾 Zhāngjiāwān is a small Mengla County village in Xishuangbanna, about an hour’s drive north of Yiwu, just above Bohetang and Yishanmo. At 1400 meters, it sits an hour’s walk from the Chinese–Lao border on brick-red soil supporting tea gardens of old-growth trees 3–5 meters tall. With only 50 households, the village is known as an entrance to the 易武原始森林 Yiwu primeval forest, ringed by state-owned wilderness. Zhangjiawan gained fame before the Sino-Japanese War as the first stop for tea-horse road caravans bound for Vietnam from the Six Great Tea Mountains. Just 3 miles from the Laos border, it marks the top of this map. Zhangjiawan's about 3 miles from the Laos border and is represented at the top of this map The Story Retold Before meeting the Hé family’s factory manager, Long Fa, the Fire Garden’s past remained a mystery. Locals say that over a century ago, rival tea merchants clashed as caravans paused in the village. In jealousy and spite, one set fire to the ancient groves. The strongest roots survived, and the trees slowly regrew, their many slender boughs now rising from single massive bases. Long Fa tells the story in the Fire Garden After a grueling hour-long car ride up a dusty mountain road that felt more like a boulderfield on our skeletons, we spilled out of Long Fa's old truck, battered. A mountainside thicket of ancient tea trees with spindly branches seemingly sprouting out of the ground, this wasn't the typical feel of an ancient arbor. After the fire razed the trees down to the ground, the regrowth sprouted from a singular base, yet with many sprouts they grew taller and thicker as separate boughs emerging from this base, creating an entirely different growth pattern. The amazing thing was that many of the bases from which these slender boughs emerged, in terms of girth their trunk bases are exceptionally large. As carbon dating would be out of the question for many ancient tea trees, measuring the trunk diameter has become another metric of gauging a tree's age. And while we didn't bring a measuring string to the Fire Garden, the massive width of these trunk bases begs the question, just how old are these wily old trees that continue to thrive against the odds all these years? We can only listen to the tea for more answers.