The Chinese, whom usually are so unsqueamish to talk about money, suddenly shun the subject stiff with horror imagining the losses caused by everything Covid-19 virus has brought along. Rightly so.
As the 6th week of confusing existence with Covid-19 kicks off with all its peculiar side-effects including being housebound and severely restricted socially, things are as stands: at least some locations in Zhejiang and Sichuan have gone ahead with their early harvests. How they did it among total panic of people gathering together – I don’t know. And I have decided: I don’t want to know. Somebody somewhere made some choices on how to complete the harvest, and as far as I am concerned, not my business to know how it was pulled off.
So, if it happens to be your fancy, most green teas should be made available to the wider population almost on schedule. The local officials of Guanyuan, Sichuan were not pleased when people wanted to gather together to have a taste of the new tea. Harvesting tea obviously ok, gathering together in large numbers to gulp it down without face masks – not ok. But wait – doesn’t harvesting require a bunch of people from a certain radius grouping together…? Don’t ask me how I made my buck, and we can still be friends.
Yunnan has also started picking the first flush as we speak. It was never in doubt that Yunnan wouldn’t be able to deliver. Owing to the topography, the tea mountains (read: people living in remote places, far and wide apart) were always less likely to be affected. How they will get the produce down the mountains and available to everyone we wait and see. Traffic within a certain radius is considered doable, but logistics and moving goods beyond any radius has been to a halt for weeks. Trafficking goods seems to only now be picking up, and even so, gradually.
Hence, how does tea get to the shops is one more question perhaps it is best one doesn’t know the answer to, lest one gets someone into trouble in these troublesome times. Obviously, all the tea fair and exhibition arrangers nationwide are also holding their breaths to see, how and when restrictions are eased, or are they. And if the exhibitions and tastings are to go ahead – how are they to be arranged? How does one sample tea with a face mask on?
Back to base, the beloved Fujian province. Different regions are, as could be guessed, affected to a different degree and in different ways. Wuyi region for example is a very popular tourist destination, which attracts many a holiday maker with its unusual scenery and -of course- tea. While Wuyi does enjoy a relatively long period of visitors coming and going, the peak season nationwide is without a shadow of doubt, the days following Lunar New Year. That’s when the guesthouses are full, and that is when the tea shops engaging in business on the first floor of all the guesthouses sell tea.
But that was not to be this year. The local authorities forbade very quickly guesthouses having any visitors and, like everywhere else, people were expected to stay at home. So, while Wuyi tea dealers can still merrily go ahead and sell their goods online, no new customers will be made among the throngs usually visiting. How much loss in revenue this has created, we must wait and see. While Chinese generally are quite open to discussing money, this episode has filled many with such stifling horror at their possible losses, it has been too painful to venture too deep into monetary issues, so… that has become another set of questions to be steered clear of. Must say though, I am slightly envious of all those Wuyi peeps, just sat there slowly drinking away their expensive stock day after day. Why, oh why was I not quarantined there?!
A word on online purchasing/selling in China for the uninitiated: online shopping in China is as advanced as it gets. Online shopping should be on anybody’s list of blessings why living in China is great. It is fast, efficient, convenient, relatively priced and always available. You name it, they sell it. And within few days it is at your house.
During the compulsory house quarantine of these past weeks has and hasn’t been an exception. Deliveries haven’t been as punctual and many goods were not available due their points of origins. But even so, many a produce has been available. And it seems to be: online customers are what has kept many tea merchants a float these past weeks. They would pop down to their shops, send off the orders and go back home – all the while having met the local municipal regulations concerning the virus.
As a rule of thumb: most tea merchants are run off their feet selling tea twice a year. Leading up to Mid-Autumn Festival and leading up to Lunar New Year. These two occasions are traditionally used to gift people with tea. So, as far as immediate effects go, tea merchants have been spared the worst initial financial impact brought on by the epidemic. Yet having said that, they are definitely crossing their fingers now – if things don’t shift soon – their livelihoods are very much on the line with first flush of Fujian looming in the horizon… Merchants and growers alike; when the harvest season is upon us, so many growers rely on hired hands to finish the picking and most of the manual labourers would not be local to that particular area, so they are biting their finger nails to see are all the outsiders allowed in or not. So many questions only time can help us out with!
Well worth a read: https://worldteanews.com/editors-choice/coronavirus-impact-on-chinas-tea-harvest