1) Where is Da Gu Yun 

    After more than two and half hours of rocking ride (worse than on a tiny boat in the middle of a stormy ocean) from She city (She is forty minutes by Car from Huang Shan Tunxi airport), we arrived Da Gu Yuan bus stop.  The car climbed about two hours on the mountain and another half hours of ride into the valley.

3)     Meet the First Native Carving artist from Da Gu Mountain

  Cross from the bus station we met artist Ke Cong who lives here with his wife and son. He grew up on the mountain (we will visit his home later) and was the first one went to She city to learn to carve inkstones when he was fifteen years old. He moved back to the Da Gu Yun valley because he likes the quiet environment and to be close to the stone mines. We collected two kinds of inkstones from him which we have never seen on the market before. One of them is already totally out of supply. Because it has no more at the stone mine. 

  4) When more carvers were needed, Ke Cong introduced Ke, Tianshen who died in a bus accident on the way out of the mountain. Here is a picture of Tianshen's mother and niece. Tianshen's house was right in front of Ke, Guihai's house in the middle of the Da Gu Yun village.

  2) The Misty Mountain Produces one of the Best Green Tea, Kiwi Fruit, Mushrooms, and Chinese Herb Medicine

    Da Gu Yun -----  Identified as one of the three genuine Huangshan Maofeng tea estate in China by the government, the famous Maofeng tea did not change much of the people's life there. Any one interested in exploring the beauty and the rich resources please write to us. We will be more than happy to help you set your foot on this soil and guide you through all the necessary trade steps to bring the best green tea, kiwi fruit, wild mushrooms, inkstone etc. to the rest of the world!  , it's understandable there is inkstones among these mountains too. So far there are nine active inkstone mines among these mountains.

  5)  These Village Steps Leads to Our Famous Ke, Guihai's Home

   Ke, Guihai was introduced to Sulu Chen by Tianshen. He was fortunate enough to have survived a bad injury from the bus accident. After his mother passed away last year, Guihai's house has been on a lock.

  6) In the Spring, this is   the Da Gu Mountain Tea Market

   There are only some local vegetable and grocery shops open on the main street of the village in the summer. I was told, during the spring tea picking time, the main street is alive and crowded. Not just all the tea growers from the maintains here, but also tea growers from other mountain areas bring their tea to sell here. These teas were cheaper than the Da Gu Mountain tea, as you can see later, the bushes from lower mountains were much bigger and produced much more. But the teas are not as good.

  7) Fang, Jianchen is getting Ready to Build his Summer Retreat Deep into the mountain and Along this River

  Along this river by the end of the village, deep into the mountain, there are a few inkstone mines. Our most prominent inkstone carving artist --- Fang, Jianchen often comes to the mountain with his students to look for raw inkstones. He fell in love with the tranquillity and beauty of the river, the mountain, and the stones, he is planing to build a summer house deep in the mountain and along the river as his summer studio. 

8) Emperor Zhu, Yuanzhang Named Da Gu Yun from Here

  After lunch, we were able to get on a bus and take about a forty five minutes drive out of the valley and around the mountain. The bus driver dropped us off on the back of the Da Gu Yun village. We can see from this point some of the houses in the valley. In Reality the mountain is much steeper and the houses are very far away. It was at this point that the name of Da Gu Yun was given by the emperor --- Zhu, Yuanzhang.

  9) Another two Hours of Hiking to get to the Tea Estate

  From where the bus dropped us  we climbed among the tea and corn field for another two hours, finally we arrived at the house (the white house on the left border of the picture)  where we are going to stay for the night. Eventhough we are already at about 1700 meters above sea level, there are other houses that are still on the higher mountains. This is probably the biggest house on the mountain. The host is working as an electrician in She city. Most of the other houses are still made of mud and grass,  just like twenty years ago when I first visited the village.

  10) The Old School is still the same Compare to Twenty Years Ago, but Fewer Students

  Not far away from the house where we are staying is the village school. My oldest sister who came here thirty five years ago to get re-education from the peasants during the cultural revolution started and taught in this school for twelve years!  When she was sent to the mountains to collect bushes for cooking stove, she cut some of the valuable wild tea bushes. When she was sent to pick tea, for  a whole day she was only able to collect three pounds of fresh tea leaves because she is very near sighted. The kind villagers decided to open up a school and have her teach the kids live around the mountains. The school grew from a one room  K - 5th grade and one teacher class to three teachers. In 1977, my sister moved back to She city. Now the enrollment of the school dropped dramatically and it's still the old and dark classroom inside this old mud house. The play area outside the school is now piled with building material from the neighboring house. 

11) High Mountain Tea Bushes are Very Small, but very Tender and Full of Fragrance, Da Gu Yun Tea is Naturally Organic

  From this picture, you can see the small tea bushes. There are 14 bushes in this picture. This picture was taken in July at the time the bushes are the most vigorously grown. While in the spring when teas are picked most of the branches are not yet fully grown yet.  On such high mountains, to produce the best Maofeng tea, the tea bushes are being cut to the ground each year after the teas are picked. The mountains here comes with it's very rich organic fertile humus soil. The only fertilizer they use to grow tea here is the soy been mass after the oil is squeezed for cooking. 

   12) Da Gu Yun Tea can only be Grown in Patches Between Wild Trees and Bamboo Forests

    In Da Gu Yun tea cannot be massively grown, as you can see the tea bushes are grown in small patches among bamboo forests and wild mountains. First at the steepest area, the natural nutrients are not well contained, so  it's not able to grow good bushes. Second everything has to be operated by hand. Third the transportation from the deep mountain also add to the cost of getting the tea to the market. After the revolution, China is turning all the mountains to individual families. No agency help   the small growers to market their top quality tea. They also can not compete with the industrialized tea plant that are situated on flat or much easier to manage tea growing areas. 

13) Compare to Lower Mountains, Da Gu Yun Tea Comes with a lot of Hard Work, but Super Quality

  While above is a typical tea bush on a modern low elevation tea farm, just one bush can pick more than ten times the fresh leaves compare to the little bushes on the mountain of Da Gu Yun. Such big bush can only be grown under  high temperature at low elevation area.  But a super-premium tea requires But a super premium tea need   soil that's rich in humus and minerals, wet and mild climate in high elevation mountains.  Most of the Da Gu Yun teas are grown 1400 meters above sea level. Our Mao Feng tea come from the mountain that's 1600 meters above sea level. The high elevation produced the low and mild temperature for the best green tea. Through out the year the Da Gu mountains are covered by about two hundred fogy days. The rain fall on the mountain is between 2000 and 3000 millimeters. Most of the days when the sun rises through the fog, it's already close to noon time.  The wet soil on these misty mountains consisted of   yellowish natural humus that are rich in minerals and water.

  14) Why is Special Choice Huang Shan Mao Feng so Rare

  For  special choice Mao Feng tea, is the first pick before the spring rain and is picked from the very top consist of the un-blossomed leave buds that looked like the little birds tong plus at most one open leave. As you can imaging, how much bushes need to be picked for one pound of Maofeng tea. This is why the tea is so rare. Last year(2000), we got our tea at the end of March, by June, we already sold out all of our inventory. After the Mao Feng tea is picked, the rest of the tea leaves are made into Ying Gou tea.  As we traveled around China, Hongkong, Singapore, and other south east Asia countries, most of  the Huangshan Mao Feng tea that are sold are not from Da Gu Yun, they are from a region under the foot of Huangshan. The tea bushes of these Mao Feng tea is transplanted from Fu Jian province. They look whitish with white hairs on the leaves. While the genuine high mountain Da Gu Yun Huang Shan Mao Feng is yellowish with hairs on the leaves. The taste is almost the same as Zhe Jiang province's   Long Jing tea, this is because  there is a lot of Long Jing tea is made from Anhui mountain tea, it's just the making process is different. Most of the teas planted in Hui Zhou is sold as fresh leaves to Zhe Jian province. My Guess is the art of processing and marketing the tea in Hui Zhou is not as good as Zhe Jian province.

   15) How can High Mountain Tea Estates Compete with Modern Tea Growing Plants?

  This is a typical modern tea farm. Where most of the interrogation and fertilizing can be done by machine. Here tea bushes are grown like our lawn hedges. Are we going to be forced to drink these teas ultimately? Can a superb high mountain tea estate like Da Gu Yun survive in such an efficient society? We really have serious doubt about this.  Even though Da Gu Yun tea won many many top three prizes in China's tea taste conferences each year. With such low production efficiency, most of the importers and tea merchants opt to buy the cheaper tea from other areas. This is why this year most of the growers cut their bushes to the ground after they picked the spring tea. Because they do not know where to market their tea. On the mountains we only see few bushes left for the fall pick when we visited in July. 

   16) While Teas need to be Grown on High Mountains, Best Inkstone are Found in the Deep Valley where Mineral Water is Abound

   After rested for a while, dabbed along the very narrow and often very steep mountain trails, we crossed over three mountain ridges and descended deep into the valley. Where we visited two old inkstone mines and also Ke, Cong's home. One of the mine is behind his house. It was found when they were digging into the mountain to get the platform for building the house. His house is the one at the deepest valley.   Anyone who plan to visit the mountains should walk on the trails very carefully. My niece once rolled down the hill and fortunately saved by a bush studs when she was a little girl.

  17) Only Nine Inkstone Minds Among the mountains are found, 0.1 % Among the Rocks are Slates that can be used as inkstone

    As you can see among these huge rocks, only a layer with the very dark colored slate by his knee, inkstones can be found. After this layer is mined, the slate can be exposed layer by layer with a chisel. Only very little can be used to make inkstones after the cracked and rough pieces are discarded. From  a pile of at least one cubic meters of slates exploited from the inkstone layer, we found two pieces that we brought to She county to let Jianchen made them into inkstones. By the mine there were some piled up slates that were mined from the underground where Ke, Cong is standing. The un-usable rocks are used to make retaining walls for the tea growing patches. The discarded small pieces from the inkstone layer is grounded to even small pieces. They are used to make the building cinder blocks.

   18) A very Dark, Jade Belt, with silver Star inkstones were Found

  Also spring water were running among the rocks. The inkstone quality is just like the Jiangxi Dragon's tail jade belt, but with silver stars or patches and they are much darker.

              Sold

  19) A Water Mine where a very Rare and one of the most Fine Grain Inkstones were Found

  This mine is about 50 meters on top of Ke, Cong's house. As you can see, spring water flows all year round among the rocks.  Though so close to the other mine, the stone character is totally different.  From under the ground, he found some very rare inkstone. On top of the each stone, it has a yellow layer that's almost transparent. After oil is put on, it looks just like jade. I never seen this on Hui Chou market. Unfortunately, only very small amount of pieces were found. Currently Ke, Cong still have a few pieces in stock that are not carved.