Chen Mei is of the Dai tribe in Yunnan Province and has been honing her skills in picking and producing ancient tea tree teas since a young age. During the Cultural Revolution, the government had ordered all the ancient tea trees in Yunnan be cut so to cut the relationship to the ancient culture. Her grandfather who was managing the ancient tea garden at the time, risked his life by forbidding anyone in the village from cutting these beautiful ancient trees. He told them he would die fighting if he had to in order to protect these sacred trees. Now her grandfather’s ancient tea tree plantation is regarded as having the most unique tea tree forest on the mountain as it was completely in tact throughout the Cultural Revolution.
Chen Mei leads a simple life and is married to her husband who is from the Yi tribe of Yunnan who also shares her life of working on this beautiful ancient tea tree garden. Chen Mei wakes up at 5am every day to get her children ready for school and then begins right away on caring for the tea garden.
Chen Mei and her husband favorite teas are her Ancient Moonlight White, Moonlight Buds and her Ancient Yang Ta Puers. Before her time their village tradition was that the men would be responsible for the picking and grooming of the tea trees and the women managed the tea gardens and processing.
She says she is working on her teas and tea trees 365 days per year. It is her love and her livelihood, carrying on an ancient family tradition of tea artisans that would give anything to protect their sacred tea garden to pass it on to the next generation. Now you can try any of Chen Mei’s family ancient tea tree teas:
Her teas: