The Tea Journal

The mist on Tà Xùa doesn’t lift so much as step aside. We began to climb at six — me, chị Dua, and her mother, who is small and quick and does not wait for anyone. By the time the sun found us, we were already up among the trees, and the whole world below had turned to white.

You do not bend to pick tea here. You climb it. The trees are older than the village — a hundred years, three hundred, nobody counts past “old.” A basket hangs from a branch, and the buds come one at a time, each one furred with silver down, cold to the touch.

In the afternoons the leaves withered on bamboo trays by the kitchen fire, and there was nothing to do but drink tea and listen. Which trees give more this year. Whose daughter is studying in Hà Nội now. The rain that came late, and what it did to the buds. The tea, when it is finished, tastes like all of it — you just have to know it’s there.

“You do not bend to pick this tea. You climb it.”Không ai cúi xuống hái thứ trà này — phải trèo lên cây.

On the third morning the mist held longer than usual, and chị Dua said that was the sign to stop — when the cloud does not lift by noon, the trees are asking to rest. So we rested too. Three mornings, one basket per tree, and a lot small enough to carry down in our own hands.

Back in Toronto, the same tea is on our table. When you drink it, the honey comes first, then a coolness like alpine air, then a sweetness that stays after the cup is empty. It is the closest I can bring you to standing on that ridge at six in the morning — and it is the reason this journal exists.

Một mẻ trà nhỏ, mang cả một ngọn núi về nhà.