100th Episode 🎊 : No Easy Answers

Ryan · 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan. This is Zongjun Li who also goes by Sam. Hello, hello. And we are the Co founders of Sanko Matcha Products. Yeah, we'll launch this podcast to discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts, And this episode marks our 100th episode there.

Zongjun · 0:30

We go, we got 1 sound effects. Yeah, wow. Yeah. So I went back and listened to our first recording recently, conditions for a specialty much preference acquisition, but it aged pretty well. So it's been quite the journey so far.

Ryan · 0:45

It has just been a fantastic excuse both to document our own learning journey and kind of as a forcing function for us to make sure we have something interesting to talk about every week. It's if you're not accountable to, you know, close you down. Exactly what I've been saying for I guess 100 times. You have discussed our learning journey and much our share startup stories and interview experts. It's just also been a fantastic excuse to interview people that have much more.

Zongjun · 1:15

Knowledge. That's a that's a really, really interesting. I would say kind of disarm a lot of people and let them share a lot of honest opinions. Yeah, and it's allowed us to fill our own curiosity gaps. The more we learn, the more questions we have.

Ryan · 1:33

And a lot of that knowledge is locked inside someone's head for some reason or another. And I think especially the gift of a podcast format is one that ideas are allowed to breathe a little easier. It's a little more conversational, like it's less pressure to get something right, but also people start to open up.

Zongjun · 1:55

A lot of people in the Japanese tea community and in the matcha community tend to be a little more reserved and less willing to be critical. But typically after about 20 minutes in a podcast format format, people really start to open up. Yeah, take some time, and everyone has sort of their own way of opening up.

Ryan · 2:12

But it's interesting because, you know, if it's buried in minute 40 in a podcast episode, the likelihood of someone taking it out of context is much less likely than, you know, writing an article and someone you know being critical of Chanoyu or criticizing some part of the Japanese.

Zongjun · 2:31

The ecosystem to this podcast format has been oddly I don't want to call it successful, but effective at getting people to express more controversial opinions. Yeah. Like we're trying to really offer kind of like a safe space for people to share their honest opinion. And you know, we, we, we kind of trying to do that for ourselves, too.

Ryan · 2:54

Yeah. And it's not so black and white. I mean, there's some positions that we take that we're not totally confident are going to age well. And frequently it's, you know, Ryan and I both take a slightly different position and we're trying to either debate or argue or convinced each other. But eventually we reach to a common ground. And I think that's pretty typical scenario how a lot of episodes unfold.

Zongjun · 3:20

And that's the. Beauty of that form. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It is. I mean, it is hard capturing nuance in the 32nd reel. Like I love short form content. I think the people who do it well are just incredibly talented.

Ryan · 3:33

But like, a lot of these concepts are like very nuanced and like to be examined from multiple sites, which also makes this podcast very hard to clip. But today, for the 100th episode, we wanted to look back and have a conversation between us about what we feel like we've gotten wrong or what are areas that we think might not age well or.

Ryan · 3:54

How has our opinion? Changed so if you would have talked to me 10 years ago before I was into matcha in in the industry the way I am now I I was really into Japanese tea ceremony I was an Omotesenke student and I was really into the concept of tea as a product. If you would have talked to me 10 years ago, I would have told you told you that Japanese tea is incredibly industrial on mass if you compare it to other types of tea. That was a judgements that I had that I think I got wrong the deeper and deeper I go.

Zongjun · 4:26

I agree to the statement sort of still, you don't see the levels of artisanal craft and production the way you see in Taiwan for oolong or in Pu'er in mainland China and other types of tea where it's actually truly being hand processed.

Ryan · 4:44

And in Japan, the vast majority of the tea is not handpicked. It's all using machine harvesters. It's actually pretty technologically advanced. A lot of the major farms are sending soil samples off to lab. Amino acid measuring content in the leaves.

Zongjun · 4:59

But actually I think it's the future of farming the deeper we go. I actually have grown to appreciate this very science first approach to Japanese tea. It is one of my former opinions that doesn't age well. Well, it's really a system that has evolved to adapt what Japan is truly right, the lack of Labor force, the terrain that they need to overcome to do a consistent and sustainable farming for themselves. And I think that being so critical about it from a Chinese or Taiwanese point of view, I think eventually these countries are going to face this reality sometime in the future, too. Yeah, just the entire Asia is

Ryan · 5:42

declining in population. Actually, very recently I was listening to an old interview with Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore and their first Prime Minister, and he was talking about Japanese immigration situation.

Zongjun · 5:56

And if you talk to anyone who's tried to immigrate to Japan, it is just incredibly difficult to stay there. That country like basically tries to reject foreigners in every way it can, less so for students, but it's very difficult to actually go and try to live in Japan.

Ryan · 6:11

And he was saying demographics is destiny basically, and that I think at the time of the recording there were like two or three productive adults for every non productive old citizen. And it was projected and he, I think this interview was done in like the 1970s and it was projected by the year 2050, there'd be 1.2 productive working adults for every one person, which is really demographically imbalanced and is a sign of a dying country, literally. And that he was actually praising the United States for its immigration policy.

Zongjun · 6:43

I don't think we can do that anymore. Saying that having levels of immigration to support the country and it makes sense within the context of a country like Singapore, which has embraced immigration to the extreme. It's actually a wonderful case study of a bunch of different ethnic groups living together in harmony among Chinese, Malays and Indians primarily.

Ryan · 7:05

So I think Japan's has to have this level of extreme automation, and that's the future. There's an interesting tension there because also that means the death of these artisanal crafts. If you you know, watch any of Marc Alexandre's content, a very typical framing is preventing the extinction, the endangerment of these very old crafts where there is indeed a lot of knowledge. Or a quote to protect or preserve heritage. So there's an interesting tension you can criticize that it is becoming so industrial so fast and economically speaking from like a macroeconomic lens that has to if it's not going to embrace immigration and if it's

Zongjun · 7:55

a dying country demographically speaking. But with that, death is also a death and culture. So it's, you know, our opinions on the levels of industrialization. There is such a natural tension there that we've explored on the podcast.

Ryan · 8:11

And I think sometimes we take one side being lovers of a hand produced product, artisanally crafted tea, really old school knowledge to produce interesting things, and the preservation of genetic diversity like zairai and the use of honzu shading with rice straw instead of synthetic canopies.

Zongjun · 8:32

And but it's also not sustainable. You can't love 1 and be critical of the other at the same in the same breath if you really care about the system as a whole. It's true, It's true, but also like, it also comes down to like, you know our discussion topic about authenticity, right?

Zongjun · 8:50

It's about the intention of doing something if the intention of doing something is not trying to restart. Dying culture is a pretty interesting take. Dying culture is a pretty interesting observation, But if you view it from a kind of authenticity lens, culture is dying because it doesn't necessarily have the soil to thrive and survive anymore. And, and in in order to, to, to kind of force it to exist, you have to kind of put it in, into a museum, into a glass shelf. But, but it's really not sustainable because the environment has changed.

Zongjun · 9:31

And the new culture right now, the new status quo is a fully automated, be heavily industrialized tea production environment that we are seeing in Japan. This is the new culture. This is the new phenomenon that you know that that's that's the only I will say maybe not only, but the very few sustainable way that the Japanese can still to produce tea right now and maybe in the future too.

Zongjun · 10:00

So. We find ourselves on both sides of these arguments. Actually, it's and. And it's, it's very difficult because on one hand, you can really advocate and demand like culture or tradition being preserved. On the other hand, we are not doing it. It's the farmer on the ground that's actually need to overcome all these difficulties.

Ryan · 10:23

And you cannot just like tell them what to do. Like they have to survive. They're human beings too. And they have a business to run. Yep, and the legacy to carry on. It's complicated, it is complicated. And I think that, you know, for someone to make the claim or advocation that has some gravity or weight into it is that they, they, they also participate, right?

Zongjun · 10:46

Like, for example, like Marc from Ooika or even like Nekohama, who's been, you know, going door to door to farmers in Japan to, to, to, to help them revive their wages for doing agriculture. I think, you know, but but it's hard, right? It's very difficult seeing them and doing all these kind of things and overcoming all these societal changes almost feels like it they're, you know, heading towards a inevitable failure, which is very.

Ryan · 11:14

Well, really, in what way do you mean inevitable failure? Well, there will be fewer and fewer farmers. You mean as a whole, a system as a whole? A system as a whole. Right farmers aging out. They, they're working with farmers that are literally like not going to be with us for the next maybe a decade or two and there will be no one taking over or very unlikely.

Zongjun · 11:38

So it's, it's there's a lot of respect to, you know, all these people, you know, making their endeavor, but at the same time, you know, being so critical about the current system, like the current like industrial system that people are doing in Japan, trying to produce more tea and trying to maintain business. I think there's a really a fussy line out there, like how it's hard to be critical after learning so much context. Yeah.

Ryan · 12:08

And going back to the but and also their policies don't make it very easy. We've talked to probably four or five very serious people who are non Japanese that wanted to do farming in Japan. That too. That's. Really hard.

Zongjun · 12:25

Don't want your help? Apparently even if you are Japanese, getting land in the right licenses, etcetera, it's very hard to do agriculture if you are Japanese. So it's this, there's also these types of barriers, but the number of conversations we have really serious people, like people who would put time and money and effort into reviving abandoned tea plantations or starting their own, they just can't do it. They face so much friction.

Ryan · 12:53

And you hear about people on the Internet complaining about this all the time. It's hard to open a bank account. It's hard to open start a company there. Like it's just like very tricky to do this. And then even if you do want to like, let's say license a plot of land from another farmer, it it's a very difficult work and business environment to do so.

Zongjun · 13:12

I mean, we would love to have a little contract plot someday to do a bunch of experiments and really understand the agriculture a little bit more, but it would be almost impossible for us. It's it's such a daunting task.

Ryan · 13:25

It's honestly not worth the effort of even try it at least where where we're at at the moment. I mean, as soon as our mill becomes economically viable and starts generating some profit for us, it is something we would love to do. And the reality is we're probably going to do it in China.

Zongjun · 13:41

We're actually certainly going to do we. Have fun. In China, because it's so much easier to navigate and there's not all of these quote UN quote stupid rules which offer some level of protection. They help protect, protect against over consolidation of farming and allow, you know, smaller farmers to thrive.

Ryan · 14:05

There's some merits to some of these rules. Yeah, but the reality is there will be no farmers to protect in the future. Yeah, more and more if you look at the the overall demographic tables. So that's an interesting attention that we've explored over the course of 100 episodes. And I think you'll find some episodes where we're very pro small farmer, intergenerational preserving the craft. And you're also going to find some episodes where we're very pro technology and the necessity for innovating higher yield, higher quality tea science first approach using automate means of automation.

Zongjun · 14:44

Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, like it really comes down to, you know, what do you care by the end of the day? Where do you care the most? Which? Which ground do you stand? Another. Thing that we aren't sure will age well or if our opinions will change is our take on chanoyu, our Japanese tea ceremony.

Ryan · 15:03

We have been relatively critical of both Omotesenke and Urasenke and the whole system at large. Not that we have a bone to pick, but they're very it's very rare to have people question assumptions. And I think it honestly, it's over romanticized and over glorified and it's not a popular opinion.

Ryan · 15:25

And we've actually gotten some hate mail about it over the course of 100 episodes basically saying stop slandering tea ceremony. I don't think that they have the path has to not be criticized. We were were former practitioners. I studied Omotesenke for three years. Sam studied it for I think about a year and a half. But we were in a really unique educational scenario where we first started getting serious about tea at Penn State University and there was something called the Tea Institute at Penn State.

Ryan · 15:53

And at the time, we were the only organization in the United States that hosted both Omotesenke and Urasenke schools of chanoyu. So you had to pick a school for formal lessons, but anyone could attend the public events and the lectures and, you know, a couple times a semester.

Ryan · 16:12

And we would both sit in on these lectures from both Omotesenke and, and, as well as their public demonstrations, which gave us a pretty unique perspective on how both schools kind of approached things, their similarities and their differences, which has given us a foundation to be critical.

Zongjun · 16:30

Especially having also a Chinese tea background takes a very different approach to a lot of these things. Yeah, I mean, this is the Specialty Matcha Podcast and based on our own curiosity and our background, we, what we care about the most naturally is tea, right yourself and tea ceremony on its own, it's really a wonderful, I would say a vessel, a vehicle to carry a lot of these Japanese culture and element and make it the relevant to the modern context.

Zongjun · 17:01

And you know, people in the modern days to relate back to a very old tradition. But it's really not a place for you to learn anything about tea. And and it's also a place that's, I would say dragging more people to appreciate just tea itself in the broader context.

Zongjun · 17:20

It's implementing a lot of these baggage and burden for you to or for anyone to almost trying to inflate, inflict a sense of guilt to just enjoy tea or matcha on its own without any, you know, other cultural education or context.

Ryan · 17:38

You know, it's almost difficult to treat matcha just as a beverage. Yeah. And the other thing about it is just it's a very conservative traditional art form inside a country that is really not that advanced among first world nations in what we'll call liberal values. And by I'm not talking about liberal versus conservative, like I mean like basic things like gender equality and general opportunity depending on, you know, no matter what your class or background is.

Ryan · 18:11

For example, I mean among G7 nation, Japan ranks the worst. It is still, if you listen to Japanese scholars or economists, it is just like pathetic how poor they are on gender equality. I think 50% of enterprises in Japan don't have a single woman executive.

Ryan · 18:30

And there's, I mean, this is very well documented in other works is a book that deep dives into this called Japan and the Shackles of Its Past. I might have gotten the title, I might have missed one word there. But it's it's approximately this that talks about basically a revolt of women who basically just bow out of the system because it's not even worth trying to fight.

Ryan · 18:52

Very similar problem in Korea and Korean culture too. It's, well, it's more of a societal structural problem that, you know, Japanese tea ceremony just happens to be a pretty wonderful condensation or lens towards all of these, you know, aspects. On the words of Doctor Rebecca Corbett that we had on, she was like, yeah, you know, Japan is a very conservative country in this way, and you probably wouldn't look to chanoyu as the fertile soil for a revolution or more change across these aspects that are the more dark side of Japanese culture. But you know, over the course of time, as we kind of reflect on how a lot of these contemporary

Zongjun · 19:38

matcha cafes and matcha consumption is evolving, I think I think in a few episodes we talk about there's actually a lot of things that, you know, modern matcha cafe owners or brand owners can learn from China. And we think that there there are a lot of wisdoms in it that we can distill. The problem is, is that people only have a surface level understanding of chanoyu and that's what gets communicated in most chanoyu education.

Ryan · 20:04

You only learn from the forms. Not the Spirit. Not the spirit. I think the Spirit is what's the most valuable. And to do and to learn the spirit, you really just have to take the lessons and suffer and suffer. I mean like physical discomfort of sitting and saying that it's a very nonlinear path.

Ryan · 20:22

If you're used to Western style education of being able to ask questions and things being explained very explicitly and in plain terms, this is not where you go. It's very Eastern type of education, Zen learning, learning through experiences. That's a whole, there's a whole philosophy actually behind this level of education.

Ryan · 20:43

It's fascinating to read about, but it is a slow process in which you are more of a passive observer than an active learner. And, you know, you really go through, I mean, the first thing that you learn, at least in my memory of studying Omotesenke, is something called Wadi Gekko.

Ryan · 20:59

And I had to beg students at Penn State just like, please just suffer through this. You're going to be folding wet napkins and dry napkins for a little while, but I promise it's worth it. You will eventually whisk matcha. The sweets are really good.

Ryan · 21:13

Nothing is as rewarding as like, you know, going through all of this to enjoy your 3 sips of tea and your wagashi. You know, but even from Body Gecko, I think there's a lot of things that you you can learn from it. Totally. The total intentionality of the caring of items, of objects, of, you know, experience of the guests, like the setting up the whole kind of vibe for someone to like pay attention to things that they take it as granted.

Ryan · 21:43

Like there are a lot of these interesting, like philosophy that's so baked into the tea ceremony that's I don't think never taught. You really have to experience and kind of discover these intentionality yourself along the way. Yeah, all of these moves and some are explicitly taught, like for example, you, the host, never turns their back to their guests with one exception, and that's when you're removing the wastewater bowl when you were like essentially removing the trash from the room.

Ryan · 22:11

Yeah, you're using your body to hiding the. Trash basically like very and then there's a bunch of other things like, you know, in some cases you need to do moves where you go under the not over the bowl and like in some cases you can ask some questions I mean, let's be real and I remember someone asking why do you have to go under and like we were in our T-shirt Well, it turns out that if you're in a kimono has that gigantic flap coming off of your arm the.

Ryan · 22:34

Sleeve you. Literally cannot go over the bowl. And so a lot of these semi arbitrary rules are actually very well grounded, very practical things. But just the level of care and respect about preheating. Even like little things like when you take water, scoop water out of the kama when you're actually making the tea, you are supposed to leave water in the scoop as if you are giving an intentional perfect amount of water that you're putting into the tea bowl to whisk your matcha. And then you return the rest of the hot water to the kettle. It's not like you're just dumping everything in. It's you want to purposely over

Ryan · 23:14

scoop so that you can leave some in your scoop and return it to the kama to demonstrate to your guest the level of care and precision that you're putting into that particular bowl. Like all of the like this, all sorts of and this spirit is wonderful and showing that level of care and intentionality.

Ryan · 23:35

And there's just so many different examples. And like, you know, they talk about it like I remember reading some material for the Kyoto Tourism Board and the way that tea ceremony is incorporated into the sort of the tourism centers, educational centers in Kyoto.

Ryan · 23:52

And they said, like, no one actually wants to learn tea ceremony. There's a rigid hierarchy. It's very physically uncomfortable to actually attend a real tea ceremony. You know, in the 1800s during the major restoration, they did invent a ceremony that can be done on a table. And so you do see some versions of that. But for what people think of is quote UN quote, authentic is something that would be in ATV show or in a movie on it's a time, a map, right?

Ryan · 24:18

It it's 1/2 hour ordeal. That and to actually experience one would probably require, I don't know, 20 hours of education to actually play your part in learning the moves, learning the formality, learning the language, learning the etiquette. Like it's not something you can actually participate in until you've been educated.

Ryan · 24:39

So they give everyone this watered down experience where you're learning to sit, says you're learning about the chashaku and ichigo ichie. It's just the most super level stuff, superficial level stuff that is not actually the spirit of the ceremony that can be learned elsewhere.

Ryan · 24:55

Again, we are criticizing China, you and the way it's presented the majority of the world. And we are also criticizing a lot of modern follower practitioner nowadays that only learn the form, not the spirit of the ceremony.

Ryan · 25:09

You know, like using, you know, chasen and whisking your your your macha in front of the guests is really not a way to show authenticity. You better just use a chasen. Absolutely. And I think one of the the most articulate people who talks about this in the community is David from Tezumi watching his YouTube content.

Ryan · 25:31

It really, I love it. And his whole philosophy behind this. I really recommend if no one's listened to his content, I don't think there's someone who is as articulate that's speaking in English, that's thinking about how tea ceremony can be applied to contemporary culture and that intersection of chanoyu spirit in contemporary culture.

Ryan · 25:53

I'd love to have him back on the podcast to talk more about that. And his tea ceremony school. Yeah. A very rebellious 1. Based in Hiroshima. I forget the name of the school. Our friend Paul too, from tea nurseries, also part of that school.

Ryan · 26:07

Actually, it kind of makes me every time I hear them talk about it, I'm like, oh, I can't. I can't. What would they accept the former Omotesenke students like? It sounds much more liberal and progressive. Yeah. Yeah. Then these more common large schools. Not to hate on any particular school. I think what Omotesenke or Urasenke have done is incredible for if you really zoom out for protecting chanoyu and promoting the idea of matcha.

Ryan · 26:32

I don't know if we'd have this matcha boom if people were interested in Japanese culture and the carriers of Japanese culture where in the 70s and 80s you had all these rich businessmen travel abroad and typically where their wives would go with them. And part of the the good wives and wives mothers policy meant they were educated in chanoyu and they set up their own local branches.

Ryan · 26:53

I and I think that's how a lot of foreign branches got formed, the foundations of their early Japanese practitioner base of Japanese expats living abroad, which then, you know, piece by piece led to the macho explosion that we have today.

Zongjun · 27:06

So I don't know, Zongjun, are we too critical on on Japanese tea and tea ceremony? I mean, it is very sexist. Yeah, yeah. It's it's, I think it's just like all the other situation, situation that we are seeing the tea world. It's complicated.

Zongjun · 27:20

Yeah. And, and, and it's frustrating in a way that we keep hitting all these walls that just cannot be overcome. And eventually we kind of accept it as a status quo. The silver lining of the this so shiny that you cannot disregard. It's a benefit to to the modern days and to also to what we care about.

Ryan · 27:43

Yeah. So yeah, it's complicated, right? No, it's it's complicated. And you know, the temptation to just blend all Japanese tea culture into one thing, one idea of authenticity and looking at these histories is my criticism of a lot of these modern matcha companies is they kind of take this unified approach, this all inclusive, this grab bag approach to bucketing all of Japanese tea culture into one thing.

Ryan · 28:12

And it always involves a site in advice. It involves Sen no Rikyu, It involves all the tea ceremony schools, maybe like Kiyoshi and then like modern day Uji Matcha and its legacy, right? Like it's this presented as one unified narrative for for tea and tea history and tea culture.

Ryan · 28:32

And the reality is far more messy and complicated, especially when many parts of the culture are very imperfect. And, you know, at its worst, I feel like chanoyu, in the dominance of the chanoyu narrative authority, is that it just plasters over some very ugly parts of the culture.

Ryan · 28:51

Like if you listen to people who have studied Urasenke for decades and there's some podcasts out there where you know, you'll have a woman tea practitioner that's been studying it for 20 years that is treated less well than a man that's been studying for two years.

Ryan · 29:08

And they get shoved to the front. Then all the women get shoved to the back and there's all these implicit and explicit. But the part that bothers me is if you think about sexist and misogynistic and old world institutions, and if you think about it in terms of their survival rate, which are the 1st to get dismantled, it's the most egregious examples. If you look throughout history, the most blatant versions of sexism in our modern society will get stamped out first and where you have enough or large enough group of people revolting and then women have the right to vote, for example. More it's, you know, heavily

Ryan · 29:50

explicit. You see the systematic dismantling of racist and sexist institutions. And then if you think of where the longest living versions of sexist institutions can survive are the most seemingly innocent places and chanoyu and tea ceremony and all of these institutions, there are the most innocent versions, the most implicit, the most subtle, the most delicate versions of sexism that are less clear. It's not obvious until you, you know, step foot into a Japanese tea ceremony that's being run by a very traditional practitioner and the way that they're ordering and arranging the guests.

Zongjun · 30:35

Or you hear about stories of Midorikai, which is a residency program for Urasenke practitioners where foreigners come and study at the Kyoto headquarters for a year. You have to really dig deep to find these little pockets of what I'll call socially acceptable institutions where this sexism still lives. That's a very interesting observation, Ryan. And frequently I found all these institutions that have all these kind of baked in hierarchies are the institutions that are claiming to serve for a greater good, religions, academia, institutions.

Zongjun · 31:13

And you frequently end up encountering these very old world legacy, you know, racism or sexism and and and these places you really can see a similarity between them and the ceremony schools. The Wade held dogma got indoctrined. It's just like, you know, some of these scripts that you would read about in other religions that that that's really similar to how the discourse are formed in chanoyu, like all of these myth, these legends, these famous names, this wonderful accomplishment or incontinent, incontinent of these big names in the history.

Zongjun · 31:55

And, and how that kind of crystallized into this wonderful culture that we should treat it as a single truth and we should protect it and we should follow it. And we are doing so to, you know, kind of protecting a greater good or protecting the community, so to speak.

Ryan · 32:14

Yeah. I mean, there's so much about chanoyu that is fantastic and amazing. It's like you, we could go on for hours about the merits of the iemoto system. And if you look at it through the lens of a institution, it's it's the way it's been able to preserve itself and mold over time between Edo to Meiji to present day. Like, there's some very interesting lessons to be learned about the concept of the survival of an institution into modernity.

Ryan · 32:43

It's how the Catholic Church survived the thousands of years. It's being adaptive and being really actually quite savvy. I mean, then you can put on the business lenses for chanoyu and people don't like to think this. And some great tea scholars like the author of making Tea making Japan and and Doctor Rebecca Corbett have talked about the concept of these tea ceremony schools as businesses. They are businesses.

Zongjun · 33:08

They need revenue. They, you know, they have profits and I'd love to look at the Pi know some of them very interesting. But you know, they are also businesses as well as institutions as well as bearers and holders of culture. I shall donate 110th of your income. Your Catholic school education is paying off. This one is well indoctrinated, but it. Is like the teachers are kind of like the priests, the iemotos are like the archbishop's or, you know, the, the Pope, you know, like that there are a lot of similarities between, you know, the practices of the tea ceremony schools and how modern religions are formed.

Ryan · 33:49

The other interesting thing is I think chanoyu tends to attract a practitioner base that is a little more of a quiet type, one less likely to ruffle feathers. And I think it tends to eject people that don't like these systematic, authoritative systems because there's a lot of decision making that goes on behind the scenes that is entirely blind to the member, the student, the practitioner. And if you decided to ruffle a lot of feathers like it, imagine doing the same thing in a large company. Like, you're just not going to get very far and you probably aren't going to know that you're not going to get very far because you're not present or

Ryan · 34:30

Privy to those conversations that are happening in the back. If you, you know, write a big expose about systematic sexism in Midorikai in the Urasenke residency program, Yeah, probably not getting your chame or your your tea name license to teach. So like, there's not.

Zongjun · 34:48

The place to talk about that? No, so like it there's again, from a systematic institutional preservation perspective, if you're able to attract a lot of docile, non more submissive group of practitioners, it makes change agents very hard.

Ryan · 35:08

And you know, talking to we have only met one tea practitioner that studies in the sun sank. And I'll keep this a little vague. That seems to be very rebellious. You know, we asked them like, how do you get away with this basically, and they said I just play my gaijin card. So you know there is some ability to peek through the system and to to.

Zongjun · 35:31

To the person is not Japanese, right? Yeah, non Japanese, that's true. So. It's a very hard to break in from inside of the system. It's so intertwined with their own identity. Almost, yeah. And so untouchable for so many reasons, such a fascinating topic, but it's one that, you know, to be honest, we're not 100% sure that we get right and we're not 100% sure if we're being too critical or not.

Ryan · 35:57

We're expressing our personal beliefs with the context that we have and we hope on this long form format are able to express them and justify them instead of just slandering. I I think the critique of slandering is a little too harsh when we are justifying where positions are coming from and it is not what we care about. The preservation of chanoyu is actually very low on my list of things.

Ryan · 36:23

I care much more about the farmers. I care much more about innovation. I care much more about the people consuming the tea. I care much more about it living and thriving as a specialty product on my stock rank of priorities, it is actually fairly low. I'm not Japanese.

Ryan · 36:41

I have no vested interest in maintaining. You can never be a iemoto. I could never be an iemoto, No one could be because it's birthright almost or through marriage. I have no vested interest to care essentially, compared to some of these other things.

Ryan · 36:57

You know, it's something that I've studied enough that I think I can thoroughly criticize it, but also there's a lot that I don't know. And I'm certainly very open to my mind being changed in the future from people that have context that I'm missing. But it ultimately comes down to what you care about. And exploring these tensions is what we love doing on the podcast, But I think these are the top 2. Like the over industrialization argument is one thing that we're not sure if we have right.

Zongjun · 37:23

Our opinions have been a little more flexible as we explore this tension between tradition and innovation. And same thing with actually tradition innovation within the consumption meaning Chanoyu versus sort of the modern cafe consumer which is driving the whole matcha industry.

Zongjun · 37:41

Yes, indeed. And I think that we just naturally care about, so to speak, we can only care about things that we have capabilities or agencies to explore, to learn more. And I think our opinion about, you know, the modern production, more modern days production of Japanese tea really, really fundamentally changed after we tried to produce it on ourselves.

Ryan · 38:07

Yes, which comes down to our little experiment that we've done in a place called Qimen (keemun) in China. So we promised to talk about this on a previous podcast, but we are actually we can call ourselves Matcha farmers, tencha farmers, makers and matcha Millers too.

Ryan · 38:25

Not good, but yeah, not yet. So we had the opportunity to experiment with some shaded cultivation in China, in a place called Qimen (keemun) in Anhui. It's an area famous primarily for black tea. It's famously the base. The original base of Earl Grey actually comes from Qimen (keemun) Hongcha or Qimen (keemun) Black Tea, and it has a very old romanization.

Ryan · 38:49

In Chinese it's actually Qimen (keemun). And Qimen (keemun) and the Wade-Giles romanization. So it's usually a symbol of something that exists for a long time. So yeah, it's it's a fascinating place. And we just happen to have some connection of a few local farmers out there that we had the opportunity to Commission for a very little experiment. Deep in a little tiny valley near some wild growing bamboo forests we had, I don't know, it's a tiny plot. It ended up producing about 5 KGS of tencha. So probably what 25 to 30 KGS of wet leaf were were picked and we had with the same bamboo that came from the bamboo forest next door are wonderful farmer

Ryan · 39:41

collaborator built hand built raised Tana shelf from the bamboo and it was shaded. Kanreisha. Kanreisha shaded for about 3 weeks and it was all seed propagated tea. Primarily used for for black tea so it's very high catechin content.

Ryan · 39:59

Probably why it didn't taste very good and organic. And it was shaded for three weeks and it was all handpicked. And then we processed it in his backyard. On the big wok that's filled with boiling water and wood and wood. It was a wood fired wok.

Zongjun · 40:20

What we put some water and essentially A gigantic steaming basket on top. So actually is much more similar probably to the way that tencha was processed before any industrialization. Very hand processed. We did a bunch of experiments to figure what the right steaming time and duration was, which is a little painful, is very much the art of steaming it because even the amount of steam was controlled by how much would be put in it.

Zongjun · 40:47

So even like having a constant heat source produce a constant amount of steam, and like if the steam was running low, we had to steam a little longer to make sure there was no reddening. There's a lot of skill involved and even the level of steaming was a very difficult art to kind of get right, which I think we got better is the afternoon progress.

Zongjun · 41:05

But I think what's really what was really constraining us was the equipment. So one piece of equipment that really, really drag us down is the roaster. So the roaster that they used to roast black tea or hongcha in Qimen (keemun) is just not powerful enough to roast tencha.

Zongjun · 41:26

Like a for a real proper tencha oven temperature. Yeah, yeah. The temperature and also to get the remaining of the water out quickly. So a lot of the tencha, some of the experimental batch quote, UN quote in the beginning kind of just end up getting a second steam because it didn't vent out the steam or the water quickly enough. And it degraded the color pretty significantly. Our tencha looks very.

Zongjun · 41:57

Yellow. Green, yellow taste, taste the way you would expect to, but you're going to the motions and doing this ourselves, even with the picking like because we were essentially using a zairai field, you know, it was a little difficult to coordinate things. We we were there for a relatively short window. So we couldn't like go in every day like you hear about people having to do with zairai.

Zongjun · 42:19

So some were definitely a little past peak and you could tell because the young leaves were a little bit more too mature and some of the leaves were were less mature. And this is just comes from the natural genetic diversity level of difference in the Leafs were crazy to me seeing that in his zairai field that was ready to be picked.

Ryan · 42:39

The glossiness, the Sheen, the shine, the shape. Even the shape. Yeah, the shape. How serrated the edges of the leaves were? The shape of the leaves in the 3D like some are more curled and some are more flat than others. The color, some more green or more lighter color, the number of buds, all sorts of thing.

Ryan · 42:59

It was crazy the level of genetic diversity for the zairai field has, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for how difficult it must have been before cultivars. Like really, every single tree was very different. Or the teachers must not have been.

Ryan · 43:15

Very good. So supposedly part of the the Chashi's of the blunders job back in the day was to identify what needed to be picked when. And that must have tricky. Yeah. Like, you really have to have a new level of intimacy with your garden on a per plant basis.

Zongjun · 43:29

The cultivars, there's a lot of farmers right now during harvest season will show, OK, this half is Gokou, this half is Okumidori or something. And you can see how they're ready at different times. Imagine that being like a pointillism painting. But there there's a pretty interesting kind of farming practice that I saw it in Yunnan because all of the teas in Yunnan are wild teas in the tea forest. They would tight this little string with different colors to different tea in the forest to signify what teas are naturally early flushes to to kind of help to guide the tea pickers to pick tea.

Zongjun · 44:04

So you know, today is the yellow day, today is the blue day. A pretty interesting farming practices that you see. There's like all these variations that people to overcome natural difficulties. But yeah, it was quite an experience. So we hired 5 tea pickers.

Zongjun · 44:20

It took 5 tea pickers all day to pick all the material. And we participated in the first round. But then we need to go back processing. And that was interesting to seeing how the local labor was organized and the scale of all of our our tea processing Co workers for the day. And they picked up on like the picking method pretty fast. Yeah, yeah, they were pros.

Zongjun · 44:42

They were so much better than our ability, so watching them work and even interact with each other really just so chill. There's the chit chatting and, you know, picking and laughing and making fun of us for our bad skill and slow speed.

Zongjun · 45:00

Yeah, that was quite fun. So and also seeing bugs too. Very important is such a pound. At least the last time we went and picking we didn't see a single, but I think we saw one ladybug slowly dying, taking its last breath for pesticides that just fell over on its back. Yeah, I'm joking, I'm joking, but maybe not. But there are lots of bugs in this garden, which honestly I can understand why some pesticides are being used because some of the tea leaves were definitely partially eaten with a very rich amino acid content from the shading. Yeah, the only.

Ryan · 45:39

Appreciate that. The only kind of anti insect measures that they took was to put on this little like panels that they kind of emit the kind of hormone that will attract bugs and then it's a sticky panel. Yeah, it's like those sticky flytraps.

Ryan · 45:56

Yeah, but that was definitely not enough for that thyroid plot that we. These sticky traps are pretty clever. They glow, so they sit all day in the sun, absorb sunlight, and then they fluoresce at night, which attracts a lot of the night insects too.

Ryan · 46:14

Pretty clever method actually. I wonder how effective it actually is. But probably not enough based on the damage of some of the tea leaves. So we definitely understood the new appreciation for pesticides too. Not that we're pro pesticide, but wow, we really understand why it can be necessary for shaded cultivation. These very amino acid umami rich leaves that probably taste quite delicious to the bugs.

Zongjun · 46:40

So they are steaming. Processing yoga. That was hard. Oh my goodness. There's a new appreciation for the de stemming and deveining process and lots of learning. We ended up using an old rice Husker. So it's a mass based wind separator. Totally manual.

Zongjun · 46:57

Yeah, we were. Yeah, You had to hand turn it with a crank. I mean it's literally 100 year old, hundreds of year old technology. You can see old versions of this both in China and Japan. You go to the Kambayashi museum, they have a very similar wind braced hand cranked separate. We were mechanically using the same thing. Ujitawara farmers were used as that in the day for the de stemming and deveining.

Zongjun · 47:24

Wow, leads to a lot of waste material. It was very, I mean, no wonder like back in the days you had to do some hand sorting of tencha with chopsticks. It gets part of the job done. But when we were milling that material, it required a lot of hand sorting.

Zongjun · 47:39

And then we learned all sorts of just like little interesting micro lessons, like just how dry tencha is. Like if you put your hand in a bag of tencha or scooping it around or trying to pick out stems or foreign material, your hand will get super dry very quickly.

Zongjun · 47:56

Just how? Quickly it got re moisturized. It's it's like a sponge. It Forbes water so quickly? Yeah, especially in the weather of Qimen (keemun), it's quite difficult. Altogether, it was a very interesting experiment that we could have never actually done in Japan, especially at that cost amongst the five tea pickers, all the tea processing equipment, the cost of putting that kanreisha up and the cost of the tea that was underneath it for that one harvest season.

Ryan · 48:24

And they housed and fed us and it was $500.00 for the whole week, including the material. Just the cost and like how welcome we felt and we really were able to try to do whatever we wanted. Well, definitely got a French friendship quote from, from, from uncle.

Ryan · 48:44

But yeah, it's, I think it's also just the kind of interesting project for them to kind of experiment too, because this is clearly something that they have never seen before. And Uncle at the tea farmer that we work with was just like very naturally curious about, you know, all of these practices.

Ryan · 49:05

Yeah, and asked. He asked tons of great like follow up questions and he went in not from the position. I mean, he's had decades of tea processing knowledge, but he really came in with a very open mind and asking us questions from my first principals. Yeah.

Zongjun · 49:21

And he's just. So talented, like we kind of explained how the whole Tana structure needs to be and show him like maybe three photos and he end up building this Tana structure that like got admired by some, you know, Japanese farmers we talked to in Japan. And show them pictures.

Ryan · 49:37

Where is this Tana? This is very nicely built. It's amazing what can happen when cultures are mixed, can truly learn from one another. And so we actually see China as being quite fertile soil for, I don't know, a matcha renaissance or even for, you know, Japanese cultivars with Japanese processing methodologies for what could be considered matcha or matcha like product. So that leaves us very exciting.

Ryan · 50:02

And then that's another thing that I think we might, may or may not get wrong is this whole matcha debate and defining what even is matcha and exploring that tension and the levels of disagreement we see in the industry about what actually should be defined as this thing and country of origin as the ISO definition. There's various trademarks involving different like Uji matcha or Nishio matcha.

Ryan · 50:29

And the way that all these things get defined, it's just such an interesting story. And I hope we don't like beat the horse too hard on like all of this stuff because it's literally like kind of how we've been mining ideas for over 100 different episodes. And that just goes to show just how interesting. Have you asked like, what are we doing? Why are we interested in tea?

Ryan · 50:51

Why are we interested in matcha? It's all of this tension is where the real culture lies. The culture isn't this beautiful ceremony of tea ceremony. It's in this messiness, this humanness. So interesting. In the people. So there, there will be no culture if there's no people. Yes.

Ryan · 51:12

It's really the anthropological aspect of tea is so fascinating. Yeah. And now and and and and and and. It's the part that that we can be so relatable because we are humans too. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm trying to understand what other people are projecting onto this thing, how they've incorporated into their lives.

Ryan · 51:32

It's such an interesting story to try to be a student of. Yeah, to learn more about. It's, it's fascinating. It's a it's essentially a culture that the two very unique, different species co-built. It's Camellia sinensis and Homo sapiens. Absolutely, absolutely.

Ryan · 51:53

And even amongst the tea community, one of the things that has really enriched our experience as we do this is having curiosity and wanting to learn more about other types of tea. So after 100 episodes, we were doing some reflecting about, I don't know what, what makes us qualified to have a unique perspective, to even want to become matcha educators or to concentrate this knowledge in a podcast? What makes us qualified?

Ryan · 52:21

What makes our voice unique? And there's something that the David from Tezumi said on our episode that we recorded with him that really resonated with me. And I think about it all the time is the tea ceremony practitioners could enrich their experience so much more if they took interest in the agriculture and the way that tea gets produced and what the farmers are doing and the cultivars, which really lives outside of the scope of learning Chanoyu.

Ryan · 52:49

And he also said, but you know, all the people who are just interested in tea and then matcha, if they took a little more interest in a little more curiosity and learning about Chanoyu, they could enrich their experience so much.

Ryan · 53:03

And this isn't just true within, you know, matcha Japanese tea ceremony. It's true across all types of tea. And some of the most interesting open minded people that we've learned from in the Japanese tea world take interest in other types of tea, like in Baisa Nakamura, like they really understand about oolong tea.

Ryan · 53:24

If you go to Thailand and a lot of the Thai tea practitioners, which is and matcha practitioners, which is sort of like the concentration to some of the most advanced contemporary matcha culture. They take great interest in Taiwanese high mountain Oolong and Wuyi Shan Oolong, Yancha, cliff tea. They take great interest in Pu'er, you know, other cultivars like it's so much more interesting. You already have a knowledge about, let's say like different Taiwanese high mountain tea cultivars, Jin Xuan, Qing Xin, Si Ji Chun, sway you, all of these different cultivars, and you're like, wow, cool.

Ryan · 54:00

Jin Xuan is being grown for Tanja production in Chiang Rai and north of Thailand. Talk about a mix of cultures. Yeah, That would just be lost on you if you weren't aware of the way that the Taiwanese were breeding tea in the 1980s, trying to come up with new flavors and invented the Qing Xin cultivar or the Jin Xuan cultivar.

Ryan · 54:21

I mean, having tasted many different examples from Alishan or Shan Lin Xi or low elevation examples and the expression of that cultivar, there's so much that we can learn and explore across the entire tea world. It's way too much.

Ryan · 54:36

It's so energizing in a way that you just know there's so many unknowns to be explored. You have the context and like in some ways capability to participate in this mixing. I think that's something that has been getting me going to explore more and try more and stay curious and stayed passionate about this course that you and I have been both undertaking for more than a decade.

Ryan · 55:02

Yeah. For now, trying to learn about other types of tea. You know, we were considering thinking about the French word oeuvre, the American pronunciation, which means body of work. I've been thinking about that for a while, and I was floating it by Sam a few times. Whether or not we should end the Specialty Matcha Podcast after 100 episodes, Have we already said enough? Is this enough?

Ryan · 55:28

When do we call it quits? Is this the moment where, you know, we've, we've, we've said what we wanted to say, we've explored, we wanted to explore and that we don't want to drag this on like, you know, Toy Story 7 or like, you know, all of these franchises? Just another episode of Doctor Strange or Doctor Who. So we have given some serious consideration and we've decided that we are going to keep it going. There's enough new culture creation, but I think that is left to be explored.

Ryan · 56:01

And we would be ending it right on the eve of our matcha mill coming into the universe where we're hoping we'll have some impact. And then we're going to have a bias because we're going to be much closer to people using it.

Ryan · 56:14

And, you know, our perception of, you know, people getting involved in the craft of making matcha is going to be very biased based on the people we're interacting with. But it is something that we wanted to document, so this is not the end and we are going to continue.

Ryan · 56:31

There will be a season 5. And we're probably going to start looping in more tea parallels a little more aggressively than we have in the past, particularly because that's where our interest lies and that's what keeps us intellectually curious and personally motivated is a much larger picture than just trying to preserve Japanese or even just matcha focused. We're going to keep calling it the Specialty Matcha Podcast, but you know, we think that there's so much enrichment that can be done and, well, you can really broaden the scope into broader tea culture.

Zongjun · 57:06

Absolutely. I mean like we are essentially evolving with the contemporary matcha movement. There will be other teas being milled into powder form and there will be people enjoying these new forms of, you know, whether or now you call them macho or mortar or powder, whatever tea or even some new names in the future that we just don't know. They're all essentially coming from this very plan that we have been enjoying for thousands of years across all different cultures.

Zongjun · 57:34

It has been always a very internationalized product since the very beginning and it will remained as a bridge to connect all cultures into the future. There is so much to that we have left to learn to the other reason why we're not stopping it. Almost selfishly, I would love to know the origins of all these tea competitions in Japan.

Zongjun · 57:58

I would love to know how shaded cultivation actually spread in early Japanese tea history. I would love to know people in Korea talk about people making Song Dynasty matcha, Korea. Where did that tradition go? And now you even see this Korean matcha ceremony. Like that's super interesting.

Zongjun · 58:17

How did that like survive? Did it not survive? Is it an artifact of the Japanese occupation in Korea? There's just so many questions about genetic diversity and zairai, all of these new research centers and what they're researching, why they're researching it, where they're getting their money from. Like it's like following the money, following the culture, trying to understand the history, piece together all this stuff.

Zongjun · 58:41

I feel like we're also barely scratching the surface. It's so many like curiosity gaps that I still have that you are going to be a little more work to dig into because I feel like the the lowest hanging fruit was picked from the 1st 100 episodes. So it's going to be a lot more homework for us. And we're also starting a secret project, which we will announce soon that may or may not lead to another podcast. This will forever be our our baby, our first podcast. But we also want to explore other types of tea. And actually just by the nature of what we're doing, trying to, you know, meet matcha producers

Zongjun · 59:16

everywhere, meet tea people everywhere. We encounter a lot of very interesting people and interesting types of that we just can't talk about here. Yeah. And over the past, you know, decades we just have accumulated all these contacts in different regions and areas that we feel like there is a missing bridge that connects all of these contacts and people all together. And maybe like we can explore the opportunity to become the bridge at some point, or if that's too ambitious, we we want to see the opportunity of some of these cultures are learning can be commingled in a context that will just going to produce delicious or interesting product

Ryan · 59:59

that people can enjoy it not just words, but also, you know, taste. 100% And this cultural mixing that can happen and all of the unthinkable opportunity that happens with this type of cultural exchange and dialogue and we can all enrich our experience so much if we learn from each other.

Zongjun · 1:00:20

Exactly. I think that's something that's really unique about the is that it's not just words that you can read from a book or videos that you can watch from a screen. It's actual thing that you can ingest into your body and you can experience it with other sense of your biological capability. Like you can feel so much more beyond just reading or watching something.

Ryan · 1:00:46

And I think that's so interesting about tea or almost addictive about tea is that you'd like it really has the capability of teleporting you to somewhere else. And I think that's why it's such a interesting and influential foundation of a lot of these cultures and a lot of these culture cultural exchanges. And it's a way of tapping into something larger than yourself, the history, a legacy, a shared experience. And you never stop being a student because there's just so much to learn in these really interesting pockets of knowledge and experience and the human experience. Really, it's a fantastic

Zongjun · 1:01:28

beverage. And it's so, you know, we're very excited as because it feels like the early innings of this early spread of tea and tea culture internationally speaking. So those are things that we selfishly want to learn more about and to make some connections across the industry and to really enrich our own experience learning from all of this.

Ryan · 1:01:50

I think this curiosity is what really most motivating us forward in doing a lot of things like right, this podcast, this machine, all of these experiment drinking more tea. And all the people that we've met along the way, we've met so many like minded people and it's we're excited to have them on as guests perspectives and see what this we can get tea and tea culture to look like moving forward.

Zongjun · 1:02:16

So we're very excited and we get, we get a lot wrong over time and maybe some of our opinions don't age well. And we would love to turn this into a dialogue too. We'd love to know how do you feel about the progression of tea culture? How is your experience in tea been enriched by learning about other tea cultures?

Ryan · 1:02:34

What is your matcha journey look like? And we'd love to to, to hear, love to hear from all of our listeners. Yeah, or your tea journey. Or your tea journey. Yeah, we'd love to have you on. So anyway, thank you so much for your listenership.

Ryan · 1:02:47

Anyway, thanks everyone for 100 episodes. We never thought we would get here. And we're very excited to launch Season 5. And we will be starting with our series on Uji, which I feel like is the grand accumulation of 100 episodes of curiosity and research. And we're very proud of the series. The first episode is going to be very unique. It's actually going to be a monologue of the long form research article.

Ryan · 1:03:14

It's going to be read audiobook style. And then we're going to have a couple follow up episodes that are going to be editorial style where we're going to pick a subsection or a topic of it and go deep dive even further together between Sam and I. And we're going to try to source some other opinions as well. I'm sending this article around to some friends and bring in some diverse perspective at really understanding the modern origins of what we all consider matcha, which has its roots in Uji of the true origin story of modern shaded cultivation. Matcha of what we've all known to grow and love. Which is such an interesting

Zongjun · 1:03:54

story that we're very excited to unpack with everyone. Absolutely looking forward to it, Ryan. Yeah, it'll be great. We're so stay tuned for Season 5. Thank you so much. If you've made it this far and you haven't subscribed, please do subscribe. Yeah, the numbers really help for discovery that helped this podcast keep running.

Ryan · 1:04:16

And thank you so much. Take care. See you in the next season. Bye.