The Rise of Chinese Matcha

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 with the co-founders of Sanko. Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey, matcha show, startup stories, and interview experts.

Zongjun · 0:22

And this is our first episode, I think, dedicated to Chinese matcha or Chinese matcha specifically. So we've been slowly gathering up context and we've talked about it on a lot of episodes here and there, but this is our first compilation of everything that we've learned about the Chinese matcha scene now in 2026.

Zongjun · 0:47

That's right. And we kind of see this as a great occasion because right now we are sitting in the venue of Canton Fair, which is one of the largest and oldest exportation fair Expo in China, which basically they sell anything from robotics to ceramics to utensils to like food stuff like oil, cereals and obviously tea.

Ryan · 1:12

So it's been a pretty interesting experience so far. What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, well, the size is enormous. Like the amount of trade that must go on in the world here is just a little mind boggling. I mean, this is like the epitome of made in China.

Zongjun · 1:27

Indeed. And so, you know, we have been talking with both Chinese tea and matcha like aggregators, like third parties that are basically merchants that source from different farmers. We've also talked to merchants Sam's been on the ground in Hubei to meet people who are doing matcha cultivation. And of course we've had all of this matcha experience in Japan. So we thought this is a fine occasion to this is by no means a comprehensive guide, but this is about everything that we know when it comes to the matcha scene here in China. Before we jump in, we are going to take the least conservative definition of matcha.

Ryan · 2:09

So if you are on team Japan, team heritage and that you know, you don't consider any other product that's matcha like even if it comes from Japanese cultivars and has been shaded and processed on traditional Japanese tencha processing equipment it But if you if you're the type of person that believes it has to be grown in Japan to be considered matcha, we totally respect that. For this conversation, we are going to use the word matcha and refer to it as Chinese matcha just for simplicity's sake. That is how it was sold and it has the sensory and organoleptic characteristics of matcha.

Zongjun · 2:50

A lot of these samples that we just tasted, they here to Canton Fair. If you tasted it, you would have no idea it was a Chinese product. And some of them you would immediately taste it and think, OK, wow, actually this is a little different, which is, you know, really worth getting into as well.

Zongjun · 3:05

I mean, it's really for our convenience to carry on the conversation because even by the definition we are trying to advocate, this should really be called Chinese tea instead of Chinese matcha because very surprisingly, a lot of the cultivars we end up seeing today are not Japanese.

Ryan · 3:22

They are all Chinese cultivars. Actually, a few Japanese cultivars being we were being told that was used in all of these products we end up trying. Now there's some selection bias. It is kind of unfair. And there's been a lot of Japanese cultivars too as well, from different people we've been talking to over the past two years. Yeah.

Zongjun · 3:41

But the landscape is pretty interesting I think to begin with because I've been to a lot of these food conferences in China and for all of the tea sessions, it's always Chinese tea like leaf tea, loose leaf tea. If these conferences are domestic focus.

Zongjun · 3:58

And Canton Fair is one of the very interesting book conferences that you have to be a foreign or foreign related procure to participate as a visitor. And here we basically we were seeing every booth in the tea section selling matcha. They had nearly.

Ryan · 4:15

It was. Pretty amazing. And we got to talk to everyone, actually, I think except there's only one stand that we missed that was selling matcha here. Before we jump in, jump into sort of the status quo. Obviously, matcha has its origins in China to some extent.

Ryan · 4:30

When the Song dynasty, China was doing its matcha ceremonies and competitions, and then when it spread to Japan. And then China went through what, 7 to 800 years of history of no matcha and no matcha. A lot of the vendors here take a very convenient stance that the China's been making matcha here and has a very long heritage and it uses this as marketing and selling a lot of this material, especially the stuff that comes out of Zhejiang and the areas in and around Hangzhou, which is famous originally for Longjing. But they definitely are borrowing this very convenient legacy.

Ryan · 5:09

Now, of course, if you look at matcha as a product and its sensory properties, its color, its taste, this was invented in Japan. Everything that we all know of as matcha comes from shading cultivation and Japanese agricultural practices, which we are now seeing the great pendulum swift shift back to China.

Zongjun · 5:30

Because when you ask any of these vendors how long have you been making matcha, including the people that are trying to make this Song dynasty tie, they say all three years or nine years. 2017. Very recent. The oldest one that we met today was started in 2017, so let's get that out of the way too. Is that all contemporary production of Chinese matcha is new.

Ryan · 5:57

It is not a long culture. It has not been a continuous practice. There's been 700 years of emptiness and there's a lot of people that are trying to make this link, but this link is a replica at best. And that it really is a Japanese product in terms of the characteristics in which we can all consider matcha nowadays, doesn't mean it won't always be the case.

Ryan · 6:22

I think China could have a very interesting volatile renaissance where they into local cultivars, local production styles that start producing things that taste very delicious, that are not trying to replicate a Japanese product.

Ryan · 6:35

So Sam, you were here the last two years consecutively at the fair meeting different vendors. What were some of the biggest differences between the matcha scene here in China two years ago and now? Quality, quality, quality. It's really the quality.

Zongjun · 6:50

Quantity wise, definitely, I've been seeing the increase too, but it's the sheer quality of like, because like 2 years ago there was like no good matcha at all. Like the stigma was very, very well deserved, I would say for Chinese matcha. But this year, Oh my God, Ryan, I don't know, Like some of these products are pretty good.

Ryan · 7:11

There was one that blew me away. We're recorded a YouTube video which we're going to publish, and you can see us take the first sip of an example. It costs 90 dollars a kilo. It is the best cost to quality ratio matcha I've ever had in my life, and it tasted very much like a Japanese product.

Ryan · 7:34

Tasted very much like a good Japanese product. Yeah, this would sell for three, $400.00 a kilo in Japan. Easily. Easily. I was shocked and apparently for that particular supplier, who is Italian and a couple other Japanese companies are trying to get that material. Yeah, they're trying.

Zongjun · 7:52

Need to procure from them the course material too. They were trying to buy tencha from these people. And honestly, if they brought it into Japan, we'd make delicious matcha. Yes, and no one would honestly be able to tell the difference. Is that good?

Zongjun · 8:06

Yeah, very interesting. So and also like they don't necessarily owned any gardens. They're from the Guangdong province, which is, you know, predominantly a green tea, hongcha, black tea production region. So what they're doing is that they're aggregating all of these good materials that they source from different provinces inside China. I think their main source is from Zhejiang, and they also source some from Fujian.

Ryan · 8:33

But the really good one that we end up trying today was from Zhejiang. That's right. And a lot of these places are very open about who they supply people like, Oh yeah, we're a Starbucks supplier. We supply antiques, so 1 interesting artifact of sourcing anything in China, I would not expect any degrees of confidence. Yeah, but with that comes actually pretty radical transparency.

Zongjun · 9:00

Everyone is also like super transparent. Yeah. You asked how many days shaded cultivar what their practices are. Processing. Methods when they set it up. Mailing method. You know if they own the tea garden or not. They were like being pretty honest about all the information.

Ryan · 9:18

There was very low levels of caginess and when they didn't know, they just said, yeah, I don't know, just very honest and very helpful in answering all of these questions. And the other thing that was talking about half the vendors were also selling tencha. So the ability is more and more people have the get the hardware to know matcha afresh, the cost to quality ratio and some of the Chinese tencha, it's much, much easier than buying tencha in Japan.

Ryan · 9:43

Trying to buy tencha in Japan is like pulling teeth might even be more painful. To be honest. It's a weird request and it's very difficult to get. It's difficult to buy matcha, let alone tencha from a lot of these places. So it's it's a bit crazy.

Zongjun · 9:59

Yeah, it's, I will say, you know, this kind of landscape and environment to do business, it's really a healthy soil for a specialty product or specialty movement to take place. It really kind of unleash a lot of freedom and remove a lot of inertia to to to make innovations.

Zongjun · 10:22

The pain that we all experienced in Japan kind of really suffocated a lot of passion for a lot of people to try to do something new. Yeah, like if you're trying to source like interesting single cultivar, single origin tea anywhere in like the Uji trademark region of Nara, Shiga, Mie or Kyoto Prefecture, right? And like you just see Uji matcha, Uji matcha, Uji matcha all falls under the name.

Zongjun · 10:47

It's like ceremonial and then you try to learn anything about the product and it's either proprietary or all they won't tell you. But our tea master makes it taste the same every year. And it's it's his domain, not mine. And yes, it is almost always a hit. And like they just don't tell you anything about the product. It's very hard.

Zongjun · 11:09

Very few farmers are willing to be that transparent. And typically it's a lot of trust that you have to earn. But here it's the default. It could be really rich soil for a special team match up movement, finding really high quality tencha, so high quality that the Japanese are interested in. The large companies like Itoen are apparently very interested. Yeah.

Zongjun · 11:30

And a lot of these vendors, they're really willing to work with you to explore other potentials, like what kind of cultivar you want to do or what kind of shading base you want to do, what kind of fertilizers you want to, you know, end up being applied to the teas.

Zongjun · 11:43

The level of freedom is very high. Ryan and I have done a batch of tea experiment in the place called Qimen (keemun) before. It's just so easy to work with the farmers to to experiments, to tweak the parameters and you know, to and also just to start it like you don't really need to pitch or sell this idea very hard to people.

Ryan · 12:07

They're looking for opportunity, looking for opportunity. The domestic tea consumption in China is actually falling like they're looking for export markets. Yeah. The other very interesting phenomenon that we see that we saw here today is that all of these matcha producing area or new matcha producing area in Japan, in China has all been historically famous green tea production. Green tea is not selling China.

Ryan · 12:31

Everyone's trying to switch teas to tencha or matcha. There is this one vendor from from a specific county that we visit today and they were telling me that the local government invested 500 million RMB into turning into the entire county, switching from green tea, from Visha to Matcha.

Ryan · 12:50

That is almost 100 million U.S. dollars. It's like 80 million U.S. dollars invested in tencha. Something like a million hectares of tea producing of new tencha fields. That's right from Xiangxi, like a region most people have never heard of for matcha.

Zongjun · 13:08

I typically heard Guizhou or Zhejiang, but. Well, Shanxi, it's the province for Xi'an, but that specific area, I think it's called Ping Pingling. I've never heard of Pingling, to be honest. But yeah, apparently they're doing a lot of.

Zongjun · 13:24

Tencha. The number of provinces making tencha was out like enormous to me. Can you go through the full list? Oh my God. Well, we have Hubei, we have Hunan, We have Zhejiang, We have Jiangsu, We have Guangdong, We have Shanxi, We have Yunnan. What did I miss?

Zongjun · 13:43

Fujian 8 That's already 8. Wow. I believe there are more. And many different cultivars. You've heard a lot of Japanese cultivars like Yabukita, Okumidori, and then a lot of Chinese ones, specifically Long Jing 43. What were some of the other ones? There was a Zhejiang Tea Institute cultivar. There is this cha #10 which is a Hubei Tea Institute cultivar and Fuding Da Bai white tea cultivar which is predominantly being used in guicha. And that was very, we had some Fuding tencha that we bought and are grinding fresh on our machine and we bought, I don't know what we bought.

Ryan · 14:24

We're using it just for testing. It was $29.00 a kilo when we bought it. Tastes terrible. Fuding tencha from the Guizhou Guiyang people was excellent. Oh my goodness, excellent. Almost no bitterness, super green, very tasty, had a slight creaminess in umami. It was actually unlike any Japanese matcha I have ever had. The tea here is more.

Ryan · 14:50

I would say more. Tea like, yeah, more, more body, a little more tannic, but also more fragrance. And then some of these samples too just are super creamy and umami. And it's very interesting is also the amount of cross cultural learnings.

Ryan · 15:07

One of the teams that was supplying some of the best matcha that we had that was sourcing from Zhejiang, the entire team went to Uji and they learned how to whisk matcha. They did some tea tours, right? Like there's a lot of cross cultural context and learning going on in a pretty direct way.

Ryan · 15:26

I would say, and obviously there are Japanese here too, a lot of these very large farms and gardens and some of the most high quality, the highest quality ones are directly Japanese controlled, which is also very interesting.

Ryan · 15:44

They are spending a lot of investment here into expanding their productions. And I think we have no confirmed evidence, but what we have heard is that lot of these tencha eventually eventually gets funneled back to Japan and might get end up labeled as Uji matcha.

Zongjun · 16:01

We don't know. We basically have confirmed evidence. I mean all of these producers love to brag that they export even to Japan. Why? I mean the quality of a lot of this material is just so good. And what was really crazy is the price. So the most expensive matcha Chinese matcha I've ever heard of wholesale price was about 300 or maybe it was 330 U.S. dollars a kilo.

Zongjun · 16:26

And here the most expensive one we saw today was 150 USA kilo. There was some fantastic, just fantastic material that was at about 100 USA kilo. And there's also a lot hovering around 50 to 60 U.S. dollars a kilo. I this is like where the future of Cafe Matcha is.

Ryan · 16:47

I honestly think Chinese matcha is getting so good that it would be irresponsible as a business owner to your own bottom line and to provide a tasty product. Consumers like to not investigate Chinese matcha suppliers. The price to quality ratio is probably about two X as good is to what you can get in Japan right now at a similar price point for the quality it's delivering in the cup.

Ryan · 17:13

And I'm only talking about flavor here, the organoleptic, the sensory differences are really about on par with each other. They're they're the same. There's almost no difference. Yeah. For a lot, honestly, you're probably just buying.

Ryan · 17:27

You know the same thing in Japan. That gets imported. That gets. Imported. From China so if you're just serving matcha lattes it's it's crazy the quality that we're seeing here from all from all of these vendors if anyone listening is interested we're we're happy to help do some sourcing but for the value that you can get between 60 and 150 U.S. Dollars a kilo and much more readily available supply from much more transparent companies and not to mention companies that are really set up and designed for exportation. There is domestic market for matcha in China is very new. IT is growing.

Zongjun · 18:09

And I'd like to talk about that a bit in this episode. But these companies are set up for export. They're optimizing for exportable quality matcha in a way that, you know, the best Japanese matcha farms, you cannot import it to the EU or you can barely import it into the US because the pesticide residues are way too hot.

Ryan · 18:29

The best matcha in Japan like lives domestic in that market. And it's very difficult to export. Not until recently have they been starting to make pretty major investments and having pesticide residue level tea that, you know, can go to places outside that.

Zongjun · 18:46

That's another, you know, China's kind of starting from a blank slate. Yeah, it's because there's not a huge demand. But even here actually in the past two years, I think I've spent about eight or nine months in and out of China the last two years and just seeing it everywhere, even the local 711, it's quite visible.

Zongjun · 19:05

Hard. It's quite visible. Well, my guess is that they probably are experiencing A oversupply issue because for a lot of companies, they only are being allocated for a certain quota every year to explore tea outside of China. So if they end up eating all of the quota, they have to find other ways to sell their tea, which I think that is the reason a lot of these factories and brands are turning back to the domestic.

Ryan · 19:32

And this is like quite visible from a consumer's perspective two or three years ago. There's really no matcha in China. The local McDonald's has an affogato, a matcha affogato. That is a crazy sentence. I remember learning about an affogato for the first time like 10 years ago with coffee and I thought, wow, like I feel so sophisticated for knowing that this exists.

Ryan · 19:57

And now it's at the McDonald's in Guangzhou. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. And you'll also see a lot of like more boutique or specialty places being popped out. And one of the best selling products in the past year in China is this coconut water matcha made by Manor Cock.

Zongjun · 20:14

It's. Very good, It is very good and they have been advertising using Guizhou matcha. So it's more. Entirely local, yeah. So that that was pretty interesting. Like the idea of like place of origin is growing in the domestic market. So yeah, it's a pretty interesting future we are seeing here.

Ryan · 20:35

We ask a lot of questions when we go up there, and one of the more interesting things that we've been learning is just the way that the matcha's milled. So almost all of the product is ball mill or jet mill is another common one.

Ryan · 20:48

There are a few factories that are doing ishi-usu, Some are even importing ishi-usu from Japan, especially some producers from Hubei, which is the province of Wuhan. And the other thing that's really different here that you don't ever see Japanese talk about is the sieve level.

Ryan · 21:08

A lot of these manufacturers say, you know, it can pass through a 100 or A1000 level sieve in the way that it is marketed. So there's a lot of post milling sifting going on, which until very recently we learned also happens in Japan for a lot of Japanese manufacturers.

Ryan · 21:28

But there is a level of refinement after milling to remove any of these larger, bolder particles, which was definitely not on our radar until relatively recently. Even for some of the higher quality matcha they do sift apparently. Yeah, before they do any level of packaging. So we learned something that was we kept hearing and if you read online, so there's a, the largest matcha company in the world is Chinese.

Zongjun · 21:56

They're called Guai Cha, Guai Tea from Guizhou, specifically in a town called Tongren. We just call it the matcha capital of China and we have heard from some people that the total production is about the same amount as what all of Japan produces in one year, which is about 4000 tons.

Ryan · 22:16

Online, there's some mixed numbers. I saw down to like 1000 tons. I've also seen 2000 tons produced by Guai Cha. And now that we are here and we were able to talk to them, they did indeed confirm 4000. Yeah. Crazy number.

Ryan · 22:31

Which is the entire volume that is produced in the country of Japan in one year. It's pretty wild. Yeah. And you see a lot of these other places are also investing heavily in expanding their production. I cannot fathom how the production will be in the next few years coming out from China.

Zongjun · 22:51

Maybe it's good that they are turning back to the domestic market because it's it will be a very interesting future that the market gets flushed with decent quality matcha coming out of China. Like how would that impact a lot of the producers in Japan would be a big question mark.

Ryan · 23:08

Yeah, I think what the B to B side would get crushed to be honest. Yeah, unless you're like specifically and want to source a Japanese product for everywhere else where you consumers just don't care and they want matcha and the same health benefits.

Ryan · 23:23

Probably honestly lower pesticide residues than what you can find in Japan. The Chinese product is way cheaper and going to be way better and a way more stable supply than what you can find in Japan. And I think that Japan at the high end, I think there's going to be a big polarization. I think if you're doing interesting work like like hand picking interesting cultivars, like here we we didn't see any Uji Hikari or Narino or Asahi, like, you know, you don't get any of these luxury cultivars.

Zongjun · 23:53

I think those are just going to be worth even more. But like the average Yabukita or the average like Okumidori, that's very industrially produced and Kagoshima, you know, I don't know. Yeah, it's still very new even for the Chinese, this whole wave of matcha balloon.

Zongjun · 24:11

It's not that the Chinese do not have expensive cultivar, it's just that they don't have expensive cultivar for matcha yet. And all of these new places has only been producing matcha for like 3 or five years. So it's still super new for this entire country to pivot into matcha. Like I would say that if this market persists and broad in the future that China sees it as a stable market to worth invest into.

Ryan · 24:40

I bet there will be more expensive and higher quality cultivars emerge that are Chinese in China. That are suitable for shaded cultivation. Exactly. Right, like when you when you shade a plant, there's a lot of biological processes that you're disrupting and like, and that's one of the reasons actually why matcha from Uji is so good. Are all of these cultivars are specifically bred for shaded cultivation, but having really high chlorophyll content, really high theanine and amino acid content where you're also not killing the plants.

Ryan · 25:11

And all of these Uji cultivars and Kyoto cultivars are specifically bred for those exact climate conditions. You know, we say terroir generally doesn't matter because matcha is shaded #1 #2 it's heavily fertilized and #3 it's processed an insane amount. So like, the terroir doesn't impact the flavor that much, but it does impact what plants can grow healthy, wear, right? Like it.

Zongjun · 25:38

There are even in Uji with climate change, Asahi, which came from Uji Zairai, suffers from a lot of heat damage because the summers are just getting hotter and hotter. So when it comes to climate, cultivars do thrive in certain environments. The other factor is fertilizer absorption rate, Yeah. So a lot of these cultivars in China are just not that used to this height amount of fertilizer being applied to them. So I've heard that there's some local cultivars suffering from, they call it root burning.

Zongjun · 26:17

Root burning the fact because too much fertilizer being applied to the soil burns the root of the plants. Interesting, this is what Suji San was talking about. Yeah. The concept of over fertilizing, that's a plant. Yeah, so there's, there's actually a lot of art to be, you know, explored even just on fertilizers. I mean, that is the really, really crazy thing, right? These producers best have a decade of experience, most of them three to five years of experience. This is such a new industry in China. It's really hard, which is such an exciting opportunity and it's it's primarily for export and

Ryan · 27:00

will be so cool. And actually I think everyone listening, this is the future market. What could be really fertile soil for a specialty matcha movement, specialty matcha movement is showing them, yeah, you know what, we are willing to pay $200 for a fantastic product or $300.00 for a fantastic product.

Zongjun · 27:23

It will create the incentive cycles for people to start, you know, doing way more research on breeding, way more research on or even just cultivar selection, cultivar arbitrage. There's, you know, there's probably many dozens and dozens of very suitable cultivars for shaded cultivation that already exists in China because no one has made the investment yet, because this industry is brand new.

Zongjun · 27:47

Yeah. And the other great thing about, you know, the matcha scene or the matcha landscape in China is that there's no cultural baggage. You can literally do anything here. And people are so flexible to work with you to just show them the profit or a vision, like they're willing to work with you to do like, whatever you want and like, no one's going to come out and criticize you.

Ryan · 28:09

Yeah. One very interesting quote that we from one of the vendors we end up visiting today at Canton Fair is Wang Huziako Mall. Anything can be milk. They were milling, you know, oolong Honcha black tea, even to our we we end up touching some of the, you know, other non tencha powder and one of them is hojicha.

Ryan · 28:32

They roast their own hojicha to ah, which had a very unique pale color that's different from some other hojicha powder that we saw in Japan. But yeah, like, no one's going to criticize you of doing things, Mark. That's you can literally create your new culture.

Zongjun · 28:51

Yeah, really nice blank slate market. It's the other thing. So there's a lot of foreign buyers here. Actually most of this fair foreign buyers from what probably every country in the world are pretty close to it. Pretty interesting mix of people and different cultures. And the number of times I heard someone go up to one of these peaks, is this ceremonial grade? And they get the same answer every time. Yes.

Zongjun · 29:15

It's like, oh, this is an easy answer. And then that, you know, just becomes other people's reality. That's how flexible these definitions are. It's completely made-up. It's being made-up here, it's being made-up in Japan. It is this weird thing that lives in people's minds. Being made-up on time, I think we saw like 7 different grading systems.

Ryan · 29:34

Yeah, that was the other weird thing. Everyone's using their own grading system. We had A's 1A through 7A plus and there was an 8A bag in the back. We saw EH and something else. GUI Cha. People had a really weird grading system that had some acronym I had never seen before.

Ryan · 29:54

Oh, they it's a code. It's a blind code. OK, some blind code. Some blind code system and then we saw like premium, premium plus, Premium Plus Plus. We saw a lot of matcha #1. Matcha #2. I mean, weirdly enough, matcha number 2 is typically the higher quality one. I asked, can I get a sample of matcha #1? They're like, you know, this is the lower quality one, right? I was like, no.

Zongjun · 30:21

And a lot of stuff is labeled for EU export as well. Yeah, I mean this fair is for exportation. The other thing that's interesting is the MOQ. The MOQ's actually range pretty enormously from one container containing 10 metric tons all the way down through no MOQ.

Zongjun · 30:41

Super easy for work with but for the MOQ constraint orders it's a one stop solution. They help you get through the customs, they provide all the paperworks, 0 headache and for the no to no MOQ ones. Sometimes they are even just in the process of applying for a export license, so maybe you need more brain power to try to figure out how to get the tea into your country. Brain power and high pain tolerance first figuring out those export requirements.

Ryan · 31:13

But that's the other interesting scene that we saw in Canton Fair is that there's this array of vendors helping import and export and logistics. So many any country you're interested, Russia, Iran, it's and a lot of them like are very heavily specialized. Pretty crazy.

Ryan · 31:35

What is your impression just as a Chinese person, you grew up here in Guangzhou until the middle school and then went to the States. But like, what's your impression? And you're also a char and a tea person. You know, we've both been really into gongfu cha and Chinese tea and Taiwanese tea and Korean tea for such a long time. But this is a Chinese person seeing this very, like, new thing kind of developed because, you know, we've gotten so much context in Japan and are trying to learn this context here in China.

Zongjun · 32:06

And like, what's your take? Yeah, I would say that I guess the largest difference between culture or tea culture that I've experienced in China versus other places is how open minded people are not just in terms of real willing to try a new things, but also like adopting new practices and culture.

Zongjun · 32:25

So there is this concept from Confucius that they were basically saying that the so if you lose your manner, you go seek from your neighbors. And this has been true for generations across different dynasties because like the Chinese culture really changed so much in the past few 1000 years from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty to Song dynasty to Ming dynasty to Qing dynasty, every dynasty as it's actually very unique culture. And there is this habit of destroying the old culture. You know, it's cultural revolution is not a new thing here.

Zongjun · 33:03

Every dynasty has this tendency of kind of destroying some of the old manners or old rituals to prove the legitimacy or re establish a authority to kind of seize control and kind of establish a new regime that really impact a lot of these culture that are being practiced by the literati or through time.

Zongjun · 33:24

And every time you know, you lose the weight of let's say documenting a certain ritual or lose the documentation of a certain genre of art. Frequently some of the Chinese literatis or scholars from from the old time they will go seek documentation from Korean or even Vietnamese.

Zongjun · 33:45

Documenting their own, their, their culture, their culture. Basically, and this is has been a thing for many, many years. It's like they're reappropriating their own culture through some discovery. Yeah, a renaissance, a restoration, basically. So, you know, like seeing matcha being rejuvenated in China once again.

Zongjun · 34:06

I think this is just another cycle of history. Yeah. And instead of looking to Korea or to looking to Vietnam and looking to Japan and the commercial success of Japanese matcha, Yeah, and then learning getting more interest about their own former dead tea culture, Song dynasty matcha. Or it's really not that.

Zongjun · 34:25

There's this concept called the Sinosphere. It's all of these cultures who has been received historical influence from China that, you know, there's this part of China that, you know, getting very well preserved by them, that the Chinese are just rediscovering what has been lost through time, which I think is a very beautiful thing.

Ryan · 34:48

Yeah. What do you think the Japanese would think if they came to Canton Fair and saw this? So what would the spectrum of reactions be? Oh my God. I don't know. I mean, it really depends on the region, right? Right. So like, I would not necessarily see someone from, let's say, Uji being, you know, too willing to work with people here, but you know, like places from Izumo or from Yame or from Kagoshima.

Zongjun · 35:15

I mean, we actually met surprisingly a lot of people in Japan that has such an open minded mentality in, you know, trying and seeing and praising new things. Even in Uji we met, you know this farmer from Baisa Nakamura that they were just so eager to let us to try this fantastic new Chinese matcha that he discovered I.

Zongjun · 35:37

Think he would be super interested to like, taste and learn about all these Chinese I. Think so. Being made into matcha like some of these cultures you had never even heard of. You know, having so much contacts with Chinese too. Yeah, I think that's really one thing that the Japanese can learn from the Chinese is this, I would say open mindedness and this optimism.

Zongjun · 36:00

Yes, in in innovation instead of instead of instead of framing everything in a very pessimistic or armchair or negative way. Like a lot of these, you know, legacy brands like for example Marukyu Koyamaen and were framing this whole matcha shortage or this matcha boom as a bad thing. Yeah, they really took a victim stance, which would really surprise me considering there had so much demand for their matcha that they couldn't produce enough. I have trouble being intellectually honest with myself about how they are the victim in the situation. Yeah, yet everything is framed in like a negative way, like almost like this boom is hurting

Zongjun · 36:49

their business. Yeah, which is like the exactly the opposite. Yeah, but it's also like very regional, like we don't see this kind of complaint coming out from like places like Fukuoka or Kagoshima, like they seized the.

Ryan · 37:05

Opportunity In Marukyu Koyamaen's defense, they were a victim and they are continued to be victims a lot of fraud because. That's so. Popular that there's a lot of counterfeit. I'm sorry, I mean this I think they have a total complaint and they are a victim of fraud that's being committed mostly in China.

Zongjun · 37:22

But you know, I agree there's a lot of negative frightening and a lot of like not intellectually like honest arguments even on Instagram. I hate the armchair Ness. There was a matcha producer in Wazuka that was commenting and trying to correct someone on their real about about Japanese matcha. And they're like, yeah, it's like champagne, but but it's not like champagne is champagne has to be grown in champagne and matcha has to be grown in Japan.

Zongjun · 37:51

But we as Japanese did a bad job protecting that. But like, what does that have to do with like anything? It's not champagne. It's not protected. Like you can say that you want it to be protected, but you cannot say that matcha is like champagne because it's not like like it's there's no argument making.

Ryan · 38:18

You're not making an argument that. Well, I would say someone's, you know, vision of what matcha should be. Yeah, but you can say that like, yeah, OK, like, you know, this all DOP olive oil is protected and this is, it's like that, but it's not OK.

Zongjun · 38:34

It's not. But what does it have to do with anything? It's just not an intellectually honest complaint or. Intellectually constructed for inspiring. Yeah, just like literally someone just being very grumpy on the Internet.

Zongjun · 38:49

I guess it's not unique to just Japan either. But you know, I find these arguments is dumb, right? What we just tasted was delicious, and a lot of it is very Japanese inspired. Some of it was so good that Japanese companies are trying to import it to Japan.

Ryan · 39:06

And we tasted it. It's in the cup. The cup doesn't lie. Yeah. I mean, what do you care about? Do you want it to be produced in Japan to have be double the price and not taste as good? Like, what are you putting first? The flavor, the culture? Where are these incentive loops?

Zongjun · 39:22

This is my experience. And it's different for everyone. We care about the consumer and we care about the product. We care about what we can learn about the product. Like we are much more interested in broader tea culture and contemporary tea culture and inclusive tea culture where there is some level of like, yeah, let's try it or like, why is it good? How is it?

Zongjun · 39:45

Good, right? Like getting bogged down on all of these details about, you know, the exact borders of where something's grown? Yeah, that, that's great if you know you're trying. To. Well, yeah, I mean. Exclusive Culture.

Zongjun · 39:58

Yeah, or cultural preservation, but we I would say we are more interested in new culture creation or like seeing. Culture as a living thing. Indeed, it's a living thing. And it should be a living thing. Like preserving culture is great. Like today, even today's new culture will be the old culture for tomorrow.

Zongjun · 40:18

And there will be people preserving us, probably. Even this Wazuka tea farmer that's complaining there was no tencha produced in Wazuka until the 20th century. There is no history of that in Wazuka. And honestly, like all of these tencha practices that we are seeing today in Japan, it's pretty new, like all these tencha ovens. Single cultivars. Cultivars.

Zongjun · 40:41

Processing Methods. Synthetic Shading. Synthetic fertilizers or like composites or fertilizers or the idea of fertilizing with different ingredients. Or the second harvest. A lot of Japanese matcha. Second harvest. No one was doing second harvest matcha until like the 80s. Awesome.

Ryan · 41:00

Very new. Actually. You could argue that like a very large percentage of Japanese matcha is not authentic at all what the tradition is of producing matcha in Japan. Yeah, Yeah. It's not really. It's not really that older than a lot of other matcha producing areas.

Zongjun · 41:20

Actually, we don't know a single producer in all of Japan that's making matcha and tencha the way that they were 100 years ago, which is not something you can say about China. There are still a lot of producers and living artisanal crafts of Japanese of Chinese tea production and Chinese tea producing areas that have not modern so you can actually get a truly handmade product in like Wishan for example.

Ryan · 41:46

Predominantly in Yunnan, but I agree. Yunnan a lot. I mean this is where the actual, if you want to taste true heritage crafted tea, you don't go to Japan for and look at matcha because there's not a single one doing like honzu shaded hand processed zairai tea. I don't know anyone doing that, I don't think. They're not only just that you have to steam it in a wood box and you have to fertilize it with human manure. Human feces, yeah.

Zongjun · 42:17

That would be the most authentic I would say. And no one's doing. Everyone switched to cultivars. Very few people are doing honzu shading and no one is doing hand processing right. Literally does not exist in this category. It is dead.

Zongjun · 42:30

It is a dead art. No one's doing it. It's probably totally fine, and honestly, I think the current version probably tastes better. Yeah, tastes better. So literally doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. And you know, it's also a adaptive culture that I will argue that it's just not feasible anymore to do all those practices nowaday in Japan, like the labor shortage and all of these things. That's just making all these old practices not reliable. Like if you were to restore this old culture ever in Japan, it will just be a big show.

Zongjun · 43:04

Like it will not be part of a sustainable culture anymore. And you could argue the most authentic matcha comes from a living culture. And that living culture adapts, it changes, it improves, it embraces innovation, which it has done. You know, I think honestly, Japanese tea culture has done such a good job at culturally appropriating itself and foiling in on itself, selling the the old traditional ways, the old traditions, you know, all of these practices of the past. But really it is one continuous evolution and living culture constantly there's looking backwards of just folding this history in on itself to sell

Ryan · 43:46

what is indeed a very modern product. But it is the most most authentic version of the thing when you can taste the 10th generation or 16 generations of blending scale or farming where they have changed and are not only doing methods that are honestly not commercially viable. Or not good.

Zongjun · 44:05

Or a lot of them probably just didn't taste any good. Yeah, they're like one very inspiring thing that I keep hearing. I first heard it from a Uji tea farmer, one of the actually oldest family in Uji that has been continuously making poor tea.

Zongjun · 44:21

And one Korean farmer and actually a handful of Japanese farmer, is that my tea this year is better than my tea last year, most likely because I'm more experienced too. I'm making better teas and hopefully I'm making better teas than my ancestors or my previous generations because we all learn from each other because we keep learn from our past experience.

Zongjun · 44:45

Percent. And I think Chinese matcha and its current environment is only going to get better and better and better. And the speed of change and the open mindedness of new technologies is much more fluid here in China. And I think it's very fertile soil for a specialty matcha movement.

Ryan · 45:05

And it's just interesting. What's going on here is interesting. And if you find it like to be threatening to what's going on in Japan, they should innovate like, you know, they should change. Like I don't think this is definitely not a 0 sum game that is going on. But if China can produce something that is as fewer pesticides, more delicious and more transparent and more innovative for, you know, whether or not it's breeding on the cultivar side or different fertilizer recipes or different types of just tension processing will lead to a much more rich and dynamic future.

Ryan · 45:43

That's the future I want to live in. Not, you know, what some 400 year old institution that's barely changed in the generation thinks is good. But that's stale. That's not what's fresh. So, you know, all of these things will cohabitate.

Zongjun · 45:55

But very exciting, very nice to have this new member enter the party. Looking forward to it. Yeah. Nice to see this kind of trend being blossoming in other areas too. I want to see this happening in Thailand. I want to see this happening in Korea.

Ryan · 46:11

I want to see this happening in India in all of the tea producing regions. Matcha cultivation can also be a global movement too, not just consumption. 100% So let us know what do you think, What are your opinions about Chinese Matcha?

Zongjun · 46:24

Have you had a good one? Have you had an experience that really reset your expectations? So do let us know and if you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with the friend and we'll see you on the next one. See you in the future.

Ryan · 46:37

Take care.