What is Authentic Matcha? Opinion

Ryan · 0:00

All right, we're live. Hello, this is the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan. This is my co-founder Zongjun. Hello. Hello. Who also goes by Sam so you might hear both and we're the co-founders of Sanko Matcha products. Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts. And today's episode is centered around the opinion piece that we recently wrote.

Ryan · 0:23

This is a really sensitive topic that can get very philosophical very fast. Today we're going to talk about the very notion of authenticity and traditional. This is really just an illusion, and not just in the context of tea, but also in many other things across different cultures. Yeah.

Zongjun · 0:43

So it's this is a really hard concept to break down one because it's so common and we'll be the first to say that we are guilty of using this term sometimes and have in the past and might accidentally use it in the future.

Zongjun · 0:56

It's very common tea marketing term to call something authentic, and many companies do that for good reason, right? It's a really easy way to get someone to appreciate something like the very notion of authenticity itself is that it is true to itself, right? Like if you talk about having like being authentic or having an authentic personality is you know, you're not superficial or acting or whatever, right?

Zongjun · 1:24

You're very true to yourself, whatever that means, and you express it that way. Yeah, but the the only thing that the people are missing or not thinking through clearly is that the idea of self is not static. It's, it's constantly changing, like it's not about things, but you know, people too. Yesterday's you is not going to be similar to today's you and it's not going to be similar to, you know, tomorrow's you. It's when you are talking about something that's authentical, you're essentially using a static image as a reference point of a thing to define its presence, or trying to define its future.

Zongjun · 2:07

And that's really not a it's. It's not a ideal or not even a realistic thing to do unless you absolutely kill something and put it into a a glass box and put it into a museum, then it's forever, you know, sealed. And then it's that it's no longer a living culture or a living thing.

Ryan · 2:29

So. What do you think the intention is on June? Let's examine both sides of this and then let's dive into the piece that you wrote which talks about matcha specifically. But when I'm asking for authentic matcha from you as a consumer like what is my intention? Where does that?

Zongjun · 2:48

Come yeah, I think when people or for that matter, including myself, demanding something that's authentic or traditional is we we want something that has a culture and has a history and has a story that can, you know, validate its existence right now. So it's not something that it's just made-up today. We want something that has been in practice, has been used for a extended period of time so that we we can develop this feeling of ourself in drawing such thing feeling tangible to its past. And I think so many people are afraid of getting a watered down experience in some way, right?

Ryan · 3:39

Like if you grew up in a small town in the States and you had a Chinese restaurant and then all of a sudden you, you go to university in a much bigger place and you realize, holy crap, this I, I'm tasting things that this is nothing like I know, and I realize that I've been kind of lied to.

Ryan · 3:55

This isn't Chinese food, this orange chicken general sauce, right? Like Chinese food is something, you know, entirely else. And then you go deeper down the rabbit hole and realize, oh, there's Sichuan cuisine, which is totally different than like dim sum from Canton, which might be totally different than, you know, food from Lanzhou, you know, in Western China. And you kind of go down that box. But the intention of of asking for authentic is to get at the real thing, mostly because people want to change their perspective.

Zongjun · 4:26

I think usually it's the best of intentions. I want to expose myself to something that I don't know, might not understand come from a different culture, a different set of context. I mean, I think that's why, like, people are so romanced by Japan.

Zongjun · 4:44

It's such an interesting culture of the past and the perfection and of all sorts of philosophical underpinnings that you can feel not only in tea ceremony but in other things. And they want to step foot in something that is perspective shifting for them. Yeah, totally.

Zongjun · 5:00

It's it's the story being told. It's the practice or the imagination of such practice being done for many, many generations that that people can get the feeling of some credibility has been established and they are, you know, like experiencing the real thing. But in reality, such existence, such thing might have been changed for in a very drastic way, like things that being that were being done in the past might might be very different from, you know, today's practices. And for that matter, you know, if you really want something that is traditional, like should you revert back to the practice in the past or should you

Zongjun · 5:49

continue to doing the things that people are doing right now? So for 10 matter actually, Ryan, we can use the example of orange chicken. You you first time you try orange chicken and you thought this, oh, this tastes, tastes pretty good. It's sweet, it's soured.

Zongjun · 6:06

It has the flavor of chicken that that you know that that's kind of pretty interestingly intertwined with something that you you wouldn't thought they would go together. And that's probably the the first Chinese food, Chinese dish that you would experience that was outside of China.

Zongjun · 6:23

And then as you have more contacts of Chinese food, you realize, oh, wow, this is not really things that people would eat, you know, or what Chinese people would eat nowadays, but very interestingly. So I myself, you know, I'm Chinese and I grew up in China. I've never had orange chicken before in China. And trying orange chicken in the States was my first experience to this dish.

Zongjun · 6:49

And I actually went down a rabbit hole, you know, trying to figure out what exactly, you know, this dish comes from. And very interestingly, this is a very traditional dish coming from northern China. And it's similar to the preparation of the dish called Gubaro in Manchuria.

Zongjun · 7:08

So this is actually something that's quite traditional, but people no longer eat it. They brought it to the US back in time. And he felt out of favor in modern day China. And for someone especially coming from the South, we have never had this thing before for my generation. So you see like this evolution of truth, this evolution of tradition can be very generational and can be very, it can almost be so once, once tradition can be someone's present and can be someone's illusion. But but you are talking about different time frame, you're talking about different time lapse. So very awesome.

Ryan · 7:52

Well, just just to pull on that thread a little bit, right? Like when we say that authenticity is being true to itself or oneself, right? That subject is a story, is a narrative. And even saying like, is this practice traditional to Omotesenke school of Chanoyu, which is a tea ceremony school, or to Urasenke Chanoyu, right.

Ryan · 8:15

Like even that question is interesting because it's kind of actually a story of a interesting tangent. I was listening to a podcast and a talk by someone who did a lot of research and wrote a book about women in tea in the Meiji and Edo periods. And she was doing lots of she she was giving this talk on this podcast and she was doing a lot of research and she had a bunch of realizations trying to fact find. And that it turns out that a lot of the historical books about the Urasenke School of tea ceremony were largely sponsored or somehow influenced by the iemoto. So I mean, kind of makes sense.

Ryan · 8:56

The institution studying itself, you know, is going to be paying and I don't know about soliciting, but at least cooperating with people to to write, you know, the history and cultural importance of various aspects of Urasenke.

Ryan · 9:08

And it turns out that from a historical lens, they're actually not that objective at all. And these tea ceremony schools are very, the documentation is really a thing. It's really a Japanese thing in general, where everything is really documented, even in business, and they have records of different tea ceremony gatherings, who was there, what's they served, what tea ceremony utensils were used, all sorts of things like this that go back all the way. And she tried to gain access to these records from Urasenke and the Omotesenke about this because she's studying women in tea. And she wanted to know were they

Ryan · 9:44

guessed? Were they host? Were they high class or low class women? How did that change as Japan opened up in the Meiji period? Her book is, by the way, is called Cultivating Femininity. And I think you can buy it online.

Ryan · 9:56

And she no one gave her the records. So there's literally they're not like even allowing her to be able to to study this. And then you realize, holy crap, like even the histories that have been documented across these various cultures, if you're like want to have an informed opinions, is this authentic to Urasenke like maybe a certain gesture or a certain tea bowl or a certain procedure or something, right. It's actually through a highly biased distorted lens that was often very discriminatory and whose principles when analyzed through modern value systems might not be something that we're we're too happy with.

Ryan · 10:38

So really, all of these notions in tea in general can be very highly distorted. Yeah, you know, Chanoyu is especially interesting because when we're talking about tradition, we're talking about folk tradition. But for Chanoyu is a institution tradition.

Zongjun · 10:56

It's it's especially, I wouldn't say distorted, but it's definitely regulated or restricted. 1 analogy that I can think of is the Catholic Church right there is this notion of Pope infallibility ex cathedra. I think that's the Latin phrase, which essentially means, you know, it's it's people would often interpret it as the Pope is never wrong.

Zongjun · 11:24

But that's not true for for the Catholics Church's intention. That means that there is one essential truth, an essential true narrative. And that narrative will always coming out from the Pope. And that's the most validated narrative that is, you know, in the documents.

Ryan · 11:47

So I think Chanoyu is very similar right, to that institution which one's narrative is always controlled by, you know, the iemoto. And it will be practice and it will be taught to the followers. Very, very good comparison and I'm glad to hear the high school Catholic school education is paying off. But actually, it reminds me of a really good quote by Yuval Noah Harari, the author and historian that wrote Sapiens and Homo Deus and Nexus, his latest book.

Ryan · 12:19

He's a professor of history. There's this wonderful line that goes something like this. It's that everyone in the world believes that religion is a story made-up by other humans except their own. And it's a really good example that they're, you know, even for, you know, these things, they, they're all stories. The reference point is kind of a story when you're asking is something authentic.

Ryan · 12:44

So it's it's hard not to get lost in the authenticity trap and not understanding the full degrees of bias that can go into that answer as you're on your tea journey that you might not know because you might not have the context.

Ryan · 12:59

And anyone who's really asking about authenticity is in an asymmetric knowledge position. But you're asking if something is authentic. The person who's answering you should in theory have more knowledge than you to be able to answer that question. But you know, among experts, right? I I bet people who have been studying matcha for for decades or growing it for decades, like the people who are really advanced or who have tons of context are not sitting around asking about authenticity.

Zongjun · 13:30

Because usually it's they're active participants in the change and changes of the living art that is creating matcha, growing matcha, preparing matcha, blending matcha and these types of things. Yeah, it's it's very interesting. Like, let's loop back to matcha as the center of today's discussion for matcha.

Zongjun · 13:53

So when people are asking about something that's authentic or traditional, usually they want something that's that's older, that has a history that has been practiced for hundreds of thousands of years. But for that matter, matcha is actually the opposite. When you are asking something or in Chanoyu. In the context of Chanoyu something that's authentic. You are actually going to get the most updated version tradition.

Zongjun · 14:26

That's so true. Yeah, because, you know, where do you draw the line? You know, like if you really want to go back, you are going to go back to Song dynasty water. And that's China very origin of, you know, matcha, which is Chinese powder tea.

Zongjun · 14:46

And that culture is very much that you're seeing some revival revivalist movement today happening across China for Song dynasty matcha, ever since Ming Dynasty, the the first emperor of Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang or Emperor Hongwu actually issued a law and the production of powder tea in the 14th century.

Zongjun · 15:12

And ever since that, the culture of matcha ceased to exist. And it's a very much a dead art. So if you want to loop back to that tradition, you are not going to find anything that's living or breathing. And yeah. And then, you know, luckily, you know, matcha was transported to Japan and studied by and loved by the Japanese at the time.

Zongjun · 15:37

But, you know, even for that matter, you know, the matcha that we had back in the times of Sen no Rikyu is not going to be very similar to the matcha that we drink today. In fact, it was probably very, very different.

Zongjun · 15:54

And in the opinion piece we talk about several different aspect of why the tea at the time was very different from today's matcha. We saw vast innovations in tea farming, tea gardening and a lot of the practice that we are seeing today like shade grown matcha, shading your matcha bush. Shading your tea bush is actually a fairly recent innovation compared to how long tea has been introduced into Japan.

Ryan · 16:21

Yeah. I mean, people would probably use that as an example of what they mean by authentic matcha. But, you know, today's traditions were yesterday's innovations, and it's just a weird question of where you draw that line. Yeah, very true.

Zongjun · 16:37

And even for today, because like, even for the practice itself historically as being done with very specific materials, like when talking about honzu, you know, it's a rice straw is all of all of these bamboo reeds that people would, you know, scattered and form a coverage on top of the tea bush. But nowadays we're seeing kanreisha or cheesecloth, you know, this synthetic plastic cloth being used everywhere in Japan.

Zongjun · 17:06

And it was used in some of the most, you know, oldest tea garden in Uji. And people have no problem with it. And in fact, you know, a lot of these tea farmers had told us that, you know, the difference of using completely honzu shading versus synthetic clothes. And their impact on the flavor of tea is very, very marginal. And the cheesecloth actually provides better sun coverage than traditional honzu shading. And even the term that everyone uses, synthetic cloth, is actually ridiculous when you really think about it. I mean, let's look at like, I don't know something umbrellas, they also cover you.

Zongjun · 17:47

Let's go back 150 years. Umbrellas existed. They're probably made out of, I don't know, canvas and wood. Now that they're made out of plastic, do we call them synthetic umbrellas? It's just this ridiculous, like standard that's. Very true.

Zongjun · 18:01

You know like something that's what we consider very traditional is it's also synthetic, right. Paper is synthetic. These are clothes are also synthetic. It's just different synthesizing method that we are using today versus yesterday.

Ryan · 18:16

It's an unfair standard and often used to make often used to differentiate between, you know, I guess higher labor methods and non higher labor methods. You have this wonderful line. I mean, we see tea marketing all the time and we try to follow as many people as we can and constantly look at matcha positioning. And I'd say over half, you know, often use the word authenticity. You know, whenever we have these rants in our, you know, internal discussions and you have a great line, we're talking about authenticity or heritage matcha or all of these different words that people use.

Ryan · 18:50

You're like, OK, that's great, but from which era Do you want it from The modern era? Do you want it from the Meiji era? The ADO era? There really is no such thing as authentic matcha because the reference point is so ambiguous. Yeah.

Zongjun · 19:09

And even you want to follow a chanoyu interpretation of, you know, something that's authentic or, or something that's traditional, then you will run into the question of which schools of chanoyu you you want to follow. There are hundreds of active schools of chanoyu exist today. They all have various different level of heritage. So which schools do you follow?

Ryan · 19:37

Which interpretation do you want to believe? Yeah, well, I mean, let's make this very relevant, right? Someone's getting into matcha. They want to learn how to whisk. A natural question. How do they whisk in Japan? How do I whisk matcha authentically, Right?

Zongjun · 19:52

And let's just pick the two major schools. You have a Omotesenke or a Urasenke, right? Those, if you have two different instructors, are going to teach you how to whisk completely differently. If I show up to an Omotesenke class whisking the way I whisk at home, I'm going to be told Dame, Dame, Dame, Dame.

Ryan · 20:11

Yeah, that's so true. But but you're not doing it wrong, right? I'm totally doing it wrong. I'm getting yelled at. I have gotten yelled at. Yeah, but you are doing it wrong in Omotesenke's guideline. So, so, so, So I guess the question here that we need to ask is what outcome do you want to achieve?

Zongjun · 20:31

Do you want to be the perfect Omotesenke student or you want to make a very delicious bowl of matcha that you like? Like because for Omotesenke, the goal is not produced a very thick foam. In fact, they don't want a lot of foam for for the matcha, it's about the elegance of how you move your hand. It's about the elegance of how the whisk glide through the the soup of matcha.

Zongjun · 20:59

And before someone that drinks matcha today, a lot of them really like the very thick foam coming from the matcha. But if you whisk with the correct Omotesenke gesture, you are not going to get that outcome. So for that matter, you know, like, what's your goal?

Zongjun · 21:16

What's your purpose of whisking matcha? You want to make something that you like, or do you want to follow a certain tradition? Yeah, correct. But you know, like, but, but here you really need to make a decision of, you know, like what?

Zongjun · 21:29

What exactly do you want? Yeah, I was watching this reaction video of an Urasenke student, I think she did, Midori Akai. And for those of you who don't know what that is, it's kind of like a residency program for Urasenke students that can go to headquarters in Kyoto and and study live and learn there for a certain period of time.

Zongjun · 21:51

And she was judging TikTok and Instagram reels of people preparing matcha and basically correcting, oh, this is right, this is wrong. Pretty like entertaining video to watch, but it was so black and white like this is wrong, this is right. And what's a much more useful framework for anyone who knows anything about tea, teaching people who don't know as much about tea.

Zongjun · 22:17

It's an interesting position, right? Because most, most people are not that deep into tea or into matcha or anything like that. And so the moment you know a little bit, you're automatically know way more than 95% of the population. So it turns out the people who have this passion often get put into being a position of an educator or giving recommendations and things like that. So it's so important that there's a culture online and offline of really understanding intentions, especially behind the question of authenticity and break it down exactly the way that you just did.

Zongjun · 22:53

Like, what am I actually asking when I'm asking? How do I whisk matcha authentically versus saying, oh, and Omotesenke, you don't use your wrist. There's no wrist movement. All of the lateral movement needs to come from your elbow. I mean, that's that's true, for example, right? Like, but you know, what does that matter to someone who's not studying tea ceremony?

Zongjun · 23:13

It's rules for the sake of rules. And it's so black and white and it's such a unfriendly way to be introduced to tea and matcha. And I think one of the reasons why is that another type of tea ceremony like Chinese tea ceremony for example, it's a very bottoms up approach.

Zongjun · 23:32

There's many practitioners out there, there's relatively few schools and it's this organic living, breathing thing of normal people doing their living their life, having their tea practice, promoting their tea practice, forming communities, blah, blah, blah. But in Japanese tea, very much like Japanese society, it's very hierarchical and very top down in position with these large institutions, these schools, which on top of that, in a very traditional top down society that have created this new or influencing this, this new culture of consuming tea outside of a ceremonial context.

Zongjun · 24:11

As more non Japanese and more foreigners are getting into this as a thing that they like and want to enjoy. Right. You naturally go to where all the practitioners are who've been doing it for hundreds of years. You know, we want to learn from you. And it, it's creating I, I, I think this is 1 aspect of chanoyu that doesn't map well onto the modern. And I think that's sort of where our reactions come from and why we want to see matcha much more as a specialty product where it's much more bottoms up.

Zongjun · 24:42

Understanding why you like something, not being told that, you know, this blend is what we use here in Omotesenke. That's, you know the iemoto said. This is our koicha blend you should all buy. Yeah. I mean like it's we we essentially we really want to see matcha.

Zongjun · 24:59

It's more relevant to matcha the self instead of all these, you know, traditions or, you know, institutionalized practice centering, centering around it. Because you know, when you're talking about, you know, like this matcha plan for this, that that this iemoto endorsed, you are not really quoting this matcha. You are quoting the iemoto.

Zongjun · 25:22

The the credibility comes from the iemoto, not from the matcha itself. And we see that in the world of chanoyu. We also see that in some words of Chinese tea ceremony too. And in Chinese tea ceremony, I think it's it's the most ridiculous.

Zongjun · 25:36

You see a lot of these, you know, so-called tradition, but it was really modern invention, you know, like pointing up your pinkies when you pour tea and certain ways. The Phoenix Tale. The Phoenix tell and the where to point your teapot's spout towards like if you're pointing towards the door, that means the guest relief and these like really weird, strange quote UN quote.

Zongjun · 26:01

Tradition is not really traditional. And if you really want to experience something that is like tradition, instead, you should probably go to places like Chaozhou where they do not have such rules. But the culture of drinking tea is just infused in every aspect of people's life from day-to-day, people drinking tea, people enjoying tea all the time in all kinds of contexts.

Zongjun · 26:26

The tradition, quote UN quote tradition. I'm just going to use the, the word tradition for the sake of coherent narrative. But the the tradition in Chaozhou, it's about tea itself. It's about the dental tea that they drink and if the tea is flavorful, if it suits their preference, if they would like it and if they, you know, are prepared well. So that's the tradition that people would follow in child. And it's about, it's about tea, not about, you know, certain rules or certain gesture or certain, you know, ways of how this tea needs to be treated in the very structural way. If we zoom out a little bit and

Ryan · 27:05

talk sort of about, about the elephant in the room, about why so many companies promote traditional matcha or having a traditional or authentic practice, an authentic matcha, right? And the reason is kind of obvious, right? There's, it's a reaction to industrialized agriculture. There's a lot of bad actors that are taking product that maybe wasn't shade grown or maybe it's from the fourth harvest or maybe it's from China or maybe it was ground on not an ishi usu stone mill.

Ryan · 27:37

And there's various levels of where people draw the line and a very industrial product and promoting it as much. And right, you know, there are these producers that are going through the hard work of creating a really highly unique product using much slower, less efficient methods that have been done for a longer time than using a self driving harvesting machine or an AI computer vision optical sorting machine.

Ryan · 28:06

So it's understandable why it happens. But you know, even these same vendors, let's say you have honzu shaded Asahi cultivar, Tezumi hand picked tea, their favorite example, largely because we love that kind of tea so much and saying, OK, this, no one's going to argue that this is authentic, but you know, it's not true, right?

Ryan · 28:26

Like 100 years ago, almost everything was zairai or seed propagated. So you had much more genetic and plant to plant diversity versus just all Asahi plants, which is a which is a cultivar, right? That cultivars are a modern invention. If you go back far enough, honzu was also an innovation, so it's a too reductive of framework probably for someone that has gone down the rabbit hole that far in matcha. Yeah.

Zongjun · 28:55

And it's interesting that you brought up all of these modern inventions of, you know, manufacturing matcha like it's it's very how do I put this? So the the reason why we can today sit down and talk about matcha and talk about matcha with you and I and with someone from Japan, someone from Europe, someone from the Philippines or other Southeast Asian countries or anyone you know in this world that had the experience of drinking matcha. It was unthinkable back in the days like for for us like that can just get how access to matcha. It would be crazy in the context of, you know, people hundreds of years ago.

Zongjun · 29:44

Like matcha at a time was such a expensive and luxury product. The very reason why the first emperor of Ming Dynasty banned powder tea production is because it's so labor intensive. It was very interesting story about the emperor himself.

Zongjun · 30:02

He was actually a peasant that from a uprising to fight against the Yuan dynasty Mongols and eventually claimed the throne of of China at the end. But he really understand, you know how labor intensive powder green tea production was back in the days. That's why he eventually issued that band to make powder green tea production illegal.

Zongjun · 30:29

And that's the same story for Japanese matcha. It was really labor intensive and for those people that were involved in the production of matcha, they didn't have the luxury to enjoy their own creation. It was all reserved for the elites.

Zongjun · 30:45

Thanks to modern invention like a people like you and I can enjoy matcha from day-to-day and it's still a little bit expensive, but not that expensive. You can buy it from your local supermarket, but it's a higher price tag compared to your tea like Lipton.

Ryan · 31:01

But still it's it's a common product nowadays. Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. And that's probably not very traditional, but it still tastes good. It's important to ask kudu heritage or tradition or authentic practices serve.

Ryan · 31:21

Yeah. Like the Japanese tea industry has an aging population, but people are retiring, There are not very many succession plans. And if it's just easier to use a cheesecloth to shade your garden versus Hanzu shading, it kind of makes sense, right? If it's going to produce a relatively similar tea and it's almost the wrong framework or potentially the wrong focus unless it's really improving the product in some way. That is, you know, very highly tangible. And, and I kind of have an interesting example here. So very kindly, Johnny Macha had sent us some of Suji's son's competition, Great Asahi.

Ryan · 31:58

And I know what they do in the production of this, which is something Mark from Olika has talked about. Suji San and his family and the people that work there literally go around with chopsticks picking out leaves to make competition. Great tea, absolutely hand sorted slowly by people who have been doing this for a very long time and know what they're doing.

Ryan · 32:19

And you know, when you and I were in Uji Songjun, we went to a little tea museum and we saw old pictures, old photographs, very old photographs, probably over 100 year old of tea production. And it's just, I can't take a room of these people sorting tensha with chopsticks to, you know, sort out stems or various colors or or whatever.

Ryan · 32:40

And it's a very traditional technique. It's an authentic method of sorting things. Now, if Suji San were to buy a computer vision AI optical sorter, which exists, including in the tea industry, but in other industries where you, you know, you take this tea, you put it on the conveyor belt, you have it fall off into something else and you create this waterfall of tea.

Ryan · 33:04

There's a camera behind it that's constantly monitoring it and there's all these little air jets, this little grade of air jets behind it. And if it notices, oh, this is a brown leaf little jet of air will shoot out and knock it out of the stream and it gets sorted out.

Ryan · 33:18

If he were to buy one of those, he would probably be able to produce much more of that competition grade tea, which is let's let's assume objectively higher quality. I get to taste it. It was indeed incredible. We're going to have some podcasts about about competition grade tea in a bit. If you use that, that's no longer a heritage method. Would we then say it's not authentic? So it's at what point are you allowed to use a better tool in terms of quality?

Zongjun · 33:46

And why do you get, like minus points on authenticity? It's a very unfair standard to judge people by, especially farmers who are making a living doing these things. Yeah. I guess you know, the one criteria that I can think about of judging any invention is the intention of this invention. Is it intended to replace a more laborious method, but with, you know, similar or even better outcome? If that's the case, then I would say that's a good invention. But, you know, if it's, you know, trying to produce more tea to make more money, but the with the damage of the tea or the environment, like, you know,

Ryan · 34:32

certain pesticides or certain synthetic fertilizers, then I would say that's a bad invention. That's a great point. Quality and quantity considerations. And what are the secondary and tertiary outcomes? I mean, using an AI optical sorting tool, right? Doesn't have that many negative externalities other than saving a whole lot of Labor that can probably be spent doing better things of higher value elsewhere when sorting things with chopsticks manually.

Ryan · 35:03

Or just, or just, you know, such labor probably doesn't exist anymore. Japan is such an ageing population. Yeah, it's very rare. And I mean, it's not very glorified either. You and I were in Chow Zhou visiting a tea friend, and she has quite the personality. And we were at this tea shop.

Ryan · 35:22

It's owned by a friend of hers. And there's someone very young, he looks like a teenager who kind of runs around and helps and very much is obviously his first job. He's kind of learning the ropes. He, you know, refills people's water and brings people charcoal to add to their fire.

Ryan · 35:38

And when he doesn't have anything to do, he has this very large tray of tea that he has to sort by size and to pick out stems. We were walking by him and she was laughing at him saying, oh, it must be so boring. Like, these are not glorified tasks.

Ryan · 35:54

Like, I mean, his time would probably be much better spent studying, practicing his technique, learning about tea history, or if you're a farmer, doing the 10,000 other things that you need to do. So like the notion of the elements that go into a narrative that people would call authentic, you need to ask who does that serve?

Ryan · 36:19

Who does it serve that your hand sorting competition grade T with chopsticks when there are other better tools out there? Unless the AI optical sorter is objectively worse, then you can have a convincing argument. But like, it's probably not.

Zongjun · 36:37

Especially if you run through the material several times, you'll probably catch most things. Well, Ryan, I guess for that matter, you are not essentially buying a a tea product, you're buying a luxury product. Yeah, you're buying an Hermes bag that had to be made over the course of one month by 1 artisan for, you know, a bazillion hours and the two decades of skill. Yeah, you're buying someone's life, essentially. Buying someone elses time, yeah.

Ryan · 37:07

That's why it's so expensive. In the name of authenticity, it's an unfair standard especially it's an unfair standard not to Suji San necessarily, and we're just using him as an example. It's an unfair standard to everyone else who does not have the time, bandwidth or capacity to make the investments to compete in competitions and to sort out things by hand. And who knows what sacrifice, real human sacrifices, are made in doing these types of efforts.

Zongjun · 37:36

Yeah, well, you know, like we, we are not saying that, you know, Suji sans tea is bad or wrong. I mean it, it's perfectly great tea, but I think the side that we want to criticize is to coin such tea as more authentic than the others. It's perfectly, you know, OK that it's a more expensive tea. It's you know, absolutely it's you know, it is someone's life course of achieving such perfection in sorting and making tea.

Zongjun · 38:11

It is very good tea to begin with and it deserves a higher price. That's totally, I think that's totally legit. But the existence of these luxury products doesn't invalidate some other teas that's using some some of the more modern, you know, production method. Those teas are they are still really good tea, but you know, instead of, you know, hand sorted, they probably got machine sorted or instead of using totally Honzu shaded method, they probably did a hybrid of Honzu and kanreisha.

Zongjun · 38:45

But, you know, these are, you know, people that have been making and growing tea also for a very long time, and they follow the intention of trying to make good tea. And I would say, you know, that's that's also perfectly authentic and perfectly traditional.

Ryan · 39:01

And it's such a spectrum, you said it's such an interesting thing, something being more authentic than other. It's beyond just what is authentic. There is this perceived notion of relative degrees of authenticity where it is very unclear where both endpoints are the most authentic and the least authentic.

Ryan · 39:21

And it's not fair for who gets to set what the standards are. What does it mean to save, preserve, practice, whatever methods, authentic matcha, traditional matcha, right? Like at some point you're making certain value judgments that are going to help some people and harm others.

Zongjun · 39:40

Yeah, very true. Authenticity is not a gradient. Who gets to have the power to define what authenticity is? Yeah. So it's really a horrible question. We understand the intention of someone with less knowledge or context asking for an authentic experience that makes sense. So that's like pooling, you're pooling information as a consumer or out of the industry.

Zongjun · 40:06

I I want this thing versus pushing an authentic product onto a consumer and is using that as a value proposition has a lot of complicated externalities. Who gets to define what is authentic? The spectrum of authenticity? The authentic to what?

Zongjun · 40:25

Like what's the unit to the ceremony? To the farmers, to what time period? And it's never really defined. Yeah, yeah. Very true, very true. I guess for us what we can start doing is just stop using the word authentic or traditional.

Ryan · 40:41

There's a whole movement behind this. It's very hard to stop using these words. It's convenient at best. It's also very difficult to find a replacement of these words. Like what do we use instead? Or is there a word or some words that can be used to replace these? Would they be the next version of reduction framing? Very likely so, but I would.

Zongjun · 41:08

Say that a humanist approach is the way to do this. So there's two great, wonderful modern examples. Perhaps some of our audience have heard of these companies before. Omsom, which was recently acquired, was started by two Vietnamese immigrants.

Ryan · 41:21

I think they're both millennials. They're both relatively young. They're about our age, maybe a little bit older, and they create or created elevated version of instant noodles with various flavourings and seasonings. And then they launched their product with the sauce packet. So you could make sisig like the Filipino dish, sisig at home with relatively few ingredients.

Ryan · 41:44

So you don't have to buy the whole pantry of stuff that you would need to make that dish or lob, which is a Thai dish with minced meat and toasted rice. And they had they had a mala one for a mala dish. And what they did is they very are purposely anti authentic, especially because in the context of Asian food in America, it's highly reductive.

Ryan · 42:07

And who gets to define what authenticity is? It's kind of a trap and an unfair double standard for a lot of those businesses Because, you know, there's someone going in there who's Chinese to a Chinese restaurant claiming to be authentic might say, this is not how my mom made this, right?

Ryan · 42:23

But like, you know, it's a variation within these things. It's a really unfair standard. And they stopped using the word authenticity. And they wrote a really good article I'll link in the show notes that's worth reading.

Ryan · 42:35

But they take a very human centric approach. Every one of their products was designed by a chef, right? So the Mala one came from someone who runs this wonderful restaurant in New York called Mala Project. She was the one who crafted the product.

Ryan · 42:50

Her name's Amelia. So it was, you know, Amelia's mala mix, right? And they also the founders of Fish Cheeks, which is also a really great Thai restaurant in New York, made the one for Lab, which is the mincemeat dish with toasted rice. And it was a very human centric approach. And the same thing could be easily done in tea where, you know, it's so and so's blank.

Zongjun · 43:15

And I think like a lot of the specialty macho companies are are like that. This is blank, blank something. It's very human centered. The verse is just saying this is authentic matcha. It's from Japan type of positioning. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan · 43:30

A good example is Fly by Jing, which is a chili crisp. If anyone knows, like Lao Gan Ma, like the chili oil chili crunch. Fly by Jing is a very successful clean label elevated Chinese CPG product made by a Chinese woman who grew up in Europe and then moved back to the States and launched this thing and was just fed up with like the way Asian food and Asian CPG products, Consumer Packaged Goods like thing you'd buy at the grocery store were framed.

Ryan · 44:00

And she went through this whole rebranding recently, ish like four or five years ago. And the tagline is personal, not traditional, meaning please do not hold me up to whatever standard you have in your mind about what is traditional.

Ryan · 44:19

This is a product of me and where I come from and the flavors that I know and the innovation that I wanted to see in. This product, she probably just got so tired of the endless comparison with the Lao Gama and her product. What's innovative and it is a living tradition and she by like her origins, her parents is from Sichuan, right? Like it it like she has just the same right to innovate on this living tradition as anyone else.

Zongjun · 44:54

And you know, when innovation goes further than people than traditionalists are comfortable then? I think by the end of the day, it's just a good product and tastes good. And it's true to her own preference of creating such product.

Zongjun · 45:10

And I think that's, that's it. That's all you need. It's it's a genuine product out of the creator's love of such thing. I think that's that's the most authentic feeling and essence authenticity itself. It is the most authentic thing if it's true to herself.

Zongjun · 45:33

So I guess narrowing the aperture of the subjective authenticity is a much better framework, which means you almost don't even need to use the word. So it's it's interesting. There's, there's, there's all these hardball people who are just so like, frustrating, you know, in this very traditional industry that is matcha.

Zongjun · 45:57

And this is both morbid and very true. There's a quote attributed to Max Planck of the scientist saying that science progresses one funeral at a time. It's I guess, the baseline slowest rate of change. And we certainly hope that it can progress faster than this.

Zongjun · 46:16

And we hope that new generations of tea companies, tea vendors, tea practitioners can open up their mind a little bit about how we define what is authentic and the externalities that that has that that reductive framework has. Yeah, totally.

Zongjun · 46:32

I mean, it's, it's very easy for someone to get very defensive of, you know, and take a stand of something and calling in, you know, the most authentic. Frequently it's their first exposure to such thing and that's that that's really hard, right? Like because essentially you are taking a snapshot. It's probably very authentic at the time and it's probably still very authentic to nowadays, but it's one version of a authentic thing at a time.

Zongjun · 47:01

It's a snapshot. It's a image of of that thing at the time. You know, like you see a lot of people outside of Japan getting very defensive of certain things in matcha that has to be that way. But when you actually go to Japan, people are very like innovative. They are they're very easygoing on all kinds of change changes that are happening nowadays.

Zongjun · 47:25

You know, like you're seeing people from Horii Shichimeien making new blends for matcha latte. Like they are perfectly fine with people mixing matcha with milk and they are, you know, happy that, you know, it tastes good and they're happy that, you know, their products being enjoyed in different version outside of Japan.

Zongjun · 47:43

People, you know, in Japan not, you know, making matcha on the ground. Frequently we'll get very defensive of how matcha needs to be, quote UN quote, properly used or properly prepared. And that, you know, proppered procedure is really a snapshot of matcha's very rich, evolving and very much a live culture. I guess people get uncomfortable when there's this level of ambiguity in vagueness with such a term. Yeah, yeah, ambiguity.

Zongjun · 48:14

Deeply, a deep discomfort. Yeah, feeling insecured, but that's the reality. That's the reality. Matcha is not in someone's control. It's a living thing that can be enjoyed by everyone. And it's no longer depending on the context of chanoyu.

Ryan · 48:33

It's very much free now. Django Unchained. Yeah, I mean, it is actually really radical how recent all of these histories were, especially the I'm currently in a rabbit hole down looking at chanoyu history both in the modern era and before. And you know, it's interesting.

Ryan · 48:54

There are no women practitioners that were in any level of power in like the Edo period. In the Meiji period, I had started to open up a lot more. And then like, they began, Japanese government basically decided that this should be like finishing school for young girls.

Ryan · 49:09

It was taught as part of the curriculum for a lot of people about 100 years ago, all of which were young girls. And then which is why even today, the vast majority of chanoyu practitioners are women in Japan. You know, these the system and who it serves is like constantly changing of who makes up these people.

Ryan · 49:28

And now we have the Internet, we have people on every corner of the world, world learning and enjoying matcha, some in a traditional context, some in an Internet context of which, you know, it should be really thought of as a new and different type of community. And this was bound to happen, that you have people on the edges that are promoting innovation. You have people looking backwards trying to preserve and promote tradition.

Ryan · 49:53

And it's, you know, hit these various clashing moments where, you know, commercial interests mixed with people who don't have as much context and which is us in certain areas, right? You know, we don't know all aspects of tea by any stretch of the imagination. And this conservative approach and the safe approach of wanting to have the real thing is very understandable until you start really double clicking and looking at the externalities of this question.

Ryan · 50:26

I think it ultimately comes down to the vibe that people can be sometimes very uncomfortable with ambiguity and people want certainty. They want, yeah, this is an authentic product. Boom, box checked. I'm done thinking about this. Yeah, very true.

Zongjun · 50:40

I guess the thread for this episode is that you know it's almost the wrong question. What is authentic matcha? And the deeper you go down this rabbit hole, the more you realize that it is as ludicrous as a question as what is authentic Chinese food. It's just the question why.

Ryan · 50:57

You can work backwards in the intention of why someone's asking it and what various answers could mean with various levels of what we call resolution or certainty, Right? Because the subject of authenticity can change even when it comes to matcha. It's just the wrong framework I think. And yeah, it's essentially a wrong word to use because, you know, for when we're talking about something that's a living culture that's constantly changing, you know, you, there's no, there isn't a ground truth that people can keep just referencing back because the, the ground truth is it's, it's constantly changing.

Zongjun · 51:36

Yeah, constantly changing. It's interesting because you're right when you tend to tea ceremony, because iemoto's can make changes, you know, once a generation in their lifetime, right? You're literally getting the most up to date version. You're getting Windows.

Ryan · 51:52

I don't know what the current version of Windows is versus Windows 95. Something like that. Yeah, it's I mean even even you know, like even chanoyu is not anti change. Like they, they, they, they change all the time too. Like every generation of iemoto is allowed to make one change, but they are changing.

Zongjun · 52:12

And, you know, like it's trying to fixate a practice onto something that's not going to change a unchangeable ideal. It's just really crazy to think about. There's a really interesting, I don't know what to call it, maybe a meme or infographic that was floating through the coffee world recently, the specialty coffee world.

Ryan · 52:35

And it was a map divided between the northern hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere. And the Southern hemisphere is where the vast majority of coffee is grown. The Northern hemisphere is where the vast majority of coffee is consumed, and the top half, the Northern Hemisphere, it said.

Zongjun · 52:51

The place where it is perfectly OK for technology to be used in the name of coffee quality. And below it in the Southern hemisphere, the place where technology is not welcome at all. And in fact, the slower and longer it takes, the better. And this ridiculous double standard, it's hard to sometimes escape the trap of trying to differentiate a highly industrial product from a non industrial product from an industrial product by putting on this lens of slow and not efficient and heritage and authentic with having you know it.

Ryan · 53:29

It's an unfair standard for the people who are actually doing it and we should be encouraging the use of better tools and new technology in the name of matcha quality. Yeah, yeah. I think the intention is what truly matter. The intention is what matters.

Zongjun · 53:47

Yeah. 100%. Making better matcha, drinking better matcha, right? I think that's the future and that's. What we want, it's a perfect note to end on. So this is still a wide open topic for the way that we see it. We would love to source other perspectives on this.

Ryan · 54:04

And so if you have a strong perspective on this, please do reach out and we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to learn from you. Yeah. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, please consider sharing friend and give us five stars on whatever platform you're listening to it on and we'll see you in the next one.

Zongjun · 54:20

Yeah, or if you have any thoughts, feel free to reach out to us. We don't have a authentic narrative, so all ideas are constantly changing too. Absolutely all. Right, see you in the next episode. See you.