In attendance were many Chinese tea buyers, along with several from Taiwan, who maintained that the local Jasmine flower production is as high-quality as it is important to the economy.
Jackson C.M. Huang, chairman of the Taiwan Tea Manufacturers Association told me that, 30 years ago, the biggest jasmine fields were in Ninde, in Fujian province. The move further south to GuanXi was made because here, more land and more labor were available, offering the possibility to increase the production. Today that production is estimated to be of about 50,000 tons per year.
Local farmers pick the flowers by hand, daily, from mid April through October. They bring their full nets to the official flower market in town or carry them directly to tea factories in the vicinity.
In town there are three markets:
• One where flowers are delivered and traded daily
• One where buyers source premium teas to undergo the scenting process
• One where the finished jasmine teas are displayed for sale
I was privileged to taste some of these teas, whose wholesale prices start at 230 Yuan (a little more than $33) per kilogram, but can be as much as 30 times that, depending on the quality of the tea and intensity of the scenting.
A blackboard at the entrance of the flower market broadcasts each day’s weather forecast, the previous day’s total of flowers delivered and today’s price per kilogram. The day I was there, it was 15 Yuan (about $2.20).
Pickers shoveled heaps of flowers into big nets for weighing. There was not only Jasmine, but also some Ylang Ylang, giving the place a heavenly smell.
So, how is the scenting process carried out? I got to learn first-hand on a visit to the spiffy, new factory of the Good Young Co.
Through insect-repelling wire mesh sliding doors, I watched workers with big shovels bustle around huge batches of loose tea and flowers, spread out on the floor, continuously moving the tea and flowers around.
Factory Manager Feng Wenzhi said that each batch weighed approximately 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) and that their daily output in peak season was 20 tons of scented tea.
Ma Da, a buyer from Guangzhou International Tea Trading Center, explained that the moving around process is done for about 12 hours. Then the tea and flower mixture is put into a pyramid-shaped pile for the evening. This is because, at midnight, the flowers release their maximum scent. In the morning the flowers are separated out – either the tea is finished after one scenting operation, or new flowers are added. This process can be repeated up to 6 times, explaining the wide variation in prices.
Another reason for high prices, according to the owner of Hu Qiu tea garden, which I visited in Beijing's Maliandao Tea Market, is the species of jasmine flower used. In Suzhou, he told me, they have a special kind of jasmine with smaller flowers and fewer petals, but which gives an even more delicate fragrance.
As for what happens to the discarded flowers, one high school student among the “jasmine volunteers” who accompanied us, said they were dried and used for stuffing pillows. Most of the other people I asked said they are given to pigs, however. If you find this hard to believe (as I did), consider that that all the scent has gone into the tea leaves, which avidly absorb it, being very dry and hygroscopic. (They absorb so much moisture, in fact, that they have to be further dried after scenting.)
My hosts from the China Tea Marketing Association stressed their wish that Western consumers understand how natural this scenting process is. During the first day of the festival’s conference session, several speakers discussed marketing strategies for conveying more information about the longstanding manufacturing traditions and the high quality of Chinese jasmine tea to the consuming countries.
One speaker, Professor Zhao Lin, a well-known physician and nutritionist outlined the health benefits of jasmine teas. “Green teas have an assessed antioxidant effect,” he said, underlining the point with results from several studies (on rats for the time being) that indicate the ingestion of jasmine flowers has a distinct detoxifying effect.
But the aspect of the festival which looms larges in the memory of anyone lucky enough to see it, is the beauty of Southern China’s jasmine fields.
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