The Tea Sessions 2 - The Umami Grip - In partnership with Outpost Magazine

Continuing on with my tea-fuelled series in partnership with Outpost Magazine, The Tea Sessions. This second piece is a (brief) departure...

Jeff Fuchs

Mar 17, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Part Goat and a Little Part Human

Over the course of years since meeting Dorjè I’ve written and pondered much about him. “Part goat and a little part human” was how he was...

Jeff Fuchs

Mar 9, 20212 min read

Tea Horse Chronicles - The Bend

It was here at the ‘first bend of the Yangtze’, at Shigu, in Yunnan province that the Mongolian armies of the Yuan Dynasty crossed the...

Jeff Fuchs

Feb 21, 20211 min read

The Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Remnants

Within the tidy remnants of a former ‘Tea and Horse Trade Office’ in Mingshan County, near Ya’an in Sichuan, Jamyan and I wandered for 25...

Jeff Fuchs

Feb 19, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Other Tales and Sight

Not all stories of the Tea Horse Road were ones of grand expanses, snow caps, or buzzing tea sessions. A friend from the Yi minority...

Jeff Fuchs

Feb 11, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Chronicles - Fields vs Forests

Blankets and ridges of green stimulant leaf lie in rows near Puerh. Here the leaf is entirely industry. Gorgeous industry, but still...

Jeff Fuchs

Feb 9, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Empress of Cloth

Ponzera, or Benzilan as it is now known, is a small valley town in northwestern Yunnan that lies alongside a headwater stream of the...

Jeff Fuchs

Feb 3, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Way Out, and Out Again

Yeshi and I shared tea with this old memory palace of time. Goat milk and butter were used instead of yak variations. The tea was deadly...

Jeff Fuchs

Jan 28, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Chronicles - Blessings and Warnings

It was from this patch of grassland near Napa Lake, just north of my home in Dukezong (old town of 'Shangrila') that our expedition...

Jeff Fuchs

Jan 23, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Chronicles - The Hostess, The Keeper

A nomadic hostess (nemo) offers up a smile to our sun and grime battered crew near Ala Jagung, Tibet. The smile that comes from living so...

Jeff Fuchs

Jan 7, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Tenzin

Legend, guardian of caravans, and hunter of ‘tea thieves’, Tenzin. We had heard of this legend but worried we wouldn’t track him down...

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 23, 20201 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles Continued - A Sanctuary of Leaves

We are engulfed in the ancient tea forest. Damp earth and mushroom smells hit us as Napu walks out in front of us through an entire world...

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 17, 20201 min read

Tea's Brilliant (and Needed) Informality

Mr. Gao and his tidy moustache move past, beckoning me to join. He has finished a day of pan frying his remarkable teas, and now it is...

Jeff Fuchs

Oct 28, 20208 min read