premium-tea

I am happy to finally be back in the United States after a long trip to
Asia. My trip was part of my graduate school research in
anthropology.  I left for Japan about six months ago and made
my way across the country.  Then I flew from south Japan to
China making my way across the country to India. I spent the majority
of my trip inside of India.  The research I was working on is
about the cultural heritage of different countries' farmers across East
Asia.  I was working mostly within the community of different tea
growers.  In Japan I spent about a month visiting about six
different farms. Four of those farms were green tea
farms and these were the large and quite intricate farms. It seemed
that they paid a great deal of attention to the layout in terms of both
practicality as well as aesthetic value.  The other two farms
were home to growers of white tea. 
They were a bit smaller though they still seemed quite well off for
farmers.  When I made the jump to China I was expecting a
whole different view of the business.  In China I was looking
to study the reaction to the new demand across the world for Organic tea. 
The farmers I visited had interesting reactions to the demand in the
western world for these types of teas.  Most of the farms I
visited in China,
including the Organic
farms, were not nearly as intricate as those I had witnessed
in Japan.  For the final, and majority, of my journey I went
across the southern border in to India.  In India I was
looking for a mixture of both types of farms, but I would only be
looking at the premium
teas that are grown there.  The majority, all but
one green tea farm, were black tea
crops.  I also asked for their reactions to the Organic tea
movement in the west and how that has affected their way of growing, if
at all.  Then I had finished my research with about a month to
spare and decided that rather than leaving early, I was just going to
enjoy the fruits that India has to offer a grad student on a research
grant.