New crop of students…
May 2009 saw four new students, not really student in Wendy, who came from Australia and Swapnil who came from Nagpur. But Manon Souchet and Baptiste Cote came from ISTOM, France and will be here for quite some time.
Dr. ID Singh, as usual, is incharge of them.
American Consulate…
Matthew K. Asada, Council for Political & Economic Affairs, attached to Kolkata Counsulate, visited Siliguri and met us under CII (www.cii.in) banner to discuss areas of co-operation and improvements.
Tea, tourism, education and visa matters were the main thrust areas which we discussed at Sinclairs Hotel in the evening of 7th May 2009.
Watch out China…
Mission accomplished…
Today having signed the tea contract they left for Mumbai to look around for medicine business.
Boon in disguise…
Ankit and Swapnil made the killing in Almaty and a delegation came visting us on 29th April from there, whom we took to Darjeeling and Terai. We keep our fingers crossed now.
“Have a sip of India tea to taste the flavours of Indian heart”
(Xinhua News Agency, Author: Wu Yu, Tang Xiaoli and Luo Lanfei, 22 April 2009-English translation)
A delegation of leading tea companies from India organized an Indian Tea Promotion Event and invited Chinese tea lovers to savour the delectable tastes of Indian tea which is a window to Indian hearts. Deputy Chairman of Tea Board of India Ms. Roshni Sen, said that tea drinking was an integral part of people’s lives in both India and China. However given, green tea is popular in China and that black tea in India, there were immense complementary opportunities. “Every one cup of Indian tea, is a reflection of one kind of Indian mood” she said.
Indian tea manufacturers hoped that more and more black Indian tea could become popular in China as well as invited Chinese tea enterprises to invest in Indian tea plantations. It is learnt that India allows tea gardens to accept 100% foreign direct investment.
The Consul General of India, Shanghai Mrs. Riva Das Ganguly said one of the factors attracting FDI into India was also the availability of the rich human resource pool and advanced R&D facilities.
According to statistics, in 2008, India’s tea export to China stood at 0.70 million kgs.
Dream realised…
The missing link has been established now – Wuyishan bush – thea bohea - was brought to Darjeeling to establish a black tea industry by Robert Fortune in 1842. We sat in a tea house, then visited tea plantation and factory to see for ourselves alongwith documentory proofs.
This will be telecast on CCTV channel no. 1, 2, 4 and 9 – China’s national TV netwok.
http://cid-08ec579c9c3838f1.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/China%20April%202009
Milk tea and Darjeeling are going to be hit in China – I am assured now.
Once upon a time…
CCTV interview on 21st April in Wuyishan has excited me so much that I am walking down the memory lanes – from China to Pourtgal to England to India – when pioneers toiled to bring tea from China to India and plant it suitably on native soils selecting Assam varities and China varities and breaking the myth that Thea Bohea and Thea Virdis are no different tea plants but the process to make black and green teas are different.
Hats off to Robert Fortune who will be reincarnated in Jiang Yuanxun on that day.
Shanghai April 2009…
Centre for black tea trade in China, we have been thinking to establish our presence there since some time. Maybe our attendence in this event may finalise something. Let us keep our fingers crossed.
IFE London 2009…
Vincent Moreau and Marjorie Galaud were on our London IFE booth organised by Indian Tea Board, which opened yesterday till 18th April 2009. First time in any UK show - this is a big opportunity to us.
http://www.ifeproductsearch.com/index.php5?id=158055&highlight=&fid=542&offset=40&Action=showCompany
Dan from Yunnan calling…
We will be meeting a Pu Er expert who also helped set up the tea growing business in Africa for many years. I believe I met him before. FYI, the walk to the King of Old Tea Trees is about 2 hours. It takes about 2 hours coach ride to get there. Bring your camera! When I was there last, I also arranged a reenactment of one of the legends of Shen Nong discovering tea. I wanted to film it for my documentary. The part was played by an 80+ year old tribal woman who looked like she could have known the real Shen Nong. Despite her age, she could climb the hills (and the tea trees) faster than any of us “younger” people. She had tended the now 400 year old tea trees her entire life. She speaks no Mandarin, only a very local dialect. We drank some of the “wild” tea together and she gave me a few handfuls. Attached is a photo of her tea garden. I hope she is still climbing those hills. I promised her that I would return and we would drink more tea together.
We will fly from Kunming to Xiamen, have a brief meeting and then drive to Quanzhou. As you know, it was one of the early sea ports for tea. From Quangzhou we’ll make our way to Dehua – famous for porcelain. On the way I’m hoping for a stop in Anxi to see some oolong tea making and then, time permitting, Panyong to see their black teas. From Dehua we go to Fujian for a day and the next day we go to Fuding for jasmine tea and also white tea and the blooming “performance” teas. From Fuding we will go to Wuyi Shan but on the way we will stop to visit the tea village of Yellow Meadow. There will be a reception for us there. I donate funds to the village for community services and have been going there for some years now. They make very nice organic green tea though they are too poor to afford to go through the=2 0certification process. Also, they sell out all their crop every year so there is no need to get certified. I’ll send you an article I wrote on the village.
http://www.tching.com/index.php/2009/03/13/mt-kanchenjunga/
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