I still remember, twenty years ago, when I was still an undergraduate student, I learned for the first time how to grow vegetables, not using soil, but a nutrient medium. It felt absolutely magical at the time, the idea that we could calculate every single element a plant needed and let it grow perfectly in a laboratory seemed almost fictional. However, when I picked one of the leaves and put it in my mouth, I was surprised that it tasted completely different from ordinary vegetables. There was no fragrance, no vitality, as if I were chewing on nothing but air.
The second time this memory came back to me was nine years ago, during my first visit to Wuyi Mountain. When I tasted the local food there, the chicken had the true fragrance of chicken, the pork had its own rich flavor, and even the vegetables carried the freshness of the mountains. In contrast, in Singapore, I pay several times each day for food, including many expensive vegetables labelled “organic,” yet none of them possess that genuine taste. It made me reflect: what has happened to our food today? In the modern world, we possess advanced technology and immense productive power, capable of providing more than enough food for everyone. But I feel that something essential is missing from what we eat. It is as if the food, though abundant and beautifully presented, has lost a certain life force or Qi (氣).
Let’s take the tea mountains in this picture as another example. At first glance, the endless rows of tea trees covering the hills may seem beautiful and harmonious. But as someone with a background in botany, my first thought was different — could the soil of this mountain alone provide enough water and nutrients to sustain all these tea trees and allow for harvest year after year? The answer, of course, is no. Large-scale cultivation always requires irrigation systems and regular applications of fertilizers. As a result, what these tea leaves truly absorb from the natural soil is greatly limited, most of their substance ultimately coming from fertilizers. As a result, the life force it truly draws from Heaven and Earth has become almost negligible.
This is why I have always loved yancha (岩茶)— the cliff tea of Wuyi Mountain. The region is mostly composed of steep cliffs and rocky slopes, where large-scale cultivation is impossible. Instead, you often find just a few tea bushes quietly growing beneath great stone walls, their roots gripping the cracks between the rocks. These plants draw directly from the essence of the environment, absorbing the purest nutrients and energy of their surroundings. This is why the “Qi” contained in cliff tea is far greater than that of ordinary tea. In ancient times, it was regarded as a true elixir of immortality. On a single mountain, there might be only one tea tree, quietly growing among the cliffs. It absorbed all the energy of the entire mountain.
Of course, driven by commercial demands, the energy contained in today’s cliff tea can no longer be compared with that of ancient times. I am very proud that I was the first person to think of using charcoal fire to merge the essence of agarwood into the cliff tea during the roasting process. From the perspective of ancient Taoists, this could be seen as a form of Chinese alchemy (煉丹術), the sacred art of creating elixirs. In that ancient practice, the two most precious elements were united over the charcoal fire, their essences merging and transforming through time into a potent elixir of greater power.
We have also discovered some fascinating phenomena while making it. For example, this tea - Bu Zhi Chun (不知春, Unaware of Spring). It is the last tea to sprout and is harvested at the beginning of Summer. What makes it truly special is its naturally enchanting aroma, similar to that of the Gardenia flower (梔子花). Initially, we worried that the deep scent of agarwood might overpower the floral notes, but it turned out to be the opposite, the floral scent becoming even more distinct and beautiful.
We have roasted this tea with agarwood three times since 2024, for a total of over 50 hours. After the final roasting, we realized that a new gardenia scent was actually being transformed from the agarwood. With each and every round of agarwood roasting, its essense and energy will be absorbed into the tea leaves, as if being consumed by them. Several months of integration later, during the next roasting, this energy is reawakened, transforming into the tea's unique aroma. It's a truly magical transformation of energy into aroma. Like the Einstein’s equation of E = mc2, where energy and mass can be inter-converted, the energy of agarwood can be converted into tea's fragrance too.
The original floral scent from the tea lingers only in the nose, but the new floral aroma born from the agarwood seems to penetrate deep into the body, as if it could reach the soul. It’s truly extraordinary, unlike anything we have ever experienced before!
Since the beginning of this project in 2024, the process of agarwood roasting has given me a much deeper understanding of both agarwood and cliff tea. Just like ancient alchemy, the different elements of nature, can be inter-converted. In our modern world, there are so few foods that still carry real vitality or Qi, which is the true driving force behind my creation of Agarwood Cliff Tea. You could say that it is a modern version of the ancient elixir of immortality.
