Leaf Journeys, Leaf Ageing, and the Heights
It was upon the months' long journeys along the Tea Horse Road that the big-leafed 'assamica' material and eternal panacea, tea, would...
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Jeff Fuchs
Apr 2, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Departure and the Cherub
The final destination along the Tea Horse Road, both for our own expedition and for the great journeys of the past, was Kalimpong, in...
Jeff Fuchs
Mar 26, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Tea That Never Came
A simple tea room in Weishan, Yunnan, and one of the only tea rooms in my life that I failed to actually have tea in. Weishan was another...
Jeff Fuchs
Mar 9, 20212 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 7, 20212 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Choices, No Choices, and some Courage
Ascending up to the Sho La Pass in northwestern Yunnan in May there would always be a chance of weather issues, but it would still be a...
Jeff Fuchs
Feb 27, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Tea and Bloodlines
On foot our team of four puttered and wandered west (often faintly lost) through the Nyanqen Tanghla mountains in Tibet towards Lhasa....
Jeff Fuchs
Feb 21, 20211 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 19, 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 16, 20212 min read
The Tea Sessions - A new column with Outpost Magazine
Given the span of time and efforts to immerse in leaves and the lives connected to tea, there aren’t many more satisfying additions than...
Jeff Fuchs
Feb 11, 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 9, 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 3, 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
Jan 28, 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 26, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - There Are No Straight Lines Through the Mountains
Not heeding the warnings of Sonam Gelek; I should have known better at this stage of our journey than to plunge onwards without his...
Jeff Fuchs
Jan 23, 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 14, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Chronicles - Tea's Value
“Tea is our everything. I don’t know where it comes from but we take it every day in the morning, afternoon, and night. Our children...
Jeff Fuchs
Jan 7, 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 5, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Jokhang Boys
After 52 days of trekking from my then home in Zhongdian (aka: Shangrila/Jiantang/Gyalthang) in northwestern Yunnan, a small celebration...
Jeff Fuchs
Jan 2, 20211 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - A Gathering of Women
Nomadic women of Ganze gather on a grassland to take part in a horse festival. It was through and over such high grasslands that the Tea...
Jeff Fuchs
Dec 30, 20201 min read
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Pluck
Napu went up the tea tree amid a forest of tea trees, shimmying along a support branch, until she could access the buds and leaves two...
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