I pinned my hopes on Weiqiang, a farmer and former classmate of mine from the next village over. In an effort to halt this process, in 2017 I attempted to reintroduce white chrysanthemum production to the area. As traditional village life fades into memory, the sustainable agricultural system it birthed has fallen apart. Residents are being moved into subdivisions one by one, their connection to the land severed by the road expansions that now fragment the village. My own village has undergone a similar decline. In “The Natural History of Tayubang,” writer and Tongxiang native Zou Hanming documents the decline of traditional crops, farming, and folklore in his home village of Tayubang, culminating in the village’s demolition in late 2009. The collapse of this system had a devastating on the local environment. In addition to maximizing land use and productivity, these practicies preserved the earth and reduced farmers’ dependence on external fertilizers. Sheep manure and silkworm droppings fertilized the chrysanthemum, while chrysanthemum leaves protected and nourished the soil. The flower was part of a diversified and delicate farming equilibrium: Farmers in the surrounding Hangjiahu Plain cultivated it alongside silkworm, local sheep breeds, mustard greens, rice, pond fish, and other biota. Just as some merchants soak non-local crabs in Yangcheng Lake to package them as authentic hairy crabs, white chrysanthemum gets imported into Tongxiang, processed, and resold as Tongxiang tea.īut the loss of Tongxiang’s white chrysanthemum plantations isn’t just about tea. White chrysanthemum tea remains readily available in stores and online, in part because tea producers have exploited loopholes in the product regulation system. Courtesy of the authorĪmong consumers of chrysanthemum tea, these changes have gone largely unnoticed. ![]() The “sea of a hundred flowers” we’d learned about growing up had vanished, replaced by subdivisions, asphalt roads, and a handful of industrial farms.Ĭhrysanthemum tea from Yu Jiangang’s farm in Tongxiang, Zhejiang province. Indeed, according to China’s official agricultural products registry, true hangbaiju is defined by its terroir: It can only be produced in a small part of Tongxiang.īut by the time my wife and I moved back in late 2011, most residents of Tongxiang’s 10 towns had gotten out of the tea growing business. My hometown, Tongxiang, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, has been a center of hangbaiju, or “whited-colored chrysanthemum,” cultivation for nearly four centuries. Perhaps that explains why traditional tea-growing areas along China’s developed coast began abandoning the the crop in the 1990s and 2000s. Despite its idyllic reputation among China’s literati, the actual work of cultivating and picking chrysanthemum is backbreaking: A single mu of chrysanthemum flowers (roughly 667 square meters) requires between four and five laborers to harvest, not to mention the complicated work involved in processing the flowers into tea. Yu Jiangang’s hometown used to be a “sea of flowers.” What was lost when the sea dried up?įor such a dreamlike flower, chrysanthemums can be a nightmare to grow.
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