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Our Story
Fall, 2000
Wudang Mountain,
Hubei Province, China
Master Yun Xiang Tseng leads a group of visitors towards the peak, by way of ancient Taoist temples dotting the mountainside. The visitors stop at a far-removed monastic schoolhouse, hidden and aging. Inside, a man named Xiao and seventy young children sit alone.
Xiao's children
The school was an abandoned building only a year before. Until that point, the children of Xiao's remote village had no school to attend. But Xiao saw a need to educated the about the outside world. He pledged to take this task upon himself.
Xiao greets and invites Master Tseng and his visitors in for a cup of tea. The group stays for hours, playing and practicing English and Chinese with the children. Master Tseng is overwhelmed by the childrens' fierce desire to learn. Some children, it turns out, walk from as far as 30 miles away just to learn from Xiao.
Master Tseng
Over dinner, Master Tseng realizes just how impoverished the children are. There's barely enough food to sustain everyone. Having himself grown up during a tumultuous cultural revolution, Master Tseng understands the challenges the children faced every day. Isolation. Hunger. For the children on the mountain, education is a luxury.
A connection
As Master Tseng and his group gathered to leave, he noticed some children tending bushes at the forest's edge. "They're tending tea plants," Xiao explained; "It is their hope to sell plants to support the school." At that moment, a connection formed between the two men. Master Tseng called upon his group to reach into their pockets and hearts, and to buy the entire crop of tea.
For three years, the group continued to buy each crop of tea. Then UNESCO took over, relocating the children to a new schoolhouse in a nearby town. Xiao remained on the mountain, where he continues to grow tea with Tseng. From those few bushes originally tended by school children, Cha Tao Tea evolved into a 160-acre farm adjoining the UNESCO World Heritage Site. As part of a consortium, we joined with Taoist and Buddist tea farms comprising thousands of acres—in a common mission to bridge cultural, religious and geographic barriers with tea.
The story of Master Tseng and Xiao lives on. To this day they share a passion for the pristine mountains where they were raised, a great respect for the Taoist culture which nurtures their spirits, and an appreciation for the medicinal, ceremonial, and gratifying qualities of truly organic tea.
Cha Tao
Our teas are 100 percent organically grown with no genetic modification whatsoever—and enhanced only with natural sesame cakes for nutrition. Our farm's weather conditions are optimal for growing tea. Mist sails through the valley; a pure mountain spring flows through the farm; each tender leaf is supplied with just the right moisture necessary to grow our high quality, amazingly delicious tea.
Approximately 12 hours of processing goes into every 5 lbs. of wet tea we harvest, which yields 1 lb. of finished tea. Every step is completed by hand. We use no machinery; only traditional methods of drying, bruising, and roasting. After the tea is processed, every pound undergoes a ritual of prayer and ceremony by Master Tseng’s fellow priests at the Purple Cloud Temple. This ancient ceremony is intended to infuse each leaf with blessings of health, well-being and joy, and to convey energetic blessings to you, our consumers.
Today, Sacred Mountain Green Tea is a prestigious tea known throughout the world for its superb quality and infusion of ancient Taoist culture. Cha Tao Tea Company is the exclusive retailer of Sacred Mountain Green Tea in the U.S.. It is our honor to share this gift with you.