TeaHQ

Hekai

A mountain in Menghai holding what is generally described as the largest continuous area of old planted tea in Xishuangbanna, spread across a run of Lahu villages including Manmai and Manghong. The layout is the interesting part: the trees stand inside the villages and among the houses rather than in separate gardens, so the settlement and the tea planting are physically the same thing — an arrangement that predates the plantation model and shows what ‘garden’ meant before rows. The tea is conventionally read as a middle position among Menghai origins: bitter on entry, sweet behind it, without Lao Ban Zhang’s extremity.

賀開China1400–1900 metresAlso called Hekai ShanAlso called ManmaiAlso called Manghong

Elevation

Recorded at 1400–1900 metres.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

When it is picked

Three named crops rather than a flush structure. Spring — chun cha — is picked after the dry season breaks the growth back, and the pre-Qingming and pre-Guyu pickings within it carry the premium; it is the crop the speciality trade buys and in a strong year it is most of a village's income. The rains bring yu shui cha, summer leaf that grows fast, thin and cheap, and much of it goes into blends or is not picked at all. Autumn gives gu hua cha, picked as the rain withdraws and the air dries, and it is the second-best crop of the year — lighter and more aromatic than spring, less concentrated, and considerably cheaper. Winter growth effectively stops without a true dormancy. Because the trees stand among the houses rather than in separate gardens, picking is domestic work fitted around the rest of a village day rather than a scheduled operation, which spreads each crop over more days than a plantation round would take.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

How production is organised

Household smallholdings, and primary processing done at village or family scale: leaf picked by the family that owns the trees, wilted, pan-fixed in a wok, rolled by hand or by small machine and sun-dried into maocha on the spot. Brands and private buyers purchase the maocha and press it elsewhere, so the value added downstream is much larger than the value added in the village. There are no estates in the plantation sense on the old-tree ground, and the smallest unit that means anything commercially is a named village rather than a garden. Here that description is unusually literal: the planting and the settlement are the same physical thing, so tree ownership follows household and house rather than plot boundaries.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

How the name is written

Also transliterated as he kai, hekai. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.

Other growing regions in China

The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.

Sources

  • TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ

This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.

How TeaHQ handles sources