************************************ Mountains with bamboos and tea trees ************************************ 3rd-December-2022 Shanghai, Rainy, 7-10 celsius degree Writing on Sony VGN-P37J(LinuxMint) ssh to sdf.org, with tmux & Vim ******************************************************************* After last phlog, I continued the outing to near Shanghai mountain area until end of November. I went to Anji or Moganshan every weekend, in the autumn it is the best colorful sights in mountains, red, yellow amoung greens. ## Kingdom of bamboos ---------------------- Moganshan and Anji's mountains are dominated by bamboos, especially in low altitude, there is nothing but bamboos. The residents of those villeages there are used to relying on bamboos. Baby bamboos are eatable, nowadays those are eventually quite expensive due to it's difficulity to search and dig them out of the field of bamboo forest, it take skills and efforts to rover over the mountains to find, I heard that usually one person only able to find one or two kilogram in half a day. But baby bamboos are really delicious for its juicy, soft, crispy taste and feel. There could be eatan while fresh, it's one taste, they could also be dried and kept for several month and then cooking it with like pork, it is like totally something else, the mixed taste of well cooked pork in the soup with bamboo makes the perfect balance of meat and vegi. The root of bamboos are super strong, lives in those rocky soil, it is said that the baby bamboos take 7 years grow underneath and then when it break out of the soil, it grows up to meters in days or month. The bamboo could be used for many other cases too. It firstly could be used for constructing rod given its length and straightness, building scafolding in old time when there is not so developed with steels. The leaves on end braches could be used to make a broom. In my childhood, every family need one to clean the yard, even today this is still in use compare to increasing other plastic ones. ## White tea ------------- Anji is most famous for it's White tea, it is a type of green tea. Planting Tea has a long history in China, the most early evidence shows 6000 years ago, in Yuyao Niluoshan Moutain, the acient people are already plating tea trees. Tea is getting quite common in China around 2000 years ago in Han dynasty, white tea as far a I know is already appreaed in Tang dynasty's book <the saint of tea> by Lu Yu, that's about 1500 years ago. White tea usually plant on the low mountains or lower part of mountains, many times they plat in the forest of bamboos, on the incline mountain fields. The view of tea tree field was super, usually when you are on the top of bambo mountains, looking a bit of down or peer of counterside mountains full of tea tree "belts", It is like the melody of music. enjoyfull and peaceful green. The white tea or green tea usually produced in April are best, they will collect the top leaves in end of March or begining of April, those are the best of all, those soft tender new leaves. there is a series of process to make them to dry tea from green fresh leaves that used for thousunds of years. I like the white tea most because of its light flavor, and the elegent shape of the tea leaves, and when it is floating and dipping in hot water. It's a nice journey of enjoyce of making such a cup of tea. ## Colorful autumn in mountains -------------------------------- The mountains are not so high in Moganshan, no more than 1000 meters, some are even a few hundreds meters, so most of those area are covered fully by bamboos, some few higher ones, at the top there are other type of trees that will change color in autumn, like red, grey. That can be super impressed when you see only one red tree on top of a vast mountain! In Anji the mountains are higher than those in Moganshan, therefore that's much more colorfull, especially when you climbing hours to the top of a peak and looking around, the "red spot" in the far mountains or valleys, It's like a painting and youself living in. The mountains in Moganshan and Anji are my favarite, if possible I would like spend years there and will never get bored. -Peter