58 Scott Writer
It is particular methods of manufacture, then, that actualize the expressive
potentiality encoded by “ecological” modes of cultivation. Until the tea-making
process has been completed, the tea’s taste exists primarily as a theoretical object.
But what is often called a tea’s “original taste” (原味 yuanwei) is not an abstract
ideal held in the mind of the tea maker but a pattern of responsive transformation
the material displays under the perturbing interventions of the human and non-
human agents it encounters.^9 As Mr. Lin explains,
Understanding fermentation really means looking into the tea making process.
Taiwanese teas, oolong style teas like Oriental Beauty, High-Mountain
Oolong or Baozhong, are all “semi-fermented.” So when you are making
tea, the tossing, that’s done in order to incite fermentation [i.e., oxidation].
But what I often say is that the real significance of “fermentation” is “de-
composition” (分解 fenjie), that is, to break down the material constituents
in the tea, so that when we brew the tea its taste can be more fully apparent.Here tea making is not just an elaboration of a preexisting, essential flavor
but the unraveling of a trajectory of becoming that proceeds by engaging with
what might be called the invariances immanent to each tea’s materiality: an
“original” taste that is “more fully apparent” only in and through its patterns
of transformation (DeLanda 2002, pp. 75–6). The technical manual issued by
Taiwan’s public-sector tea research agency supports this framing of the slippery
ontology of tea’s taste when it states that
Each tea leaf has its own inherent (本身 ben shen) fragrance and taste. In
tea manufacturing the leaf goes through the complex series of chemical
reactions that allows the leaf to express its elegant fragrance and produce its
sweet and mellow taste. These aspects of a tea’s quality—its fragrance and its
taste—can only be attained through the interplay between factors including
a suitable cultivar; favourable soil and climate; proper cultivation techniques
and appropriate tea manufacturing procedures and equipment
(Lai et al. 2002, pp. 34–5)From the point of view of the tea producer, then, the “inherent” flavor and
taste attributed to a finished tea is not just an essence but also the expression of a
network of ecological and technical agencies—including the tea producer’s own
labor—whose interplay allows the tea to express “itself.”^10
Guiding each batch of tea toward a desired conjunction of taste, scent, and
color requires the tea maker to continually “attend to the situation” (看情況
kan qingkuang). Successfully managing the passage between different stages of
tea processing—from laying the leaves out to wither in the sunlight, to tossing
them by hand and machine, to firing, rolling, and drying them—requires by the
tea producer registering the various “decisive points” (判斷點 panduandian)
that the tea reaches along its trajectory of oxidation. These points manifest as
material changes in the tea but also implicate shifting properties of the tea-making