Scrolling videos, we often meet wellness advice: one says exercise hard, another says rest and avoid strenuous movement; one says fast, another says eat plenty of staples; one says eat on schedule, another says eat only when hungry, ideally one meal a day... Have you noticed how contradictory it all is? What do you do?
The videos you watch may all be right - the key is your choice. If you choose both strenuous exercise and fasting, you may run into serious trouble.
Wellness has many schools, and the worst thing is to drift between them: eating by school A, fasting by school B, then hitting the gym hard by school C. If you do not get into trouble, who will? I know such examples around me - people who follow TCM wellness in food and drink yet go to the gym daily; at fifty their faces are dark and bloodless, and they call it finding the great wellness method. To me that is not wellness; it is self-destruction. TCM holds that strenuous exercise may harm qi and blood in middle-aged and older people, who are better suited to stretching and loosening movements such as taiji or baduanjin. Someone argues with me: some old people lift weights daily and are very healthy. Yes, some do - but those elders' diets fit weight training, so the TCM dietary rules do not apply to them, and most elders should not follow that style of wellness anyway.
Ordinary people cannot invent their own school. The best strategy is to pick one school that fits your situation and stick to it.
For wellness we need the ability to choose. That is not the point of this article.
For learning tea, we likewise need the ability to choose.
Let me use raw pu-erh processing as the example.
1. Schools of raw pu-erh processing
1. The traditional "keep-green" school
Traditional light kill-green is still mainstream: the kill is light, the dry leaf smells strongly of fresh leaf, and a heavy steep turns the liquor red. Many people prefer this school - Guangdong tea merchants especially - pressing the finished tea into cakes and warehousing it, letting time remove the green and turn it mellow, "the older, the better".
2. The green-tea school
High-temperature kill-green keeps raw pu-erh with a "clear liquor, green leaf" character like green tea; new tea is very fragrant, which helps its immediate consumption. Many in the industry attack this school, saying green-tea-ized raw pu-erh is not worth storing and will not improve with age.
3. The "fully processed" (shou tou) school
This school does not formally exist, but a group of people are indeed doing it. The principle is to remove the damp-cold from the leaf so that even new raw tea can be drunk pleasantly - which is what I have been doing all along. That is why I write it up as a school.
Around 2017 several people told me to my face that I had ruined the tea and it had no storage value. At the time I could not really answer, but I knew I was right. And so it has proved - today I have plenty of tea as evidence. In that period we made a great deal of this tea, pressing 357g cakes and 6g mini cakes, adding up to over a dozen tons - and now, in 2026, it still drinks wonderfully.
2. Which school is better?
1. None is better or worse - only your choice matters.
Each school has its followers. The traditional keep-green school has the most supporters; it is the market mainstream, holds the most aged stock, and its core idea is "store new, drink old" - many famous old teas belong to it.
But this school also produces much junk: plenty of teas warehoused for over twenty years are still not good, and most "old tea" at a few dozen yuan a cake comes from it.
If you choose this school, you need long-term warehousing - only bring tea to market once the greenness has fully settled and it is pleasant to drink.
For the green-tea school, do not build large warehouses; best to consume within a few years. Old green tea can still be drunk, but whether it tastes good is debatable - there is excellent aged green tea, but most old green tea is not good. The market widely believes that some Lincang-region teas are not suitable for long storage - this may be one reason.
The fully processed school demands more labor and cost in the processing stage, with higher leaf-to-dry ratios and the highest production cost. I think it is all worth it. "Drinkable now, stunning when aged" is this school's craft ideal: new tea tastes good and old tea tastes good too. Who would not like that?
2. There IS good and bad - depending on how you choose.
In my years of learning I found that good material can be processed any way; lightly killed tea, given long warehousing, really can come out well.
But if the material is very poor - plantation tea with pesticide residue, for example - light kill-green yields a harsh, hard liquor that leaves you damp-cold and harms the body with repeated drinking. The key point: I have tasted that harshness even in thirty-year-old teas, which means poor material never "improves with age".
3. Summary
If you work with tea of good ecology, you have the right to choose your processing school.
Evidence: Dayi's restructuring (2004) was a pivotal moment for the industry. Before it, the market was weak, all of Yunnan's tea regions were forest tea with no pesticides or fertilizer, and the teas made in that era all drink well today. After it, the market boomed; trees were cut to plant tea, forest cover fell, and many tea gardens used pesticides and fertilizer - so a lot of low-end tea does not taste good after storage.
If you work with tea of poor ecology, you seem to have no right to choose.
As said earlier, with poor-ecology material, choosing light kill-green harms the body.
Yet many tea merchants and companies, chasing the high profits of aged tea, insist on light kill-green - and those teas have caused various health problems for many tea drinkers.
3. Learn tea as a whole system.
1. Make tea as a whole system.
I have always believed no school is right or wrong - only choices are. If you choose light kill-green, you must choose good material and then warehouse it for a long time before bringing it to market. That is what I keep saying: do things as a whole system.
But many of our peers do light kill-green and sell the tea new - is that not harming people? If the material is also poor, the harm is even worse.
2. Learn tea as a whole system too.
Choose one school, then study and practice it consistently - that is the reasonable way to learn tea.
Let me list a few examples from my own circle.
Many people learn tea with me. I keep stressing that cup aroma is useless, yet many still choose teas by cup aroma.
I keep stressing not to worship masters - I even joke about them privately - yet the people learning with me still get excited at the sight of a master and buy plenty of "tuition tea".
I keep stressing that tea leaves should be picked mature - one bud with three or four leaves - yet when pressing cakes they insist on removing every huangpian.
Staying up late, clubbing and heavy drinking unbalance the body and make you unable to taste tea - this I often say. Some make a great resolution and travel from afar to learn tea with me, yet regularly get dead drunk at Menghai barbecue stalls.
That is human nature! I know.
But if you truly want to learn tea well, you must exercise restraint and hold yourself to high standards.
Otherwise, you betray your own resolve.
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