I didn't know it then, but this moment would become my first lesson in cultural research methodology—the humbling recognition that authentic cultural learning requires more than curiosity. It demands preparation, humility, and the willingness to be taught rather than to observe from a distance.
The wok was already hot when Uncle Li gestured for me to step forward. I could feel the heat radiating before I even got close—a warning I should have heeded. Around us, the processing room hummed with the quiet efficiency of a family that had been making tea for generations, and I was about to learn my first lesson in what it means to earn the right to witness cultural knowledge.
This wasn't supposed to be a story about tea. Only a few days earlier, I was in a different world of a typical tourist —sick and lost in Chengdu. What I didn't know was that I was about to receive an education in cultural humility that would reshape how I approach every story I now have the privilege to document.
But when I finally contacted my relative from that sterile Chengdu hotel room, everything changed. "Come to Kunming, Yunnan," he said. I knew nothing about Yunnan then. Nothing about how tea culture would seep into my understanding like leaves releasing their essence in hot water.
At the Kunming airport, my relative met me with plans I hadn't expected. I was to accompany his business partner on a journey deep into the tea mountains of Yiwu, a town so remote it felt like the edge of the world. First, we flew to Jinghong. Then a local tea farmer came to collect us, and after one night's rest, we spent hours winding through mountain roads that seemed to lead nowhere.
Sitting in that car, watching the landscape change from city to village to wilderness, I kept wondering: "Where the hell am I? How is it that someone like me—a foreigner, a Korean-American who knows nothing about tea—ends up in a place like this?"
But curiosity kept me alert. What was this tea thing that could draw a Korean businessman all the way to China? What was in it for the farmer who came to meet us at the airport?
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What I didn't understand then was that Uncle Li and his family were about to offer me something invaluable: permission to witness their cultural practice. Not as entertainment or content, but how time, patience, and earned trust create the only authentic pathway to cultural understanding.
Uncle Li was Yizu, part of one of China's 56 ethnic minorities, and a second-generation tea processor whose family had been invited into this relationship with tea through generations of careful practice. Despite meeting him for the first time, I found myself calling him "Uncle Li" (李叔叔)—a familiar address made possible through my relative's established relationships and, more importantly, Uncle Li's gracious willingness to include a curious outsider in their family tradition.
When we finally arrived at his facilities—conveniently built right alongside his family home—I realized I was about to witness something I'd never imagined. The next few days would unfold like pages in a book I didn't know I needed to read.
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The first step surprised me. We climbed into Uncle Li's truck and bumped along roads that barely deserved the name, going to find people who had spent their day plucking tea leaves by hand from ancient trees. There was no designated marketplace, no formal transaction space. It was more like "let's go see where we can find them today."
The truck bed filled with fresh leaves—green, fragrant, still holding the morning's moisture. Back at Uncle Li's place, we divided them into batches, and then the real work began.
Uncle Li and his wife moved to the wok for sha qing—the step that would "kill the green" in the leaves. I watched, fascinated, as they worked in tandem, their movements synchronized by years of shared practice. Each batch took about thirty minutes. The Korean businessman and I were given chances to try.
I couldn't even last through a single batch.
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"Watch the leaves," Uncle Li said in Mandarin, his bare hands dancing through temperatures that would send me yelping to the nearest faucet. This was sha qing—"killing the green"—the crucial step that would halt oxidation and preserve the tea's character.
When I stepped up to try, reality arrived like a slap. The wok wasn't just hot; it was a furnace demanding respect I hadn't yet developed. My soft hands—products of air-conditioned offices and smartphone screens—recoiled after seconds. Uncle Li's hands, seasoned by decades of this dance, moved with the unconscious grace of true mastery.
This was my first encounter with the core value that guides me now — that time alone creates something valuable. Uncle Li's mastery wasn't just skill; it was time made manifest through decades of practice that had earned him the right to make this knowledge look effortless. This wasn't something that could be rushed, purchased, or learned from a tutorial.
What humbled me most was recognizing that Uncle Li's willingness to let me try wasn't just generosity—it was pedagogy. He was teaching me that some cultural knowledge can only be approached through direct experience of one's own limitations. My soft hands weren't just unprepared for the heat; they were unprepared for the responsibility that comes with witnessing traditional knowledge.
This moment taught me what would become the first principle of my cultural research methodology: the difference between cultural tourism and cultural learning. Uncle Li's approach—allowing me to fail safely while maintaining the dignity of his craft—showed me how communities can be generous teachers when approached with genuine humility rather than entitled curiosity. This wasn't about me collecting an authentic experience; it was about being offered instruction in recognizing my own limitations as preparation for deeper learning.
Later, I discovered that when the busy season for tea processors hit, they would be working until the wee hours, literally sweating as they killed green for many batches of tea to meet the production schedule. What looked like a simple process of tossing and turning tea leaves was actually a delicate conversation between human intuition and natural process—a relationship that could only be developed through years of patient attention.
We helped more with the rounian step, rolling the processed leaves to release their juices and shape them. Even this seemingly simpler task required finesse I was just starting to understand. Then came the waiting—spreading the leaves to dry in the sun, letting natural processes take their course.
Nothing could be rushed. Each step had its own time, its own rhythm. The sun would do its work, and we would wait. This wasn't just about making tea—it was about learning to work with natural processes rather than trying to control them.
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By our third day, something had shifted in how I understood my role. I wasn't just watching tea being processed; I was being invited to witness cultural transmission—knowledge passing from one generation to the next with the kind of care that can't be commodified or extracted.
Uncle Li's family was sharing more than technique; they were demonstrating an approach to life that honors patient craft over quick results, relationship over efficiency. What made this sharing possible wasn't my worthiness as an outsider, but their generosity as cultural holders and my growing recognition that witnessing such knowledge comes with responsibility.
This experience would later shape how I approach every cultural story I'm learning to document respectfully—always asking not "How can I capture this?" but "How can I honor this?" The difference, I was learning, determines whether cultural exchange becomes preservation or appropriation.
On our final morning, Uncle Li set out everything needed for a proper tea session. The tea we would brew had traveled from ancient trees to careful hands to patient sun—each step a meditation on time and attention.
As I held the small clay pot, waiting for the tea to steep, I realized this moment contained everything I had witnessed—like leaves that carry the story of their mountain, their processing, their patient aging. The mountain soil, the scorching wok, the patient waiting, the gentle hands that had guided these leaves through their transformation. But more than that, it contained a question that would follow me home and eventually reshape my life:
What happens when we slow down enough to truly receive what time wants to give us?
Uncle Li asked what I thought of the tea. I told him I was still learning the language—not just of tea, but of listening with the patience that cultural knowledge requires.
I didn't know it then, but this experience was teaching me the foundational lesson for all the cultural research work I would later develop: that the most important stories live not in museums or books, but in the generous hands of people willing to share their knowledge with someone humble enough to receive it properly. Years later, this moment in Uncle Li's place would become the template for how I approach every community that graciously allows me to witness their traditions—not as content to be captured, but as knowledge to be honored through careful, systematic learning that serves cultural understanding first.
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If this patient approach to cultural learning steeps well with you, I invite you to join our Tea Table Club—where we practice learning to listen before we presume to speak.
Let's brew something slow, together. Thank you for pausing here to witness this lesson in cultural humility.