Tales of Cities | Tongren, where China's matcha capital hides in plain sight
Most people who drink matcha assume it is Japanese. In Tongren, a mountain city tucked into southwest China's Guizhou Province, that assumption meets a quiet correction. The tea tradition long associated with Japan can be traced back further to China's Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279). During the Song Dynasty, a method called diancha, whisking powdered tea into hot water until it turns pale and frothy, was already widespread among monks and scholars. Gu Lijun, a county-level inheritor of that Song Dynasty tradition, traces the practice back even earlier still, to the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-420). The technique now associated with Japanese tea ceremony, in other words, started in China, centuries before it ever crossed the sea.
Tongren is now working to reclaim that origin story with production rather than just history. The city wears the title "China's matcha capital" for good reason, ranking first nationally and second worldwide in matcha production and sales. That scale is easy to state as a statistic and harder to picture, until you trace the leaf back to the mountain that makes it possible.
Mount Fanjing rises more than 2,500 meters above the surrounding tea country, its ancient rock formations emerging from clouds that never quite leave, wrapped in mist and rain for more than 200 days a year, long enough that locals treat a clear day at the summit as luck rather than expectation. It is a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, home to plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth, and the climb to its Red Cloud Golden Summit is demanding by design, steep enough in places to require hands as well as feet. It is a mountain that guards its own secrets. Almost everything grown in its shadow carries that same difficulty, and benefits from it.
At the Qizimei Tea Garden in Jiangkou county, plantation head Chen Chunlian tends 220 mu (about 14.67 hectares) of Fuding Dabai, Wuniuzao and Longjing tea, all destined to become tencha, the ground raw material for matcha, with Mount Fanjing visible from the rows themselves. Walk the plantation's lower slopes and the rows of low, dense bushes stretch across the hillside in every direction, broken only by mist rolling down from above, tended by farmers who speak of the mountain with a quiet, matter-of-fact devotion, as though caring for something this rare were simply what one does here. Chen explains that the mountain's high altitude, limited sunlight and near-constant cloud cover raise the amino acid content of the leaves, improving quality well beyond what flatland tea can achieve. Farmers add a further layer of engineering before harvest, covering the plants to block out even more light. Less sunlight means more chlorophyll and more theanine, the compound chemistry behind both matcha's saturated green color and its umami depth. The effect has a name in the trade: "covered aroma." Gu describes the resulting flavor in more familiar terms, bright and fresh, carrying what tea drinkers usually just call "the aroma of seaweed."
From there, the leaf still has a distance to travel before it becomes the powder found on shelves abroad. At Gui Tea Group's matcha workshop, production supervisor Li Tingbao oversees the fine processing stage: aroma enhancement, color sorting, grinding and screening, followed by air separation, a step that filters out stems before the refined tea drops into a material bin to await blending. Only after grinding does it finally become matcha in the form most people would recognize. Li reports that the workshop's output has grown quickly, from roughly 2,500 tonnes in 2025 to an expected 5,000 tonnes this year, doubling in a single season and underscoring how fast global demand has moved.
What happens to that matcha afterward is where Tongren's ambitions become most visible, and most inventive, and it tracks a pattern playing out across the industry worldwide, where matcha has moved well past the teacup into bakery cases, dessert menus and skincare shelves. Tang Yunpeng, general manager of Guizhou Guigui Matcha Food Co., Ltd., leads a team developing matcha products well outside tradition: sun cakes with a flaky, crumbly crust wrapped around matcha filling, cheesecakes, chocolates. Tongren's matcha, Tang notes, carries a stronger bitterness and fuller flavor than matcha grown elsewhere, a distinction that comes through clearly once it is baked, whisked or melted into something else. Elsewhere in the city, matcha turns up in dumplings, noodles, beer, chapstick, hand lotion and perfume. At this point, matcha in Tongren is less an ingredient than a category of its own.
At a local nongjiale, a uniquely Chinese agritainment venue operated by local farmers that doubles as a restaurant and a window into local life, located in Yunshe village of Taiping town in Tongren's Jiangkou county, villager Yang Yanfei's table typically arrives loaded with Larou, the salt-cured smoked pork that anchors Guizhou home cooking, alongside a dish that still catches newcomers off guard: matcha sturgeon, the tea's flavor threaded lightly through the fish rather than layered over it. It is not a novelty so much as evidence of how completely matcha has settled into daily life here, alongside the area's clean air and unspoiled mountains and water, which Yang credits as the real foundation beneath all of it.
For the people who make Tongren's matcha economy run, from tea garden to processing floor to test kitchen, the ambitions are collective, and they add up to something larger than any single product. Chen speaks of the quiet pride in supplying the raw material that starts the entire chain. Tang hopes matcha becomes something bigger still: a calling card not just for Tongren, but for Guizhou and for China as a whole. As matcha continues its rise in cafes and kitchens far beyond Guizhou, Tongren's name is beginning to travel with it.
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If your years at PKU had a theme song, what would it be?
We gave our graduating PKUers a mic, some random question boards, and zero prep time.
This is Reply 2026: PKU Graduates. A collection of memories, confessions, inside jokes, and dreams for the future.
PKUers, what's your answer? 💬
PKU Graduation 2026 | Produced by Mao Yi'an, Gao Heyashu, Chen Siyang, Wang Shuyi, Jin Shuhan
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The Reality of VF CROSSROADS: Why Old-School Veterans Are Panicking and Why My Background as a 40-Year Martial Artist and Tekken 8 God of Destruction Guarantees My Dominance
After the latest footage from Evo 2026 and the official "SHOWCASE," a palpable sense of dread has spread among Virtua Fighter veterans. They are realizing that this new title will be unforgiving. Based on the development philosophy of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and the technical data of the new battle system, it is clear why: this game is destroying the traditional "memorization-based" fighting game model and replacing it with a system that demands real-world martial arts intuition—what I call "human performance."
Here is the breakdown of why this paradigm shift makes me, a 40-year practitioner of Wing Chun and a top-tier Tekken 8 player (God of Destruction/Tekken King rank), uniquely positioned to dominate from day one.
1. Philosophy: A Return to Real-World Combat
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s stated goal is a "return to realistic fighting." While they claim to inherit the series' tradition of simplicity, they have prioritized "realism and strategic depth." Traditional Virtua Fighter relied heavily on frame data memorization and repetitive, muscle-memory-based trap setups. However, the new physics engine and motion-captured animations simulate real-world biomechanics—center-of-gravity shifts, shoulder rotation, and footwork—with unprecedented precision.
Veterans who relied on "brain-dead" repetition of 20-year-old VF5FS data will find their knowledge obsolete. They cannot keep up with the sensory information of realistic neutral spacing, and they will be overwhelmed by a game that functions on a completely different dimension of difficulty.
2. The Wing Chun Advantage: Reading the Intent
My 40 years of training in Wing Chun—specifically the Chi Sao (Sticky Hands) principle—is the core of my combat intuition. It is about sensing the direction of force and the imbalance of an opponent’s center line at the point of contact.
In the VF CROSSROADS trailer, we see characters executing techniques like the "Double Palm Strike" (reminiscent of Hung Ga’s Po Pai force mechanics) without the typical telegraphing seen in older games. To a novice, these are just animations; to me, they are raw expressions of Zhan-Jin (accumulated power) and relaxation before the strike. My ability to read the "intent" of a movement—not just the frame data—allows me to counter attacks before they are even fully initiated. For me, every character is "solved" the moment I see their biomechanical cues.
3. Modern Human Performance: The Tekken 8 Synergy
Some claim this game lacks depth because it isn't "combo-heavy," but that is a misunderstanding. The official data confirms that optimized combos remain a pillar of high-level play. However, these are not the 10-second juggling sequences of other games; they are based on the impact mechanics of real martial arts—using precise strikes to shatter an opponent's defense, similar to Akira’s Sotetsu (Palm Strike).
Having competed at the level of the world's best Law players, I possess two critical advantages:
High-Speed System Adaptation: The ability to optimize combos and manage space with surgical precision.
Martial Intuition (Jie-Quan): The instinct to intercept an opponent’s attack the moment they commit.
Combining the elite-level command execution of Tekken 8 with the lifetime of experience in real-world combat, I am ready to dismantle the pride of "old-guard" players who rely solely on outdated data.
Conclusion
"VIRTUA FIGHTER CROSSROADS" marks a turning point. Sega has shifted the genre from a "memory-based quiz" to a true test of human fighting sense. As a 53-year-old martial artist, I am not just playing a game; I am applying the laws of physics and the intuition of a lifetime of combat to a digital stage.
When the game launches, I will be hosting a stream to prove these theories in practice. You can find my channel here: [Your Channel Link/Details]
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