ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Climate change is driving higher temperatures and more extreme weather events. And in China, the fluctuating weather is impacting some of the world's most prized areas for growing tea. NPR's Emily Feng and producer Aowen Cao bring us this report.
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EMILY FENG, BYLINE: On this lush hilltop in southern China, tea grower Cai Yawei cultivates Fuding Dahao, one of the most famed white teas in the world. This land has been in his family since the Qing Dynasty.
CAI YAWEI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Cai says he learned to grow tea from his father, who learned it from his father. And Cai knows every plant, animal and insect on this patch of earth.
CAI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: He shows us the fragrant osmanthus flowers and lychee trees planted alongside his tea bushes, smiling at the birds and insects nestled in them. But as much as he knows this land, he does not understand the weather. Recently, he started experiencing long heat waves and erratic bouts of rain.
CAI: (Speaking Mandarin, laughter).
FENG: The weather is so off that this year, Cai says his tea harvest is down by up to 70% in volume. Some of his bushes are growing strangely colored red leaves, not green...
CAI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: ...Which are bitter in taste. The increase in average temperature in China has outpaced the global average, rising up to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century, according to the country's weather agency.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Laughter).
FENG: Tea growers like Cai pick only the most tender new leaves, but that growth is easily damaged by high temperatures.
LI ZHI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: The leaves are unusually short this year, tea picker Li Zhi says, meaning they're not growing as fast.
LI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: She's been picking tea since she started growing teeth, she jokes, and well past even when she's lost some of them in old age. Chinese studies have found harvest times for the most premium teas are shrinking, and extreme heat could decrease tea yields by up to a quarter. Tea growers are adapting. David Tsay is a tea master from the island of Taiwan, across the narrow Taiwan Strait, at the same latitude of Fuding. He has been teaching farmers in Taiwan how to use organic farming methods to counter higher temperatures and less rainfall.
DAVID TSAY: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Tsay says he's taught farmers to keep the weeds they would normally cut down around their tea bushes in order to absorb heat and retain moisture. Other farmers are planting tea at higher altitudes where it's cooler. But it's not just the tea that's impacted. It's the bugs, too.
SEBASTIAN BECKWITH: There's a little leafhopper.
FENG: This is Sebastian Beckwith. He has been importing tea from Asia for decades.
BECKWITH: And it will bite at a certain time in the spring, in May.
FENG: Beckwith pours me a steaming thimbleful of Taiwan's famous dongfang meiren tea.
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FENG: The leafhopper bug bites the tea leaves, causing it to emit a special chemical and giving it its distinct honey-like taste. But multiple tea growers in Taiwan tell NPR this insect is becoming less common, its bites less frequent - they think because of changing weather patterns and less humid weather.
BECKWITH: You know, the weather patterns have been super strange.
FENG: Beckwith noticed growers he's followed for decades, from Bhutan to Japan, struggling to adjust to new weather patterns and timings. In Darjeeling, India, for example, rain is coming at odd times in the spring.
BECKWITH: And then the tea makers are like, oh, what are we going to do now? Should we start making or do we wait?
FENG: Beckwith has also been buying white tea from Fuding, China...
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FENG: ...Where tea grower Cai Yawei sighs, looking at the farm hands picking tea. Many of them have worked with his family for decades.
CAI: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: "If our yields continue to be so low," he says, he's going to have to reconsider the business. How do you stay so calm, I ask him.
CAI: (Speaking Mandarin, laughter).
FENG: By drinking lots of tea, he laughs.
Emily Feng, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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