Good teas often contain a paradox, great teas entice with several.

In the big league ranks of the connoisseur micro terroirs of eastern Mengla county, Wangong represents wild jungle charm, only attainable on the other side of a long hero’s journey into the wilderness and back. The outposts that comprise what is now considered the larger Wangong area are situated centrally in the zone that has been described as having the best wild flower flavor/fragrance of greater area Yiwu teas.  Not to mention a superb chaqi experience on the body and mood.

an oft proliferated yet controversial map

At the session’s start, Wangong yields an impossibly soft, gentle soup on top of a solid mouthfeel structure with succinct, vivid floral notes. These tones contain a sweet bouquet profile of wild magnolia, mallow, with vanilla on the exhale. The flavor and aroma are well layered in the soup and reward slowing down to roll it around to unlock them before taking a gulp down.

Mid session shows a bready, green fruit character whose liquid stays as thick and smooth as olive oil. With most teas getting this level of thickness typically means announcing it alongside a cacophony of other elements, Wangong quietly delivers heavy tingles at ASMR levels. This is precisely what keeps big six tea mountains of Mengla county heads loyal, often unable to even acknowledge hinterland tea mountains, considering them brash by comparison.

Whispering yet uncompromising, Wangong finds refined elegance in a vast and rugged wilderness.

The Hé family are descendants of Han tea traders that came to Yiwu in the 1700s, and are eight generations deep into making in-roads into the local minority groups and geographies, not only developing tea production techniques but playing a role in shaping the pu'er tea industry as a whole.  The Hé family is highly respected in Yiwu and their patriarch, Hé Tianneng, is centrally featured in Zhang Jinghong's book on pu'er tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic.

Hé family connections in these mountains are always reliable, and in this Wangong's case, they're especially clutch. Hé Xinping's father-in-law happens to reside in 杨家寨 Yangjiazhai within Wangong, and has access to fresh leaves around the wilderness tea gardens of the 弯弓大庙 Wangong da miao Temple area.  These old ruins were once the Temple Guandi, built by the Han in the Qing Dynasty.  It was said to be the largest in the original six great tea mountains at 6,000 square meters—covering nearly an acre and a half—only to have since been almost entirely swallowed up by the jungle.

While fresh raw leaves from neighboring micro terroirs within Wangong from Yao minorities are often traded at rates exceeding what even dried arbor mao cha is from other famous mountains and villages, thankfully the old father-in-law connect provide a more stable rate not as susceptible to the crypto-esque hype fluctuations we've witnessed in the market over the last decade.  Please enjoy this tea.