The Wild Truth of Tea

This book is more than how to brew a cup of tea – it is a tea education you won't find anywhere else. Dive deep into the guts of the tea industry from the perspective of true insiders in the tea industry. Most tea drinkers never realize the depth of the story behind each cup. This book illuminates what even people who are in the tea business may not know. Packed with nitty gritty, real life stories and unearthing gems of knowledge about the tea business, this book reveals the deep inner workings of the tea business and maps out who the real players are and what they are really doing, as well as what you can do about it. Shana Zhang comes from a tea family and has a background unlike any other author on tea. She has worked for the largest tea export company in Yunnan and now runs her own venture, Wild Tea Qi. People travel from all over the world to directly partake of her in-depth knowledge of tea. JT Hunter has been working tirelessly in the field to support the last true tea artisans and shed light on the importance of biodiversity and the truth behind the tea business. This book is for the tea lovers, the tea newbie, the tea connoisseur, and anyone in the business of tea. Reading this will make you reassess everything you think you already know about tea.

This book is more than how to brew a cup of tea – it is a tea education you won't find anywhere else. Dive deep into the guts of the tea industry from the perspective of true insiders in the tea industry. Most tea drinkers never realize the depth of the story behind each cup. This book illuminates what even people who are in the tea business may not know. Packed with nitty gritty, real life stories and unearthing gems of knowledge about the tea business, this book reveals the deep inner workings of the tea business and maps out who the real players are and what they are really doing, as well as what you can do about it. Shana Zhang comes from a tea family and has a background unlike any other author on tea. She has worked for the largest tea export company in Yunnan and now runs her own venture, Wild Tea Qi. People travel from all over the world to directly partake of her in-depth knowledge of tea. JT Hunter has been working tirelessly in the field to support the last true tea artisans and shed light on the importance of biodiversity and the truth behind the tea business. This book is for the tea lovers, the tea newbie, the tea connoisseur, and anyone in the business of tea. Reading this will make you reassess everything you think you already know about tea. You thought tea was healthy – and it can be – but in the first half of the book, the industry-insider authors expose the appalling truth of how the tea most people drink is produced and distributed. The second half of the book explores the deeper reasons about why we brew tea, which will ultimately inform how you brew it. This book will change the way you buy and drink tea. Shana Zhang worked in the largest tea exporting company in Yunnan Province, China. She and J.T. Hunter now run their own tea company, Wild Tea Qi, specializing in only premium, truly organic tea leaves from ancient, wild tea trees, and they operate their business from a holistic, traditional Chinese medicine perspective. J.T. Hunter is the author of another book on subjects similar to this new one, which is also well worth reading.

Shana Zhang - Co-founder of the International Tea Academy, shareholder of Wild Tea Qi and a certified tea master by the International Tea Masters Association, Shana grew up in a tea family that owns two tea plantations and two tea factories in Yunnan, China. She has a deep and unique perspective of the tea industry from the Chinese side of tea culture and business. She worked for her family's tea company, which is the largest tea export company in Yunnan province, where she was responsible for international sales, tea quality testing, fair trade certification, IMO organic certification, plantation inspection and other responsibilities. Her clients have included some of Europe’s and the United States’ largest tea companies. She was professionally trained within China in Chinese tea ceremony and as a professional tea taster. She currently is a shareholder of Wild Tea Qi, which is a tea company that is distributed worldwide. She manages the buying operations, tea farmers and plantation inspections, package design, and international sales. She joined Wild Tea Qi as part of her mission to help protect China's quickly dwindling natural environment, as the guiding spirit of integrity in support of Biodiversity tea and preserving the original tea artisans. Shana and her business partner J.T. Hunter, deep experience in the Chinese and international world of tea and they are ready to share with you some of this insider knowledge. J.T.Hunter – The founder of Wild Tea Qi (an artisan tea company), co-founder of the International Tea Academy, author of the controversial book Wild Tea Hunter, Executive Director of the International Tea Masters Association of China, Taiwan and Thailand. JT tirelessly searches for the exotic, wild, and ancient tree teas and master tea artisans from the Taoist mountains of Wuyishan to the remote mountains of Yunnan. He has studied with Taoist masters, Buddhist monks, and the tribal people of Yunnan in their mysterious tea cultures. He has been studying Taoist healing martial arts, meditation, and Qigong for many years. In his tea treks he saw how many large-scale farms and unsustainable harvesting practices were actually destroying the environment and producing teas with very weak Qi energy. They were simply being mass-produced for large profits while paying unskilled workers a very poor wage. He saw how the master artisans were quickly disappearing, how the spiritual tea culture was being lost. It became JT’s mission to help support the true artisans, support sustainable tea harvesting practices, and to make this amazing, spiritual tea culture known to the west. Thus he created Wild Tea Qi. Today, he continues his treks across China digging deeper into the spiritual tea culture in search of wild and ancient tree teas.