Bama Mountain Tea Oil

Bama Mountain Tea Oil

　　Bama Mountain Tea Oil

　　It’s a fact that many of Bama’s centenarian elders have eaten mountain tea oil since childhood, and it’s also a fact that not everyone who eats mountain tea oil from a young age lives to be over 100. Within this subtle relationship, Bama mountain tea oil has earned a reputation — it can strengthen health when consumed and beautify skin when used, earning it the title “Oriental Olive Oil.”

　　Luo Meizheng, female, of the Yao ethnic group, was from Momai Village, Shangqin Village, Suolue Township, Bama Yao Autonomous County. On the morning of May 5, 1990, she ate a bowl of rice, drank about 200 grams of rice wine and a bowl of hot water, then lay back in bed and passed away peacefully at the age of 130. The Bama County Annals record that Luo Meizheng was 168 cm tall and had several times carried 100 kilograms of lime to the Yan Cave market, 42 kilometers away, without feeling particularly tired. She had a large appetite, eating up to one kilogram of rice and 1.5 kilograms of chicken in a single meal, and regularly used locally produced mountain tea oil among her cooking oils.

　　When many media outlets interview Bama’s long-lived elders, the topic of diet often comes up. There are many factors contributing to longevity, but it is certain that Bama’s long-lived elders have the habit of consuming mountain tea oil. Townships within Bama such as Suolue, Nashe, and Yan Cave are major production areas for tea seeds — the raw material for mountain tea oil. A study conducted by Guangxi Medical University found that the physical and chemical properties of mountain tea oil are extremely similar to those of olive oil, and compared to olive oil, mountain tea oil contains very little unsaponifiable matter. Among olive oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil, and lard, mountain tea oil has the highest oleic acid content, exceeding 80%. Oleic acid is an important nutritional component in edible oils.

　　The trees that produce tea seeds are called oil tea trees locally, and there are two types: those with red flowers and those with white flowers. Red-flowered oil tea trees are mainly distributed in northern Guangxi, while those in Bama mostly have white flowers.

　　Some locals, after washing up in the morning, don’t apply conditioner to their hair or cosmetics to their face, but instead rub a bit of mountain tea oil on their hair or face. Their hair instantly becomes shiny, and their skin smooth. In the past, the residue left after pressing oil from tea seeds — known as tea dregs — served as a homemade laundry detergent or shampoo. Bama tea seeds have a relatively high oil yield, with up to over 30 kilograms of oil extractable from 100 kilograms of tea seeds.

　　Before 1982, people in Fucun Village, Suolue Township, used primitive oil presses. When locals described these machines, the term “clawing and gnashing” could be used — the describer’s Mandarin wasn’t great, and as they spoke excitedly, each person made different “motions,” often not waiting for others to understand the first sentence before moving on. At one point, someone suddenly stood up and said to the reporter, “Let me draw you a picture, and you’ll understand.”

　　With a few swift strokes, a diagram of the oil pressing process appeared before the reporter’s eyes: next to a large hollowed-out log stood a person wielding a heavy iron hammer, smashing it down onto a pointed wooden block on top of the log. With each strike, force traveled from the base of the pointed wood to a wooden plug inside the log’s “belly,” which then pressed against the tea seed cake within, causing the tea oil to seep out from a hole at the bottom of the log. The plug moved forward little by little until all the oil was extracted.

　　The logs varied in diameter, with larger ones reaching fifty or sixty centimeters in diameter and about six meters in length, capable of pressing around 75 kilograms of tea seeds at a time. This traditional method required first crushing and steaming the oil tea seeds, then pressing them into mooncake-like shapes and packing them one by one into the log’s cavity. Initially, each tea seed cake was about 10 centimeters thick, but after the oil was fully pressed out, it shrank down to the thinness of a cutting board. Pressing oil this way took half a day and required five or six people taking turns swinging the hammer — a time-consuming and labor-intensive process.

　　The heyday of traditional oil pressing was before the 1970s, when Fucun Village alone had five primitive oil presses. Whenever one of these presses started up, the aroma of oil would waft through the village, drawing adults and children alike who gathered near the oil mill in hopes of getting a bit of tea oil or tea dregs to use for eating, shampooing, or washing clothes.

　　In 1982, Fucun Village got its first electric oil press. From that year on, the primitive oil presses gradually disappeared from the village. Electric oil presses required no special technique — just pour in the dried tea seeds and wait for the oil to come out, with an oil yield twice that of the traditional method.

　　Villagers often brought their raw materials to local press operators. Strangely, not only did they not have to pay processing fees, but they could even receive compensation ranging from a few to several dozen yuan, on the condition that they left all the tea dregs behind. It turned out that tea dregs were quite valuable, once selling for as much as about four yuan per kilogram, and the press operators made their money from these dregs.

　　Bama’s documented history of planting oil tea trees dates back to the mid-Qing Dynasty. In 1962, the county’s tea seed production was 510,000 kilograms, the lowest annual yield since the founding of New China. Production recovered in the 1970s, stabilizing at over one million kilograms per year. According to statistics from the Bama Forestry Bureau, the county currently has 376,000 mu of oil tea trees, producing about 6 million kilograms of tea seeds annually, though production remains relatively low. There are three main reasons: first, most oil tea trees have not been improved, yielding only a few dozen kilograms per mu; second, the trees are planted too closely together, resulting in insufficient sunlight; third, a significant number of farmers level the ground beneath the trees during harvest.

　　Why level the ground? Officials from the Bama Forestry Bureau explained that this practice is actually aimed at making it easier for farmers to collect the seeds. Seed collection is a traditional local method — once the seeds mature and fall naturally, they are picked up from the ground. Although leveling the ground under the trees speeds up collection, it causes soil erosion, and since farmers generally do not fertilize the trees, it affects growth the following year. Some farmers go even further, leveling the ground a month before harvest — a time when the seeds are still in the growing stage. The seeds collected this way are naturally less plump, and the oil yield is greatly reduced. In recent years, after awareness campaigns, many farmers have abandoned the bad habit of leveling the ground before seed collection.

　　Zhou Tao is the Party branch secretary of Fucun Village Committee and a major local oil tea tree grower, owning 80 mu of oil tea forest. With the tea seeds, he earns around 30,000 yuan a year. Now, like many in the village, he has built a single-story house, where he sun-dries the collected tea seeds on the roof. He has also built a small storage room upstairs for keeping dried tea seeds, which is very convenient. But before the 1980s, drying tea seeds wasn’t so easy.

　　Back then, Zhou Tao’s family didn’t have a single-story house, and finding a place to sun-dry tea seeds was difficult, so they had to roast the seeds indoors. Entire rooms, even multiple connected rooms, were fitted with racks, on which were placed bamboo sieves of various sizes — or sometimes a single sieve as big as a room — covered with four or five centimeters of raw tea seeds. A small fire was lit beneath the racks to gently roast the seeds, which were occasionally turned over. After a few turns, when kicked, the seeds would make a muffled thudding sound, indicating they needed more roasting; if the sound was crisp, it meant they were dry and ready for storage or sale. Roasting a batch of tea seeds could take anywhere from a few days to two weeks, depending on the weather — a tedious task. Moreover, the roasted seeds looked as if they’d been through a coal mine, their “skin” turned blacker, and the oil extracted from them lost its shine.

　　Farmers in Suolue Township harvest tea seeds in two ways: picking up fallen seeds or harvesting the fruit. Harvesting the fruit is the easier method — collecting the seed pods before they naturally open and fall, then drying them and extracting the seeds inside. In comparison, picking up fallen seeds better preserves the quality of the oil, whereas the fruit-harvesting method increases foam in the oil, dulls its color, and results in a lower oil yield.

　　No matter how high the price, villagers in Fucun Village always keep around 50 kilograms of tea seeds at home, waiting for a chance to take them to the village processing point to press their own oil for personal use. Traditional mountain tea oil has a yellowish tint and looks like peanut oil in bottles. Using improved methods based on traditional techniques, the oil can be refined into clear mountain tea oil — the transparent variety seen in supermarkets today. This type of tea oil is not only used for cooking but is also commonly used for beauty purposes.

　　The best year for tea seed prices was 2007, when both out-of-town and local dealers competed to buy Bama tea seeds, driving the price up from eight yuan to eleven yuan per kilogram — the latter being the price quoted by the out-of-town dealers. This phenomenon actually revealed a dilemma faced by Bama today: deep-processing companies claim that insufficient raw materials affect tea oil production, while management officials and farmers argue that this isn’t the case — the high purchase prices offered by out-of-town dealers naturally lead most of Bama’s tea seeds to flow elsewhere. For example, in Fucun Village, 60% of the tea seeds are bought by out-of-town dealers from provinces like Hunan and Jiangxi. This means the key reason Bama’s tea oil processing companies face raw material shortages lies in their own low purchasing prices. In addition, these companies have not yet established their own large-scale oil tea plantations.