It's cool and damp in the mountains just
before sunrise when Zhao Yafei walks his family's tea fields. It's not just where he works; it's what he inherited from his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father — and now him. Taking over wasn't just stepping into a job; it was shouldering a deep responsibility. “People drink from here," he says, his knuckles already rough from work despite his youth, stroking a dewy leaf. “And the land needs us to take care of it."
He doesn't talk about grand legacies much. For Zhao Yafei, the tradition lives in the daily doing. “Each time I start a new batch, it’s a fresh start,” he explains, standing in the simple, weathered workshop smelling sharply of fresh-cut leaves. “The leaves from yesterday are done. Today’s leaves? They deserve their own clean slate.” This means clearing his head of yesterday’s worries or tomorrow’s pressures. “Empty mind, full attention,” he grins slightly. “Otherwise, you rush, you miss something.”
He remembers his father, aged with the sun and the strain, placing a leaf in his palm, showing him how it should sound dry: a paper rustle. “That sound,” Zhao says, “that’s when it’s all over. That’s when you respect the leaf, the craft, the people who drank tea here before you.” For Zhao Yafei, leadership is about waking up early, listening to the leaves, and treating each one like it’s his first.
