From hillside clump to tea shelf
These tubes come from a small workshop outside Jinggu, Yunnan, where a third-generation bamboo craftsman splits fresh poles for local tea farmers. The family had supplied the same six-village pu-erh collective for decades; the tubes were never commercial — just seasonal winter work, traded for tea. Thick-walled moso bamboo is selected at exactly the right stage of ripeness, each cane split into sixteen equal staves with a single axe swing, the edges then finished with a drawknife. The piercing pattern — three staggered rows — emerged from a family belief that the bamboo should breathe like a bird’s ribcage. Every tube was sun-cured for forty days, turned daily, until the colour settled into the honey-brown we see. The workshop agreed to produce a seasonal batch for Teamotea. The set now ships from the village, bundled with rice-straw twine and wrapped in recycled jute. Each tube carries a tiny stamp of the workshop’s name in carved bamboo seal form, a mark of quiet pride.