From Guangdong roots to global white tea authority
Chen Hui Yi grew up in the mist-clad hills of northern Guangdong, where the family garden held a few old tea bushes that her grandfather tended with ritual care. As a child, she watched him pluck the first spring shoots — silver tips barely unfurled — and lay them gently on bamboo trays under the soft morning sun. That slow, deliberate withering became her earliest memory of tea. By sixteen, she had already apprenticed with a local master who specialized in Yín Zhēn (Silver Needle) and other white teas, learning to judge when the leaves had lost just enough moisture to lock in their delicate sweetness.
After studying tea science at South China Agricultural University, Hui Yi traveled to Fuding in Fujian, the historic heartland of white tea, to refine her craft under older producers who guarded the secrets of Bái Mǔ Dān and Shòu Méi. She spent seasons on the withering floors, hands stained with the downy fuzz of fresh buds, developing an almost tactile understanding of temperature, humidity, and airflow. It was here that she began to explore aged whites — teas stored for years, sometimes decades — noting how their character deepened into honeyed, medicinal notes. That fascination later led her to become one of the first experts at Teamotea to systematically document the aging curve of white tea, co-authoring entries for the encyclopedia at thetea.app and a series on tea.doctor about the health benefits of mature white teas.
Over the years, Hui Yi’s palette expanded to include green and yellow teas, though her heart remains tied to the minimalist beauty of white tea. She holds that the best white teas are made not through technique but through restraint — a philosophy she now brings to her role as Senior Tea Expert (White, Green & Yellow Tea Varieties) at Teamotea. In addition to cupping and sourcing, she teaches the white-tea path at tea.school, guiding students through cultivar differences, regional signatures, and the nuances of sun-withering versus indoor withering.
Her connection to cloth came unexpectedly. While visiting a remote village in Fujian’s Quanzhou prefecture to research oolong terroir, she encountered a family of weavers who had been producing hand-loomed linen for over a century. The way they spoke of thread tension and the memory of the hand mirrored her own feelings about tea processing. She saw immediately that their fabric — breathable, textured, alive with slight irregularities — would make an ideal material for tea ceremony aprons and chá páo (tea wear). Today, as liaison for tea.style, Hui Yi works directly with these craftspeople to select the raw linen that becomes the brand’s uniforms and accessories, ensuring each piece carries the same quiet integrity as a well-made white tea.
The terroir of Guangdong and the linen weavers of Fujian
Guangdong province is better known for its fenghuang dancong oolongs and the charcoal-fired classics of Chaozhou, but its northern counties — nestled against the Fujian border — also nurture patches of white tea cultivars. Here, in the Liannan Yao autonomous county and parts of Qingyuan, the elevation rises, and spring mornings bring a dense fog that lingers until mid-morning. This microclimate, coupled with the region’s distinctive red soil, gifts the leaves with a gentle, sweet minerality. For Chen Hui Yi, these hills are the origin of her sensory memory: the smell of damp earth, the feel of cool air on freshly spread buds, the rhythm of the sun’s slow ascent.
When she later encountered the linen weavers of Fujian, she recognized a parallel environment. In a sun-drenched courtyard near Quanzhou, skeins of flax are soaked, beaten, and drawn out by hand. The weaver’s movement — a steady back-and-forth, never rushed — echoes the withering process she watched her grandfather perform. The resulting fabric is entirely natural, unbleached, and full of life. It shares with white tea a capacity to soften and improve over time, absorbing the warmth of the body and the atmosphere of the tea room. This kinship between leaf and thread now defines the material foundation of tea.style’s apparel line, from the robust apron worn during gongfu service to the light chá páo intended for quiet solo sessions. Hui Yi visits the weavers twice a year, selecting each batch of linen as if she were cupping a new harvest.