Heat in the Tea Gardens

By Adam Mann

Make sure you have a strong cup of black tea before you read this!
Roger has been working in highland areas of Vietnam helping farmer families to grow and pick high quality fine flavour highland tea. Tuyet has been working in her family owned business to process and market high quality highland tea from Vietnam into European markets. One day they meet again, in her factory, and suddenly the spark of love unexpectedly enters into their lives which grows into amazing passion. After a season of trials and tribulations they both overcome the lack of divorce papers, and Tuyet manages to collect an engagement ring, a wedding ring, a new husband, but not always in the right order!

• Language: English
• Publisher: ButterflyBooks
• Release date: Nov 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310248344

Adam Mann

Adam Mann has lived and worked in Africa and then Asia for many years. He has always been fascinated by personal relationships, and in real life is now enjoying his fourth marriage, after being widowed, divorced, and even had a marriage annulled as this ‘wife’ had forgotten to get divorced.As a result he has extensive experience of social and sexual activities, which he brings into his books in explicit detail. Underlying all these activities is a quest for a loving and ongoing relationship with his partner.Adam Mann is a pen name.

Book preview

Butterfly Books

Heat in the Tea Gardens

by Adam Mann

© Adam Mann, 2014

Adam Mann has asserted his rights as the author of this novel.

ISBN 9781310248344

Words 31,800

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter One

Roger walked to the top of the rise and looked back at the landscape below him. There were simply acres and acres of tea bushes, with dividing lanes, and the occasional main road. The farmers had planted shade bushes amid the rows of tea bushes, usually acacia trees, which flowered in the spring.

Some of the rows of tea bushes followed the contour lines, but others just ran in straight lines. Roger looked down into the valley where new tea plants were produced and then distributed to farmer families locally. He looked back to where two visitors to his project were trying to catch up as they struggled to complete their climb.

As you know there were no large tea plantations here in Vietnam, said Roger indicating the land area they were looking at, instead each farmer family owns and manages a few acres, picks their own tea and then takes it to the tea factory, Roger continued, in previous years this land area had been managed by a cooperative, which is now a dirty word, as when the time came to distribute the money to families, neither the manager of the co-op nor the money could be found, and they are still looking for him!

The project for which Roger was working had been designed several years later to get the famer families back to work, rehabilitate their tea gardens, and improve the quality of the tea picked. The families were naturally very suspicious of any strangers, and took a whole season before they began to trust Roger, and his project staff.

What we managed to do is to get the families to elect leaders for each strip of land, and then these leaders organised the farmer families into small groups for training purposes.

It looks like you’ve been successful, said the visitor, a man, recovering his breath as he stood looking. The woman visitor caught up, also breathing heavily.

The problem, said Roger, is quality, as we all have different standards, and he added, in the end it was money that spoke to the farmers.

The owners of the tea factory pointed out that the cash they paid for A grade tea leaves were twice as much as B grade tea, and which is a lot more than C grade tea.

We managed to show the farmers that picking ten kilos of A grade tea gave him as much money as twenty kilos of B grade tea, and it is easier to carry only ten kilos of the best quality tea to the factory, Roger paused for a bit and then added, the factory really did not want C grade tea at all, and told the farmers that they would have to carry a whole sack full of the rubbish tea, which is about 75 kilos, to get even less than twenty kilos of B grade.

What does the factory do with the tea? asked Roger’s visitors now fully recovered from the climb.

They make CTC, which is the tea that goes into tea bags, explained Roger, and they have machines which sort out the better grades and then pack only the best grade into tea bags in the factory, oh yes, and all their tea bags are exported.

The lower quality teas they pack into 50kg bags, so they don’t waste anything, said Roger.

How does the money work out for the farmer? asked his visitor, how much do they actually get?

The factory calculated that if a family can pick and bring to the factory, twenty kilos of A grade tea a day, they will earn about ten dollars, said Roger.

Is that good? asked the woman visitor.

It would give each farmer family about two thousand dollars in a full growing year, which is a lot for them, and they get paid in cash every month,

Can’t they get that from bringing twice as much of the lower qualities? ask the man.

Yes, but it takes much more effort to pick and carry the lower grades to the factory, explained Roger, and the factory also monitors what each family delivers and it gives the those better farmers priorities for gifts and bonuses, which they all love, especially the women in each family.

What do they get? the woman visitor asked.

Good question, said Roger, and paused for a moment.

Every year farmers need replacement tea plants, either to expand the area of their tea garden, or to replace old or damaged trees.

The factory will also give hand tools, like sheers, as awards which the farmers need and like, and even working clothes as bonuses.

What the women, who do most of the picking by the way, enjoy most is the cooking utensils and lengths of cloth to make clothes.

Can the factory keep on affording to pay these bonuses? asked the man.

The woman who runs the factory explained to me how much each tea bag costs to produce, and how much the factory can hope to sell the tea bags for, said Robert, and as the overseas price of tea goes up they make a bit more.

At the same time the Ministry of Finance in Ha Noi, he continued, slowly devalues the local currency against the dollar, so that the farmers get a few more dong for each kilo they supply every year.

Will the overseas price go down? asked the woman.

It does sometimes, but at the same time the factory is developing a reputation with its overseas buyers for higher quality tea in the tea bags, said Roger, and added, and I’ve been told that in the factory the tea bags are produced without a label, and then packed into plain boxes. The labels and boxes are added only after the buyer is contracted.

Do you have any figures you can show us? asked the man.

Of course, said Roger, the factory helped me to produce them, and I’ve got some data folders to give you when we get back to Ha Noi.

The visitors seemed satisfied, at least for the time being, so Roger resumed walking.

These are new tea gardens, Roger announced as they reached a new area of land, it takes about three or four years for new tea bushes to become productive, he added.

The man caught up with Roger;

What are your biggest problems? he asked, panting a bit.

Well my project looks after the primary production, and I have a very good team training the farmers and keeping notes of each family’s progress, explained Roger, and then added, but my team themselves have problems as their families live in Hanoi so they cannot work here full time.

What we have done is to evolve a ten days in and four days out working system, so that they can see their families every other weekend, but for longer, and both factories have adopted a similar system for their staff from Hanoi.

They walked on for a bit.

But the farmers here work a seven day week as their tea does not stop growing at weekends, and Roger laughed, and walked on, about eight months each year are for picking, but the other four months are often the hardest physical work with pruning, weeding, and replanting, like just now.

They all stopped walking for a bit to enjoy the views, and then Roger looked up at the clouds gathering, and then they headed downhill towards the parked cars in the road.

Come and meet one of the village heads, suggested Roger, and guided them towards a house in the village. They climbed the wooden stairs to meet the village head.

This is Hon A, the head of this village, Roger introduced his guests, and Hon A’s wife had been warned in advance about visitors, and offered everyone small cups of hot green tea.

There are about twenty families growing tea for the factory who live in this village and between them they cultivate about one hundred hectares, he explained, and added, there are about twenty other families who grow other crops, like upland rice and groundnuts, and they all keep animals like buffaloes, cattle, pigs of course, and poultry, he paused a bit, the money coming into this village from the tea has improved their standard of living for all of them, as many families are probably inter-related.

They all thanked the village head and his wife for the tea, and went back to the car. The driver took then through the village and then drove on for about five kilometres and stopped outside the gates to a factory. He hooted and a security man opened the gate and let them in, but only after he had recognised Roger in the front seat of the car. As they got out of the car the guard gave them all plastic covered visitors’ passes on ribbons to hand round their necks.

Is this security necessary? asked the man.

Yes, for two reasons, one is to stop pilfering, but the most important is disease control, Roger explained. Just at that moment another security man came with brown coats, which Roger and his quests were asked to wear, and hang their visitors’ passes on