According to Pham The Duyet in Nghiem Xuyen Commune, Thuong Tin District, Hanoi, the end of the year is always the peak season for making bamboo tube tea. This product has been favored and bought by overseas Vietnamese as gifts when leaving Vietnam.

Pham The Duyet introduces bamboo tube tea to foreign guests

Duyet said he was taught to make bamboo tube tea by a tea artisan in Na Thac Village, Phuong Do Commune, Vi Xuyen District, Ha Giang Grovince 11 years ago. Fresh bamboo trees taken from the forest are sawed into shorter tubes of about 22 centimeters long each.

Accordingly, the tea leaves he picked is ancient Shan Tuyet tea growing on the Tay Con Linh range in Phuong Do, Phuong Tien, and Cao Bo communes (Vi Xuyen District). To have tea products of the best quality, Duyet only uses spring tea picked in the morning. The tea is roasted, crumpled, and dried, then is placed into fresh bamboo tubes and put on top of a fire to make it softer.

To get a delicious and good flavor bamboo tube tea, it is necessary to choose the best quality tea to make. During the tea making process, makers must be meticulous in both placing tea leaves into tubes, compressing the tea and keeping the flame steady. When the tea is softer, the aroma of the tea will mix with the aroma of the bamboo tube. This is the traditional way of making and preserving tea of the Dao people.

Pham The Duyet places and compresses tea into fresh bamboo tubes

Bamboo tube tea with the aroma of fresh bamboo mixed with the sweet astringent taste of ancient Shan Tuyet tea and the smell of kitchen smoke create a tea flavor that Duyet said is the taste of his homeland. Furthermore, bringing bamboo tube tea products to the market also contributes to promoting Vietnam’s tea culture. Bamboo is a symbol of the Vietnamese people, now blended with the flavor of tea, which is a condition to promote the tea culture of Vietnam in general and of the Dao ethnic group in Ha Giang Province in particular.

“Both tea and bamboo trees are symbols of the Vietnamese people. Therefore, bamboo tube tea products have been chosen by many people as gifts when studying or working abroad and also are favored by overseas Vietnamese,” Duyet shared, adding that his bamboo tube tea products have been bought by many overseas Vietnamese from France and the Czech Republic as gifts, or many people going abroad also take bamboo tube tea as gifts for international friends.

In addition to bamboo tubes to make containers for tea, Duyet also uses Do paper made by the H’mong ethnic minority in Mai Chau District, Hoa Binh Province, while other materials like ropes and labels are made from environmentally friendly materials, meeting the sustainability requirements and traditions of the Vietnamese people, thereby, contributing to raising incomes and improving the quality of life for the ethnic minority groups.

In 2019, for the first time participating in the Tea Masters Cup Vietnam competition held in Ha Giang Province, Pham The Duyet won the first prize in Tea Making and the first prize in Tea Tasting with the Ha Giang traditional bamboo tube tea product he produced.