Mei Yang

Mei Yang grew up inside the tea rhythms of Chaozhou, where the scent of brewing Dān Cōng (单丛) still rolls through the old lanes each morning. Her first teacher was a family friend who sourced from the higher slopes of Fènghuáng Shān (凤凰山) by foot — an apprenticeship in patience and palate that shaped every later step. Today, she is the Senior Tea Expert for Oolong and Black Tea at tea.place, and the editorial voice steering the community's Guangdong rooms.

Her deepest knowledge rests with the flowering aromas of the Phoenix Mountain family. She works directly with a cluster of smallholder gardens around Wudong Peak, often spending eight weeks each spring to select lots that express single-tree characters — the honeyed orchid of Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香), the pomelo glow of Yòu Huā Dān Cōng (柚花单丛), and the quieter resinous Huang Zhi Xiang profiles. At tea.place, she runs regular cohort tastings that help new room owners learn to read these aromatics without jargon, building the vocabulary they need for their own menus.

Black tea forms the other pillar of her work. She is known for her exacting approach to Jīn Jǔn Méi (金骏眉), collaborating with a Wuyi master to push the balance of bud-weight and sweetness while preserving the tea's cool, mineral finish. For Zhèng Shān Xiǎo Zhǒng (正山小种), she traces back to the traditional smoke-drying methods using Fujian pine, regularly sourcing batches that show the layered raisin and longan notes she considers the mark of honest Lapsang. Her thread, “How to open your own room — the questions to answer first,” emerged from dozens of conversations with new founders and has become essential reading for anyone designing a tea space.

Beyond tea.place, she teaches two modules at tea.school — one on oxidation control across oolong processing, and another on the geography of Wuyi black teas. She also leads annual tea.travel journeys to Chaozhou and the Phoenix mountain range, walking participants through the same village homes where she first learned. Her work keeps circling back to one idea: that great tea is a conversation between a place and a person, and that every room should open that conversation wider.