Tea Trees Older Than Memory
Reaching Ha Giang’s centuries-old tea trees requires travelling along slippery red-dirt roads and climbing more than 1,500 metres above sea level, where mist settles over the mountains from morning until dusk.
There are no signposts, entrance gates, or viewing platforms. Instead, dense forests open onto towering tea trees rooted in rich red basalt soil, their branches extending into the damp mountain air and their leaves glistening with morning dew.
They look nothing like the neatly trimmed plantations often seen in tea advertisements, where uniform rows follow the contours of the hillsides.
Here, Shan Tuyet tea trees grow naturally among native forest species. Their roots reach deep into the earth, drawing water and minerals from rock formations older than the communities surrounding them. Some trees have stood for two or even three centuries.
They do not know they are considered “ancient.” Each spring, they simply produce new buds, as they have for generations.
The Dao and Hmong communities living among these forests do not treat the trees as an agricultural company might treat its farmland. When the air turns cool, people gather the young buds, often still covered in morning dew, and carry them home to be processed and dried on woven bamboo trays beside the kitchen fire.
Tea here is not merely a commercial crop. It belongs to a wider ecosystem in which people, plants, soil, weather, and microorganisms have long existed together.
A Cup That Tastes Like The Forest
Tea made from these trees tastes little like what most people encounter in tea bags or bottled drinks.
The first sip carries a gentle astringency across the tongue. Moments later, a lingering sweetness slowly rises from the back of the throat and stays through the next breath. Its aroma is not added flavouring but the scent of damp earth, decaying forest leaves, and morning mist evaporating beneath the canopy.
Local people brew tea in simple porcelain bowls. There are no elaborate Yixing teapots or ceremonial rituals. Water is boiled over a wood fire, tea is poured into bowls, and guests gather on low wooden stools or squat beside the hearth. Tea here is not performed. It is shared on cold mornings, drunk before heading down the mountain, or offered to visitors when there is little else to give besides a bowl of hot tea and conversation.
That is why Vietnamese tea, or at least the tea that grows in the forests of Ha Giang, is difficult to explain to outsiders. It comes with no script and no distinctive set of tools. No English or Japanese word can fully capture what it means to drink a bowl of tea prepared over a fire by a Dao family at daybreak. Its beauty lies precisely in its quiet simplicity.
Two Perspectives, One Story
Nguyen Son Tung understands this better than most. A Vietnamese photographer who studied art in Japan before returning home, he did not travel to Ha Giang intending to "promote Vietnamese tea culture" or "elevate a national heritage." He brought only his camera and the familiarity of someone rediscovering a part of home that may have long been overlooked: tea trees his grandparents might once have drunk from, but that no one had ever truly photographed.
He photographed the rough texture of ancient trunks. The silhouette of a Dao woman carrying a woven basket across the tea forest. The morning mist curled over the mountaintops before sunlight pierced the clouds. Rather than searching for spectacular landscapes, he patiently waited for ordinary moments, believing they revealed the deepest truths about the tea forests and the communities that have lived alongside them for generations.
Tinh, meanwhile, arrived in Ha Giang as an outsider. Founded by Japanese tea enthusiasts, the tea brand works with tea-growing communities across the northern mountains of Vietnam. They did not come to teach anyone how tea should be brewed according to Japanese traditions. Instead, they wanted to understand what had shaped these remarkable trees: why they could survive for centuries in the forest, why people chose to leave nature largely untouched, and what made a cup of tea from this landscape feel like something far greater than leaves steeped in water.
Tinh has returned to Ha Giang time and again. They have shared meals in stilt houses, drunk tea from the same humble porcelain bowls, and spent time listening to local communities. It is not the patience of an investor searching for suppliers. It is the patience of someone learning a new language not from dictionaries, but by immersing themselves in everyday life.
When Tung and Tinh met among the tea forests of Ha Giang, they found themselves drawn to the same conviction: these trees deserved to be seen as they truly are, through light and shadow, mist and fleeting moments.
Echoes of Life — Tea from Vietnam: A Story of Nature's Chain of Life
This August, 32 photographs from that journey will go on display at Kosha Kosha Akihabara in Tokyo. The exhibition is titled Echoes of Life — Tea from Vietnam, or Inochi no Baton (いのちのバトン) in Japanese, meaning "The Baton of Life". The exhibition invites visitors to see tea not as an industrial product, but as a gift from nature, shaped by an unbroken chain of life that connects forests, soil, rain, microorganisms and the people who have lived alongside these tea trees for generations.
None of the photographs rely on lengthy captions explaining the history of Vietnamese tea. Instead, the exhibition unfolds naturally, leading visitors from mountain tea trees to skilled hands processing the leaves, then to steaming bowls of tea, and finally to the faces of those who drink it. Visitors move through the exhibition much as they would travel through the landscape itself, rather than reading a textbook.
Beyond the exhibition itself, a series of public events will further explore tea through different creative lenses. On August 8, Japanese design studio Knot For will discuss Vietnamese tea culture and how local heritage can shape meaningful branding.
On August 22, Tinh and Chiyaba will host a tasting session featuring teas from Vietnam and Nepal. On August 24, the exhibition welcomes the owner-chef of Kokyu, a restaurant built around the concept of "Tea × Gastronomy," for a conversation on food pairing and how tea and cuisine can elevate one another. After Tokyo, the exhibition is expected to travel to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, bringing these stories from Ha Giang's tea forests back to audiences in Vietnam.
The Journey Continues
One of the exhibition's most distinctive features is its Minna No Ki (everyone’s tree), where visitors are invited to leave personal reflections. Their messages will not remain in Tokyo. Instead, they will travel with the exhibition to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, allowing the story of Vietnamese tea to grow through the voices of those who experience it.
The exhibition runs from August 5 to August 29, 2026, on the fifth floor of Kosha Kosha Akihabara in Tokyo. Admission is free, and opening hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. After Tokyo, the exhibition will continue its journey to Vietnam.
If you have never seen how Vietnamese tea grows, this may be the closest you can come without climbing mountain passes yourself. Someone has already made the journey, waited patiently, and captured what the forests have quietly held for centuries.
Exhibition Information
Echoes of Life - Tea from Vietnam will travel across three cities in 2026, beginning in Tokyo before continuing to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
Tokyo: August 5–29 at Kosha Kosha Akihabara
Ho Chi Minh City: September 29–October 4 at Saigon Muse Gallery
Hanoi: October 10–18 at Artscape Cafe & Gallery
Admission is free at all venues.
Explore the exhibition schedule and venue details here.