Yibang 倚邦

Located in eastern Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, Yibang is one of the "Six Great Tea Mountains" 六大茶山, which were designated in the Qing Dynasty as sources of tribute tea for the imperial court. Today the tribute system is long gone, yet the names of these mountains still hold their historical weight. They are usually grouped as the "Ancient Six Tea Mountains" east of the Lancang River, to distinguish them from the "New Six Tea Mountains" that rose in prominence during the twentieth century.

"Yibang" means two things at once. Administratively, it is a single village within Xiangming township. But in the tea world, "Yibang" means something larger: a historic, prominent tea growing area that extends well beyond the village itself, and includes sub-areas like the famous Mansong 曼松. When we talk about Yibang, then, we mean this wider sense of the name, which certainly deserves a page of its own.

We first walked through Yibang village in spring 2024. We met tea makers there and interviewed them, and spent time in the local tea museum, learning first hand why this place matters and how its environment sets its teas apart from Yiwu. That visit is where our research began.

The two years that followed were our homework. We kept sampling Yibang teas, and were finally convinced to source there after trying several vintages at a professional government pu'er tea course that Pink attended in Kunming, taught by a university professor and pu'er collector. Patience is how we work: a place with this reputation takes time to understand, and a tea at this level has to earn its place in what we stock and teach.

That is why, after years of sourcing in the neighboring, more accessible Yiwu area, in-depth fieldwork in Yibang became our highest priority for spring 2026. Yibang was more than we could take on when we started out; it took years of pu'er sourcing and study before we felt ready to work with such high-end material.

Our first area to source from within Yibang was Mansong. This is still quite a large area, and it's impossible to cover it all in a narrow picking window of just several days, so we had to prioritize and plan our sourcing trip in advance. We decided to focus on two micro-terroirs from two nearby mountains: Wangzi Shan 王子山 ("prince mountain") and Beiyin Shan 背陰山 ("shady mountain").

The terrain across the Yibang area varies. It can be very steep, as in Mansong, where we climbed for ten minutes and barely reached 200 meters up. Picking here is harder and more dangerous than in flatter areas, so labor costs more, and that carries into the production cost of Mansong teas.

Yibang prices are among the highest in pu'er: a micro-batch from a single plot, picking date or tea maker can reach five digits in RMB per kilogram of fresh maocha 毛茶, before any aging.

Beyond Mansong, our work on Yibang also extended to Dahei Shan, a smaller corner of Yibang that is lesser-known on the global market, and speaks more to drinkers who trust their own palate than to those looking for famous names. We came in early April 2026 focused on Mansong, and left, through the people we met there, not only with our two micro-batches but also with a batch from remote Dahei Shan trees grown under a yefang 野放 approach. Sourcing works like that: one thing leads to another, and a place you never planned for becomes the surprise of the trip. We have no doubt we'll continue to explore Yibang's micro-terroirs in the future.