Chen Hui Yi

Chen Hui Yi works out of Chaozhou, in eastern Guangdong, where she has lived since 2008. She came to tea through her grandmother's Bái Mǔ Dān (白牡丹) cupboard — a stack of 2003–2009 Fuding pressings that taught her, before she had any vocabulary for it, that white tea is a study in slow chemistry rather than freshness.

On tea.events she anchors the monthly cupping club — a small, deliberately unhurried session that rotates through one category per month and returns to whites every quarter. Recent sittings have compared three vintages of Shòu Méi (寿眉) from Zhènghé against a single 2015 Fuding cake; another paired Yín Zhēn (银针) from two adjacent gardens on Tài Mǔ Shān (太姥山) with a Mòguāng Bái (月光白) from Jǐnggǔ, Yunnan, to show how cultivar and withering room reshape the same idea. She tends to pour at lower temperatures than most hosts — 82–85°C for younger needles, climbing to near-boiling for aged cakes — and asks participants to track aroma at three intervals rather than rate cups against each other.

Her second register is yellow tea, the smallest of the six categories and the one most participants have never properly tasted. She sources Jūn Shān Yín Zhēn (君山银针) through contacts in Hunan and occasionally co-hosts comparative sessions with Zhou Xiang when schedules align. Green tea she treats more pragmatically — early-spring Lóngjǐng (龙井), Ānjí Bái Chá (安吉白茶), and the underrated Guangdong greens from Shīhú — usually folded into spring cupping cycles rather than standalone events.

Chen also writes for the community. Her thread Bringing children to a tasting — when it works, when it doesn't drew on three years of running family-friendly Saturday sittings at her studio and remains one of the more discussed pieces on tea.community. She is candid that most formal cuppings are wrong for children under ten, and equally candid about the format adjustments — shorter steeps, fewer cups, edible pairings — that make the room work for everyone.

For participants who want to study whites more seriously between sessions, she points toward the Fuding modules on tea.school and the aged-white selections at shop.thetea.app, where she has helped curate the 2014–2019 pressings shelf. She rarely travels for festivals, preferring to keep the cupping club consistent month after month, and considers regularity — same hour, same table, slightly different leaves — the underrated half of tea education.