01/09/2026
A snapshot found on Austin’s desk, taken before Seven Cups was even Seven Cups.
This photo goes all the way back to the first time Austin ever stepped foot into a tea garden, twenty-five years ago, when he hiked up into the Wudong Mountain range on a stock trail and camped among the tea bushes there with this tea maker (name unknown) as his host.
There was no driving up the mountain back then, although the local government was actively working on a road at the time. Rock-clearing dynamite blasts echoed through the night as the tea maker poured gongfucha brews of dancong and made Austin some farm fresh chicken soup on the mountainside, as advertised by his sign in the photo. Talk about entrepreneurial spirit.
That was a year before Seven Cups started up, when Austin was still figuring things out. He wasn’t in the tea business. He didn’t know he even wanted to be in the tea business. He was just a guy who loved tea and China was opening to the world. Beijing just got chosen for the 2008 Olympics and China soon entered the WTO. There was a sense of optimism and awe in the country, among Chinese and outsiders alike.
Drinking 2025’s Sweet Potato Dan Cong invokes these memories for Austin. It reminds him of both the flavor of the tea he drank that night on Wudong Mountain and the feeling of promise it came steeped in.
