Chen Hui Yi

Chen Hui Yi joined the Teamotea expert bench in 2019, after eleven years sourcing white and yellow tea across Fújiàn (福建) and her home province of Guangdong. On tea.fitness she sits at a specific intersection most experts do not: she is a sub-3:30 marathoner who has run Berlin, Helsinki and Suzhou, and she designs her cupping work around the demands of an endurance training block.

Her specialty is the long, quiet shelf-life of white tea — Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) from Fúdǐng, Bái Mǔdān (白牡丹) from Zhènghé, Shòu Méi (寿眉) pressed into cakes for ageing, and the lesser-known Yuè Guāng Bái (月光白) moonlight whites from Yunnan border villages. She is also the community’s reference point for Jūn Shān Yín Zhēn (君山银针) yellow tea and the smothered mèn huáng (闷黄) step that separates it from green. Her approach to aged whites — particularly seven- and twelve-year Shòu Méi cakes — informs much of the recovery-day protocol library shared with tea.doctor and tea.yoga.

Within the fitness community she hosts the Marathon prep cupping — Helsinki event, a six-week cohort that walks runners through pre-long-run, intra-effort and post-race tea protocols using lab-tested formulas from the tea.doctor research desk. The cohort culminates in a closed cupping the morning before Helsinki City Marathon, where each runner builds a personal three-tea kit for race week. She also authored the long-running thread Hydration during long runs — tea as a real option, which has become the community’s reference on cold-brew electrolyte ratios for efforts past ninety minutes.

Chen Hui Yi trained under Master Lín Zhènxīng of Fúdǐng for white tea grading, and under Professor Wáng of the Húnán Agricultural University short course for yellow tea. She holds the Teamotea senior cupping certification (2021) and teaches the white tea module on tea.school each spring. Her sourcing trips — typically two per year to the Tài Mǔ Shān (太姥山) ridge in April and to Jūn Shān island in late May — are documented in field notes shared across thetea.app and puerh.app.

Outside the community she coaches a small group of distance runners in Guangzhou, most of them masters athletes, and writes a quiet quarterly column on the relationship between long aerobic work and the slower, lower-caffeine end of the Chinese tea spectrum. She is, by her own admission, not a fast taster — she prefers three steeps over thirty minutes to one quick verdict, which is also, broadly, how she races.