After Working in China for 8 Years, He Plans to Move Back to the US

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dylan Rothenberg, 32, the founder of Wu Mountain Tea. His words have been edited for length and clarity.

I realized in high school that my academic strength was learning foreign languages.

My dad did business in China, and his best friend was Chinese, so I’ve always had a connection to the country.

When I was 15, I went to China to stay with a host family for six months as part of a US government-sponsored full-immersion program. It was in 2009, the golden era of US-China relations.

At 19, I decided to major in Chinese and economics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

I spent my junior year abroad in Beijing at Peking University. After six months, I started working as a translator.

I sat in on negotiations with company founders, one of whom ran a tea company. He tasked me with buying tea and shipping it out to Geneva.

Deciding on tea

I decided to take a temporary leave from school and moved to Guangzhou, home to the world’s largest tea market.

China felt like the Wild West. At the time, nothing was black and white. Everything felt negotiable — anything was possible if you were ambitious enough.

In the market, I was haggling for goods and negotiating. It was pure adrenaline. I’d see the address of a manufacturer on the back of a packet of tea in the convenience store, then head to that address and start talking to the factory owner.

When I was in a factory waiting for tea bags to be produced, a guy invited me to meet his professor, who specialized in tea at the South China Agricultural University. The professor told me to come back to Guangzhou after I graduated, and he’d teach me everything he knew about tea. He told me I’d be his first American tea graduate.

I felt he was offering me a chance to be exceptional at one thing. After talking to my parents, I decided I wanted to focus on tea as a career after completing my bachelor’s.

I founded my company, Wu Mountain Tea, in 2015. Two years later, I started my master’s degree in tea science and went on to earn a Ph.D. — both completed in China.

Things I’ll miss about China

Here, I’ve been able to form deeper personal connections. My best friends are Chinese, and I have close ties with lab colleagues and my gym bros.

One of my friends grew up in Wushan, the area of Guangzhou where I live, which means “five mountains.” I call him my “sixth mountain.”

I see my professors two or three times a week. The relationship with teachers here is much closer than in the US. We drink together, have dinner at their homes, and discuss research in real time.

I’ll miss China’s high-speed rail. It connects cities the size of New York or Chicago with metro-like efficiency. I travel often.

Guangzhou to Shanghai — a distance of 1,500 kilometers, or 930 miles — takes seven hours, and I can arrive 20 minutes before departure and just scan my passport. Then I’m whipping along at 250 kilometers an hour. In the US, traveling equivalent distances is a logistical issue.

The shrimp dumpling, xiajiao, is my favorite morsel on earth. I can get a serving of roast duck in my campus dining hall for just 6 yuan, around 85 cents, and it’s better than any duck dish in New York City’s Chinatown.

The pull of home

The biggest struggle here is that strangers stare at me and point at me. I’m like an alien walking around. Even if they’re not saying anything malicious about me, it’s upsetting.

In New York State, where I’m from, you can’t really make eye contact like that. It provokes confrontation. And here, I can’t just lose my cool when someone is staring or laughing at me. For the last three years, I haven’t left the house without a low-brimmed hat.

At the same time, I know I’m doing something unique. My YouTube channel, dedicated to tea, has more than 50,000 subscribers. If my business continues to grow, I could see myself staying in China — but for now, my plan is to return to the US.

I grew up in Syracuse, the snowiest city in the US. I skied 120 days a year and was an alpine ski racer at a competitive level. I’m more comfortable on skis than on my own two feet.

In Guangzhou, there’s no snow at all. I’ve been far away from what I love the most for the last 10 years. I plan to move back to Salt Lake City in a couple of years, so I can be closer to the mountains and my family.

Do you have a story about living in Asia that you want to share? Get in touch with the editor: [email protected].