Our Story
A mountain. A practice. A quieter way to live.
1. A Stranger in Silicon Valley
In January 2023, Lisa Liao arrived in Silicon Valley for the first time.
She had spent over twenty years in Beijing at the center of China’s fashion media world — deadlines, collections, launches, the relentless momentum of an industry that never pauses. Then, at a turning point most people call “starting over,” she stepped into a world where she knew no one, had no job, and no familiar ground beneath her feet.
In the valley most famous for moving fast and breaking things, she set up a small tea table in a public park and posted an open invitation on social media — strangers welcome, come sit for a while. She called it 一米茶台 — a one-meter tea table. Half a meter of space. A moment of stillness. Her quiet answer to a world that didn’t know how to stop.
People came. And kept coming.
2. What the Valley Taught Her
The people Lisa met through her tea table were accomplished, driven, and exhausted in ways they couldn’t quite articulate. Poor sleep. Racing minds. The particular loneliness of people who are always achieving but rarely arriving.
Tea did something that conversation alone couldn’t. It created a pause — not forced, not scheduled, not optimized. Just a cup, a few minutes, and the permission to stop.
From those park gatherings, she built something larger: a wellness tea space, a community, and eventually a nonprofit organization — Asian CHEA (asianchea.com) — dedicated to using tea as a tool for healing, connection, and belonging in a community that rarely slows down long enough to find either.
3. The Return to the Mountain
For three years, alongside building her community in the Bay Area, Lisa traveled back to China — visiting tea mountains, walking through gardens, sitting with farmers and craftspeople who had spent their lives learning one thing deeply.
She traveled widely. And then she came home.
Xinhua County, Hunan Province. Lisa’s hometown. A place she had always known but never fully seen as the extraordinary landscape it is — ancient forests rising above 1,000 meters, a dark tea tradition stretching back a thousand years, and a mountain called Daxiong that holds all of it.
The tea shrubs that grow here are low to the ground, weathered by altitude and mist. Their branches are covered in moss — a sign of the slow, undisturbed environment that gives these leaves their particular depth of flavor. You cannot rush moss. You cannot manufacture it. It is simply what happens when a place is left alone long enough.
She chose three teas. Not ten. Not a collection designed to impress. Three teas for three moments in a day — the moment you begin, the moment you pause, the moment you restore.
AWAKEN. GROUNDED. RESTORE.
4. Why Only Three
People are often anxious and lost not because they have too little, but because they have too much.
Too many choices. Too many options. Too many voices telling them what they need.
ZORB was built on a different premise: that simplicity is not a limitation, it is a form of respect.
We carry three teas because three is enough — when each one is sourced honestly, made carefully, and chosen for a reason. Behind these three teas is the energy of ancient forests that have been growing undisturbed for centuries. The skill of craftspeople whose knowledge passes from grandparent to grandchild, not from manual to employee. And the quiet, particular pleasure that a well-made cup brings — not excitement, not stimulation, but the steadier feeling of being, for a moment, exactly where you are.
在。
Zài. Present. Here. Now.
That is what we named this brand. And that is what we hope every cup returns you to.
5. How We Source
Every tea in our collection comes from a single origin: Xinhua, Hunan, China — Lisa’s hometown, and one of China’s most historically significant tea-producing regions.
We work directly with small-batch producers whose families have been making tea in this region for generations. No blending. No mass production. Nothing added.
What you receive is exactly what was made — traceable to its harvest season, its producer, its mountain.
A note on what we claim: GROUNDED, our 2018 Fu Brick Dark Tea, holds EU Organic Certification. AWAKEN and RESTORE do not carry organic certification, and we will not say they do. We will not make health claims we cannot substantiate. We will tell you where each tea came from, how it was made, and what it tastes like. The rest is yours to discover.
Small rituals for returning to yourself.
Lisa still makes tea for strangers.
The table is a little bigger now. The community stretches from Hayward to Hong Kong. But the idea is the same as it was in that park in 2023 — that a cup of tea, made well and shared honestly, is one of the simplest and most reliable ways to return to yourself.
Shop the Collection →
Visit Asian CHEA →
ZORB Tea is operated by MaisonForte LLC
25008 Viking St, Hayward, California 94545
Teas sourced from Xinhua, Hunan, China