Dragon Well Tea (Longjing)

Which tea is fit for a king? Tribute Dragon Well tea is the only tea in the world that the Chinese White House consumes in large quantities.

In the old days, emperors drank tribute teas.

For thousands of years, hundreds of these teas existed. Most perished and were forgotten. Today, only one survives: the Tribute Dragon Well tea.

Every year, the Chinese White House – Zhongnanhai (Central South Sea), or the modern Forbidden City, acquires 500 kilograms of this tea. The growers sell the surplus after meeting the quota.

She is also known as the Queen of Chinese tea.

Being the most famous tea has invited many imitations. She is not one, but many. Here are the reasons why Tribute Dragon Well tea is so rare:

• Dragon Well tea is now cultivated in 14 provinces throughout China. The only authentic source is the Zhejiang Province.
• Zhejiang produces 15,000 tonnes each year. Its most renowned variety comes from West Lake.
• West Lake is the Champagne region of Chinese tea. It accounts for just 6% of Zhejiang’s production.
• There are more than 30 West Lake sub-varieties.
• The No 1 sub-variety is grown in the Lion Peak Mountain (Shifeng).

Only the best tea gardens here bear the Tribute seal. Their teas go directly to the Chinese President: Mr Hu Jintao.

Concentrated Nutrients

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Harvesting takes place once a year in spring over 6 weeks. The tea plants are rested for the remainder of the year to preserve its quality.

Fancy the life of a tea grower?

The highest grade is picked in the first 2 days. They yield the fattest and sweetest tea buds.

Imagine:

The essence of the heaven (mountain air), earth (pristine soil) and men (centuries old handicraft) over the entire year all miraculously concentrated in these little tea buds…

Taste = quality = nutrients.

EGCG and theanine exist in the highest concentration in these young tea buds. UK scientists found that it contains high level of quality markers such as theanine, EGCG and other active compounds.

Naturally Organic

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HQ’s Tribute Dragon Well tea grows at the top of Lion Peak Mountain at an altitude of 700 to 800 meters, well away from road traffic.

This is a Grade 1 National Designated Protected Zone.

The remote locations and protected status make the foggy mountain an area where endangered plants and animals thrive undisturbed by industrialization and pollution.

The high grades are harvested so early in the spring that insects haven’t started multiplying.

Artisan Crafting

Here, the tea is grown in the oldest part of West Lake. The four villages of Weng, Long, Man and Yang are renown locally for producing the best West Lake Dragonwell tea (Xihu Longjing).

HQ’s Dragonwell tea is grown in the Weng village, right at the top of the Lion Peak Mountain.

Today, everything is still handpicked and handroasted the traditional way.

It takes a good picker 10 hours to pick 2 kilograms of fresh leaves, which is then made into 500 grams of dried tea.

Dragon Well tea-making is an art form that ranks among the most sophisticated. A novice takes 3 years to master the complex “10 hands movements” and they roast not more than 1 kilogram a day.

The tradition is still well and alive. HQ’s uncle, who owns a neighboring tea garden, was crowned in April 2002 as the Tea King, because of his mastery of the “10 hands movements”.

The family roasts their teas together – so you can be assured of artisan quality of the Tribute Dragon Well tea.

Yixing Chinese Tea Pot

A Gongfu Tea Drinker’s Complete Guide

The best way to think about it is to use the analogy of a magnifier.

Once seasoned, it amplifies the desirable quality of your favorite tea and rewards you with cup after cup of delicious-tasting beverage.

It requires almost no maintenance, and gets better over time.

If you have the eyesight of a superman, you may be able to zoom into Yixing clay’s miraculous molecular structure.

You would see that the clay is porous – the surface area is many times larger than the size of the tea pot.

Each time you steep a tea, the clay absorbs 4% of the water. It becomes “seasoned” when it has absorbed the chief characteristics of your favorite tea.

When your tea pot becomes seasoned, it tastes good even by itself. I usually drink plain water out of my Yixing cup, because it tastes so good!

The tea pot is recommended for brewing highly oxidized teas (roasted oolong, black tea, old pu-erh) with strong body but light aroma.

But is can also be used to brew green tea, white tea and aromatic oolong. However, you have to take care to use one pot for just one type of tea.

Now imagine again you are a superman again.

Using your fantastic eyesight, you would detect more irregularities in the clay. You would see it contains tiny amount of iron, quartz, mica and other minerals.

When you brew a tea, you automatically enrich the water with minerals. Also, the lid has a small pore on top so that your tea can breathe easily.

The combination of past brewing “memory”, minerals and air makes your tea tastes great.

Not only that, it lasts more infusions – saving you money.

The clay has low thermal conductivity. This means it retains heat well and is not too hot to touch.

The clay has low shrinkage rate. The lid can be made to fit tightly to the mouth.

What this means is that high temperature brewing is surprisingly effective.

It is for this reason that Yixing pottery sits at the apex of tea world, prized by avid collectors in China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Not only is the clay enriching, the manufacturing process is also safe.

The next time you consider buying a handmade ceramic ware directly from China – think again.

A porcelain ware such as a gaiwan (tea bowl) usually contains lead glazing.

Individual artist would not have precise control over the kiln temperature. Your ceramic ware would look nice, but your tea may be poisoned by lead.

(It is safer to buy your ceramic ware from a reputable manufacturer from a first-world country.)

Although Yixing comes from China, it is totally safe. The clay contains naturally occurring iron, which can be mixed and fired to create various color effects. There is no need for glazing.

It does not contain any lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other toxic materials. No chemicals or other additives are added.

Getting a Chinese tea set is not just about brewing tea, it is also an intensely tactile experience.

The clay is pleasant to touch. Although the surface appears grainy, the clay feels smooth.

When you buy a Yixing, you are not just buying a vessel. You are making a connection to the artist and maker.

When making porcelain ware, division of labor is the norm. Each team specializes in its own processes.

Making clay pottery is different. The same person is involved from start to end. Therefore each item is closely linked to the artist.

There are hundreds of pot designs? Which do you choose one? Practicality considerations aside, the pot’s design should speak to you in the same way.

A well-made pot is beautiful. It is well-proportioned, smooth and gets shinier over time.

Maintenance is simple. Never wash your tea pot with soap or cleanser. After each use, rinse with water and remove the leaves.

Then leave to dry or wipe gently with cloths.

There are six things to consider when you are buying a Yixing:

• Which type of clay?
• What does your touch sense tell you?
• Do you like the style?
• Is it practical and fit for purpose?
• What does the calligraphy and seal tell you?
• What tests can you perform to assess the quality of your ware?

Yellow Mountain Fur Peak

The word “yellow” carries a special significance in the Chinese psyche.

Yellow Emperor is reputed to be the Father of the Chinese people, widely regarded as the embodiment of the mythological golden era.

Yellow River is the cradle of the ancient Chinese civilization, flowing through the spine of the Chinese heartland. For millennia, she quietly witnessed the triumphs and troubles of her beloved people.

Is it a coincidence that the tallest mountain range of Eastern China is known as the Yellow Mountain – the very Mountain that has given birth to 4 of China’s 10 Famous Teas?

Liuan Guapian (Melon Tea), Taiping Houkui (Monkey Tea) and Qimen Hong (Keemun Tea) are relatively young and were invented at around the turn of the 20th century.

So what is special about the Huangshan Maofeng tea – the only of the four golden siblings that bears the name of her Yellow Mother? To understand, we need to delve deeper into the origin of her name.

The word “Huangshan” means Yellow Mountain.

The word “mao” means hair, or fur. It refers to the silvery downy hairs that cover a pristine tea bud.

The word “feng” means mountain peak. It refers to the tippy end of a tea bud, which is so pointed that it resembles the sharp contour of a typical Yellow Mountain peak.

Chinese green tea can be classified into 9 basic shapes, and the Huangshan Maofeng tea is considered an Orchid shaped tea.

Grown in Anhui province, Orchid shaped teas are slightly curly. They are processed using a combination of roasting and ovening.

History

The story of this special tea is inseparable from her inventor – tea merchant Xie Zhengan, who inherited the tea company Xieyutai from his forefathers.

A major tycoon of his time, Xie Zhengan was a tea master in his own right. At around 1875, he selected tea buds from a village in Fuxi and started making Huangshan Maofeng. It was an instant success. He became the richest man in Yellow Mountain and went on to own nine tea shops around China.

(The tea company was subsequently brought down by trade embargo and his son’s addiction to opium. In modern times, it has started trading again as a corporate entity.)

While Xie Zhengan’s success has brought fame to this special tea, historians believe the cultivation of tea in the Yellow Mountain predates Xie Zhengan and may exist as early as Ming Dynasty.

During that time, she is known as the Yellow Mountain Cloud Mist tea (Huangshan Yunwu). Qing dynasty chronicle Suhu Bianlu rated her as No. 1 amongst all teas.

The high esteem in which Huangshan Maofeng tea is held by scholars explains why today she is regarded as the one of top 3 amongst Chinese green teas, ranking alongside Xihu Longjing and Dongting Biluochun.

The tea-making process consists of four stages: harvesting, initial roasting (to halt oxidation), rolling and ovening.

As with all other high grade green teas, harvesting only takes place once a year, in spring. It consists of picking, sorting and withering.

Authentic teas are handpicked and made in the same day. Tea picked in the morning is made in the afternoon. Tea picked in the afternoon is made at night.

Initial roasting is known as Shaqing. Wok temperature starts at 150 degree Celsius and is then reduced.  Using their bare hands, the tea makers stir-fry the tea leaves, making about 60 hand movements every minute.

This is the most critical stage of the entire tea-making process. A well roasted tea has to be uniform, and neither raw nor burnt.

The initial roasting kills the tea enzymes and halts the oxidation process. The next task is to “roll” the leaves into the required shape. Again, bare hands and a hot wok are called for.

Ovening is divided into two stages. The temperature starts at 90 degree Celsius and is reduced towards 60 degree Celsius.

In the first stage, the leaves are shuffled by hand to facilitate the drying process. It is a delicate process, as poor temperature control and hand movements could still lead to oxidation or “reddening”.

Huangshan Maofeng tea is now cultivated in the entire country, so it is meaningless to talk about any specific tea of this type, as it covers the entire spectrum of teas, both high and low grade.

Traditionally speaking, an authentic Huangshan Maofeng tea is known as a Teji, or special grade. Many people expect to buy an authentic tea from a reputable vendor and taste the real thing, but such a high grade is extremely rare.

Huangshan Maofeng tea is said to have originated in the deep mountain valley of the Fuxi villages, a few kilometers away from the Huangshan Scenic Area. The tea has become so popular and successful that by the early 1990s, thousands of tonnes were being produced in the Yellow Mountains.

What does a high grade look like? Here are some basic characteristics to watch out for:

• Uniform Fur Peak. The tea buds should be pointed and covered by downy hairs. There should be a high degree of uniformity.
• Orchid fragrance. This seldom mention by experts, but Huangshan Maofeng has a characteristic orchid fragrance that is pure yet full “nose”, making it very pleasant to drink.

In addition, the following may apply for a best grade:

• Sparrow Tongue. Leaf style is one-bud-with-one-leaf.
• Ivory Golden. Downy hairs cause the tea buds to appear ivory in color. Incidental leaves are golden in color.

Chinese Tea Culture

Tea culture is an important part of Chinese traditional culture, which covers a wide field and is rich in content. It not only has the embodiment of spiritual civilization, but also the extension of ideological form. No doubt it is beneficial in enhancing the cultural accomplishment and level of art appreciation among the Chinese people.

Tea books

The ancient tea history of our country creates tea scientific technologies for mankind and also accumulates the most abundant literature of tea history for the world. Among the vast cultural classic books, there are not only books specially discussing tea, but also a large quantity of records about tea life, tea history, tea law and production technology of tea in historical books, local records, notes, textual studies and ancient books of calligraphy.

Tea journal

Tea journal refers to a serial professional publication of tea that has a fixed name, is numbered by volume and issue or in the order of year and month, and is bound into a book. According to incomplete statistics, there are twenty two tea journals in our country after reorgnization. The large number of tea journals is incomparable to other tea production nations.

Tea and wedding

Simply speaking, the relationship between tea and wedding refers to applying and assimilating tea in the wedding or tea culture as a part of etiquette. Wedding is not merely a form of proclaiming to the society or requiring the society to admit marriage relationship, but also is actually a “reception” held for the bride and bridegroom to regonize relatives and meet friends. Therefore, on the festive wedding day, which is generally also the day of big gathering for close kins and good friends of the two families that establish a marriage relationship. When visitors come, tea is presented to them. In this way, wedding has bore an indissoluble bond with tea. Hence, from this point of view, the relationship between wedding and tea can be traced back as early as the era when drinking tea began to come in in our country. However, what I am saying here is not entertaining guests with tea during the process of establishing a marriage relationship but all kinds of etiquettes that directly use tea as rites during the wedding ceremony.

Tea and sacrifice

As for when tea began to serve as a sacrifice, our ancestors seem to have never done special research. It is generally regarded that the use of tea has developed from medicinal use through drinking to a series of cultural pheonomena of tea, that is to say, only after tea became an item in daily use, has it slowly been used or assimilated into the etiquette system of our country including the funeral.

Tea and Buddhism

The relationship between Chinese tea and Buddhism is interative. Buddism, especially Zen Buddhism needs tea while this prevailing custom of addiction to tea also promote the development of the tea industry and tea culture of our country. Apart from choosing a quiet environment as the monastic room, the sitting meditation of Zen Buddhism in our country also requires attention to five coordinations, namely, food coordination, sleeping coordination, body coordination, breath coordination and heart coordination. It is very obvious that the five coordinations talked about here, especially the sleeping coordination, have a certain relationship with drinking tea. Perhaps just because tea plays such an important role in Buddhism and sitting meditation, later some Buddhist followers didn’t hesitate to adopt the methods of making up myths or stealthily substituting one thing for another and do their utmost to describe tea as the favor of Buddha and the merit of Buddhist monks.

Tea and poems

China is both “the homeland of tea” and “a nation of poetry”. Therefore, tea has permeated the poems since a very early time. From the earliest tea poems (such as Poem on Lovely Young Girls written by Zuo Si) to the present time, lasting one thousand and seven hundred years, a large number of poems and litterateurs have created many graceful poems about tea.

Tea songs and dances

As in the case of tea and poems, tea songs and dances are a tea cultural pheonomenon deriving from the primary culture of tea production and drinking. They not only appear at the later development stage of songs and dances in our country, but also are merely seen after the tea production and drinking has become frequent content of social production and life in our country.

Tea and Chinese traditional drama

China is a nation that creates tea culture and also the sole nation that produces the independent type of drama “tea-picking drama” from the development of tea industry in the world. The tea-picking drama is a type of Chinese tradional drama popular in provinces such as Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. In each province, owing to different districts it goes current, a distinction is made between them by naming it after the places, such as “Yuebei tea-picking drama” in Guangdong and “Yangxin tea-picking drama”, “Huangmei tea-picking drama” and “Jichun tea-picking drama” in Hubei, etc. This drama is common especially in Jiangxi and has many genres. For example, the genres of Jiangxi tea-picking drama include “Gannan tea-picking drama”, “Fuzhou tea-picking drama”, “Nanchang tea-picking drama”, “Wuning tea-picking drama” and “Ji’an tea-picking drama’, etc. Though these types of drama have a multitude of items, the time of their development is generally at the stage from the middle period of the Qing Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty.

Tea and fine arts

Fine arts is a “design art”, which creates visual images through the devices such as composition of a picture, design and using color, etc. Therefore, apart from the generally regarded painting and sculpture, its extent or content even include architecture. The sculpture technique in tea culture is mainly concentrated on the tea set such as pot, bowl, cup and calyx, the form of tea ball and cake and their facing. For example, the dragon and phoenix tribute tea of Beiyuan in the Song Dynasty were very particular about the patterns of their facing, which were frequently changed. In the palace, there were also activities of adding other ornaments to the tribute tea, which was then called “embroidery tea”.    

Tea and couplets

The tea couplet is a dazzling fresh flower in the treasury of couplets in our country. There is no limit on the number of characters but it requires antithesis, neatness and coordination in the level and oblique tones. It evolved from the form of poetry. In our country, in all the sites with the theme of “keeping up a friendship with tea”, you will often find tea couplets with the content of tea life hanging in the courtyard or on the stone pillars of tea shop, tea house, tea room, tea leaves shop, tea spa, on the wall of the halls where tea lore, tea art and tea etiquette performances are conducted and even in the living room of tea lovers. They not merely have the beauty of primitive simplicity and elegance, but also present a feeling of “social morality and honesty and uprightness”, provide people with association, add temperament and interest to tasting tea.

Tea proverbs

Tea proverb is another cultural phenomenon derived during the development of tea culture in our country. According to its content and characters, it approximately belongs to the two categories of tea drinking and tea production. In another word, tea proverb mainly originates from tea drinking and production practice. It is a generalization or statement about tea drinking and production experience, which is preserved and goes round through the form of proverbs by the method of handing down by mouth and memorizing by heart. Therefore, tea proverb is not only a precious heritage of tea science or tea culture of our country, but also a beautiful flower with strong and pervasive fragrance in the folk culture of our country from the perspective of creation or literature.

We can see from the above narrative that tea has a close connection with all the aspects of people’s life either in the history or in reality and has become a unique treasure of Chinese culture

Chinese Tea Art

The Chinese tea lore is several hundred years and even thousands of years earlier than that of Japan. It can be said that the Chinese tea lore places an emphasis on spirit and makes light of form. It also has different representations at different historical stages. Teas are also different but all embody the tea spirit of “clearness, respect, joy and truthfulness”.

Drinking tea：Tea is taken as a beverage to quench thirst.

Tasting tea：Emphasis is placed on the color, fragrance and flavor of tea, water quality and tea set. When taking tea, the taster should also be able to savor tea carefully.

Tea art：Attention is paid to environment, atmosphere, music, infusing techniques and interpersonal relationships.

The highest ambit—— tea lore：Philosophy, ethics and morality are blended into tea activity. People cultivate their morality and mind and savor the life through tasting tea, thereby attaining enjoyment of spirit.

Clearness：It is namely cleanness, incorruptness, quietness and loneliness. The essense of tea art not only seeks the cleanness of the appearance of things, but also pursues the loneliness, tranquility, incorruptness and   shame awareness of the mind. In a still ambit, only through drinking clear and pure tea soup can one appreciate the profoundness of drinking tea.

Respect：Respect is the root of everything on earth and the way of having no enemies. People should show respect for others and be cautious themselves.

Joy：The meaning of harmony lies in form and method and that of joy is in spirit and affection. Sipping bitterness and swallowing sweetness when drinking tea can enlighten the spice of life and cultivate a broad mind and a far sight so that the disputes between others and self disappear. The spirit of joy lies in that people is not pretentious and haughty, dwell in mildness and nurture courteous conduct.

Truthfulness：It is namely truth and genuine knowledge. The supreme good is the whole formed by combination of truth and genunine knowledge. The ambit of supreme good is to retain nature, remove material desire without being tempted by advantages and disadvantages, study the physical world to gain knowledge and continually seek after improvements. In another word, people should use scientific methods to seek the complete sincerity of everything. The essence of drinking tea lies in enlightening capacity and conscience so that everyone can live a simple life to express their ambition and handle matters thriftily and virtuously in daily life, thus attaining the ambit of truth, good and beauty.