The original Dragon Well Tea came from Lion Peak Mountain in West Lake (Xi Hu). Due to its popularity, Dragon Well Tea is now cultivated throughout China. Today any tea that is produced using the same technique is called Longjing.
Three Points to Teach You the Way to Choose :
1: To know when the tea is picked:
The best Dragon Well Tea is gathered several days before Qingming (Pure Brightness, 5th solar term) when new twigs have just begun to grow and carry “one leaf and a bud.” To make one kilogram (2.2lb) of finished tea, 60, 000 tender leaves have to be plucked. In the old days Dragon Well tea of this grade was meant solely for the imperial household; it was, therefore, known as “tribute tea”. That is one of the many reasons why Dragon Well Tea is so precious. Dragon Well Tea can only be produced for 6 weeks a year. A good tea picker can harvest only 2 kilograms of fresh leaves in 10 hour a day.
2: To know the way and how much time to roast the tea:
Once the tea shoots are harvested, they must be roasted the same day. After picking the tea is “withered”, the tie guan yin tea is spread thinly to dry for 8 to 10 hours to remove moisture and reduce any grassy or bitter flavor. Once the tea is sufficiently dried, it is “Roasted”. Roaster usually uses bare hands to roast tea to feel his work. It is an extremely hot job and takes novices many years to harden their hands so that they do not feel the heat. Watching an experienced roaster dry the tea is like watching a martial art master. It takes a novice over 5 years to master 10 hand required movements to dry the tea. A master roaster can only fry 1 kilogram of high grade Longjing Tea each day. After roasting, the freshly processed Dragon Well tea is ready to drink.
3: Aroma also is one of the most important factors in judging the quality of a kind of tea.
By putting 3 grams worth of leaves into 100 milliliters of boiled water, people can judge the quality of the tea by the smell. Dragon Well Tea is pan fried, so it has a delicious chestnut aroma which should be high, and lasting. The brewed tea is floral with an exceptionally long sweet aftertaste. Lesser teas often taste weak, grassy, or bitter.
High quality Dragon Well Tea will never have these features. The easy way to buy a West Lake variety is to ask for an authenticity certificate. This won’t guarantee its authenticity, as tea gardens often sell fake tea with the certificates they have been issued. If possible it is always best to purchase tea at an actual tea plantation.
Tea is produced in over 20 Chinese provinces. Tie guan yin tea bushes (Camellia sinensis) are cultivated in the mountain areas of tropical and subtropical regions or wherever there is proper climate, sufficient humidity, adequate sunshine and fertile soil.
Chinese tea is classified in many ways, e.g., quality, method of preparation or place of production. The main processing methods include fermentation (oxidation), heating, drying and addition of other ingredients like flowers, herbs or fruits. These help to develop the special flavor of the raw tea leaves.
Chinese tea may be classified into five categories according to the different methods by which it is processed.
1) Green tea: Green tea is the variety which keeps the original colour of the tea leaves without fermentation during processing. This enables the leaves to keep their original green color and retain most natural substances like polyphenols and chlorophyll contained within the leaves. This kind of tea is produced all over China and is the most popular category of tea. This category consists mainly of Longjing tea of Zhejiang Province, Maofeng of Huangshan Mountain in Anhui Province and Biluochun produced in Jiangsu.
2) Black tea: Black tea, known as “red tea” (hong cha) in China, is the category which is fermented before baking; it is a later variety developed on the basis of the dragon well tea. In comparison to other tea categories, its flavor is longer lasting and it has the highest concentration of caffeine. This is most popular form of tea in south Asia and Europe. The best brands of black tea are Qihong of Anhui , Dianhong of Yunnan, Suhong of Jiangsu, Chuanhong of Sichuan and Huhong of Hunan.
3) Oolong tea: This represents a variety half way between the green and the black teas, being made after partial fermentation. Its taste is more similar to green tea than black tea, but has less a “grassy” flavor than green tea. It is a specialty from the provinces on China’s southeast coast: Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan.
4) Compressed tea: This is the kind of tea which is compressed and hardened into a certain shape. It is good for transport and storage and is mainly supplied to the ethnic minorities living in the border areas of the country. As compressed tea is black in color in its commercial form, so it is also known in China as “black tea”. Most of the compressed tea is in the form of bricks; it is, therefore, generally called “brick tea”, though it is sometimes also in the form of cakes and bowls. It is mainly produced in Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.
5) Scented tea: This kind of tea is made by mixing fragrant flowers in the tea leaves in the course of processing. Flowers used include jasmine, gardenia, magnolia, grapefruit flower, sweet-scented osmanthus and rose. There are strict rules about the proportion of flowers to tea. Jasmine tea is a well-known favorite with the northerners of China and with a growing number of foreigners.
Various preparation methods mean different teas have different bioactive substances. For example, green tea only has limited processing so it retains a relatively high content of natural ingredients, meaning that green tea has stronger anti-aging, anti-cancer and anti-bacterial properties. Oolong tea, which is partially fermented, is quite potent in breaking down protein and fat, aiding weight loss. Red tea that has undergone the full fermentation process has lost 90% of its polyphenols but retains its high caffeine content
An essay called “Chinese tea culture in eyes of western people” was published in 《Financial Times》in UK. It says that China is a subject of knowledge. Understanding China is as difficult as learning Chinese. It’s said that, business tourists are lost in the sea of Chinese cites. They Chinese are surrounded with tall buildings, watch TV while enjoying their dinner, go singing karaoke. Whatever, open China sometimes seems elusive as closed China.
Faced with doubts, people need courage or special interests of birds, gardening, train, arts and so on. I think these things will attract you to more strange and meaningful places than nightclubs and yachts. Tea also has this kind of enchantment. As you know, tea is grown in the southern part of China, and popular with the whole Chinese. It can bring you to a better and more graceful China when drinking tea.
Hangzhou is the hometown of dragon well tea and may be the most convenient in transport. Nonesuch longjing tea’s scent is like mixture of chlorophyll essence and cream hazelnut.
Tie guan yin tea is of high quality, and it’s important to choose good water to infuse it. In local places, people use Hupao spring to boil tea, which is two kilometers away. As is known, tea can show the poetry aspect of local people’s character. If you have a chance to stay in a tea house, you will get more than the knowledge of tea. There water in tea pot is heating slowly, and servers will constantly provide water, fruits, desserts, etc.
Tasting top grade tea is like enjoying the spring days. It brings you a relaxed mood, especially with classic furniture, traditional decorations, servers’ costumes and music in the air. If you even can’t find the sense, you can go back to Xihu lakeside. Then you can choose a beautiful night, and join a party with traditional musicians when moon is up. Oh, that’s really an impressive experience.
Here are some articles about tea (drinking tie guan yin tea , thinking life)
Infused tea with boiled water, brewed one more times, and they sink and float once more. After that, tea leaves release their fragrance, smelling like spring rain, summer sunshine, autumn wind, and winter frost. We, ordinary man, are just like the tea, aren’t we? Those who haven’t gone through storms, live silently, like weak tea suspending in the warm water. And they will never spread their scent of life and wisdom. While those who have experienced many setbacks and frustrations, sink and float time and time again, like infused tea with boiled water, diffusing its aroma.
We are a cup of life tea, aren’t we? And destiny is a pot of hot water or boiled water, isn’t it? Dragon well tea leaves emit their scent because of hot water, while life release its beauty just because of setbacks and frustrations once more.
During our life journey, anything will not become forever. Only those bitter and happiness in the process will be the most beautiful flowers in our lives. Sinking and floating stages are the most splendid and glorious sections in the whole life, and if one hasn’t undergone the up and down, he is bound to be a failure. The up and down is the true essence of life, and the continuance of human’s civilization. Taking a panoramic view of the human’s history, it is a sinking and floating history. Glossary and perish time and time again, make today’s civilization. During the sinking and floating, mankind have stepped forward, develop, and civilized. In other words, without innumerable sinking and floating, mankind may became extinct long ago. Mankind is a kind of wisdom animal, adjusting themselves to the environment.
Everything in the nature has their life circle. In spring, they become lively; in winter, they stay silent. Human is the same with others in nature, with success and failure, birth and death. Sinking and floating need a firm and unyielding spirit, thousands of dropping down and thousands of climbing up, never be down forever.
longjing Village is the most real and original place where produces Dragon Well tea in Hangzhou! You can see the real tea field! It’s free to taste tie guan yin tea in tea grower’s house, and it was visited Queen Elisabeth and Bill Clinton and other famous Prime Minister and governors. Reasonable price with First-class quality!
Dragon well tea Village is located southwest of West Lake scenic area, surrounded by mountains, trending from north to south, and the village resident population of about 800 people. It has nearly 800 acres of high mountain tea garden. In the northwest of the village, there are Beigao Peak, Lion Peak, Tianzhu Peak. They become the natural barrier to resist breeze wind. In the south, there is a streamlet called Nanxi. This creek valley is vary wide, and it straight towards Qiantang River. Southeast wind blow into the valley in spring and summer. So ventilation makes the tea grow well and geography conditions provide a unique advantage.
The tea booth (Chatan) and small tea house (Chaliao) existed long before in China. During the Song Dynasty, Chasi and Chafang, where tea was sold, were already ubiquitous. The tea shop industry was further developed in the Ming Dynasty. At the same time, the business of selling big bowls of tea began prosperous in Beijing and was included as a formal industry into 360 industries. During the Qing Dynasty, since the Manchu aristocracy often spent their time in tea houses, they become important activity places for people from all walks of life, such as high officials, merchants and underlings, there. To the Chinese people, tea house, similar to the cafes in western countries, are social places where various kinds of social information are gathered and spread and where customers taste tea and talk about birds, news and daily things. In order to attract customers, stages are built in some tea houses to play tom-tom, Storytelling (Pingshu) and Beijing opera, making these tea houses amusement places. The drama Tea House, written by famous Chinese writer Lao She, revealed vividly the unstable society of the last phase of the Qing Dynasty through describing various kinds of people’s words and behaviors in a tea house.
News from Xinhua net says that 140 tea peasants from Xihu dragon well tea protection zones came to Chinese Tea Museum to have free trainings. They were taught tea making by professors and masters, in order to join the coming competition. Although sponsors have encouraged young villagers to participate, 70 percent are old men above 40. villagers says that, this craft is not very costly, but time-consuming. So more and more young people don’t choose to learn it.
Yang Jichang, 66 years old, has fried tea for 40 years. He spread out his hands to show us his cocoon and moulage because of the high temperature. “This is a hard work, and it costs about 2 to 6 years to learn it very well. So do you think young men will devote to it?” he said.
The reserve contains 9 tea villages and 2 communities, with 4000 peasants, and half of them can fry tea but almost past 40 years old. “ on the one hand, young people are afraid of hard work; on the other hand, peasants would rather want their offspring to go out for school or working.” A villager said.
Government has recognized the trend of losing tie guan yin tea frying craft. So this tea frying competition will provide a free training to young people and this is a method to encourage more young men to learn this craft. This craft has been listed to be national intangible cultural heritage to get protection.