WuYi Rock Tea Making

Since we have already introduced two kinds of Wuyi Rock tea, one of the most famous Oolong teas, it is time to talk about the Oolong tea handicraft. There are four main Oolong tea areas, Northern Fujian, Southern Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan. They follow very similar procedure but the slight difference determines their flavor difference. 

Step One: Leaf Pickup 

There are three pickup seasons in one year: spring, summer and fall. Timing is important because leaves too tender will be over-cooked in the "roast" and "bake" step. 

Step Two: Green-making (ZuoQing, 做青)

Green-making, sometimes translated as "fine manipulation of green leaves" is one of the most important steps in the oolong tea handicraft. Craftsmen first dehydrate fresh green leaves under the sun. Next, they shake the dehydrated tea-leaves with controlled speed/rhythm, literally translated as "green-shaking"(YaoQing,摇青). In the ancient times, craftsmen shake by hands, but now machines are more commonly used. The green-shaking step is to help the aromatic substances in the stalk to go into the leaves. This unique technique makes the oolong tea intensively-aromatic. After the green-shaking step, the green leaves will be spread and cooled by air. This is called "cool green"(LiangQing, 凉青) . It is important to keep the leaves spread, so they could keep on losing water. 

Shake green by hand

Shake green by machine

Step Three: Green Roasted (chaoqing, 炒青) & Rolling (Rounian,揉捻)

During the "green-making" step, leaves have already been fermented. When temperate goes up in the step, it stops the tea from further fermentation. That's why oolong tea is called "half-fermented" tea. Usually, craftsmen put the "post green-making" leaves into a big iron pot to roast them. The tea will keep on fermenting until 80C. After that, the enzyme stops oxidation. With continuous rolling, leaves will turn into green and yellow. The green color comes from the chlorophyll left, while the yellow color comes from the result of the initial oxidation--theaflavin. As the fermentation/initial oxidation proceeds, the thearubigins increase and the theaflavins decrease. That makes the unique feature of oolong tea "green leaf with red trim". In another word, the red trim comes from the complete oxidation. 

Roast Green

Step Four: Bake tea leaves(HongBei, 烘焙）

This step is to get rid of the unclean flavor of the tea leaves. First, spread the tea leaves evenly on different layers of bake basket; Light the charcoal in the bake-hole. The bake process is like when you stew a soup. You have to keep the fire very light, so it lasts really long. The longest bake process takes 12 hours. Maybe that's why the rock tea is so precious. If we know the whole process of the rock tea making, we may respect and enjoy every sip of it! 

Bake Basket

Bake Hole and Charcoal

WuYi Cinamon Tea (Wuyi RouGui,武夷肉桂)

Region: WuYi Mountain, Fujian province
Category: Oolong Tea
Shape: Streak/Cord-like, firmingly curved
Color: Brown-green
Color of the soup: Orange, clear
Smell: Spicy cinnamon
Flavor: A very rich and mellow flavor with bittersweetness
Color of leftover: Yellow leaf with red trim


Wuyi Mountain is a very famous mountain in Northern part of Fujian province. The crust movement (due to volcano) developed into its unique "three pits, two gullies(三坑两涧)" landform long time ago. This kind of complicated and diverse landform, which is called "micro climate" by tea connoisseurs is a perfect environment for tea tree's growth. Also, it is believed that Wuyi Mountain has "36 peaks, 99 rocks" and under each rock there're different kinds of tea trees. The peak prevents the tea trees from overly-sundry in summer or the extreme coldness in winter. Besides, soil is another important factor in tea trees' growth. Iron in the volcanic rock has been weathered away into Wuyi rock and soil, and that's what the Wuyi rock tea's name comes from. 

A is WuYi Mountain, in northern part of FuJian province.

Wuyi Rock Tea is a general term for the category of Oolong tea that produced from the WuYi Mountain. It is famous for the unique "Charm of Rock(岩韵)", a rock aroma that makes the tea flavor very rich and mellow, along with the sweet taste after original bitterness. It is considered to be the best category of Oolong tea and a lot of tea conoisseurs' favorite. 

All the red points are the famous peaks in the Wuyi Mountain. 

The quality of the tea is determined by the area of the rock. The top Wuyi rock tea comes from "three pits, two gullies". When choosing the Wuyi rock tea, connoisseurs usually ask whether it is from the core producing areas(Zhengyan, 正岩), literally means the core rock area in Chinese. The best Wuyi rock tea is called "Big Four"(四大名枞), which is: the red rob (da hong pao, 大红袍), iron arhat (tie luo han,铁罗汉), White cockscomb (bay ji guan,白鸡冠) and water cockchafer (shui jin gui, 水金龟).

The cinnamon flavor of WuYi Cinnamon is not cinnamon additive, it is the tea tree's special character. It is believed that there are two most magic plants in the world, one is grape and the other is the tea tree, because they have many magic talents inside. As long as you apply the right technique (fermentation/bake,etc), it will help them to let it out. For example, the orchid-flavor narcissus tea, the cinnamon tea. For wine, there's even a metal flavor. There's also an artificial way to add flavor and that is flower tea, such as the jasmine tea. But it can also be beautiful. In the old times, they separate tea with jasmine until the timing for the blossom instant of jasmine. But nowadays, they usually choose low-quality tea to do so since the flower will help to cover the shortcoming of the tea. 

 The cinnamon tea on the left is from a famous brand called "Lang Yun" (郎韵）

Dried tea in a cool tea holder

The first pour of the tea, the soup color is much darker than ZhangPing narcissus

When drinking Wiiyi Cinnamon tea, don't forget to smell the cinnamon flavor before you drink it. There are "two smells" during the tea ceremony: hot smell after you pour the water inside, and cold smell for the warm cup  after you drink up the soup. You can hardly get the cinnamon smell by the dry leaves, but during the "teacup warmup" step (the step before the first pour), put the dry tea in the warmed cup and shake it, then you will smell the strong cinnamon right after you open the cup.  

Tea meditation:
Some tea connoisseurs call themselves "tea server", instead of "tea drinker". Before you drink the tea, there are several procedures during the whole process, from the original leave-pickup to sunburn, several rounds of fermentation and finally tea making. All these persons need to work together to extract the best flavor of the tea. Sometimes I feel this kind of relationship is like you and your "mentors", or I should say, all the people that help you find the special talents inside you. It could be your teacher, a friend takes you into a specific field, or just a random person. If we look at tea in this perspective, you will feel it's amazing how tea could turn from an ordinary tree leaf to a popular drink all over the world. So I really like to be called a "tea server" at this point.  

A cool tea house in Beijing

I've been volunteering working in this cool place for a while: record every detail of HuiLiang (惠量小院) by my video camera, make them into a consistent and beautiful story, and help more people know about it. That's how the "HuiLiang. ZHOU" studio comes from. 

Hui (惠) , blessing; Liang (量), accumulate. The founder says he wants it to be not just a tea house, but a place accumulate people's power and blessing. There are more than 50 classes in HuiLiang every week: Chinese tea, Chinese incense, Taoism and FengShui, Calligraphy, Chinese painting, ancient Chinese Classic etc. Since I need to collect my video material, I have visited almost every class and every time I am moved and amazed by the wisdom contained in the ancient Chinese traditions: 

"Different people have different opinions about drinking tea: some people focus on tea itself, some on the water, and more experienced tea drinkers will focus on the sunshine and soil that breeds the tea."

"You can find almost everything in life in a cup of tea. Take marriage for example, every relationship goes from the original intense love/taste to a more insipid state. Three factors affect the performance of the tea: the amount of the tea, the temperature of the water and the timing you get the soup. If you like a more strong flavor/intense love, you can make the first few pours very strong but it won't last long. You can also choose to put more tea, but even so, it goes to the insipid taste finally. Insipid doesn't mean boring, it means all the love finally goes to the specific/basic life, like eating, drinking, sex, etc. Just like tea is not necessity in life, but water is. You can choose to get a new cup of tea if you are bored (just like you divorce because you feel bored with the person), but it won't take you long to realize the next cup of tea will finally get insipid finally. "


Anyway, I will share more about the "HuiLiang.ZHOU studio" works in the future. This time, I'm going to post the two year anniversary gift I made for them here and hope you will like it. 

ZhangPing Narcissus

Region: ZhangPing, Fujian Province
Categoy: Oolong Tea
Shape: Square Compressed Tea
Color of dried tea: green, brown, yellow
Color of the soup: golden bright
Smell: A very unique orchid-flower smell
Flavor: Very quickly to go from bitterness to sweetness
Color of leftover: yellow leaf with red trim

Narcissus Tea is one kind of Oolong tea in Fujian province. It originated from the Northern part of Fujian（JianYang 建阳，JianOu建瓯). People believe that the narcissus tree was first found in a cave called "Zhu Xian(祝仙洞）". In the Fujian dialect, "Zhu" is the same pronunciation as "Shui", so local people call it "Shuixian", which means narcissus in Chinese.Also, the tea has a very special orchid and narcissus flavor, and that's the origin of the narcissus tea's name.

It is until the Qing dynasty (1857), a guy called Zheng Shibao from YongChun (Southern FuJian) brought the narcissus tree to Southern Fujian and then YongChun became into the origin of Southern Fujian narcissus tea. Based on different origins, narcissus tea is categorized into: Northern Fujian Narcissus, Southern Fujian Narcissus. 

Red A is Jianyang; C is Jianou; Green A is FuZhou, the capital of Fujian province

Green A is YongChun, Red A is FuZhou

Narcissus tea has a very unique orchild smell and usually lasts for more than 7 pours. It is not strong so it's ok to finish the whole 7+ pour. There's also narcissus flavor in the soup. Southern Fujian is also famous for its narcissus flower. It is really fun to drink the narcissus tea in winter with flourished narcissus flowers. The leftover leaf has a very unique "green leaf with red trim" feature. 

The leftover leaf with red trim. The cotton paper is very delicate with the seal of the manual workshop.

ZhangPing Narcissus

ZhangPing Narcissus is from Southern Fujian. The packaging of ZhangPing Narcissus is very special, which is called "mini compressed tea". It is seal-size pack wrapped with delicate cotton paper. When you open it up, it is square-shape tea pack with compressed thread-like tea leaves. 

Picture A: My own tea cup with very delicate narcissus tea packs.

Picture B: Mini pack narcissus tea with yellow, green, brown colored thread-like tea leaves.  

Compared to other narcissus tea, ZhangPing Narcissus is famous for its "light baked, light fermentation". Drinking the light-baked tea is like eating steamed vegetables, while well-baked is like braise in soy sauce. Chinese tea connoisseur like to tell which tea is more well-baked by tasting the flavor of the fire. The color of the dried-tea is different: light-baked tea is more bright while the well-baked is more dark. For the tea soup, it is the same: the light-baked one is more bright, and that is why ZhangPing narcissus's soup is so bright. Also, light-fermented tea is more green, while well-fermented is more red.

Picture A: First pour.The tea pack is still very condensed.It is not surprising why it usually lasts for 10 pours. 

Picture B: Golden bright tea soup.

Tea Meditation

ZhangPing narcissus tea is a very good example of the doctrine of mean in traditional Chinese culture. Different from other kinds of tea, it is very well packed and you can only see and smell its dried leaves when you open it up. Also, it takes time to know it. After 3 to 4 pours,the leaves could finally open up. But it lasts much longer than most of the other kinds of tea (seven pours on average). Wuyi narcissus (the most famous Northern Fujian narcissus) is more heavily baked and fermentation, which makes its soup more dark and thick-flavored,but it also covers the orchid-flower flavor.However, the ZhangPing narcissus is more balanced with both the bittersweetness of tea and the orchid flower, just like traditional Chinese people's "a little bit of everything"

Tea is not just a drink

This cartoon is actually a joke between me and my boyfriend. Since I started to learn Chinese tea this year, I get into it very quickly and always try to share those interesting knowledge I learnt with him. One day, I was telling him that as a tea connoirsseur, you need to bring your own tea cup to a tea house. So he asked me seriously: so do you need your own cone for a green tea ice cream?

Well, of course I am not THAT crazy! Actually one year ago, I am totally a coffee drinker. Tea, for me, is just a drink. It’s more like a subsitute for coffee in the afternoon. This year, I happened to visit several really cool tea houses in Beijing and fall in love with Chinese tea quickly. I gradually realize tea is not just a drink, it’s a culture. It has a lot to do with the Chinese history, geography and philosophy.

A lot of people know Chinese “blue-and-white” porcerlain. But not so many people know it has a close relationship with the Chinese tea. In the Tang Dynasty, people like to tell the tea’s quality by the color of the soup (the hot water you pour inside), so a white-inside tea tool became a perfect choice. However, this trend has been changed in the Song Dynasty, which is another important time period in the Chinese tea history. The emperor at that time, HuiZong, likes to drink tea in crude pottery. So the “blue-and-white” lost its dominant role since then.

Also, tea has a very close relationship with the the propagation of Buddhism in China, both chronologically and geographically. Chinese people started to drink tea at a very early stage. But it is until the Tang Dynasty that tea started to become a nationwide drink. And that is also the time that Buddhism started to become popular in this country. The propagation pathway of Chinese tea is very similiar to Buddhism as well, which is from the Southern part to the Northern part of China. Tea is always considered to be a symbol of peaceful and cool mind which matches the Buddhism philosophy perfectly well.

You can also see ancient Chinese philosophy from tea clearly. For example, a lid cup has three parts that will never get separated: the lid, the cup and the mattress. Chinese people believe that “the universe is a balance between the sky, the earth and the people”. A small tea cup contains a deep meaning: for all the creatures living in the planet (tea in this example), you need the sky as a lid, an earth to stand, and a person to foster.

Fascinating, isn’t it? Well, now I’m really thinking about bringing my cone for the next green tea ice cream.