Xiaotian Lanhua Green Tea

We bought this tea from the same family in Qimen City where we bought most of our Qimen Red Tea and the previously tasted wild green tea. It is from the nearby town of Xiaotian and comes from the mountains that encircle the town. From what I was able to find on the internet, this tea has won some local awards. The lanhua or orchid refers to how it tastes, reminding one of the smell of orchids. We spent around three hours talking about tea and tasting the various teas they had from the region. I remember this one was especially sweet and pleasant. I have not been drinking this tea as much as the wild tea but occasionally we will try some. It is really orchid sweet and mild.

This tea looks a lot like the Huangshan Mao Feng we bought in Anhui Province. It was obviously processed in the same manner and exhibits the hair that the mao feng teas have. It is very dark with only hints of green in it.

One can see the hair on most of the stalks like Mao Feng. The tea is processed like Mao Feng but with a little tighter wrap, making the tea look almost like sprigs of grass.

A little closer and one can see the just how the leaves have been wrapped and the hair on the stems. This tea looks like it could almost be a more oxidized tea than a green. It as kept very nicely in our refrigerator this past year but it is most definitely time to drink it up.

To steep this tea I used the glass tea outfit we bought on our last trip to China. I bought two of these "tea devices" and they work really well. I used boiling water that had sat for about three minutes to get the temperature down.



The color of the liquid is a pale gold and taste magnificent. The tea is sweet from start to finish with no real aftertaste. As with all sweet green teas, it reminded me of the artesian well a couple of miles from where I grew up in north central Oklahoma. Lots of mineral taste, flowery, sweet and very refreshing. This is a much better tea than the Huangshan Ye Tea I tasted yesterday. Believe I will have this tea for the rest of July. Makes a nice morning tea!

Huangshan Ye Cha

We bought this Mt. Huangshan Wild Green Tea in Qimen, Anhui Province when we were searching for the authentic Qimen tea. We have been drinking this tea now for sometime so I thought I would do a tea tasting with it before it was all gone.

The leaves are shorter and more tightly wrapped than the famous Huangshan Mao Feng. The color tended toward a golden brown with a small amount of stems among the leaves.

This close up reveals just how brown and golden most of the leaves are. The tea is very much like a tightly wrapped Qimen but not as short and obviously not nearly as fermented.

We bought this Mt. Huangsha Wild Tea in Qimen, Anhui Province when we were searching for the authentic Qimen tea. We have been drinking this tea now for sometime so I thought I would do a tea tasting with it before it was all gone.

So how is this tea? Since we have been drinking it for some time now, I can say I like it. I did three steepings and each came out almost identical in taste and strength. The first time around was the weakest (not enough time and a bit too hot water)but it was very refreshing and tasted clear with hints of vegetables and spring. The aftertaste was pleasant and long-lasting.

The liquor is dark yellow to golden brown. Each steeping presented almost identical color in the liquor. The taste is actually a bit stronger than what I expected based on this color. Generally, I drink this tea very light in the morning and do not use boiling water. I let the boiled water stand for about five minutes before I pour it over the leaves. It works great and I end up getting around five steeping with the tea which works out well for a morning tea.

I never drink green tea in the afternoon as it bothers my stomach, forcing me to take Zantac before I go to bed. Oolong tea or Puerh tea is what I drink in the afternoon. Absolutely no problems with the stomach and these teas.

This is the third time around and I let it steep for about four minutes. Came out as nice and strong as the first two without any serious bitterness. I once read that a good tea will tend not to go bitter quickly, no matter how long one steeps it. Not sure if this is correct. I do have some cheap teas which tend to be bitter the longer one steeps them.

The nice little green leaves show up well in the tea pot. Looks to be two very small and delicate leaves that have been processed on each stalk. They looked shiny and pale green. The taste matches the color of the leaves, pale and refreshing yet slightly strong in its aftertaste. It starts out refreshing and tastes like unidentifiable vegetables until it is swallowed. The aftertaste continues for several minutes after swallowing.

Here you can see the leaves a little bit better. They are very uniform and precise. It took a long to pick these leaves. The family who sold us the tea said it came from near the top of the mountain on uncultivated tea plants. Nice sounding sales pitch.

Overall, this tea is a good little green tea, great for drinking at around noon. Been doing it most of 2012 and will do so for a few more months.

Putuoshan Focha (Buddha Green Tea)

I am always on the look out for tea whenever we travel to China. Since this trip to visit all the sacred mountains in China was going to be our last for quite some time, I wanted to be sure and take advantage of it to buy some interesting tea. We were visiting one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains (Putuoshan) when we got this tea.

I talked Sunee into buying a small can of the local (and very famous) Putuoshan Focha (普陀佛茶) or Buddha tea. It was super expensive but I wanted desperately to try it. We bought the tea at a local tourist place that was part of the package tour of Putuoshan so everything was expensive. I did not even see any tea on the island during our tour. So here it is over a month after arriving back home to Bangkok and I am just getting around to drinking it. Guess I was not so desperate after all.

The leaves are a bit curled and light green and gold with fuzzy hairs on most of the golden buds. They reminded me a little of Mengding Gan Lu but not as tightly wound.

I used my most expensive tea pot. (Hey, my pots are not really that expensive because I was told early on that tea pots made cheaply from the same clay that is artistically designed produces the same level of tea.)

I allowed the water to cool a bit from my boiling pot before pouring into the waiting small amount of tea leaves. I was only going to taste it so my desperation speech to Sunee would become truth.

This tea is as good as advertised or as good as the ads that I had read from some of the big suppliers on tea on the internet had promised . I liked it, very much.

To be perfectly honest, we sneaked a bit of this tea to try in our hotel in Ningbo after finishing the tour of Putuoshan. Neither of us were impressed. We simply put some in a tea cup, poured the boiling water on top and waited for it to turn color. As I recall, it seemed to be very grassy tasting. I got no grassy taste in this, the official tasting. It was sweet and refreshing and like the Longjing tea I had while we were in China, it reminded me of the sparkling water we used to get from the artisian well not far from where I grew up in Oklahoma. Refreshing, sparkling and sweet. I knew I should have bought more of it!

DuJun Mao Jian Tea

Since I did the Henan Xinyang Mao Jian, I figured to break out a little of the Dujun Mao Jian (都均毛尖) that three of my students bought for me in their home town of Guiyang in Guizhou Province where this tea originates. It is a bit different looking than the Xinyang Mao Jian with more silver, yellow and lighter green leaves. Weight wise they seem to be about the same.

Here you can see the silver very clearly and the green does not appear to be as dark as that of the other Mao Jians.

In this close up, one can see why this is called Mao Jian or Hairy Tips. If you look close enough you can see the tiny down-looking hair on many of the lighter leaves. There is a lot of tea in a pound of Mao Jian tea.

I followed pretty much what I did with the Xinyang Mao Jian, letting the boiled water cool for about two or three minutes before I steeped the tea. This Mao Jian does not seem to be as delicate and contrary as that of the Xinyang tea. No matter how much I used or how long it steeped (of course I did not let it steep too long), I tasted no bitterness at all. The liquor is not as sweet and interesting tasting as that of Xinyang Mao Jian but it is very, very good. The color is a bit more yellow and just as light. I still have a lot of this tea in the freezer and have taken some out to drink regularly. It is considered to be one of the top ten classic teas of China. This tea is in most of the top ten lists but in some, if it is not listed it probably would be number eleven. Xinyang Mao Jian is listed in all the top ten teas I have seen.

Here is a nice view of the little cup of Duhun Mao Jian resting peaceably on my tea tray along with the other things brought from China. This tea is supposed to be one of the three treasures of Guizhou. The other two are the Maotai (powerful alcoholic rocket fuel) liquor and Dafang lacquered ware.

My three treasures from Guizhou were Katherine, Craig and Grace. All were from Guiyang and they were some of the finest English students I have ever had. Craig, in particular, was a scholar beyond belief while Grace was the most sophisticated speaker of English in all of China. Katherine was just a sweetheart with excellent English skills and a quiet personality. We visited all three in their home town two years ago and had a fabulous time.

Xin Yang Mao Jian

Last year in July, we decided to travel to northern China and look specifically for classic Chinese courtyard buildings. Beijing, of course, has the most famous and the most renovated. Shaanxi, however, has several times more than anywhere else in China. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaanxi was pretty much the financial center with Pingyao being the most famous. In fact, if one travels in eastern China, one can see the evidence of this success as many of the Shaanxi business people moved to other locations and became equally successful. So why am I writing about this trip in a tea blog?

Our trip began in Yuncheng, Shaanxi and then we traveled to Henan Province so my wife could visit the famous Shao Lin Temple not far from Luoyang. Since Henan is home to one of the top ten teas in classic Chinse tea history, I figured to find some so I could say I bought it in Henan. Thus, for my first tea tasting in Thailand, I dug out the Xin Yang Mao Jian we bought in Luoyang. Chinese Tea Travelers we are!

Here is the sample of Mao Jian bought in Luoyang. I do not recall the exact price for this, but it was not cheap. I do remember my wife not wanting to buy it because it was too expensive. We bought a half pound from the tea merchant's freezer. It has the characteristics of what I have read about Mao Jians - dark green and tightly dried with points at each end.

Before actually preparing this tea, I did some search (again) on the internet to find out if it had some interesting features for which I should be aware. At the Half Dipper tea site (my favorite tea site), I read the article on Xin Yang Mao Jian that saved me a lot of pain. Basically, this tea is very delicate and the water temperature has to be just right for the better Mao Jian from Henan. So I followed his advice for the first steep and used cooled boiling water. Was I rewarded?

This tea matched the Half Dippers comments about an expensive tea. It was refreshing, delicate and kind of reminded me a bit of lemons. I immediately shared it with my wife and she was delighted. Only problem was I did not empty the tea out of the teapot (my only expensive teapot) and when I went for more after about six or seven minutes of continued steeping, the tea was flat out bitter. Wew, it was as bitter as any tea I had ever tasted.

More experiments proved that the tea we had bought in Luoyang was probably the real deal. Too hot of water and it becomes common. Steep too long or use too many leaves and it gets really bitter. Do it right and one has truly one of the best teas in China. Amazing stuff this Xin Yang Mao Jian.

When China Tea Travelers travel they not only look for tea but for tea stuff as well. Here we negotiate for some really fine tea cups. All nice but what I was looking for was the Luoyang Jun pottery made famous during the Ming Dynasty with its three colors. Believe those on the left are the Jun style pottery. Not cheap but we did get a few as well as some of the other ones. Fun to be Tea Travelers indeed.

After our tea shopping trip, we stopped at a nice small restaurant and had some of the local dishes. This one is the most famous vegetarian dish. We broke out our Mao Jian tea and enjoyed it with our meal.

This is not a famous pork dish from Luoyang as we have eaten this all over Sichuan. This dish, however, was especially good with our nice Xin Yang Mao Jian.

I will have more on our trip to Shaanxi and Henan at my Emei blog later on.

Special China Tea Travels Hand-picked and Hand-processed Green Tea

As stated in the previous post, all the "hard work" put in by the Freshmen Class 1 came to naught because we had not picked enough tea to process. I ended up with the tea we had picked. I took it home in hopes of convincing Sunee to become a tea processor. She liked the idea and we became our own specialists in tea processing. The above poster represents our new found field of tea processing. Actually it came from a website that specializes not in tea but in what is called "motivational posters." How is this for a motivational poster? The picture is mine as are the motivational words.


I did some internet research and decided on a process known as the Longjing method. Basically there are three ways to process green tea: fry it, bake it or steam it.

Since we have no oven to bake the tea in and we had no idea what steaming meant for tea, Sunee decided to fry it. The Longjing method calls for three separate fries of twenty minutes each. First, however, one had to let it dry in the shade for a couple of days. We followed these directions and you can see Sunee processing the tea in the first fry after the initial drying period.

Here is the tea after the second frying. Sunee would fry the tea at medium heat and move it around the pan with her hands to insure all the tea was heated.

After each frying, we would let the tea cool and "rest" the remainder of the day. The process took around five days with the first two days allowing the tea to dry on its own. Additionally, we allowed one day for each of the frying sessions for a total of five days.

So how was this hand-picked, hand-processed China Tea Travels tea? To be honest, Sunee sneaked some to try after the second frying and she thought it was pretty good, so our expectations were high when I did the official tasting.

We used our Gaiwan teapot to make this first "official" unveiling of our own special green tea. As you can see, the tea came out a pale luscious and beautiful amber. The aroma was wonderfully hypnotizing with lots of hints of "hand-processing" and essence of being "hand-picked." Could it be that the freshmen all forgot to wash their hands as they picked our tea?Complex is simply a word that does not do justice to this "fantastic" tea.

As we both lingered over this exhilarating aroma, a hesitation gripped our solace. What if this stuff tastes bad? What if . . . .. . ? What if . . . . .? What the heck! We have just spent five days preparing for this moment and here we are hesitating.

As I sipped the hot liquid, the first thing that came to mind was . . . well, Zhuyeqing. Sunee's first comment was also - Zhuyeqing! Hey, that means that we were a success, doesn't it? A tea that tastes like Zhuyeqing is a good thing not a bad thing.

Actually this tea was quite good - not too bitter but with a nice sweetness that starts on the tip of the tongue and goes all the way back to the throat. It also possessed an aftertaste for a little longer than the normal Zhuyeqing. A very nice green tea, hand-picked and hand-processed on the slopes of Emei Mountain that screams out to anyone who dares sip of its youthfulness - I AM FRESH GREEN TEA.

Based on our experience as tea pickers and tea processors, are we ready for prime time? I think if one did the math, one would realize that tea from Emei can be bought for a whole lot less than the freshmen class paid for this tea. It cost 15 Yuan for each tea picker to go out and do the picking. There were 22 freshmen along with the Gap Guys and me doing the picking. The tea that Sunee and I, thus, processed cost an astounding 375 Yuan for less than 100 grams of processed tea. PRIME TIME? I think not.

A Return to Zhuyeqing Garden

The Freshmen Class 1 invited the Gap Guys and me to go pick tea with them at the Zhuyqing Garden. Pick tea! Great idea.

Mr. Frank and Ms. Jennifer dropped by our apartment at 0900 on Saturday and we walked back up the hill to the Live Plaza where several of the freshmen were waiting for us and transportation. The Gap Guys, Jennifer and I took a rented car to the garden while the other students took a bus to Emei City and would get a taxi.


Here is Jennifer waiting for the car while we visit with the other students.

The Welcome Sign at the entrance to the Zhuyeqing Museum and Garden.


We had a good time introducing the Gap Guys to some of the other students as we waited for the rest of the freshmen to arrive.

The "koi" and gold fish were especially active this morning so I had to get several shots of them. They looked pretty hungry.

The Zhuyeqing Rock is always a good place to take a few pictures. Still waiting for the others to arrive, we looked for things to keep us entertained.

Finally the rest of the class arrived and Ms. Freda arranged for us to meet our tea lady who took us over to the tea plantation to pick our tea.


The tea lady, Ms. Yang, went around and helped us understand which tea leaves we needed to pick. Here she trains me on what to look for in picking tea. Do I have what it takes to be a professional in the tea industry? With her guidance, I may have a shot at it.

Ms. Freda picking tea as quickly as she possibly can. Actually she was not picking the tea that quickly. I looked into her bag a the end of the picking and I counted 42 leaves.

Bless his little tea picking hands - Admon.

More pickers slaving away at trying to fill up their tea bags.

If one looks closely, one can see the newly formed teabuds among the mature tea leaves.

Ms. Yang seemed to really enjoy training the "waiguo ren" as he attempted to become a professional tea picker. She could speak a little English and we had a great time trying to get me to understand what leaves to pick and what leaves to leave. Leaving the correct leaves seemed to be the key to picking the correct leaves. She was a delightful teacher.

This is what we were looking for according to Ms. Yang. One small leaf attached to the unopen tea bud. These were the best tea leaves to pick.

A great picture of a newly opened tea leaf.

Here two students are bothering me for pictures as I try to fulfill my destiny as a tea picker.

After an hour of picking tea, these three students got bored so they started taking pictures and having a good time. Tea picking is boring!

Here, Mr. Jack, joins the bored trio for picture taking and none tea picking activities.

More freshmen clowning around not doing their class activity of picking tea. Guess none will sign up to the advanced tea picking class coming up soon.

Jon, one of the Gap Guys, conned these students into picking the tea for him. I looked into his tea basket and he only hand 33 tea leaves. No wonder he had to have guards with him all the time.


Here are some of the guys on the other end of the tea rows. Notice their empty tea baskets and bags. No wonder there are no professional men tea pickers. Only women have the hands that are small enough to get to all the good tea buds. Only women have the ability to pick tea from dawn 'til dusk. Only women do not goof around and take stupid pictures. Women also work together with the others in the group and do not wonder far afield and clown around when they are supposed to be picking tea.

This is the official Freshmen Class1 Tea Picking Picture. I will print a couple of these out and have the members of the class sign it and then we will present them to the Gap Guys.

Here is the sum total of all the tea the class picked. The basket is really very small so there is not much tea in the basket. In fact, we did not have enough tea for the tea cooker to mess with. We will have to fry it ourselves. I eventually ended up with the tea for Sunee to fry next week after she gets back from Thailand.


Mr. Frank thinks the fresh-picked tea smelled really good. Or did he? I forgot to ask.

As we walked back to go through the museum, I took these pictures of some of the girls posing for pictures. Not too bad, huh?


Mr. Jack is overwhelmed by the aroma of the freshly picked tea. Or was he? Me thinks he might have been acting, which he is famous for doing.

Here Ms. Jennifer and Ms. Freda pose by a flowering tree. I kept asking what kind of tree it was or what kind of flower. All I got was that it was a PINK FLOWER.

One of the flowers identified as a PINK FLOWER!

Inside the Zhuyeqing Museum

I got to watch the show again and, again, I was not impressed with the length. The whole thing took about ten minutes. I did try to get some better pictures of the lovely lady doing the gaiwan thing which she does here.

This lady obvious has done this before. She pours the water from a pretty good distance from the gaiwan cup. Seen it before and actually done better at many of the local tea shops.

The Sichuan style of pouring water into the gaiwan. This demo lasted about three minutes. I tried to get some good shots but my camera takes longer than three minutes to get ready.

A porcelain figure representing drinking tea in China. Notice the tea stuff around the guy.

The Gap Guys, Jon and Dave, discovered that this wood thing was actually a giant tea pot. I missed this the first time around.

Dave here is doing a really lousy impression of the Sichuan style of pouring tea. He made it appear to be very painful. I fear he does not have a future in the tea industry.

Each exhibit had English translations for us foreigners to read. Here Jon checks out the English to find out what the heck the exhibition is about. Actually Jon was just looking blankly at the Chinese.

Ms. Freda does a very poor job of faking caligraphy. I tried to get her to be more realistic but it is obvious that she is a poor actress. Maybe she is a good caligrapher!

Shopping area in the museum. The tea here was not cheap. In fact, it was very, very expensive.


The "what is it, what is it" photo I had so much success with the week before with Giselle, Cecilia and Taunis. Same picture, different models.

The garden and museum was fun and educational. Afterward we got vans back to the university where we had a typical Emei Shan lunch. Kind of a hot pot thing with chickens and taro floating around in a spicy liquid. Not bad but the chicken was full of bones and took a lot of effort to eat.

A final picture of Ms. Freda enjoying our lunch.