Wuyi Shan Oct. 1st

On my second day At Wuyishan, I just felt rotten, had digestive issues and was dizzy and weak.  I think it was the shellfish I ate at the restaurant the night before, but it could have been drinking too much tea.  I got some antibiotics, and some Chinese medicine.  I felt a lot better by the third day, but the second day was not productive.  I did drink some tea, but not much.  Especially in the morning I just swished it around in my mouth and then spit it out.  In the spring, when the new tea is finished, the producers and buyers usually taste the tea this way, rinsing it around in the mouth and then spitting it out.

My friend was trying to find a nice tea for cheap, as Yancha is not very popular in Southern Zhejiang province.  He thought that his customers would not be able to accept a more expensive Yancha, and was looking to get a nice tea for 50-150 RMB/kilo.  I was interested in getting a good tea for myself, and interested in buying small quantities if even if the price was high.  I did traipse around the area with him trying all the garbage teas, looking at carvings, both stone and wood, looking at tea packaging and other tea products.  Since I did not do much tea drinking on the 1st, I will introduce some of Wuyi's other products.  One of the most interesting things I found was the Wuyi bingcha pictured above.  I was really surprised to see these all over the city in tea shops.  I had never heard of Yancha being pressed into a cake, but here they were.  As soon as I got back, Hobbes posted about this on Half-dipper, and people commenting on his post left links on where to buy the stuff as well as links to posts on rec.food.drink.tea.   The prices were about 11USD for a small bing of about 150 grams.  I thought it was really expensive.  I offered a bunch of store keepers 20RMB, but they didn't sell.  I asked one proprietor when Wuyi started making these tea cakes, and he said they had always made them, but they had been for the farmers personal use in the past.  I also noticed that many of the cakes were covered in plastic wrap.  Wuyi tea is supposed to be kept sealed up pretty tight, while Pu'er is supposed to have access to a certain amount of air.  I wonder if these tea cakes age well, and how they ought to be kept for best results.

Another famous specialty of Wuyi mountain is Shoushan shi（寿山石 - longevity mountain stone）which is a beautiful orange red and white stone, and one of the four most famous stones in China. They sell lots of poor quality carvings in many stores all over Wuyi, and also many beautiful pieces of art.  If you want to buy shoushanshi, look around.  they have lots of decently priced items, as well as overpriced ones.  Most pieces are covered in oil to protect them, which attracts small insects which in turn get stuck in the oil.  Corax got a chop made (see the link to his post on Chadao two posts ago) at 乐宝齐寿山石总店 (tel 0599.525.2542) which I was also able to find, unfortunately it was closed by the time I got there.

Snake products are ubiquitous in Wuyi.  They have a snake garden somewhere nearby, which supposedly hold tens of thousands of snakes.  These snakes are used to make delicacies such as snake meat and snake gall wine and snake wine and snake oil and snake face cream.  Almost every store in Wuyi has a snake product section.  I really meant to get some snake wine, as it is sort of legendary in China.  

I suppose it is silly, but it certainly would impress my male friends back in the states if all I drank from now on was liquor that had snake corpses floating in it.  Snakes are also killed in the thousands for their penises.  I am not just making a crude joke, every store in the resort area has a couple of boxes. 

 They sell for the bargain rate of 20 RMB/box of five.  I never actually saw anyone buy any.  I didn't either, and I probably wouldn't admit it here if I had.  They are supposed to improve sexual prowess in males.  

The last thing I wanted to mention is a set of postcards which I bought.  I went into a painter's shop in a side street.  He was from Chongqing and painted almost exclusively landscape paintings from Wuyi Mountain. He was a good painter, but his style was a little bit round and coarse for me, so I didn't buy any of his paintings. 

 He did have a great set of postcards of scenery from Wuyi mountain, which were a bargain at 12 yuan.  They were issued by the post office, so they are quite a bargain as half the price of the set is postage.

The painter's name is Jiang Guanmin (蒋关民.）He also showed us a great fold out painting of the scenery of all nine bends in the local Jiuqu xi (九曲溪 - nine bends stream) that was several meters long.  

I would suggest these postcards as an interesting alternative to regular postcards, and which also supports a local artist (who moved there from Chongqing.)

I slept most of the afternoon of October first in order to get over my sickness and prepare for another tea drinking marathon.  October first is Chinese National Day for those of you who don't know.  Be sure never to go anywhere in China on national day, especially not tourist destinations such as Wuyi.  I had a vacation during this time, and so I decided to risk it and go anyway.  All of the tourist destinations are packed, there are lines for everything.  All the locals are trying to cheat as many people as they can.  All the restaurants are busy and will ignore you if they have to get a high profit dinner ready for a huge tourist group.  If you do go during the Chinese holiday season, I would suggest you go with a tour group.  

I thought maybe the vacation would not affect the tea people, but it does.  Everyone is busy on the holidays.  Lots of the tea people are in their shops hawking their lowest quality goods to tourists who will pay big bucks for a fancy looking box of tea with the characters Dahongpao written on it.  Also many of their old customers may only have time to come by during the vacation, and they will be keeping these people company.

If you go on the off season it is much easier to convince the tea dealers that you came for the tea and are not just a tourist.  They will have more time to sit down with you and just chat.  When an area is as full of tea shops as this place is, a lot of these people are bored much of the year, and if you go at the right time they are friendly, helpful and happy to have the company of someone who loves tea even if you don't buy anything.  Most importantly, many tea producers don't even keep their best teas in the shops.  If you go during the off season, they have plenty of time to take you to the tea factory and see the tea gardens, and try all the better teas.

It will also help if you do some tea research before you go.  It is good to find respected names on the Internet, find their numbers and just give them a call.  When you do this, they will know you came for tea and it is a much better method than walking into random shops in the resort area and hoping they are tea producers.

Wuyi Shan Sept. 30

The bus trip to Wuyi Shan was just as long as I had suspected.  China is a place with lots of mountains, so in certain places taking a plane can save a lot of time.  The train was not an option from Wenzhou, so we took the bus which dropped us off at the resort area at about 10pm Monday the 29th.  Looked at the carvings and had a cup of tea at a random shop.  The wooden carvings （雕根） for sale in Wuyi are mostly amazing, but also expensive.  When we stopped for a break on the bus ride home, my friend went in to a workshop where they are produced.  A product that would be marked with a 20,000-30,000 RMB price tag and sell for about 8,000 RMB in Wuyi Resort area was on offer there for 1,000 RMB. Maybe there was something wrong with it I didn't see.

A local hustler got us a hotel room the first night for 130 RMB. The next night the price doubled. Our hustler was still anxious to help in the morning.  At about 8AM we set off to get discount tickets to the resort area.  Our guide/hustler led us past the gate to the 大王峰 and over to the river.  We started up a narrow path around the fence.   The 'discount tickets' were not tickets at all.  The hustler just wanted to charge us half price to sneak us around the ticket collector.  She was angry and said we were very stubborn when we refused to sneak in.  We did not wind up going to any sights in the tourist area of Wuyi Shan.

We took a taxi to the Big Tea Pot （大茶壶茶叶研究所）and arrived before 9AM.  Kids were screaming and everyone was too busy to pay attention to us.  Don't get me wrong, this place is worth checking out, although most people say its a bit on the expensive side. I regret I didn't go back to the Big Tea Pot at a better time.  I will definitely make a stop there next time.  The proprietor is Liu Feng （刘峰）one of the 'Three Lius' who are famous in Wuyi for their tea processing skills.

Our tea drinking marathon began at about 9AM and lasted through Sept. second.  We made a call to the proprietor of Tianzishenyun, mentioned in posts by Corax on Chadao and by Will (see my previous blog post for links.)  Ms. Yu's husband, Mr. Lu came to pick us up in his truck. Their house is great, we got to see all of the tea making equipment, and most importantly, they were re-roasting their tea. 

 For those of you who have never experienced it, Yancha over a roasting pit (beilu - 焙炉) is one of the most wonderful fragrances one can encounter.  I took a couple of pictures of the room, also mentioned in previous posts with the reed baskets over the concrete roasting pits. 

 We drank a bunch of cheaper teas, including their Yanzhonglan(岩中兰）the high fire version is quite good.  We also had his Baijiguan (白鸡冠.）I wasn't very impressed with the baijiguan.  It looks really cool (yellow leaves with red edges) but it doesn't have the Yanyun (岩韵) which Yancha is famous for.  I heard a few tea sellers say Baijiguan is not very good, but that they can get a good price for it and it sells well to certain customers. Mr. Lu took us for lunch to a small restaurant near his home, which in my opinion was excellent.  The moderate spiciness suited my taste, and did not overpower my palate for the afternoon tea session. We had green vegetables, some sort of eel like fish which lives in the mud, bamboo shoots, and Chinese bacon(腊肉), which for some reason I love.

After lunch, my friend and I went back to Mr. Lu's for an afternoon session.  We had a Gushucha (古树茶 ancient tree tea) which was very good.  They have a couple of versions.  The cheaper version I had before lunch was OK, I finally got them to bring out the 900RMB/kilo high fire version which I drank right after lunch and was impressed by the Chaqi. The old bush teas, including Shuixian are said to have a mossy flavour (青苔 qingtai.) I didn't think moss was the best description, but I think I noticed the flavour they were talking about.  I bought some of the high fire Gushucha and high fire Yanzhonglan, and got samples of the Qingxiang Gushucha, Dahongpao, and Shuixian.  After buying tea, Mr. Lu drove us into the Scenic area to show us some of his tea bushes and then dropped us off at the Wenyou Shudian, also mentioned in the Chadao post.

Mr. Lu went into the bookstore first and bought me a copy of the Record of Famous Bushes of Wuyi Mountain (武夷岩茶名丛录.) Since he is a local, he got the book for the local price (60 yuan as opposed to the 100 yuan cover price.) It is a great book with pictures and descriptions of 70 varietals, and a list of names of 280 varietals from the 1943. I plan to do a post with some names and translations as well as descriptions as soon as I have time.

Apart from this book, there was not much other material about tea.  There is a Chadao magazine, but the selection didn't seem as good as when Corax from Chadao was there.

In the afternoon we waded through a bunch of cheap teas which are not worth mentioning. The one exception was the 石乳 or 'stone milk.' It was tasty, and had an interesting beidixiang which really had a milky fragrance. (kind of like that sometimes found in TGY or Taiwan Oolong like Alishan.) I found a 石钟乳 or 'stone clock milk' varietal in my handy book in the list of names from 1943, but this varietal is not described.  I did see it in other shops, so it is not unheard of.

The restaurant we tried to eat at on Monday night was awful.  They had all sorts of vegetables set out to choose from including all sorts of mushrooms, bee (maybe wasp) larvae, deer, some unidentifiable animals.  After a whole hour of waiting they only managed to bring out 1 dish, which was nasty fresh water shellfish.  Most of the shells were empty, and there was a lot more empty shells than shell-less meats. They tried to bring over some expensive dishes which we hadn't ordered, and eventually we left without eating.  

After we finally had a bowl of noodles, I went back to the hotel to rest for awhile.  My friend went back out immediately to drink more tea, and I just lay about making notes.

Laying by myself in the hotel room I had a very strange experience.  Some of the Huigan 回感 of the myriad teas I had had throughout the day came back to haunt me.  It was very hard to attach each huigan to a specific tea, but very lucid tea flashbacks.  It was like remembering part of a very nice dream I had had days earlier... sometimes the whole dream or the context is hard to recall, but the nice feelings or pleasant emotions of the dream come back.

My friend took came back to the hotel room at about 10pm to get a sample of tea to bring out to another tea shop to see if they could match the flavour at a better price.  We went to 探春 tanchun teashop (in the resort area, right opposite the bus station.)

I went to the factory of the family who runs Tanchun teashop on the third day.  I am not sure what to think of their business practices, but the young woman who runs Tanchun is very knowledgeable.  She told us our tea sample was a mix of Rougui and Beidou varietals.  Rougui has a rough feel to the leaves which are more narrow than Beidou. Beidou is smooth, and the leaves are  wider.  She also told me that all Fenghuang Oolong tea was originally from Wuyishan, and that the bushes were transplanted there during the song dynasty.  Evidence can be found in the 崇安县志 chonganxianzhi.  I am not sure who to believe, as I have also read that all Wuyi Yancha originates in Chaozhou.  I have been suspecting some sort of connection for awhile since so many of the names are so similar.  I'm pretty sure the relationship is not as simple as everyone makes it out to be.

The Origin of Fenghuang Oolong Tea (ii)

Red Fungus Tea (红菌茶)
  During the Song Dynasty¹, the people of Fenghuang mountain found the 'red fungus' tea teas, made tea and drank it. They thought the the flavour very good, and so began digging up young plants and transplanting them around their houses. From this time, the cultivation of tea by the people of Fenghuang started.
  Even today on the ancient Fenghuang mountains, in areas not yet opened for agricultural productions as well as slopes and cliffs, 'red fungus' tea trees still grow.
'Red fungus' is the wild fore bearer of the cultivated 'bird's beak'² (also called Fenghuang shuixian.³) It is because the gorgeous light red color which appears on the edges of the tender new leaves that this tea gets its name.
  Over many years through the process of growth and natural propagation, there developed 'hong xin' and 'baixin' varieties of 'red fungus' (These are terms used by the locals, the actual leaves are green, and not white.⁴)
  This variety grows at 450 Meters or more above sea level in barren hills and wild peaks, or in clifftop or amidst brushwood. Sunlight and mist are beneficial, but shade and rain are harmful. They have high resistance to insects, cold and drought, and are a very hardy variety. This variety exhibits strong growth year after year in places like Fenghuangji Mountain's Weiyan cliffs which are 1,498 Meter above sea level, below the sheer rock face of Wanfeng mountain, or the gravelly soil on the slopes of Daxinkuyundu Mountain.
 The appearance of these bushes are almost exactly the same as the 'bird's mouth' tea bush, but there are some differences between them. The first difference is the new tea shoots, one is dark green, the other light, one has hairs, the other none.⁵ 'Red fungus' young leaves not only have hairs, they have lots of them. The second difference is on the back of the 'red fungus' mature leaf, there is hair. The 'bird's beak' has very little or no hair at all.

¹ Northern Song 960-1127 Southern Song 1127-1270
² 鸟嘴 niaozui
³ 水仙 The same shuixian characters as one of the 4 famous bushes of Wuyishan.
⁴ 红心, hongxin, red center: refers to the reddish color of the leaves of one variety, 白心, baixin, white center: are the plants with normal green color leaves. It seems like they are called white because of a lack of [unusual] color. The book is not why 'xin' (heart or center) is used. It seemed to suggest that the red coloring was on the edges of new leaves.
⁵ At this point, the text is not explicit about which has hairs and which none, but it can be inferred from the order which they are referred to and the hair of the mature leaves that the 'red fungus' or hongjun is the hairy one at all stages .

Phoenix Single Bush Oolong Names

Phoenix Single Bush Oolong or Fenghuang Dancong Wulong (凤凰单枞乌龙) has many different names for different bushes. As confusing and sometimes frustrating for the new connoisseur, this is inevitable because of the very nature of the tea. The goal is to get a tea from a single bush, so logic follows that types of fragrances and then specific bushes should be named. It is mostly for my own edification that I attempt to organize a list of names and translations. I found a list in a book about Dancong Oolong, which I duplicate below with my own translations of the names.

壹 - 黄枝香（栀子花香）型  Gardenia fragrance type
1. 宋种黄枝香      Song variety gardenia fragrance
2. 宋种黄茶香      Song variety yellow tea fragrance
3. 大白叶              Large White Leaf
4. 黄茶香              Yellow tea fragrance
5. 老仙翁              Old fey gaffer
6. 宋种2号            Song variety No. 2
7. 佳常种              Always fine variety
8. 棕蓑挟              palm frond coir clasped under the arm
9. 特选黄枝香      Special selection gardenia fragrance

贰 - 芝兰香型       herbal fragrance type (literally, the glossy ganoderma and the fragrant thoroughwort fragrance type)
1. 八仙                  Eight immortals
2. 宋种芝兰香      Song variety herbal fragrance
3. 竹叶                  Bamboo leaf
4. 鸡笼刊              Chicken cage
5. 芝兰香              Herbal fragrance

叁 - 蜜兰香型       Honey orchid fragrance type
1. 蜜兰香               Honey Orchid fragrance
2. 白叶单枞          White leaf dancong
3. 香番薯              Fragrant sweet potato

肆 - 桂花香型      Osmanthus flower fragrance type

伍 - 玉兰香型      Jade Orchid fragrance type

陆 - 姜花香型      Ginger flower fragrance type
1. 柚叶                  Pomelo leaf
2. 杨梅叶              Waxberry Leaf
3. 姜母香             Ginger root fragrance
4. 火辣茶              Fiery spice tea

柒 - 夜来香型       Fragrance which comes in the night type

捌 - 茉莉香型      Jasmine fragrance type

玖 - 杏仁香型      Almond fragrance type
1. 锯剁仔             Saw cut seed
2. 杏仁香             Almond fragrance

拾 - 肉桂香型     Cassia fragrance type