Chinese Tea Culture Tours

Tea evokes different images in the thoughts of people, ranging from the hot morning cuppa’ made from a black tea teabag to the mystery of China and Chinese Tea culture and their Wulong tea and Green teas and so on.
Some of the greatest teas originated in China, with China’s tea culture dating back for over a thousand years. Western experience with tea, however, is relatively recent, dating back a couple of hundred years when tea was introduced initially to the nobility. It soon became a favoured drink among many, with most of the tea exported to western countries
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 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 green tea. The best brands of black tea are Qihong of Anhui , Dianhong of Yunnan, Suhong of Jiangsu, Chuanhong of Sichuan and Huhong of Hunan.
3) Wulong tea: This represents a variety half way between the green and the black teas, being made after partial fermentation. 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 colour 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. The flowers commonly used for this purpose are jasmine and magnolia among others. Jasmine tea is a well-known favourite with the northerners of China and with a growing number of foreigners.
Tea drinking is an ancient custom with origins in 2737 BC China. Reputedly, the Emperor Shen Nung, known as the great “divine healer,” first sampled tea after a gust of wind carried a few stray leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to an open pot of boiling water. Today, approximately 3,000 varieties of tea are made from this single plant, at least 300 in Chine alone. In the west, the U.S. is second only to Great Britain in tea consumption, brewing more than 2.2 billion gallons each year – enough to fill more than 160,000 swimming pools. But, tea offers more benefits than being a soothing beverage to be served at social gatherings, or to ward off the chill of a winter’s night. There is mounting evidence to suggest that drinking tea may also reduce the risks of developing cardiovascular disease and many forms of cancer.