Green Tea Processing Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-148Traditional CraftsmanshipHuangshanshihuangshan, AnhuiBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

Tea culture flourished greatly in the Tang dynasty. Emperor Xuanzong changed the character "tu" to "cha" in the Kaiyuan Wenzi Yinyi, and afterwards Lu Yu's Classic of Tea (Cha Jing) also appeared. Before the Song dynasty, the tea consumed was mostly compressed tea—the leaves were steamed, pounded, and formed into lumps or cakes, then boiled in water for drinking, sometimes with dried fruits such as melon seeds and pine nuts added. In the Qing dynasty this changed to brewing with boiling water, a practice that continues to this day. In the Tang dynasty it was already popular to pluck the tiny newly sprouted tea buds; these tender buds were sharp like spears, with small leaves shaped like banners growing beside them, and so they were called "banner-spear" (qiqiang), a name that has endured to the present. Huangshan District has a long history of tea production; as early as the Tianbao reign of the Tang dynasty, over a thousand years ago, there were records of tea production here. Taiping Houkui tea was created in the twenty-sixth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty (1900). At that time Taiping tea was extremely popular along the Yangtze River, and some tea merchants asked farmers to separately pick out the neatly tipped buds and leaves from the "jian" tea and sell them at high prices, reaping great profits. Taiping Houkui has long enjoyed a strong reputation at home and abroad for its fine quality: it won a quality award at the Agriculture, Industry and Commerce Exhibition in 1912, a gold award at the "Panama–Pacific International Exposition" in 1915, was named one of the nation's ten famous teas in 1955, and after 2004 repeatedly received honors at domestic and international tea expos and became a national gift tea.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

China's tea-making craft has a long history. More than three thousand years ago, tea used as an accompaniment to drinking already appeared in the ritual ceremonies of the Western Zhou dynasty. In ancient times tea was called "tu," a name that appears in the Book of Songs (Shijing). By the Three Kingdoms and Western Jin periods, tea drinking had become a common custom in the Jiangnan region. Green tea is a type of tea that is fixed (kill-green) at high temperature without oxidation or fermentation, also known as "non-fermented tea." Its production process mainly includes plucking fresh leaves, fixation (kill-green), rolling, and drying. Top-grade green tea is made from the delicate young buds that first emerge, generally plucked before the Qingming or Grain Rain solar terms; the finished tea is commonly called "pre-Qingming" or "pre-Grain Rain." Fixation uses high-temperature processes such as steaming or pan-firing to enhance the green tea's bright color and clear fragrance, and can be divided into steaming fixation and pan-firing fixation. In ancient China, high-temperature steam was used for fixation, called "steam fixation"; in modern times this changed to pan-firing in an iron wok, giving rise to "pan-fired fixation." Fixation makes the leaves soft, and gently rolling them between the fingers twists them into tight, slender strips—this is called "rolling." Rolling helps the brewed tea release its infusion and also reduces the leaves' volume, making storage and transport easier. Huangshan District, Huangshan City, Anhui Province has a mild climate and abundant rainfall, with over two hundred foggy days each year, extremely suitable for the growth of tea plants. The district's tea-garden area reaches over 3,400 hectares, with an annual tea output of over a thousand tons, of which famous and fine tea accounts for more than 80%. At that time this place was called Taiping County, so the tea produced was called "Taiping tea." Wang Kuicheng, a tea farmer living in Hougang, was inspired: rather than selecting after the tea is made, it is better to carefully choose and craft from the plucking of fresh leaves; so in the high-mountain tea gardens he specially selected sturdy, upright one-bud-two-leaf sets and meticulously made the tea. Thus the tea produced in the Houkeng and Hougang area of Taiping County was the champion among "jian" teas, and the originator of the tea-making craft was also named "Kuicheng," hence the name "Taiping Houkui" (Taiping monkey champion).

Four sorts and eight exclusions

Leaf is sorted and cleaned before the pan; anything off-spec is refused so only the best shoots go in.

Charcoal-heated pan kill-green

Charcoal gives the steady high heat needed for kill-green, the step that fixes the tea's base character.

Drying to full dryness in bamboo baskets

Bamboo drying baskets let the leaf lose moisture slowly, giving firm leaf that survives transport and storage.

The Houkeng and Hougang tea gardens

With over two hundred foggy days a year, the Houkeng and Hougang slopes grow slow, plump shoots.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Most residents of Taiping County made their living from tea production, and locally the building of tea pavilions to benefit travelers was regarded as an act of kindness and merit, long practiced and established as a custom.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Green tea is currently mainly produced in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Fujian, Sichuan, and other places, among which the most famous are West Lake Longjing of Hangzhou and Wuzhou Juyan of Jinhua in Zhejiang; Huangshan Maofeng, Taiping Houkui, and Lu'an Guapian in Anhui; and Dongshan Biluochun of Suzhou in Jiangsu. Fang Jifan (per the official archive records of the related inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in January 1965, a native of Huangshan City, Anhui Province. Representative inheritor of the fourth batch of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item "Green Tea Making Technique (Taiping Houkui)." Taiping Houkui green tea-making technician. He learned tea planting and making from childhood and has rich experience and a high level of mastery in the making and cultivation of Taiping Houkui. In 2007, the "Houkeng Brand" Taiping Houkui was designated as a national gift tea. He built the Taiping Houkui Tea Culture Museum, participated in revising the National Standard for Taiping Houkui Tea and the Taiping Houkui Tea Craft Procedure, and created a "company + farmer + base" management model, bringing the Taiping Houkui making craft to thousands of households. He has consistently upheld the ancestral techniques, adhering to core skills such as the fresh-leaf "four selections and eight rejections," charcoal-pan fixation, and bamboo-tray final drying, ensuring the traditional quality of Houkui; his products have repeatedly won national awards such as the Golden Bud Award.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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