Green Tea Processing Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-148Traditional CraftsmanshipChangxing, ZhejiangBatch 3 (2011)Extension ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

"Guzhu Zisun became the finest tea of the Great Tang Empire and the highest-grade gift for the imperial court's sacrificial rites and bestowals.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Zisun tea, also known as "Guzhu Zisun," is produced in Changxing County, Zhejiang Province. Its name derives from the statement in "The Classic of Tea" (Cha Jing): "purple is superior, green is inferior; bamboo-shoot-like is superior, bud-like is inferior." In both shape and color it is "the finest of the fine," and Lu Yu, the Sage of Tea, called it "fragrant and sweet, surpassing all other regions." The making of Zisun tea requires that each year, from the Qingming to Grain Rain period, one bud with one leaf or one bud with two leaves just unfolding is picked, and the process is completed through spreading, fixation (kill-green), shaping, cooling, initial baking, and re-baking. The finished supreme-grade tea buds are tender in flavor, with a purple tint and a bamboo-shoot-like shape; once the leaves unfurl they take the form of an orchid, and tasting it leaves a sweet fragrance on the teeth and cheeks with an endless aftertaste. A Tang poem describes: "Peony flowers smile as golden hairpins tremble, a report comes that Huzhou's Zisun has arrived." Because of the imperial order to supervise tea, the beautiful and charming Gushu Mountain also welcomed countless tribute-supervising prefects and cultural luminaries — Yan Zhenqing, Yuan Gao, Jiaoran, Liu Yuxi, Lu Tong, Du Mu, and others — so that for a time, before Gushu Mountain, the stars shone in dazzling array. For a long time, the villagers of Gushu have treated tea-making as an important industry; organized by household, with women picking and sorting the tea and men making it, the phenomenon of "the whole clan practicing tea" has been common. The Shuikou Gushu Mountain still preserves an ancient tea garden of about 500 mu. Through the inheritance and development of dozens of generations, the Shuikou Zisun tea-making technique has become a unique flower among China's tea-making techniques. However, as the planting area of Zisun tea keeps expanding, villagers, in pursuit of speed, have adopted modern making tools and neglected the use of traditional manual skills. Coupled with a lack of training in and talents for the traditional Zisun tea-making technique, the traditional technique cannot be effectively inherited and developed.

Whole clan working the tea

Women pick and sort while men handle the firing, so every batch moves through the same rhythm.

The signature steamed green tea method

Zheng Funian keeps the heat low and steams the shoots so they take no scorch and keep their natural fragrance.

Withering, fixing, straightening, cooling and two bakes

Shoots picked between Qingming and Guyu pass through six stages, with the cooling step giving the leaf a second chance to breathe.

The old tea gardens at Shuikou

About five hundred mu of old local-variety gardens at Shuikou hold rare genetic material and a taste unlike newer plantings.

Supervision of the tribute tea at Guchu

Tribute duty brought magistrates and poets such as Yan Zhenqing and Liu Yuxi to Guchu, fixing the mountain's name in the tea's fame.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The core of Zisun tea's technique lies in the area of Shuikou Gushu Mountain in Changxing County, where about 500 mu of ancient tea gardens remain, forming the germplasm foundation of this region. Locally, production is organized by household: women pick and sort the tea, men make it, and the "whole-clan tea practice" is common; several generations of one family guard a single mountain plot and a single set of procedures, and if any household's firing is not up to standard, the whole clan can taste it. Since the Qing dynasty, Yan Zhenqing, Yuan Gao, Jiaoran, Liu Yuxi, Lu Tong, Du Mu, and others successively supervised tea and composed inscriptions in the Gushu Mountain area, binding the mountain's name together with the tea's name and influencing its reputation for over a thousand years thereafter.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Zheng Funian (from the official archives of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in July 1961, a native of Changxing County, Zhejiang Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth batch of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item "Green Tea Making Technique (Zisun Tea Making Technique)." A green tea-making technician for Zisun tea. He learned the Zisun tea-making technique from his father since childhood. He is able to make the more difficult and superior-quality baked green, steamed green, cake tea, fermented red, and oolong teas. He has unique expertise in every step — raw material selection, fire control, shaping methods, and baking quality. In particular, his proprietary steamed-green technique breaks through the fired aroma brought by traditional tea-making, preserving its original natural fragrance. He was once awarded the title of "One of a Thousand Mass Literary and Art Backbones" by the Culture Department of Zhejiang Province. The Zisun tea he made once received titles such as "Famous Chinese Tea" and "Special Recommended Pollution-Free Premium Tea of China," and won a gold medal at the China International Tea Expo organized by the Foreign Trade Development Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce and others.

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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