Green Tea Processing Craftsmanship

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

01 · Historical Records

The name "white tea" arose in the Song dynasty; Zhao Ji's "Treatise on Tea of the Daguan Era" (Daguan Cha Lun) devoted a separate entry to white tea, describing it as having spreading strips and glossy, thin leaves, with only one or two plants occurring naturally and only two or three cakes produced, a rare variety born by chance. Anji white tea carries on this name, but it is a green tea—the "white" in its name refers to the white leaves, a tea-plant type with a pale leaf color, and by manufacturing method it still belongs to baked green tea. The history of making white tea around Xilong Township is only about a hundred years; the locals produce baked green tea, favored for its white leaves with green veins and clear, translucent liquor. In recent years, because plants with the leaf-color mutation are scarce, prices have risen, yet fewer and fewer people hand-fry it, and the craft has instead become a rarity.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Anji white tea is produced in Xilong Township, Anji County, Zhejiang Province, and is a baked green tea. Since ancient times, white tea has been hard to source and its plants hard to cultivate, with wild tea being rare and precious. According to the Song dynasty's Zhao Ji in his "Treatise on Tea of the Daguan Era": "White tea is its own kind, different from ordinary tea; its strips are spreading, its leaves glossy and thin; between cliffs and forests it occurs by chance, not through human effort; those who have it number no more than four or five households, those that grow number no more than one or two plants, and what is made stops at merely two or three cakes." Anji white tea is characterized by whiteness, liveliness, aroma, freshness, and clarity; both its fresh leaves and dried tea have white leaves with green veins and vivid color, and its liquor is clear and bright, full of freshness, with a high and lasting aroma. The manual frying process of Anji white tea is divided into seven steps: picking, spreading, fixation and strip-shaping, initial baking, cooling, re-baking, and ash-collecting drying. Each step has special requirements; in particular, the fresh leaves can only come from the first twenty-odd days of spring tea, and picking takes one bud with one or two true leaves, without the milky leaves or fish leaves. Because the leaves are extremely thin and the stems coarse, fixation and strip-shaping have stringent temperature requirements, for otherwise the leaves will either scorch or the stems redden. To achieve leaves that do not scorch and stems that do not redden, while keeping the leaf surface intact, besides the correct temperature one must also maintain stringent humidity, requiring extremely high tactile sense and technique. Because the manual frying craft is hard to master and yields small batches at slow speed, it is now generally replaced by machine frying. At present, only a few people in Xilong Township, Anji County—such as Chen Shoubin and Qian Yirong—have mastered the white tea manual frying craft.

Documented Process Records

The manual frying process of Anji white tea is divided into seven steps: picking, spreading, fixation and strip-shaping, initial baking, cooling, re-baking, and ash-collecting drying.

Heat and damp in kill-green and shaping

With leaves thin and stems thick, both heat and damp must be held precisely or leaves scorch and stems redden.

Leaf from the first twenty days of spring

Only the first twenty days of spring picking are usable, one bud with one or two true leaves and no milky or fishtail leaves.

First bake, cooling and second bake

An initial bake, a cooling rest and a second bake alternate so the leaf neither scorches nor loses its aroma.

Final ash-grey drying

After the second bake the final drying step drives off residual heat and locks in the aroma before storage.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Anji white tea is concentrated in the Xilong Township area of Anji County, Zhejiang Province. Here the fresh leaves are extremely thin while the stems are coarse, and the picking period is short—in a year there are only about twenty-odd days of good material, and whether a household picks three days early or three days late, the finished tea drops a grade. Today only a handful such as Chen Shoubin and Qian Yirong still master the manual frying craft, and the township has begun organizing training, hoping to build up personnel before machines take over.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Xilong Township, Anji County, has begun training in the white tea manual frying craft to further inherit and promote this traditional handcraft.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Green Tea Processing Craftsmanship (Anji, Zhejiang) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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