Oolong Tea Processing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Anxi County, Fujian, has a long tea-producing history: it began in the late Tang, flourished in the Ming and Qing, and boomed in modern times. During the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns of the Qing, because Anxi tea had a singular quality—black, lustrous, and firm, heavy as iron, with beautiful aroma, rhyme, and shape like the Guanyin—it was named "Tieguanyin" (Iron Guanyin).
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The exquisite Anxi Tieguanyin craft is unique among China's tea-making techniques. Anxi tea farmers comprehensively drew on the principles of fully fermented black tea and unfermented green tea, combined with local reality, and invented a unique semi-fermented tea process, thereby producing oolong tea, one of China's six major tea categories. The traditional Anxi Tieguanyin craft consists of three parts: plucking, initial processing, and refined processing. Before plucking, one must determine the plucking season and set the plucking standard, then skillfully apply the technique to harvest. The initial process includes ten steps: sun-withering, cooling, tossing, pan-firing, rolling, initial baking, wrap-rolling, re-baking, re-wrap-rolling, and drying. The refined process includes six steps: sifting, picking, blending, baking, cooling, and packing. In making tea, one must respond flexibly to various conditions such as season, climate, and the tenderness of the leaves. To make Anxi Tieguanyin, one first controls and regulates the tea leaf with methods such as sun-withering, cooling, and tossing, inducing a series of physical and biological changes that form "green leaves with a red rim" and a unique color, aroma, and taste; then high-temperature kill-green stops enzymatic activity; finally, rolling and repeated wrap-rolling and baking shape an elegant tea with natural orchid fragrance and special resonance. The traditional Anxi Tieguanyin craft is the crystallization of Anxi tea farmers' long production experience and labor wisdom, with considerable scientific value.
Archive of process records
The initial process includes ten steps: sun-withering, cooling, tossing, pan-firing, rolling, initial baking, wrap-rolling, re-baking, re-wrap-rolling, and drying.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Anxi Tieguanyin craft is distributed mainly around Chengxiang and Penglai and the mountainous tea villages of Gande, Xiping, and Xianghua; each tea village differentiates styles—strong-aroma and fresh-aroma—by altitude and the intensity of leaf-working. Unlike Wuyi rock tea and Jian'ou xiaozhong, Anxi follows a semi-fermented leaf-working route, determining its tight strips and natural orchid aroma by the counts of cooling, tossing, and repeated wrap-rolling and re-baking.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Oolong Tea Processing Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Wei Yuede (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born July 1964, a native of Anxi County, Fujian Province. Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item "Oolong Tea Making Craft (Tieguanyin Making Craft)." Tieguanyin craft technician. Born into a tea-craft family, he learned tea cultivation techniques and Tieguanyin-making craft from his elders from childhood. He is especially proficient in the ten-step traditional initial Tieguanyin craft, including sun-withering, cooling, tossing, pan-firing, rolling, initial baking, wrap-rolling, re-baking, re-wrap-rolling, and drying. He also emphasizes research on the making craft, establishing a Tieguanyin research institute and a mother-tree garden. The Tieguanyin he made won honors including the gold medal at the first China (International) Famous Tea Expo held by the China International Tea Culture Institute and others. Wang Wenli (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born July 1970, a native of Anxi County, Fujian Province. Representative inheritor of the third national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item "Oolong Tea Making Craft (Tieguanyin Making Craft)." Tieguanyin craft technician. Influenced by family tradition from childhood, he learned the Tieguanyin craft from his grandfather and father, mastered its traditional techniques, and gained deep understanding in learning and transmitting cultivation, initial, and refined crafts, with considerable expertise in plucking, sun-withering, cooling, tossing, kill-green, wrap-rolling, and drying. He especially emphasizes training successors in the traditional craft, and by setting up dedicated training teams has cultivated several thousand skilled oolong (Tieguanyin) makers. He successively received honors such as one of the "Top Ten Influential Figures in Chinese Tea Enterprises" awarded by the China Tea Marketing Association, and "Quanzhou Tea Industry Contributor" awarded by the Quanzhou Agriculture Bureau and others.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wei Yuede 03-1420
- Wang Wenli 03-1421
- Zhang Xingyu
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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