Green Teas

Huangshan Mao Feng (Huangshan Hairpoint) Tea

While not strictly a scented tea, this variety produces an apricot colored beverage with the fragrance of magnolias, even though none grow nearby. Perhaps the wild peach trees blossoming all over the hills surrounding huangshan in Anhui province make some contribution. And perhaps that is why one authority lists it among the five best known teas in China. Huangshan tea drinkers have a saying: the first cup is most fragrant, the second sweetest, the third, strongest.

Plucked very young at the stage of only a bud and a single unfolding leaf, the leaves when processed are yellowish green, flat with a very slight upturn, and covered with silvery hair. The Qingming (early April) picking is sold as a special choice grade.

Every part of the Chinese countryside has its legends which reflect the tragedy of life of old China, and there is one linked with Huangshan Mao Feng. A young man and a beautiful young woman from a tea plantation were in love, but the local tyrant seized her for his concubine. She escaped, only to learn that the landlord had killed her lover. When she found the lover's body deep in the mountains, she wept and wept, until she became the rain, while her lover's body turned into a tea bush. That is why, says the legend, the area where this tea grows is cloudy and humid the year round.

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