Green Teas

Pi Lo Chun Tea (Biluochun, Green Snail Spring)

For centuries this very famous aromatic light green tea was know by the name Xia Sha Ren Xiang (Astounding Fragrance). A legend explains why. Once in the distant past, some pickers of a particularly good crop filled their baskets before they were ready to go home. Wanting to carry more leaves, they stuffed the excess inside their tunics. Warmed by body heat, the leaves began to give off a rich aroma. "I was astounded," many pickers said, and the name stuck.

Sometime in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century Emperor Kang Xi visited this tea. He liked it, but said the name was too vulgar, and suggested a new name, Pi Lo Chun, Green Snail Spring. The processed leaves, tightly rolled in spiral shape, do look like tiny green snails.

The name is now known all over the world, for this is one of China's famous rare teas. Its home is two mountains known as East and West Dongting which poke up out of Taihu, the great lake not far west of Shanghai, and where the garden city of Suzhou is located. One mountain is an island in the lake and the other a peninsula. The water evaporating from the lake keeps them overhung with clouds and mist, thus the young leaves stay moist.

A further attraction is the fact that between the tea bushes are planted peach, plum, and apricot trees. They are in full bloom just as the unfolding tea leaves are at their tenderest and most receptive to absorbing the fragrance of the blossoms. This gives Pi Lo Chun tea a unique aroma and clean flavor.

Plucking time begins at the spring equinox and reaches its height early in April. After that time leaves are no longer at their prime. Plucking takes only the bud and a single leaf half unfurled, called the "sparrow's tongue." The leaf is full of fine white hairs. A mere pound of it contains sixty to seventy thousand leaf-bud sets. Processing is done by hand, and it takes great skill, for if the rolling of the roasting leaves is not carefully done, they will not achieve their perfect snail shape.

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