Tie Guan Yin, 铁观音, Iron Goddess of Mercy, or just plain old Iron Goddess. Probably the most popular oolong in China. And quite right too. In a quest to find out more about this famous oolong, my friend, Jasmine, and I set off one October weekend to the source of Tie Guan Yin - Anxi in Fujian province.
Wholesale Tea Market
Our first port of call was China Tea Capital, Anxi’s wholesale tea market, probably the largest of its kind in the world. This is where the tea farmers from nearby villages come to trade their Tie Guan Yin directly to customers from all over China. The market also attracts big buyers from many other countries. Buyers can sample their wares by buying a ticket for three rounds of tastings at the tasting station.
Tea sorting
Grandmas, kids, students are all roped in for what is the final stage in oolong tea production - the tea sorting. The processed tea is still attached to the stem in little round balls. This is called “raw” tea. The tea leaf ball is picked off the stem and sorted, this is called “clean tea”. It can take 10 hours for one person to remove the stems from 12kg of raw tea, producing about 9kg of clean tea.
The Mother Tea Bush
The next morning we took a winding taxi ride up to Xiping, the village where Tie Guan Yin is said to have originated. Here we paid our tea respects to the mother tea bush which is enshrined in its own little temple.
Visiting a Tea Family
Nearby the mother tea bush, a group of kids were hanging out. They all came from tea farming families, so Jasmine "asked" one of the boys to take us to his home so we could see the tea making process. We ended up staying until nightfall, “helping out” with the production process (step by step guide here) along with all the family – grandpa, baby and all. After a hard day’s work, they invited us to stay for a home-cooked dinner of local veggies, tofu, and pig’s ears. Before saying zaitian, we insisted on buying some Tie Guan Yin. And we had to insist, they didn’t want us to buy out of obligation. Ah, tea people - warm, welcoming, generous human beings!
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