Country
China
China invented the six-type classification the whole tea world now uses, and it is the one country that still makes all six at scale. It is also where the unit that matters is the village rather than the estate, because the famous gardens are smallholdings that never consolidated into plantations. A great many of its famous teas carry a place in the name: a mountain, a lake, a valley, a single ravine. Where the name does that it tells you where the tea should have come from, and much of the trade turns on whether it actually did.
What grows here
Fujian is the busiest province: Wuyi rock oolong in the north, Anxi Tie Guan Yin in the south, all of white tea around Fuding and Zhenghe, the first black teas and the jasmine scenting trade. Yunnan is puerh and dianhong, grown on the broad-leaf assamica plant rather than the small-leaf bushes of the east. Zhejiang is green tea, Longjing above all. Anhui gives Keemun, Taiping Houkui and Huangshan Maofeng. Guangdong has the Phoenix dancong oolongs and Yingde black. Hunan, Guangxi and Sichuan press the dark heicha that travelled north and west by caravan.
The ground
The growing belt runs from the Shandong coast, where Laoshan and Rizhao sit near the northern limit of where the bush will overwinter outdoors, down to Hainan, and it climbs from riverside gardens to Yunnan slopes above 2,000 m. There is no single Chinese terroir, and the useful generalisation runs the other way: the famous teas sit on small, awkward, mountainous plots that resisted consolidation, which is why a Chinese origin claim points at a named hill rather than a district.
The bushes
The split worth understanding is between qunti zhong, seed-grown mixed populations where every bush is genetically its own, and named clonal cultivars propagated from cuttings. Old gardens are usually the former, and growers argue that the mixture is what gives a complex cup. New planting is almost always the latter, chosen for yield, frost resistance or an early bud. Longjing 43 against West Lake's older seed-grown bushes is that argument in miniature, and it repeats in every producing province.
Harvest seasons
For green tea the calendar is solar rather than monthly. Mingqian tea is picked before Qingming, around 4 to 6 April, and yuqian before Guyu, around 20 April; both carry a premium because the buds are small, slow-grown and few. The further north the garden, the later everything runs, so Sichuan and southern Yunnan can be picking while Shandong has not started. Oolong, black and dark teas are picked later and to a more mature leaf, and their seasons are looser.
How it is made here
The six-type system is a Chinese invention and it sorts teas by what was done to them rather than by where they grew. Two steps are particularly Chinese. The default kill-green is pan-firing in a hot wok, which leaves the toasted, nutty edge that steaming does not. And the dark teas, heicha and puerh, are genuinely fermented by microbes after processing rather than merely oxidised, which is what lets them be aged on purpose and pressed into bricks and cakes.
What to look for
Nearly every famous name is now made well outside the place it names, openly and legally. Longjing is grown across Zhejiang and beyond while only West Lake leaf is the expensive thing, Tie Guan Yin is planted far outside Anxi, and unqualified Da Hong Pao is mostly a blend. China does register protected geographical indications for many of these teas, but Western shop copy rarely mentions one, so the work falls to the buyer: ask for the sub-region, not the name. For greens, ask the harvest year too, since they are at their best inside a year.
How it got here
Tea use begins in the southwest, and the first sustained account of it is Lu Yu's Cha Jing, written around 760 under the Tang, when tea was pressed into cakes and boiled. The Song whisked it as powder. The decisive break came in 1391, when the Hongwu emperor abolished compressed tribute tea and pushed the court onto loose leaf. Steeped whole-leaf tea descends from that, and so eventually do oolong and black tea. Export dominance ended in the nineteenth century as India and Ceylon planted at scale, and the famous-tea trade was rebuilt from the 1980s.
Places in China
Named places inside China. The ones with a page of their own are links.
Styles from China
Tea styles tied to China or to somewhere inside it.
Oolong
- Bai Ji Guan
- Ban Tian Yao
- Ben Shan
- Da Hong Pao
- Dancong: Ba Xian (Eight Immortals)
- Dancong: Gui Hua Xiang (Osmanthus)
- Dancong: Huang Zhi Xiang (Gardenia)
- Dancong: Mi Lan Xiang (Honey Orchid)
- Dancong: Song Zhong
- Dancong: Xing Ren Xiang (Almond)
- Dancong: Ya Shi Xiang (Duck Shit)
- Dancong: Yu Lan Xiang (Magnolia)
- Dancong: Zhi Lan Xiang (Orchid)
- Huang Jin Gui
- Lao Cong Shui Xian (Old Bush)
- Mao Xie (Hairy Crab)
- Phoenix Dancong
- Qi Dan
- Qi Lan
- Rou Gui
- Shui Jin Gui
- Shui Xian
- Tie Guan Yin (Iron Goddess)
- Tie Luo Han
- Wuyi Yancha (Rock)
- Zhangping Shui Xian (Pressed Oolong)
Green
- Chun Mee
- Gunpowder
- Jasmine Dragon Pearls
- Jasmine Green (Scented)
- Mao Feng
- Anji Bai Cha
- Bi Luo Chun
- En Shi Yu Lu
- Laoshan Green
- Liu An Gua Pian (Melon Seed)
- Longjing (Dragon Well)
- Lu Shan Yun Wu
- Meng Ding Xue Ya (Snow Buds, Sichuan)
- Song Zhen (Pine Needle Green)
- Taiping Houkui
- Xin Yang Mao Jian
- Zhu Ye Qing (Bamboo Tips)