Region · in China
Fujian
Fujian has invented more of tea than anywhere else. Oolong, white tea and black tea all start in this province, and the jasmine scenting trade that made Chinese tea legible to the rest of the world runs out of Fuzhou. It is mountainous, wet and cut off from the interior by ridges, which historically pushed it to the sea and to export, and that is a large part of why its teas travelled.
What grows here
The north makes Wuyi rock oolong, and inside it the Tongmu valley makes Lapsang Souchong and Jin Jun Mei. The south makes Anxi Tie Guan Yin alongside Huang Jin Gui, Ben Shan and Mao Xie. The northeast, around Fuding and Zhenghe, makes all the classic white teas: Silver Needle, White Peony, Gong Mei and Shou Mei. The province also holds three gongfu black teas (Tanyang, Zhenghe and Bai Lin), the pressed Zhangping Shui Xian and the jasmine scenting workshops around Fuzhou.
The ground
Ranges cover most of the province and the tea sits in them: the Wuyi range along the northwestern border, Taimu Shan in the coastal northeast, the Daiyun range inland from Anxi. Subtropical monsoon climate, heavy rain, acidic red and yellow mountain soils, and a lot of cloud. The coastal counties are warmer and more maritime than the northern uplands, which is roughly why the north roasts its tea hard and the northeast can get away with drying leaf in open air.
The bushes
Fujian is China's cultivar nursery, and several of its bushes have been exported nationwide. Fuding Da Bai and Da Hao, with their fat downy buds, are the reason Fujian white tea looks the way it does, and Zhenghe Da Bai is the later, larger-leafed alternative. Shui Xian originated here and is now grown in half the oolong regions in China. Tie Guan Yin, Huang Dan and Rou Gui all belong to the province, and Fujianese planting stock seeded Taiwan's oolong industry.
Harvest seasons
White tea takes the earliest and most valuable picking: Silver Needle is bud-only from a short window at the end of March into April, and White Peony follows immediately after. Anxi oolong has two seasons that are genuinely different products, a spring picking with more body and an autumn one, qiu xiang, that the trade buys specifically for aroma. Wuyi takes a single later picking to a mature leaf in late April and May, then spends months roasting it.
How it is made here
Three inventions, all still local practice. Oolong's zuo qing, the cycle of tossing and resting that bruises the leaf edges and oxidises them while the centre stays green, is the step that created a whole category. White tea is the opposite instinct: withering and drying with no kill-green and no rolling at all, which is a much harder thing to do well than it sounds. And jasmine scenting layers fresh Jasminum sambac blossoms through finished tea overnight, then removes them and repeats, several rounds for a good one.
What to look for
White tea is where the misdescription concentrates. Real Silver Needle is buds only, so plenty of what carries the name is White Peony with leaf in it, and aged white cakes are sold with vintage claims that no one can check. Fuding, Zhenghe and Jianyang are the three traditional counties, and 'Yunnan white' from assamica material is a different tea wearing the same word. For Tie Guan Yin, decide first whether you want the modern jade-green style or the traditional roasted one, since they share only a name, and note that plenty is grown well outside Anxi.
How it got here
Fujian's first fame was the Song imperial tribute garden at Beiyuan, near modern Jian'ou, which supplied the court with pressed cake tea when that was the most prestigious tea in China. When the Ming abolished compressed tribute in 1391 the province had to reinvent itself, and it did so with the loose, oxidised, roasted leaf that became oolong and, in the Tongmu valley, black tea. Fujian leaf reached Europe through Canton from the late seventeenth century, which is where English picked up Bohea and Souchong. Fuzhou's opening as a treaty port in 1842 cut out that overland haul and made the province its own shipping point.
Places in Fujian
Named places inside Fujian. The ones with a page of their own are links.
Styles from Fujian
Tea styles tied to Fujian or to somewhere inside it.