Is Your Tea The Real Da Hong Pao

Posted by Guest Author on November 30th, 2009 filed in Reader Articles

In 1972, during his unprecedented visit to China, then U.S. president Richard Nixon received a rare gift as he met Chairman Mao – a pack of about 400 grams of Chinese Da Hong Pao oolong tea The president joked:”This is little”, to which Chairman Mao replied:”No, that’s not little at all. Half of what China has is in here.”.

That’s true!China produced slightly over a kilo of Da Hong Pao at the time400 grams, that was more than a lot

But how come the tea was rare?

That’s because there were only six Da Hong Pao oolong tea trees in all of China. One kilo of tea, that’s the production for a whole year.

continued below......

Also, the harvesting of the tea leaves was extremely difficult, for the oolong tea trees grow half way up a skyscraping cliff in Wu Yi Mountain. In ancient times, monkeys had to be trained to pick the tea.

But, if Da Hong Pao is so scarcely available, what’s in your cup anyway?

The truth is: it’s still Da Hong Pao, but the leaves are not from the original 6 tea trees now venerated as ‘mother’ of all Da Hong Pao.

In 1982, after a long petition, an oolong tea expert named Chen De Hua received five twigs from the original Da Hong Pao trees. Chen transplanted the twigs in his experimental field, and grew them with extreme care. Soon, twigs become shrubs. And only a few years later, they’d grown big enough to produce juicy and aromatic tea leaves.

Chen’s re-plantation of Da Hong Pao ended in a big success. Before long, oolong tea farmers all came for the tea saplings

Today, the area grows as many as 40,000 acres of Da Hong Pao with the its annual production reaching 1,700 tons.

Meanwhile, another tea expert joined the effort to improve the flavor of Da Hong Pao. Master Zhang Tian Fu, who is 101 year old now, has been studying Chinese oolong tea since he was young. And even someone as experienced as him wasn’t quite sure of the recipe for processing Da Hong Pao.

Although Da Hong Pao is known to every tea lover in China, very few knew how to make it. Near the place where the 6 mother Da Hong Pao trees grow stands a Buddhist temple, which used to own the trees and the proximity. For centuries, only the abbots knew the existence of the six tea trees and they carefully preserve the secret till their death.

Things have changed, and today, fans of Da Hong Pao from around the world come to visit the ‘mother’ tea trees and take a peek into its once mysterious processing techniques.

And you, too, can secure a serene space, sit back, and sip your Da Hong Pao oolong tea with ease and delight.

 Mail this post

Technorati Tags: Aromatic Tea, Chairman Mao, Chinese Oolong Tea, da hong pao oolong tea, Experimental Field, Extreme Care, Kilo, Master Zhang, Monkeys, oolong tea expert, oolong tea farmers, oolong tea plants, oolong tea trees, Pao, Petition, President Richard Nixon, Rare Gift, Richard Nixon, Shrubs, Tea Farmers, Tea Leaves, Tea Lover, Tea Trees, Twigs, Unprecedented Visit, Wu Yi