Category: Chinese Tea Culture

Tea for medicinal purposes has a history of 2,700 years in China. Many books, like Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic (Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220)), and Classification of Tea (Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)), all recorded the tea’s effect for medicinal purposes. Tea Classics, written by Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty, recorded 24 examples to show tea’s pharmacology effect Tea contains more than 5,000 biochemistry ingredients closely correlated to human body. Tea not only can refresh the mind, clear heat, and help people lose weight, but also has certain pharmacology effects on some modern diseases, like radiation sickness,  cancer, heart disease, and blood sickness.

Researchers believe they have solved the riddle of East Asia’s remarkably low rates of heart disease and lung cancer.

Junshan Silver Needle: Produced at Qingluo Island on Dongting Lake. This Junshan "Yinzhen" leaf has very long silvery, downy tips.

Kuding tea or Ligustrum purpurascens, commonly known as Chading, Fuding tea and Gaolu tea, is a particularly bitter-tasting Chinese tea produced mainly in the provinces of Guandong and Fujian. It is one of the most famous types of tea in Chinese history. According to Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao Gangmu), the medicinal properties associated with Kuding tea include its ability to disperse wind-heat, clear the head and the eyes, alleviate thirst, invigorate digestion, keep up the spirits, resolve toxin, and reduce inflammation as well as lower blood pressure and blood lipids. Kuding tea contains more than 200 elements including Kuding saponins, amino acids, vitamin C, polyphenols, flavonoids, caffeine, protein, etc. The finished product features an aromatic and bitter taste at first and then a slightly sweet and cool taste, as well as many medical functions such as dispersing heat and preventing sunstroke, clearing the eyes, benefiting the brain, alleviating thirst, increasing the discharge of urine, strengthening the heart, relieving the cough, lowering blood pressure, reducing weight, preventing cancers, slowing aging, and enhancing blood circulation. Therefore it is usually dubbed as “healthy tea”, “beauty care tea”, “slimming tea”, “anti-hypertensive tea”, and “longevity tea”.

Recented tea is a tea variety unique to China. It originated in the Song Dynasty, began in the Ming Dynasty, and took shape in the Qing Dynasty. Then, a number of tea shops that sold jasmine tea, like Zhang Yiyuan Tea Shop, emerged in Beijing. The high-quality and bulky jasmine tea is processed from green tea and scented with fresh jasmine flowers. It is a rarity in all flower tea varieties.

Taboos for tea storage 1. The moisture contained in tea leaves should not be too much. 2. The contact of

White peony tea, one variety of the white teas, is one of the top ten most well-known teas of China.