meizitang

From stewing drinking to drying collecting
For the using of tie guan yin tea, from the earliest chewing of fresh leaves developed into stewing and drinking. Stewing, is similar with stewing soup in today. Such as in Yunnan, the Jinuo minority still keep the convention of eating the dish mixed tie guan yin leaves: crush the fresh leaves and put them into a bowl, add some yellow fruit leaves, garlic, pimiento and salt as seasoning, then some spring water and mix them. For drinking the tie guan yin tea, the 《Book of Jin Dynasty》recorded: People in Wu Dynasty picked tie guan yin leaves and stew them, named it tea porridge. Even till the Tang Dynasty, people still had the habit of eating tea porridge.
In the Three Kingdoms Period, there came up the simple process of tie guan yin tea in Wei Dynasty. Leaves that newly picked are made into bulks, drying and baking, which is the germination of the tie guan yin processing technics.
3. From steaming shapes to the dragon and phoenix bulks
The tie guan yin bulk with primary process still has strong grass smell. With times of practice, people invented the steaming way to make tie guan yin tea, i.e., crush the fresh steamed leaves and perforate the tea cakes, bunch them with a string bake then bake them to remove the smell. But it still tastes bitter, the people reduce the bitter flavor by washing fresh leaves, steaming and pressing.
From Tang Dynasty to Song, the Gong tie guan yin tea emerged. There was a Gong tie guan yin tea academy, is actual a factory making tie guan yin tea. The officials did some researches on tie guan yin tea to promote revolutions of the tea productionNews from Xinhua net says that 140 tea peasants from Xihu dragon well tea protection zones came to Chinese Tea Museum to have free trainings. They were taught tea making by professors and masters, in order to join the coming competition. Although sponsors have encouraged young villagers to participate, 70 percent are old men above 40. villagers says that, this craft is not very costly, but time-consuming. So more and more young people don’t choose to learn it.