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Tie guan yin tea, is created by the people in Anxi of Fujian province during the year of 1725-1735. It is the representive of oolong, one of the Chinese ten famous tea. Tie guan yin tea is between the green tea and black tea, belonging to half-fermentation tea. Tie guan yin tea has its own “Kwan-yin lingering charm”, fresh and elegant. In spite of the general health keeping effect, tie guan yin tea also has effects of anti-aging, anti-cancer, anti-atherosclerosis, anti-diabetes, diet fitting, anti-caries, heat curing, sobering up and obstructing smoking.

  The summer dragon well tea, i.e., tea picked and made in the hottest season of the year, which takes 20% of the total production of the whole year. The leaves picked at that time are the worst of the four seasons. In appearance, the leaves are loose and nonuniform with dim color. As to the quality, the aroma is not high while the tea water is weak and bitter. The summer tea costs less because that it doesn’t partition a long time from the harvest of spring tea, the nutrient accumulated in the tree is little while the temperature is high with much rainfall, which costs nutrient quickly. Therefore, only few of branches germinated and grew, causing poor inclusion.

As the old Chinese saying that a year’s plan starts with spring means that spring is the golden season of the year, so is the tea harvested in this season. But how can we identify pros and cons of the tie guan yin tea? The tea experts consider that we can judge by the aspects of appearance, color, aroma, taste and tea water.

  Appearance: judging by trabs, tenderness, color and cleanliness.

  Trabs: leaves with line shape are called trabs. Those are tight, straight, uniform and heavy are good.

  Tenderness: it mainly depends on the amount of buds, tenderness of leaves and smoothness of trabs.

  Color: depends on the color and lustrousness of leaves.

   Cleanliness: mainly to see if there are stems in leaves or other impurity, that without is good.

  Aroma

  Use your nose to judge if the aroma sterling and lasting. Smell it for several times to distinguish if the aroma high or low, strong or weak, last long or short. And also you may judge if it smells smoky, burning or mouldy.

  Color of the dragon well tea water

  The color that the brewed inclusion presents is called the color of tea water. The color may be dark or light, bright or dim, clear or impure. Surely the water bright and clear is good while the water dark and impure is bad.

  Taste

Brewed by boiling water, most soluble ingredients are dissolved in water, forming the taste. By the way, the taste formed when water’s temperature is 50℃ is the best. When tasting, keep a sip of tea water in mouth, taste it slightly with tongue to distinguish if it’s strong or weak, fresh or mellow, sweet or bitter.

  Tea dregs

Watch the leaves brewed in the cup, to see the tenderness, color and uniformity. You may also use fingers to press to judge if it’s soft or tough, thick or thin, old or tender

In winter, the temperature is lower, and nights are longer while days are shorter. Human bodies activities are relatively less and the appetite increases. While we use food to add heat of our bodies to drive chilliness, we must not ignore the body conditioning and maintaining.
The Anxi tie guan yin tea is popular in China. When think of the comfortable vision is that a cup of tea with a book, the poetic and pictorial splendor. Tie guan yin tea is famous, the sip of tie guan yin tea may compare with the appreciation of antiques. But how much do you know about tie guan yin tea’s essence? Do you truly know the famous tea?
　The Chinese likes drinking dragon well tea, tea not only reveals the odor of tea culture but also contains details of the history for thousands of years. However, there are perhaps few of people know that drinking tea may cause the waste of leaf nutrient, the essence of tea may be thrown with the tea dregs by yourself.
　Nutrient of tea leaves include water-soluble and fat-soluble parts. The latter is water insoluble, no matter how many times it’s drunk, it’ll be all along in leaves, so only 12% of it would be absorbed by the human body. The water-insoluble nutrients in leaves are vitamin E which is anti-aging, and the catechin is especially an important nutrient. The tea polyphenol in catechin has a strong effect on eliminating oxygen radical to resist being old and weak. The recent researches proved that it may not only remove splash and lose weight but also degrade cholesterol and blood-fat, and to kill leukemia cells and prevent influenza.
Well then, if we change the drinking way into eating, can we absorb the essence of tea? The answer is YES. But how do we EAT tea? Does it mean chewing tea leaves? Absolutely NO! Eating tea may better absorb the nutrient of tea leaves because what you absorbed is the total essence.

Feel sleepy at work? Refresh your mind with a cup of tie guan yin tea then. But pay attention that it’s not a good habit of drinking tea with an empty stomach. It’s said that drinking tea with empty stomach you’ll get your body covered by disease.
The professor Li Yuehua from the Chinese traditional medicine academy of sciences says that drinking tea has a lot of advantages, it’s for all the people except who suffer from canker, anaemia and insomnia. The patients with cardiovascular disease and diabetes and people who work before the computer for a long time, should especially drink tea often.
When we drink tea, we should pay attention to the drinking time. For example, drinking tea at night will cause bad sleep, which we should avoid. Drinking tea in the morning will not give health to human but have bad effects on the contrary. That is because tea leaves contain caffeine, if drink the tie guan yin tea with an empty stomach, the tea water goes straight into the stomach and solar plexus may make intestine absorb much more caffeine, which may cause the adrenocortical hyperfunction. That may cause dismayed and frequency of micturtion. With a long time, it’ll influence body’s absorbing of vitamin B1.
Therefore, from that ancient times, there is an old saying as no drinking tea with empty stomach. Generally speaking, it’s good for drink green tea in spring and summer, which may refresh minds and reducing fever, while for autumn and winter, we’d better choose black tea and oolong tea, which drives chilliness and nourish the stomach. For the generic black tea, green tea and scented tea, brew it for three times. Put a large amount of tie guan yin leaves when brewed, brew for times for they are old and tough. For the tea-bag, usually brew it for only once. A cup of dragon well tea should not be brewed from morning to evening, because after several times of brewing, some insoluble hazardous substance will gradually appear, which is harmful to bodies. The perfect drinking way is one cup of tea for morning and one for the afternoon, which is fresh and no losing of tea aroma. In a word, never try to drink tea with an empty stomach.

Tea is a kind of popular beverage nowadays and also a kind of gift. However, there are a few of people who truly know how to drink tea and as for how to choose tea, there are much less. Today, we’ll learn the five wrong ways to choose tie guan yin tea.
1. Buy tea by its names. In the tea market, all the tea may be titled with famous tea names. As for oolong tea, it is titled with tie-guan-yin tea, dongding oolong or dahongpao tea, for dragon well tea, it is called lungching, defang, biluochun or huangshan maofeng tea. Tea-lovers must be clear to know the fact that famous tea would not be everywhere.
2. Buy tea by its packaging. Inferior tea is always shining wrapped in porcelain bottles, tin pots or rosewood boxes, which can be called fair without foul within.
3. Buy the whole set of tea. The wicked businessmen would integrate all kinds of inferior teas and add an so-called elegant or excellent package, then name it as “Five kinds of famous tea or Eight kinds of famous tea”. Tea-lovers must keep it in mind that it would never be so easy to taste all kinds of famous tea.
4. Buy tea by the places. Go to the lands of tea, especially tourist attractions such as Huangshan, Lushan and Wuyi mountain. Never ever buy tea at vendor’s stand or the so-called farmhouses, you’ll 99.99% be fooled. Tea there would be fake or inferior or worth false price.
5. Buy tea by its grade. The words “nonsuch, gold award, superb work and superfine” are always printed on the tea packages. Actually, tea at first had grades and the country had clear rules about that, but now the rules has been messed. In addition, some businessmen are cunning, they make a big fuss about the grades. For example, they divide the dongding oolong tea into nonesuch, gold award, silver award and superfine, while superfine the highest level becomes the lowest level.
According to my humble opinion, if we buy tea by appearance, we’d better choose leaves with green, yellow-green or dark green color; for black tea, leaves are with shining dark red color; for oolong tea, it’s hard to choose, for the north Fujian oolong tea, choose the black color and for the south Fujian oolong tea, pick the tea with dark green color

Origin and evolvement of the white tie guan yin tea
The so-called white tie guan yin tea in Tang&Song Dynasty is made of the leaves from the occasionally found white tie guan yin tree, which is different from the white tie guan yin tea developed without frying or kneading. When in the Ming Dynasty, there appeared the white tie guan yin tea that’s similar to the one now.
The modern white tie guan yin tea is evolved gradually from the green tie guan yin tea of Song Dynasty. It indicated the silver white “Baihaoyinzhen”at first and then developed into “white peony”, “Gongmei”, ”Shoumei” and other varieties.
Emergence and development of red tie guan yin tea
The red tie guan yin tea originated from the 16th century. In the process of producing and developing of tie guan yin tea, people found that use solarizing instead of deactivating enzymes and kneading will turn leaves into red. The earliest red tie guan yin tea is planted in Chongan of Fujian province. From the small scale planting of red tie guan yin tea in the star village, it gradually evolved into the kongfu red tie guan yin tea. In the late 20 years of the 20th century, the red tie guan yin tea in India developed into pulverized red tie guan yin tea. In 1950s, China started to make the pulverized red tie guan yin tea.
Origin the blue-green tie guan yin tea
The blue-green tie guan yin tea is between the green and red tie guan yin tea with the producing of green first and red later, from which we get the producing of blue-green tie guan yin tea. There’s still a controversy about the origin of blue-green tie guan yin, some people deduced that it came up in north Song Dynasty but some thought that it was in Qing Dynasty. However the place is consilient in Fujian province. The facture of the Wuyi Rock tie guan yin tea of Fujian keeps the feature of this traditional technicsXihu longjing tea

Xihu dragon well tea comes from the famous West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. And Zhejing is not only famous for the West Lake, but also famous for Xihu Longjing tea.

2. Dongting Biluochun tea

Dongting Biluochun is produced in Tai Lake Dongting mountain, Wu county, Jiangsu province. Biluochun tea’s shape is cable slender, curled up into a spiral. Its body is full of fuzz, and color is green.

3. Huangshan Maofeng tea

Huangshan Maofeng originates in the Huangshan. Tea buds are very fat, soft, and tender. Tea leaves are so fat that they can be infused for long time.

4. Lushan Yunwu tea

Lushan Yunwu tea comes from Lushan, Jiangxi province. Tea buds present white luster and fat shape.