Tea Farer

Sorting tea at Wuliting Tea City in Fuzhou

Its apparently that time of year, harvesting season for that emerald jade beauty of an oolong, tieguanyin 铁观音. Mid November is the end of the harvesting season in Fujian. The most well known tieguanyin and the original source is around Anxi in Southern Fujian.

Sorting through grades of tieguanyin oolong

I recently visited one of the “tea cities” in Fuzhou. This area is full of literally dozens of tea wholesalers from various tea mountains throughout China. While there I visited a wholesalers I knew whose family has farms in Anxi.

The last of the mornings shipment of tieguanyin direct from Anxi.

They literally had bushels and bushels of tieguanyin. They were also processing and sorting leaves there. For the past few weeks everywhre you go in Fujian there are people sorting through tieguanyin at all the tea stores.

Random street in Fuzhou full of tea sorters

Ok made it to Korea so far and I have a five hour layover here before I catch my flight to Shanghai. I still haven’t figured out how I am going to get to Fujian, but this won’t be the first time I’ve “winged” it. Then starting tomorrow I am going to make arrangements for my trip to the Wuyi Mountains. I am looking forward to the many hours of tasting various da hong pao (Scarlet Robe) dark oolongs, and some of the artisan black teas grown in the region.

I am getting excited now that my quest for tea has begun. I hope all you fellow tea lovers will enjoy following along.

So I have finally gotten my plane tickets back to China. I will be landing in Shanghai on the 6th of October. By late that same night I should be back at my place in Fujian, one of the largest tea growing regions in China.

I also sent an email to Yang Jiangfan, a professor I met from my involvement with the Agricultural University. Professor Yang is President of Wuyi University and holds chairs at Universities in Beijing, Zhejiang, and Fujian, all relating to tea. I am asking him about showing me around the Wuyi tea farms and artisans. I plan on going there for the fall harvests in mid-october.

Once I hear back from him and find out the specifics of the trip I will let you know.

I am going to start a blog soon detailing my travels and quests to find the perfect cup tea of by going to the source.  I live in Fujian Province in the center of a seemingly endless number of Mountains famous for producing tea.  Currently I am back in the Chicago area visiting family.  At the end of the month I will be going back to Fujian and start my travels into the mountains.