Since China has a long history of tea planting, extensive tea areas, various natural conditions, numerous varieties of tea trees and also different methods of tea collecting and processing, it has produced thousands of tea products. Chinese tea named after the colour, class according to the degree of fermentation, process techniques are divided into six categories, let me take a look at the characteristics of different teas!
Green tea
Green tea is non-fermented. It is named after the green colour of its dried tea, the turquoise colour of its brewed tea broth and the emerald green colour of its leaf bottom.
Famous green tea in China includes West Lake Longjing Tea,Dongting Biluochun tea, XinYang fresh tea made of delicate leaf bud, etc.
Black tea
Black tea is fermented. Black tea is not naturally grown, but is made on the basis of green tea, through a series of processes to allow the tea leaves to ferment so that the components of the chemical reaction, showing the characteristic deep red tea colour, and therefore known as black tea.Black tea is the most exported of Chinese teas, for example to the UK.
Famous black tea in China includes Qimen black tea from Anhui, Zhenjiang black tea from Yunnan and Xuanhong black tea from Hubei, etc.
Oolong tea
Oolong tea is half-fermented. The character of this type is the leaves showing green in the centre and red at the edge, it is commonly called green leaves with red edging. It is mellow as black tea but bitter and stronger than ordinary black tea while fresh as green tea but without the bitterness of ordinary green tea. It keeps strong and long-lasting flavor even after drinking, and has the effects such as refreshing oneself, promoting digestion, curing dysentery, cooling down the summer heat and sobering up, etc.
It is mainly produced in Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan, etc. Generally, it is named in accordance with tea trees of producing areas, e.g. Tie Guan Yin, Da Hong Pao Tea and Oolong, etc.
White tea
White tea is non-fermented and needs no rolling. It has natural flavor and can be divided into large white, narcissus white and mountain white, etc. Among them, the most famous and precious one is white tip silver needle whose features are: coating with white fuzz all around and with shining silver glosss, tea soup is slightly yellow and mellow.
The main producing areas are Fuding County and Zhenghe County from Fujian Province.
Dark tea
Dark tea belongs to post-fermented tea, which is a special tea from China with a long production history.
Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guangxi etc. are focused on producing pressed tea and selling to border areas. Main types of dark tea are Hunan dark tea, Sichuan brick tea and Yunnan Puer tea, etc., among which Yunnan Puer tea has great fame for a long time in modern and ancient times in all around the world.
Yellow tea
Yellow tea is fermented, whose production process is similar to that of green but has one more stack-cover process. This extra process is the main feature of yellow tea production and also the fundamental distinction with green tea.
Typical types are Mengding yellow tea and Huoshan yellow tea.