- Dragon Well – Long Jing Green tea
- Dragon Head – Long Ding Green tea
- Dragon Buds – Long Ya Green tea
- Dragon Sword – Long Jian Green tea
- Dragon Beard – Long Xu Oolong tea
- Dragon Pearls – Long Zhu Jasmine tea
How many of these teas you ever tried? You may wonder why so many tea names are dragon connected, actually there are more, the Chinese people just can not stop loving dragon, it’s the representation of chasing for a better life.
Dragon Well
Dragon Well is not just a tea name, it’s the name of spring water that locates in West Lake of Zhejiang Province. Thousand years ago people didn’t have so many solutions for drought and flood, they only way they can do is to pray.
Intriguingly this spring water never dry or overflow no matter how bad of the drought and flood, people believe it has a channel connected with the sea and there is a dragon king in the sea. Dragon King is not just a god, it also has the ability and responsibility for raining.
This spring water has been existed for thousand years, this tea has been called Dragon Well for thousand years too but it’s not the no.1 China tea until the Emperor Qian Long arrived.
Emperor Qian Long
In China, since BC 221 the first Emperor Qin unified the whole China, only him can ware or use anything has dragon image, the emperor claimed himself to be the son of god, embodiment of dragon.
After almost two thousand years later, the Dragon Well village welcomed a special guest, the sixth emperor of Qing Dynasty, Qian Long was a both civil and martial man, he liked this tea very much and wrote six poems for it, also eighteen bushes were knighted. From this time on, Dragon Well tea became more and more famous. I assume he might be very happy to meet another dragon as a dragon.
Paint the dragon
Can you imagine a dragon has no claws or horns? The dragon image we see now has a long time evolution, in the beginning it’s just a totem of tribes, when time moved to the cultivation era, it became god, a god of water but there were many many gods at that time.
The important time to distinguish it from others is the man mentioned above, the first emperor of China, from that time on, dragon began to have patent rights, it means power, noble and inviolable. According to the archaeological findings, the next dynasty Han started to have four claws then scales in the following dynasty Tang.
Phoenix and dragon
Emperor is dragon, in turn Queen is phoenix, they always come together, just like Yin and Yang. In Guangdong province, there is an Oolong named Phoenix Mountain Dan Cong, it’s said the plant seed was gifted by the phoenix.
Dan Cong means single bush, this tea was picked and processed one bush by one bush, different craft is applied to each bush as they are different, a very fine manufacturing. In this big machine time this might means insane but it helps to create remarkable quality, the most impressive character is strength of aroma, if it’s no.2 there is no no.1. Interestingly many styles of aroma available, the most famous one is Duck Shit Aroma.
Emperor tea man
Historically the most powerful tea man was emperor Zhao Ji who was the eighth emperor of Song dynasty, Da Guan Tea Comments is the book written by him. The first classic tea book was written by Lu Yu but the crown of most delicate belongs to this one.
He pushed forward the tea to the highest level in the entire China history even today, and the representative work is Dragon Ball Phoenix Cake (aka DBPC, Long Tuan Feng Bing) which is the origin of Wuyi Rock tea.
The minister would be very lucky to get one DBPC from the emperor, as this tea is not just monopolized by the emperor but indeed cost very very much. So almost everyone drinks tea, no matter rich or poor, high and low, still today a lot of people are studying the tea life in Song dynasty.
A better life, a cup of tea
What would you do if have only ten minutes life?
I would have a cup of tea, a cup of DBPC.